Recent Posts

6051

Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?

« Last post by superboyac on April 04, 2006, 11:37 PM »

Great!  Very helpful discussion.  THanks.

6052

Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?

« Last post by superboyac on April 04, 2006, 06:44 PM »

So it's been a few months since the last post here...how are you guys feeling about Outpost now?  Have most of the issues been resolved, or should people still be cautious about committing to it?  Thanks.

6053

General Software Discussion / Re: How necessary is a software firewall?

« Last post by superboyac on April 04, 2006, 06:07 PM »

Ok thanks, I guess I will give outpost another try, since it is the DC gold star winner!  But I remember before that it kept pestering me with connection permissions and it would never remember them, and kept repeating the same requests, and it pissed me off.  And I didn't understand all the rules and settings in the configuration, and I didn't want to spend time learning it, so i just installed it out of impatience.  But maybe I need it now since I do more things on my computer these days.

6054

General Software Discussion / How necessary is a software firewall?

« Last post by superboyac on April 04, 2006, 04:14 PM »

I've been wondering lately about how important a software firewall is.  Many years ago, I used to use ZoneAlarm, but it got too bulky and bloated, so I stopped.  Then I tried a few others, mainly Outpost, but I found that i grew tired of all the configuration, where it keeps asking me to accept/deny connections, etc.  So I quit that also, and since then I don't use a software firewall anymore.  Am I at big risk here, or is it not such a big deal.

For general computer practice, I am pretty safe.  I have good virus protection, I borwse the web responsibly (with ad blockers and good sense of what not to click on), I am a respnsible email user (I have never had a problem with spam).  I have a wifi linksys wrtg-something and it has a firewall in it.  I always heard that these hardware firewalls are better than software anyway.

SO, how secure am I?  I don't think I've ever had any problems with security, but maybe there's some things happening in the background that I don't know about.  Packet-sniffing, what not, I don't know what that means anyway.

6055

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: BatchFTP

« Last post by superboyac on April 04, 2006, 03:57 PM »

Ahh!  Very interesting, allen.  I was just about to start a thread on what people recommend for ftp clients, so i'm glad I did a search first.  Like you, I used to use bulletproof for the longest time (since the 90's I think).  I haven't done ftp for years, but now I'm thinking of maintaining a simple website occasionally.

Let me ask you this, if you don't consider the repeat uploads feature, is this still the best ftp client in your opinion?  I liked bpftp because it was simple and pretty easy.

6056

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Windows system tray clock replacement

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 11:42 PM »

You know, there's something weird about Alfaclock.  The have one website:
http://www.alfasoftweb.com/alfaclock/
and they sell alfaclock 2 and alfaclock classic.  THen they have another site:
http://www.alfaclock.com/
which has a beta version of alfaclock 2 (now betaclock), and alfaclock free, which seems to be a more recent version of alfaclock classic.  They are both free.  I don't get it, are they hoping people go to the first page and get duped into buying the software?  And there's no link from one page to the other.  What's the deal, it doesn't make sense?!

6057

Living Room / Re: Any MiniDisc people out there?

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 11:35 PM »

As I said before, with Sony's Sonicstage v3.4 that just came out, there are no more DRM restrictions, so you can upload and download from pc to mindisc at will.  THey're really fixed a lot of the annoying things about these SOny discs, and many of these changes are still no more than a year old, or, as far as DRM goes, just a few weeks old.

For those of you that have been avoiding minidisc because of this, take another try at it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

6058

Living Room / Re: Any MiniDisc people out there?

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 05:52 PM »

I think there's a new HiMD for data storage, and it might do a couple of other things, but I'm not exactly sure.

As far as the DRM crap, I'm pretty sure Sony removed that restriction in the most recent version of its Sonic Stage software (v3.4).  I think a lot of people we're very relieved about that.  So, I think for the most part, the major headaches that used to be associated with minidiscs have been done away with.

6059

Living Room / Re: Any MiniDisc people out there?

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 05:24 PM »

My bad, fodder, you are right!  The old MD discs had only 140-160 MB storage on it, depending on how you were using it.  That makes the new 1GB discs all the more amazing!  Yes, the HiMD's are still magnetic media.  I just love the novelty of these minidiscs.

On the minidisc forums, there have been some discussions of the mp3 players out there, like HDD and flash players, vs the new HiMD mindiscs.  Basically, we all know the pros of the HDD, which is massive storage capacity.  The benefit of the flash players is that they are extremely tiny.  The benefit of minidisc is somewhat weird:  it tends to have better battery life than the HDD.  The media is much cheaper per GB than flash players, and it is still probably cheaper overall per GB than the HDD players (although that's difficult to assume since the HDD players don't technically have "removable" storage, so the price of the player and hardware is united).  But what pushes you across the line is the ability to record in amazing quality for such a tiny unit.  I mean, we're talking uncompressed wav...that's just great!  I'm excited, this is my first new toy in years!  I've been very disciplined lately.

And, usually I don't care about looks, but the organic LED screen is just beautiful.  And, unlike the ipod, I'll probably be the only one around who has an orange HiMD player.  I'm special!

6060

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Windows system tray clock replacement

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 03:31 PM »

Interesting, it seems like Alfaclock has gone through some changes recently.  Just a few weeks ago, it was selling it's Alfaclock "Classic" for some nominal fee (it was version 1.82).  Now it looks like it's version 1.90 and called Alfaclock "Free".  And the newer Alfaclock 2, which they were selling for $30, is now called "Betaclock" and is once again a free beta version, that I assume will periodically expire like the previous beta alfaclock.  How interesting...

6061

Living Room / Re: Any MiniDisc people out there?

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 03:17 PM »

fodder...you should check out the new HiMD format, let me give you a brief overview:

--The new HiMD discs can hold 1GB instead of the 650MB or so that were the old MD discs.

--With the new HiMD units, you can transfer from MD->pc at usb speed, they removed the restrictions they had before, where you had to just record from the line-out in real time.  This is by far the coolest feature.

--You can record uncompressed PCM wav files now.  Sweet!

--The new mindisc units look so cool, especially the MZ-RH10 (or MZ-M100 in the US), and the coming-soon MZ-RH1.  They both sport the ultra sweet looking organic-LED displays.  There's even one unit out that can take pictures, but it can't record, so I don't care about it.

--I almost forgot, the new HiMD units can play mp3's natively.  You don't have to convert to ATRAC anymore.  You can just put mp3's on the disc and play it.  YES!!  This and the pc transfering was what always kept me from getting a minidisc before, but with these restrictions gone, I am now a full-fledged MD junkie.

I know that minidiscs aren't a practical format because there are these big hard drive mp3 players, that put the 1GB discs to shame, but if you're talking about ability to record and listen to mp3's, minidiscs are a great option.  There are a couple of flash-card based player/recorders out there, but when you consider that the new HiMD discs cost $7.00 for 1GB and a 1GB flash card is at least $50, it's much more practical to get the minidisc.  Besides, there's something to be said about being able to slide those cool cartridges in and out of the player.

6062

Living Room / Any MiniDisc people out there?

« Last post by superboyac on April 03, 2006, 01:53 PM »

Any of you use minidisc player/recorders?  I know they're not big in the US, but they are popular in other countries.  Anyway, the new HiMD format has been out for a while (which is cool...anyone who knows the advantages of the new format will understand).  A friend of a friend who is in Japan right now, just bought me the new orange HiMD unit that Sony released recently, the MZ-RH10.  You can only get the orange one in Japan.  It's so good looking.  Super sweet.

6063

General Software Discussion / Mcafee security suite...4 thumbs WAY down

« Last post by superboyac on March 29, 2006, 10:53 AM »

My goodness...my mom just got her dell laptop, which comes with Mcafee security suite.  This program is a load of <fill in>.  First of all, if it were mine, I'd just uninstall it and use something really simplistic, like AVG or some poweruser antivirus solution.  But since it came with the computer, and my mom isn't too familiar with computers yet, I figured I'd leave it.  I assumed Mcafee caters to people who don't know much about computers.

But it's a bloated, horrible software.  First of all, it makes you go through these wizards to set it up, which is a pain, because it makes you register and keep passwords and all this crap.  I mean, why do I need a password for virus protection, let alone how confusing this would be to someone who doesn't even know about computers.  It's retarded.  And the whole interface is bloody, bubbly work of trash.  It's like an unorganized webpage with things linking to other pages in an irrational way.  The options are convoluted and nonsense.  I think it's impossible to actually disable components (like the firewall) permanently.  The most you can do is temporarily disable it until reboot.  It won't work with IE7 beta installed.  It's basically a piece of junk.  I hate, I absolutely hate, how the major software companies make a living by putting out this bloated trash, while guys like mouser and some of the developers here write good software for free, or for pretty cheap.

6064

General Software Discussion / Foxit Reader (fast pdf reader alternative)

« Last post by superboyac on March 29, 2006, 10:36 AM »

http://www.foxitsoft...are.com/foxitreader/

For those of you that find Acrobat reader bulky and slow, try this baby out.  It's fast!  I just found out about it, so I don't know if it's old news or what, but I like it.

6065

Official Announcements / Re: Revitalizing the Reviews - Everyone Read in Please

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 12:41 PM »

Mouser, you know that I'd be willing to do the reviews.  But I may have a few suggestions as to how to make this process more manageable to most of us who are pretty busy with our other commitments.  I won't get into it right now, since I have to go back to work, but I'll post something soon.

By the way, as far as reviews go, there are "reviews" and there are "shootouts".  The shootouts are A LOT of work.  Reviews aren't so bad.  I can review an individual piece of software and do a good job once a month or so.  But a shootout is a whole other animal, that is a huge amount of work.  And, I think we're finding out that shootouts are difficult to do a good job on because there never is clearly one best winner, and if we start getting into things like picking multiple winners and such, it might make the shootout less meaningful.

6066

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Why Miranda might blow you away (do you use IRC, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google.talk..

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 12:29 PM »

yeah, you know, I don't think I have access to do this from work.  I think they've blocked off any kind of chatting.

6067

General Software Discussion / Re: Any issues about burning long filenames in Nero? (or any burning software)

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 12:23 PM »

aargh!  I've thought about raring the files, but the way I use these files would make it a hassle.  You see, I'm talking about backing up mp3 files.  I'll explain my process and see if there are any suggestions:

First, I have one directory per artist, and inside the directory, all of the files are listed.  So there is only really one directory, no subdirectory for albums or anything, because of the way I name my files, which is "artist - album - track number - title", so the files sort themselves alphabetically.

Before burning the files, I look through the files in Tag & Rename, which highlights all the files that are longer than the joliet (or whatever) standard, and I usually truncate those albums by reducing the album title to its acronym.  Then, I burn the cd.

I'd like to NOT have to go through the step to manually truncate all the files.  I don't want the files truncated at all, and furthermore, I don't want to zip or rar it, because after burning the files, I pass the dvd to MP3 Collector to catalog the songs.  And when I later go to retrieve the files, I'd rather not have to go through the whole unarchiving bit.

I read kimmchi's link about burning hell, and some of the people mentioned some of the problems related to long filenames may be related to harware issues.  That worries me.  If it was just a matter of OS compatibility, it wouldn't bother me.  Like I said, I don't care if I can't read the disc in a Windows 98 machine.  As long as I can read it in my current XP machine, and whatever next Windows version is in the future.  I mean, I assume the next Windows will be able to read any file from Windows XP.  In other words, I'm not really interested in backwards compatibilty, which seems to be the main issue when burning long filenames (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Here's a more general question...is the primary reason for the long filename issues due to backwards OS compatability issues and nothing more?  Is this whole thing just so that we can read files on older machines?  For me, that would be silly, because in all my life, I have never needed to go and read something in an older machine.  If this is true, please let me know so I can free myself of this unnecessary restriction forever!

6068

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Why Miranda might blow you away (do you use IRC, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google.talk..

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 12:03 PM »

Thanks, I disabled all of those.

I'm behind a proxy here, I wonder if that's why I can't connect...

6069

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Why Miranda might blow you away (do you use IRC, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google.talk..

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 11:57 AM »

OK, i got the irc server list.  But I still can't connect, I keep clicking online, and nothing happens.  And how do I stop the icq message from coming up every time I start miranda, saying I don't have it configured.  I'm only using this for irc.

6070

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Why Miranda might blow you away (do you use IRC, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google.talk..

« Last post by superboyac on March 28, 2006, 11:10 AM »

hey brothers, I'm here at work trying out miranda, and I don't have time to figure out how to set the whole irc thing up.  If possible, could you give me a quick step by step instructions on how to get the dc channel up and running.  All I've done so far is install miranda.  I started to put stuff in the irc options, but i don't know the server names and stuff.  On mirc, i would just pick a random server and connect.  Please help!

Thanks.

6071

General Software Discussion / Re: Any issues about burning long filenames in Nero? (or any burning software)

« Last post by superboyac on March 27, 2006, 02:17 AM »

Oh, I think I understand.  You're saying the files were truncated before burning it on the cd.  So if I don't truncate and just burn the full filenames, then I should be fine, right?

6072

General Software Discussion / Re: Any issues about burning long filenames in Nero? (or any burning software)

« Last post by superboyac on March 27, 2006, 02:00 AM »

mouser, when you say it couldn't be retrieved, do you mean you tried retrieving it from the same operating system you burned it from?  Because, if they were able to exist on the hard drive without any problems, why couldn't it be retrieved from the cd (assuming the OS was the same)?

6073

General Software Discussion / Any issues about burning long filenames in Nero? (or any burning software)

« Last post by superboyac on March 27, 2006, 01:14 AM »

I know that in the default setting, Nero will warn you when burning really long filenames, and will actually bring up a dialog to truncate the names and such.  Now, I don't know much about all this stuff about ISO and Joliet standards, but is it really a big deal if I set Nero so that it will just allow me to burn long filenames?  To help you guys offer me advice, let me just say that if it's a matter of compatability, I don't really care.  For example, if the only reason not to burn long filenames is because I won't be able to read the disc in Windows 95 or something like that, I don't care.  I'm either going to read the discs from Windows XP or the next more recent version, so it doesn't really matter to me.

I ask because it seems like all burning software make an issue about it, but it seems like I have no problem with really long filenames when they're on my hard drive, so why should it matter if it's the same on the burned media?  As always, thanks for the advice.

6074

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MyLife Organized (Time Management To-Do list maker)

« Last post by superboyac on March 26, 2006, 02:04 AM »

Your welcome, it's the least I can do for this great place.

6075

General Software Discussion / Re: Any recommendations for mp3 streaming/playing module for a website?

« Last post by superboyac on March 24, 2006, 05:31 PM »

(I don't know if this is still a good software, I used Dreamworks to make a couple of webpages 5 years ago!)

I meant Dreamweaver, of course.  I hate sounding like a Newbie!  Doh!