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6651
General Software Discussion / Re: Wave? Good-bye!
« Last post by 40hz on November 23, 2011, 06:57 PM »
Just out of curiosity - did anybody here who had an account ever figure out an effective or useful way to use the thing? Because I never could. For me it was Chandler all over again - something that sounded really cool and useful until you actually went to do something with it. At which point it all fell down like a house of cards. However, that might just be me not "getting it."

I must confess, I never "got" Google Wave.  :huh:
6652
General Software Discussion / Wave? Good-bye!
« Last post by 40hz on November 23, 2011, 04:22 PM »
This just arrived in my mailbox. Guess it's 'real' official now!   :huh:

Looks like you've got until April 30th to clean out your desk...

Wonder if anybody really cares any more?

Dear Wavers,

More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.

If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets you import all your Waves from Google. This feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.

For more details, please see our help center.

Yours sincerely,

The Wave Team

© 2011 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Wave account.

6653
General Software Discussion / Re: New member
« Last post by 40hz on November 23, 2011, 02:13 PM »
Criticism helps to develop better next version, example Win7 after Vista.

That being said, there's still a constructive way to complain. Getting insulting and storming off without first affording someone the pleasure of helping you out doesn't accomplish anything.

Just my 2¢  8)
6654
General Software Discussion / Re: New member
« Last post by 40hz on November 23, 2011, 10:15 AM »
Renegade makes a good point. FWIW, two people who I recommended DC to later asked me if I knew how to get "one of those free licenses." So it may not be all that rare a problem for some people even though I had no trouble finding it on my first visit. Nor did anybody else I steered here.

Go figure. :-\

So yeah...maybe one of those big green "download/get license key" buttons many sites seem to have standardized on could alleviate the confusion for these folks?

I personally think FileHippo has an exceptionally good (if not the best) setup for downloads. Everything on one tabbed page per title including links to previous versions. Very clear design.


6655
Living Room / Re: where to find user login logs?
« Last post by 40hz on November 23, 2011, 09:58 AM »
After a day of different users logging in to the computer, the Event Log Explorer is showing correctly.  The scriping method that 40hz came up with only shows the users that have administrative rights on the computer.   :(

By using 40hz's method, I can view what I want and not have to wade through all the other stuff that Event Log Explorer is showing.

If you don't create a share for all members of your homegroup, and allow read/write access to it by the group, then yes, only the users with admin rights will log times.

In the example I posted, the second UID (John) was not an admin account. I tested it before posting just to be sure.  ;)

Note: not something I came up with, but thanks anyway. Variations of this method have been kicking around since W2K Server. Group policies just made things like this simple and bulletproof once Microsoft incorporated them into their OS.  8)
6656
General Software Discussion / Re: windows partition got formatted
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 05:13 PM »
@jgpavia - my suspicion as well! ;D

Which is why I took the time to point out a free way to deal with the issue in case: (a) someone less suspicious than we happened to read it; and (b) on the off chance it wasn't spam.
 :Thmbsup:
6657
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Action Outline on offer at Bits du Jour, 2011-11-21
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 04:03 PM »
@rjbull: Thx for the link to Noteliner. I'll definitely check that one out.

re: Outline 4D - actually not much like Ecco which I also used to use. It's primarily designed to be a writing/plot outlining tool for movie scripts and novels - although it can be re-purposed to handle other things once you get your head around it. "Try before you buy" is a must with this tool since you either love or hate it. I have yet to see an in-between reaction to it. (In that respect, however, it does resemble Ecco. ;D)
6658
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Action Outline on offer at Bits du Jour, 2011-11-21
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 03:09 PM »
I think there are brief mentions of Action Outline in the famous "General brainstorming for Note-taking software" thread.  I didn't realise the upgrade policy was so stingy, given that, as I understand it, it isn't updated very often, and I'm not much excited by fancy appearance either.

I think it was the upgrade policy that was the showstopper for me.

But I also have a distinct preference for single-pane outliners.

FYI:

For quick & dirty stuff I use the freebie TKoutline. The SourceForge download page seems to be screwed up. But Softpedia has it here. It's a standalone executable so it's also portable. I keep a copy of this on almost every USB key I own.

TKoutlineShot.gif

Note: TKoutline is light on bells & whistles. So much so it almost feels more like a DOS app than a Windows app. Some people have even called it primitive. I think "primeval" is a more accurate description. And one of the reasons I like it as much as I do. It just does one thing very very well.

For more complex stuff I'll use a few different outliner apps that are geared towards specific types of work, the most used being the rather expensive (creative writing oriented) Outline 4D.

 :)
6659
General Software Discussion / Re: windows partition got formatted
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 09:10 AM »
Fortunately, quick format doesn't really write over files. It just nukes their directory entries. So everything should be intact and recoverable from the drive in question assuming you haven't been using it in the meantime.

Download a free copy of Recuva here.

If it's recoverable in a usable form, Recuva will do it for you. If it doesn't, don't waste time or money on other recovery utilities. They may recover more sectors of data. But that data usually won't be usable by most people.

Luck!  ;)
6660
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Action Outline on offer at Bits du Jour, 2011-11-21
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 08:55 AM »
AO is a nice outliner. But I don't see anything in it that's compelling enough to justify the price or upgrade policy when there are so many other products out there that offer as much for less.

I'm also not particularly interested in seeing a huge number of formatting or 'extra' features in this category of software. To me, outlining should be lean & mean. If I want to create and maintain a knowledgebase, there are far better software choices out there to do that as well.

Just my 2¢.
 :)

6661
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: United States of America visit 2
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 05:46 AM »
I'd like a shot in L.A.  Time for Cody to grow up. :o

I have been waiting since day 1.  Cody has emailed me and let me know it is time for him to visit N.W. PA and get some Amish cooking. My turn....

Well...Cody could always go to LA first to get a dose of la dolce vita, and then go to PA to atone and (hopefully) redeem himself. And get some good home cookin'.

Hmm..wouldn't mind a little blueberry cobbler or apple grunt right now, come to think of it. Maybe I'll do up some for this Thursday.
 :)



---------
6662
Living Room / Re: FUNNY~! Drinking Water DOES NOT Hydrate!
« Last post by 40hz on November 22, 2011, 05:37 AM »
Hmm, does this means next up they will ban sport car advertisers from advertising that it helps attract girls?

You mean it doesn't????

Well...then how do you explain this:

Stuck.jpg

 ;D
6663
Living Room / Re: FUNNY~! Drinking Water DOES NOT Hydrate!
« Last post by 40hz on November 21, 2011, 09:00 AM »
I'm happy that the EU did this ruling, I don't think it'd be nice for us to have the packing of french fries saying they cure cancer.

Very true, except for the fact that no French fry producer ever has, or is ever likely, to make such a claim.

Gotta be very cautious when you want to send a message you're serious about enforcing a piece of legislation. It's very important to carefully choose your test case. If you don't, you're wide open to public ridicule and outrage - which usually results in the law being widely flaunted or ignored. Take a look at "sexual harassment" "persons with disabilities" and many consumer protection laws. Ridiculous suits, and even more ridiculous court rulings on obviously bogus cases, have brought those very laws into question. Which is a shame. Because the problems those laws were passed to address are very real.
 :)
6664
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: White Smoke 70% off
« Last post by 40hz on November 21, 2011, 02:47 AM »
"White Smoke" as in "Marketing Puff"?

Try this superb tool as a possible alternative.
You can have a free trial and they can be incredibly helpful if you want to extend the trial: Pathagoras

@IanB - Pathagoras looks like an interesting albeit very special purpose tool. If you're familiar with it, would it be possible for you to post a mini-review? :)
6665
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 01:49 PM »
Hmm, only 10 days to go. Would a trial version of the "final" product not be better here?

 ;D Good point!
6666
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 01:13 PM »
You can still get in on the beta.

Thought it's closed now?

@Tuxman - I just tried this link below with an alternate email I have and they said they were sending me a key.

http://www.softmaker.../ofw12betareg_en.htm

and...

...just got the confirmation with a new key now. That was fast!

Let me know if it doesn't work for you.  Luck! :Thmbsup:
6667
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 12:31 PM »
So, technically, how does the final SoftMaker Office '12 compare to OOo/LibO or, let's say, WordPerfect? Any decent features?

Many useful features and not as much cruft as comes with MSOffice. IMO a little more polished and less 'geeky' than Libre. (40hz does not discuss OO any more. He's mad at the people who are behind it.)

You can still get in on the beta. Worth the download. Check it out if you get a chance since one person's dream of an office suite is another person's nightmare.
 :Thmbsup:
6668
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 09:03 AM »
As the policy here does not allow me to install this beta, can someone tell me if the email client supports the same versions of MAPI than Outlook?

There is simple MAPI which is supported on practically any client. Unfortunately there is also extended MAPI and that one is only supported by Outlook...as far as my knowledge goes. And what about CAPI (cryptography)?

Thanks in advance.

I'm guessing it doesn't support extended MAPI and it probably won't ever. Especially since Microsoft is fairly committed to migrating Outlook/Exchange users over to it's new and more robust Exchange Web Services (EWS) and therefor considers Extended MAPI a legacy API.
6669
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 08:44 AM »
@TucknDar - Thx! (40hz gob-smacks himself.) :-[

6670
Living Room / Re: FUNNY~! Drinking Water DOES NOT Hydrate!
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 08:37 AM »
It took the Soviet Union something like 69 years to collapse under the weight of it's over zealous, ridiculously self-righteous, and magical-thinking bureaucracy.

Apparently, the EU is intent on accomplishing the same collapse in less than a third the time.

What further proof for the superiority of Western thinking do we need than that?

professorfirefly.jpg

Suggestion: let's transfer California's state government to Brussels; combine it with the EU;  put a big fence around the city (with a sign that says: DANGER! 100,000 Dolts!) - and make that the European Union!

Then the rest of the world's population can get on with their lives, safe in the sure knowledge that all the regulatory 'nut cases' are humanely confined and accounted for.
 8)
6671
Living Room / Re: A light-field camera? Ok. This is very cool!
« Last post by 40hz on November 20, 2011, 08:12 AM »
This is the kind of camera photo that I would like to take: Cappelle sistina

There's more here - "spherical panoramas".

THAT is some seriously bad-ass, wicked cool stuff! :D

Now *that* is exactly what it's all about.

I can see this rapidly becoming a natural for game designers where you'd want to bring some heavy duty realism into the mix by using real locations for your graphics. So next time you have a shoot out in the Louvre or a chase scene in some mega-mall like the Cevahir Istanbul, you can use light-field panorama shots and not spend a fortune doing multi-camera video shooting to get decent interactivity.

Note: My GF has put some time into researching this little camera. She has that "Hmm..." look she sometimes gets when curiosity gets the better of her. If she decides to get one I'm not going to try to talk her out of it, that's for sure.  ;D

6672
General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing
« Last post by 40hz on November 19, 2011, 01:12 PM »
Just finished putting the latest beta through its paces and I'm very impressed.

The new email client is quite nice. Lightning fast. Packs much of the look and feel of Outlook without all the MS Exchange baggage that comes along for the ride. About the only feature it lacks (or I maybe haven't discovered how to do yet) is turn an email into a task on the to-do list. Not a showstopper - but that little feature is one of Outlook's handiest tools. Especially if your life and work revolves around things that come in via email.

Some nice tweaks in the rest of the suite as well.

Softmaker goes on my short list for clients that are very tight on cash but still can't afford to stray too far away from the Microsoft look & feel for productivity reasons. Figure if they need full compatibility with Office they can always order one or two copies and put those on kiosk type machines so they're available, and then populate the rest of their PCs with SO.

Much as I admire (and use) LibreOffice, I still think Softmaker's offering is too good to rule out just because of the modest price they're asking. Even for individuals and groups on very tight budgets.

Sweet suite!  8) :Thmbsup:

6673
Living Room / Re: where to find user login logs?
« Last post by 40hz on November 19, 2011, 06:42 AM »
Can't remember where I learned this one, but it's pretty easy to do.

First, decide what you want to name your log file and where you want to save it.

For simplicity's sake, I'll use the the name usertimes.log and store it in the root of C for this example. (i.e. C:\usertimes.log) Same goes for the two scripts we'll be creating. This is only for illustration purposes. You'll likely want to store this stuff elsewhere - and you'll need to enable sharing on the folder you put them in due to Windows access restrictions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Note: When you create these two scripts, first make a new folder somewhere and share it with your HOMEGROUP. Set share permissions to Read/Write for the group. If you don't, only your account's times will get recorded. You can optionally make this folder a hidden share  if you feel it's necessary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a) Create a folder and share it with your homegroup. Give homegroup read/write access to this folder.

b) Navigate to your new folder, open a text editor, and enter (or copy/paste and edit) this text, and save it as: login.cmd

echo logon %username% %computername% %date% %time% >> C:\usertimes.log


c) Next, do the same with this string and save it as: logoff.cmd

echo logoff %username% %computername% %date% %time% >> C:\usertimes.log

You might have noticed the only difference is that login has been change to logoff in the second script. You may also want to omit %computername% since your users are all logging onto the same PC. (Old sysadmin habits die hard. ;D )

d) Now you have two scripts which copy login and logoff data to a file called usertimes.log in your C root.

You can use Group Policy to invoke these scripts since Windows has already conveniently included two policy objects for you to do that.

Open the policy editor and navigate to: User Configuration>Windows Setting>Scripts where you'll find two unconfigured scripts for logon and logoff.

Doco2.gif

Double-click on each script and configure them for the scripts you just created:

doco3.gif

Voila! Done.

Now all login and logoff times will be appended to the usertimes.log file:

Doco1.gif


Piece of cake right?  :) :Thmbsup:



6674
General Software Discussion / Re: Complaint: Freemake
« Last post by 40hz on November 18, 2011, 09:00 PM »
To be fair, one can simply say no to this crapware,

Yes. You can.

Sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.  :)
6675
Living Room / A light-field camera? Ok. This is very cool!
« Last post by 40hz on November 18, 2011, 09:00 AM »
There's a new and surprisingly affordable ($399-$499) camera using something called an 11-megaray light-field sensor that's due out in early 2012. Made by Lytro, it allows you to grab a shot and then focus within the picture after it's been taken. Almost like being in one of those police forensic or spy-thriller scenes where some character inevitably says "Can you enhance that spot over there?"

Well...now it looks like you can.

LytroCam.gif

Very svelte and stylish form factor. It also packs an 8X optical zoom and features instant-on. Sweet!

In addition to some excellent uses in news and blogging photography, I'm sure this technology will also be a major boon for all the "up-skirt" and "down-blouse" photo creeps out there. Oh well...

Endgadget has a review of it here. Check it out!
 :Thmbsup:


(Note to moderator(s): Could one of you folks move this post over to the Living Room? I don't know why I put it on the software discussion board. Thx.) Thanks whoever did it! :)
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