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6151

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2011, 07:08 AM »

@cmpm: That looks rather interesting. Sounds like ancient philosophy. There is potentially a lot to be learned from ancient philosophy - e.g. Ahamkara.

As regards the emblematic two-snake (the Caduceus)  versus the one-snake (rod of Asclepius) debate offerred by @app103, you did say (my emphasis):

Here is a misunderstood symbol of a soul, and all souls.
The serpents are masculine and feminine with the rest symbolic of spirit.
You might recognize it as the symbol of the medical profession, healing.

I did indeed recognise it as a symbol of medicine/healing - e.g., as used to designate the several corps of the Army Medical Department of the U.S. Army (AMEDD) - who I suspect may need to be told that they are using the "wrong" emblem.
However, I am also used to seeing the rod of Asclepius as the symbol of the medical profession/healing - from when I was working on a WHO-related project regarding the definition of Z59.5 (abject poverty) in 1994/5. Then too, the Caduceus was in use/misuse as it is today - so it's nothing new.

I blame all such misunderstandings on the Americans anyway, who have a well-documented history of corrupting standards for their own mysterious and peculiar purposes - e.g., gallons, and especially the use of English - The Decline of the English Department

"...Let's call the whole thing off."

   

Actually, come to think of it, there is another "emblematic" modern-day confusion - the middle digit (second finger) of one hand pointing upwards and facing outwards (in America), and the first and second fingers pointing upwards in a "V"and facing outwards (in England). Though they look quite different, they apparently mean much the same impolite thing.   

6152

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.99.02 - Sep 7, 2011

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2011, 03:28 AM »

SC v2.99.02: Goes fine for me.
By the way, today for the first time, I had occasion to need to use the "splice" functionality on an existing image. Worked a treat.

Thankyou for a very nifty application.

6153

ProcessTamer / Re: Consider Affinity?

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2011, 03:20 AM »

+1 vote for that.
Good coincidence. As a longstanding user of Process Tamer, ever since I got my new PC in Dec. 2010, I have been wondering if it would be possible to implement optional automatic affinity control...     
Just "Nice-to-have" though, really.

My PC:

HP ENVY 14 Notebook PC
Windows Experience Index 5.9
Intel(R) CorefTM) i7 CPU Q720 @ 1.60GHz 1.60 GHz
RAM DDR3 4.00 GB
Windows 7 64-bit Operating System

6154

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.23.01 - Nov 22, 2013

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2011, 02:58 AM »

@mouser: CHS v2.06.01: I tried installing this this 3 times via DCupdater. Each time it seemed to go OK, but when I run CHS it's apparently v1.19.01 that has been installed and it runs with an error on Ctrl+Alt+A:

---------------------------
Error..
---------------------------
Invalid docking layout stream version

Just to be sure, I deleted the .exe and reinstalled it via DCupdater, and again it's apparently v1.19.01 that has been installed.

??

6155

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2011, 01:43 AM »

@mouser: Not sure what I may have done here, but for a while now, I have been getting these FARR-related error message on boot-up (FARR is auto-started) and on restarting FARR, though FARR itself seems to load and function OK despite the error messages, after hitting ESC through all the error messages:

There's always one of these error messages first:

---------------------------
FindAndRunRobot.exe - System Error
---------------------------
The program can't start because SALRTL.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

(Windows Search shows there are 0 copies of SALRTL.DLL on the disk.)

- and then there are several of these error messages:

---------------------------
Advanced Options: FindAndRunRobot.exe - System Error
---------------------------
The program can't start because BASS.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

(Yet ,Windows Search shows there are 5 copies of bass.dll on the disk.)

The update for FARR did not make it go away, and I have just now re-installed FARR, and that did not make it go away either.
I don't want to blindly uninstall FARR and risk losing all my settings, and I figure I should be able to point-and-shoot the problem - if I knew what might have caused it. (I'm going looking for SALRTL.DLL after posting this.)

Any ideas?

6156

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 16, 2011, 08:16 PM »

Again, in memory of 911, I just saw this excellent summary of the post-911 retribution and achievements in changing world order, by the US, over the last decade: Afterburner with Bill Whittle: What We Did Right

This video clip kind of says it all about the crimes of 911 by those devout Muslim terrorists of Al-Queda's, and the punishment meted out to Al-Queda and others of a like ideology - but at the further cost of thousands of American soldiers' lives.
I guess what the video does not address is the "residual issue" of the 1,400-year old religio-political ideology of Islam which, in the terrorists' own minds would have justified their wholesale murder of all those innocent infidels, and on which the hegemonic objective idea of an Islamic world Caliphate (mentioned in the video clip) is founded.

In his blog , Robert A. Hall (who is a former Massachusetts state senator and U.S. Marine Corps veteran) makes the point in the post I'm Tired:

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor;” of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers;” of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery;” of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

Incidentally, and on a separate and lighter note about ideology, I noticed that his blog has a link to an amusing Hitler spoof of "Attackwatch": Hitler Discovers ATTACKWATCH is a Joke!

6157

General Software Discussion / Re: custom reminder

« Last post by IainB on September 15, 2011, 04:24 AM »

@kalos: Sorry not to have mentioned this before, but it slipped my mind until just now when I read your latest comment.

If you use MS Project and MS Outlook, then I think you could be able to set tasks into MS Project's timeline, and send those tasks to the email address of an assigned resource (person) - you, in this case - who is to action those tasks. I think they go into Outlook and should pop up in Outlook as flags/tasks to be completed by the dates specified.

I have not used this facility myself, but I recall reading about the capability several years ago (about 2006) in a manual on advanced usage of MS Project. I was more interested in the capability for resource pooling in MS Project at the time and don't really use Outlook, so it was not of much use to me. MS Project was/is an incredibly complex and powerful planning tool, and it will probably have been improved further since I read about this feature. I reckon that you would be able to automate the thing to a greater extent - i.e., set an MS Project macro to trigger the tasks at prescribed intervals of days after the start of a project. Which I think is what you may be after.

I have not had time to check if this works as above in my version of MS Project 2007.

Hope this helps or is of use anyway.

6158

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 14, 2011, 04:51 PM »

@cmpm:

i think this fits here in this thread.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=eMla61cOMtc

-cmpm (September 14, 2011, 08:34 AM)

Wow. That trailer looks like it could be a seriously interesting film. It puts forward a theory as a basis for a (for me) new perspective on our killing of each other. Seems to dovetail in here perfectly. Thankyou.

6159

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 14, 2011, 03:19 AM »

app103, wraith808, and daddydave: You were joking by making the separate comments you did, above, re the quote about "The mosques are our barracks...etc." - right?
You had me confuzzled at first, but then I saw the humour.   

6160

General Software Discussion / Re: DOS Batch Functions Tutorial

« Last post by IainB on September 12, 2011, 06:38 AM »

...I was wondering if it could do functions

-justice (June 16, 2011, 09:44 AM)

There was no question...

-justice (September 12, 2011, 03:31 AM)

Hahaha, priceless. Sorry, I mistakenly took the first to reflect a vague but genuine question and had put quite a bit of effort into doing a Sherlock Holmes job looking around to discover some answers. You're right - it did make for an interesting thread. So, not a waste of effort in any event - that is, if something has been learned.

6161

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2011, 10:56 PM »

@Renegade:

...but then, I'm just a madman running around blathering like an idiot.

-Renegade (September 11, 2011, 10:15 PM)

Yes, they told me about you when they brought me here.
They seem like very nice people here don't they?     

6162

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2011, 09:51 PM »

@Darwin: Yes, exactly. I had a similar sense of disbelief as I lay listening to my alarm radio. I was in New Zealand at the time, half a world away from New York.

At the time, I was working on a consulting contract at the New Zealand power grid operator Transpower. I went to work as usual, but for most of that day the client's staff didn't get much work done as they kept watching the nearest TV in stunned silence. Being on a contract where I was paid by the hour, I could not be spending the time watching TV as well, but the little I did see was compelling viewing and perturbed me greatly. The staff watched the events unfolding, and that TV footage was repeated for us over the next few weeks, so I didn't miss anything.

...the world has never been the same.

-Darwin (September 11, 2011, 04:31 PM)

Yes, exactly how I still feel. It was unforgettable, and yet though I was neither near to nor involved in the event itself, it changed me.
Similarly, because I had lived in London and was near to some of the IRA bombings there in the '70s (only 1 block away in one case), I can never look at an unattended bag or suitcase in a public place without an uneasy sense of alarm. The experience had changed me and my paradigms.

The point about quoting the film The Thin Red Line is to suggest that, even though it is fictional, there may be some truth in the quote, and truth as to the question of:

"What is this great evil?"

The answer to that question is that it is us. It is we who are doing the killing.
After the senseless slaughter of 911, a lot of senseless slaughter (retribution) ensued in Afghanistan. Don't mess about, use "Daisy cutter" bombs. Then later in Iraq. This is in our natures. I am not condemning those wars. How could you condemn a scorpion for being what Nature made it?

I believe, as @rgdot put it (and a belief is not a rational thought), that it is the killing that is evil. It is anti-Life.
To make us good soldiers, military practice and procedures necessarily desensitise our otherwise natural aversion to killing other people. To make it easier and less risky than having to bayonet them or shoot them yourself between the eyes, we automate it all by an efficient process and do it wholesale. For example:

• By US military crew putting a group of targets/victims on a night vision video screen as infra-red blobs and then killing them all at the press of a button by remotely targetting and triggering a missile from an overhead drone. Cheers go up at the kill. Move on to the next one to get these barbaric bastards on their home ground.
• Muslim terrorists enact 911. Palestinian Muslims celebrating, cheering and dancing in the streets after the 911 kills of those unbelievers on home ground and right in the midst of their previously thought "safe" city of NY. That'll teach the imperialist murdering bastard sinners. Two more planes to drop.

What is the difference? Where is the humanity? You kill us, we kill you, and we will keep on doing it. We cannot seem to stop this endless dance of death with our fellow-humans.

It is us committing this evil, and we usually justify it by belief in one imagined theoretical construct or another - one religio-political ideology or another. It doesn't really matter which one - any will suffice. We are capable of killing, and - if we are Fascist enough - will apparently kill other people generally for not accepting our imaginary paradigms or our imaginary ideologies, and in retribution we will kill those who kill us for the same thing.
There is no more persuasive argument than the click of a pistol being cocked and aimed at your head.
That makes my ideology stronger than yours, see? Do you agree, or not?

6163

General Software Discussion / Re: Request: Looking for Automatic Productivity List Scanner

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2011, 09:28 AM »

@Paul Keith:
OK, so if "productivity list" is loosely defined by you here:

By productivity list, I was just loosely referring to all the outlines, wikis, notepads, to-do lists, grocery lists, mindmaps, grids, clippers, etc.

The list was mostly there to omit things like RescueTime, Pomodoro lists, Timeboxing and as you highlighted, some corporate metrics like quantity produced per annum.

-Paul Keith (September 11, 2011, 08:34 AM)

- then what is a "productivity list scanner" that you ask for?
Do you mean by that the tools (i.e., the "...outlines, wikis, notepads, to-do lists, grocery lists, mindmaps, grids, clippers, etc.") that provide for the presentation of the productivity list?

In my ignorance, I might be over-simplifying things here, but essentially I guess that the simplest form of what you might be looking for could be a list which shows:

• Task: what thing is to be done or produced.
• Type of task: (categorisation depending on what you need).
• Priority: e.g. A=Mandatory; B=Highly desirable; C="Nice-to-have". - to enable dynamic queue re-prioritisation on the fly.
• When task is due to start: date/time.
• When you would like to have the task completed by: date/time.
• When task was actually started: date/time.
• When task was actually finished: date/time.

If you were managing the tasks as (say) a project, then for time-critical tasks of "A" priority, you could then use CPA (Critical Path Analysis), Gantt charts and PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Technique) to "scan" or map out your progress/productivity.

Any half-decent project planning tool could probably help with this, or you could set it up in a spreadsheet (lots of people do the latter).

6164

General Software Discussion / Re: Request: Looking for Automatic Productivity List Scanner

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2011, 03:49 AM »

@Paul Keith: "Productivity" is generally defined as having something to do with the rate at which things (e.g., goods, services, ideas) are produced/generated. For example, quantity produced per hour or per annum.
Is this the sense in which you are using it?
If so, then I don't understand what you mean by a "productivity list".
Could you elaborate please?
(Thanks.)

6165

General Software Discussion / Re: DOS Batch Functions Tutorial

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2011, 01:26 AM »

@kyrathaba: I didn't know anything about Windows Scripting until I read that post.
I am not sure, but maybe this is what @mwb1100 was referring to when he wrote in the above thread:

The book "Windows NT Shell Scripting" by Timothy Hill has about the best coverage of how to do complex processing with batch files that I've come across (get a used/remaindered one for the cost of shipping).

@justice: Could this (Windows Scripting) be a potential alternative answer to what your original Q was about? (I ask the question in gnorance as to what your full requirements might be or why they might have necessitated the use of DOS batch in the first place.)

6166

Living Room / Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2011, 08:02 AM »

I remember lying in bed listening to the news on my radio alarm at about 0630hrs that morning and thinking:

"Why on earth are they broadcasting this silly fake stuff about a 'live' disaster in New York? I would have thought radio producers would have learned from the panic caused when The War of the Worlds was broadcast as though it were 'live'."

And then it slowly dawned in my still sleepy head that this wasn't a fake broadcast - that it really was happening as I lay there in my bed.
I remember saying to one of my coworkers that day:

"Things will never be quite the same after this."

And it turned out to be true, and a bit of an understatement.

Here are a couple of clips of how the world responded after that event:

• Remember Me: Beautiful musical clip with images from around the world showing solidarity with America's losses of 9/11, to the music of Mark Shultz singing "Remember Me".
• Rejoicing: Fox News footage of Palestinians dancing and celebrating at the news of the fall of the twin towers on 911.

Now I gather that there is a proposal to build a massive Islamic mosque at Ground Zero. Yeah, right.

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan, quoting from an Islamic poem.

In the film The Thin Red Line:

Private Edward P. Train: [narrating] "What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known."

6167

General Software Discussion / Re: DOS Batch Functions Tutorial

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2011, 11:29 PM »

Rather than a DOS batch functions tutorial, would it be of more current relevance to use Window Scripting?
There's an interesting post about it here: Better Than Batch: A Windows Scripting Host Tutorial

Just a thought.

6168

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.23.01 - Nov 22, 2013

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2011, 10:24 AM »

CHS v2.04.01: If I change the settings in Options | Backup/Maintenance | Automatic Filing, some of the items are consistently restored to their previous settings.

Is this meant to happen, or can it be fixed?

6169

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.23.01 - Nov 22, 2013

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2011, 03:36 AM »

CHS v2.04.01: If I copy an item from the active window of any application using the Clip to OneNote copy crosshairs (invoked by pressing key combination Windows+S), the area in the rectangle drawn by the crosshairs is correctly copied to OneNote as an image and into CHS as an image, but CHS records it as coming from:

Microsoft Office OneNote (Microsoft Office OneNote Quick Launcher) [ONENOTEM.EXE]

I suppose, but am not sure, that this could be because the OneNote Quick Launcher takes control and passes the clip to the clipboard, which is where CHS gets the source application name from.
Whatever the sequence of events, the real source is lost - together with any associated URL if the source happened to be a browser.
Can this be fixed (i.e., somehow capture the original source), or are we stuck with it?

6170

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.23.01 - Nov 22, 2013

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2011, 03:17 AM »

CHS v2.04.01: If I copy an image or text from a .CHM file (Microsoft proprietary compressed HTML Help file format), it appears in CHS correctly as image or text, but the "source application" in CHS seems to always be incorrectly given as the last application you happened to take a clip from.
I'm not sure if this a bug in CHS or a reflection of the fact that when you open a CHM file:

"The Help Viewer uses the underlying components of Microsoft Internet Explorer to display help content."

(This quote is from Help for HTML.HELP in the file htmlhelp.chm.)

6171

General Review Discussion / Re: Quick Review: Ghostery - Best blocker I've used since JunkBuster

« Last post by IainB on September 07, 2011, 09:13 PM »

This blocker seems to be working quite well, with no hiccoughs so far.   
Just noticed that on this DC page Ghostery senses and blocks:

• AddtoAny
• Google Analytics

(Does that cause any problem or create an issue for DC forum site management, I wonder?)

6172

General Software Discussion / Re: custom reminder

« Last post by IainB on September 07, 2011, 08:21 PM »

@kalos:
A few thoughts from me:

• I sometimes use Stickies to pop up a reminder note (alarm).    
• @skwire's rather nifty Anuran might be something really useful that you could use under the circumstances you describe.  
• I have requested a new thing for CHS (@mouser's proggy, Clipboard Help & Spell) to implement virtual folder/SQL functionality that will enable a note popup on a date/time alarm, since things I have copied to the clipboard will invariably be things about which I wish to be reminded to do something later, so if I had this feature, then I would not need to have to go to the extra trouble of pasting it into yet another application that will remind me of it. (I detest having to perform what would otherwise be unnecessary duplication.)  

Hope these help or are of use.

6173

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor: Improved Arrows

« Last post by IainB on September 07, 2011, 07:56 PM »

@mouser: Thanks. I don't use SC much, but when I do I usually want to place arrows/labels onto the image, so this improvement will probably make the results that much nicer.   

6174

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature request: Web clipping, permanent note keeping

« Last post by IainB on September 05, 2011, 05:29 PM »

Thanks, no, I had not looked at Echo until you pointed it out to me just now.
Why would I want to use that? It looks like it's "just" a clipboard proggy - a good one too (a Ditto duplicate) - and I don't need one of those any more, as, earlier this year, I started to commit my data to a rather good one - one which also happens to be a sort of hybrid PIM. It's called CHS.
I haven't seen anything as close as this to matching my peculiar needs since the early '90s.

6175

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature request: Web clipping, permanent note keeping

« Last post by IainB on September 05, 2011, 10:32 AM »

@rjbull: Well, I don't know about any of that. All I have done is my level best in terms of trying to clarify the requirements and what probably needs to be done to meet those requirements, and removing any ambiguity about them - as much as possible. Whether CHS is somehow "forked" in its development lifecycle at this stage, or stays as is, will probably be up to @mouser and his available time and his preferred direction for CHS/PIM/TFLM.
This doesn't look like a "commercial" exercise to me, though I could be wrong, of course. Do you think it may need to made into a commercial exercise, so that it could be profitable?