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826

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... someone using CAD software

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 11:48 PM »

@rgdot
I'll run it by her, but I suspect it'll be more learning curve than she wants - unless it has changed in the last decade, AutoDesk was a bitc ... er-r-r, it wasn't easy.

@4wd
OK, now that you've put it in perspective, I get it.  And don't worry, I'm still prolly a bit more dated than thee .  Although, that's not necessarily a contest I like to win  , whether I qualify or not  .
[Edit:  and you're not the first to accuse me of Vulcanism  .]

827

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Handling mulitiple tasks on different desktops with nSpaces

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 11:24 PM »

Hokay, downloaded and installed, Win7 64-bit.

Not being critical, this is just what happened.

As soon as I tried to start the installation, I got a Win dialog, "Could Not Install," even though the install window came up.  There's something in the install process that triggers the Windows response to reinstall with different parameters.  I closed it, triggered your install process.

At end of install, error dialog "Couldn't register the hot key MOD_WIN:S."  Also happened every time I changed desktops - I did not do any manual configuration, so the subsequent messages could have been prevented - but the initial message was not something I could prevent.

Desktop icon is pretty plain - the system tray icon looks much better  .

It started running immediately upon installation, but I didn't know that until I clicked the desktop icon.  Not a problem, but a notification of some sort would be less confusing.

I'm running both Input Director and MS's Mouse without Borders - it's a test - and when I switched desktops, Input Director did not work on that desktop, but Mouse without Borders did.  Not a complaint, just information.

Don't really have time at the moment to check how things run on the different desktops, how to transfer running apps from one (1) desktop to another, and the like.

This appears to be a credible effort, and it seems to work well.  All in all, I'd say congratulations are in order for a functional tool  .

[Quick edit:  'twould be nice to be able to move a currently running app to a different desktop.]

828

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... someone using CAD software

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 10:09 PM »

That'd prolly be humorous if I understood it  .

829

General Software Discussion / In search of ... someone using CAD software

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 09:10 PM »

Folk,

I just got a request for CAD software referrals.  Last CAD I used was Generic CAD, ~twelve-fifteen years ago.  It's not free anymore  .

A Google search brought up more links than I wanna thimk about !

So, is anyone here using any of the current CAD offerings?  "Free would be best, but a low-end stipend would not be unreasonable." (Her terminology, not mine  .)  Doesn't need to be an AutoCad clone, just something that will suffice for homemade furniture, room diagrams & the like.  She's pretty meticulous, has a better selection of woodworking tools than I'd even think of having - and knows how to use 'em well! - along with minimal metal working stuff.  ('Nother words, she's a better builder than I ever thought of being.)  However, she's tired of drawing stuff out on the kitchen table, and asked me for recommendations.  As mentioned, my last CAD endeavors were over a decade ago, and that software is now kinda pricey.

So, is anyone here using anything they could recommend for a 1st-class builder with medium computer skills?
(Vector would be best - some of what I saw was raster  >.)

830

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a universal password reset/retrieval system

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 07:51 PM »

@Miles Ahead
Thanks for the reminder.  I had that bookmarked several crashes agone, but had forgotten it.  'Tis very useful, or at least 'twas in the past.  Kudos, sir .

831

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a universal password reset/retrieval system

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 07:47 PM »

He-he-he  .  I do something quite similar to generate my own passwords.  Use a thing called Key Maker ... every password is unique for the phrase I enter, and even if you knew my penchant for phrases, you'd be highly unlikely to guess the prefix/suffix I add.  It's not the strongest generator around, but it's more than adequate for most of my usage, and a dictionary crack is well nigh impossible unless you happen to have a few Crays around  .

However, it doesn't detect passwords, and that's what I'm after.  Seems every time I turn around, I see another retriever for MS Office nnnn or Windows nn.  Usually presented as the ultimate retriever/reset.  But a lot of programs want passwords that none of the crackers I've encountered will even begin to approach.

It's kinda like the Giveaway of the Day stuff.  I quit frequenting the site because any crash or any reinstall will wipe out your access to your dividend(s) from that site.  Oh, it can be done, but the time and effort are seldom worth it.  But, given a decent tracking system and a functional cracker, that would not be a major issue.

And, while their are some pretty decent recovery tools for non-Windows OSes - mostly Linux derivatives, don't know about Mac stuff - there doesn't seem to be anything extant for Windows non-MS progs.  OphCrack is probably the best I've used, or maybe SIW, but neither will tell me the MySQL password, for instance, nor the InfoSelect password used to encrypt an element, nor ... you get the picture, I'm certain.

Generally, all these things can be found, barring catastrophic failure, but if you're using a program you installed a decade ago, you prolly don't recall the password used to install/run it.  So moving it to a different hard drive, under Windows, can be problematic, to say the least.  Granted, some apps use a hardware footprint, so they cannot be easily moved from one machine to another.  But for the ones that simply require a password, there's very little that I've found that can be of help.

This is not [for me] a pressing need, but I'm amazed, considering the width and breadth of talent on the Internet, that this has not been done - or at least approached, with requests for beta testing, RFC, etc.



The point here is to be able to recover a broken system and reinstall all that was there before.  Yeah, a decent imaging app would pretty much obviate that problem, but how many casual users do you know who even begin to think about disk/system images, much less keeping such an image updated ?

832

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a universal password reset/retrieval system

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 04:43 PM »

@ath
Yeah, that's fine in theory ... but we both know that it doesn't happen that way in the real world very often.  I can pull easily a dozen different protected proggies off my hard drive that rely upon the most common of protections, obfuscation  .  Very few protected systems use much more.

@Carol
Yep, use SIW myself when the need arises.  Never got the USB part working, though ... still too many systems that won't boot from a USB stick  .

Folk, I'm not looking for a cure-all here, just opinions on what works best for you when the time comes to correct - usually - someone else's errant memory.  Although, re-iteratively, I'm still amazed that no one has yet - to my knowledge - pulled all the various recovery systems into one cohesive whole.  After all, barring real hashing, it'd be just a matter of compiling eleventy-seven scripts into one umbrella program.  Shouldn't need genius, just patience and perseverance  .

And I suspect that a decent cryptographer could make pretty strong headway into a lot of the hashes, but that may be an opinion born of ignorance.  I've dealt with this in past corporate days, and seldom failed - not because I'm brilliant - I ain't   - but because most of my coworkers were not, either.

When I forayed into the cryptographic realm, I learned that most hashes are only as strong as what is fed them - that's why [most] dictionary attacks work - and if you know the person involved in generating the password, even a dictionary attack is not often needed - or, at least, it's a much smaller dictionary  .  (After the fact, that seems obvious beyond the need of mention  .)  

It's just that, after reading the two (2) sites previously mentioned, I got to wondering why no one had merged/meshed all the extant methodologies into a single vessel.  Be a whole lot easier to use - but, then, that may be my previously mentioned short term memory talking  .

[Edited for typo]

833

General Software Discussion / In search of ... a universal password reset/retrieval system

« Last post by barney on September 26, 2011, 01:49 PM »

Folk,

I was over at Addictive Tips and Ghacks earlier today.  Both had entries on passwords.

Has anyone ever seen a universal password retrieval/reset system?  I remember one (1) when Win98 was extant that seemed to work pretty well, but it went the way of the dodo.  Don't think it even worked with Win98SE, but uncertain in that respect.  It certainly couldn't deal with NT.

It's not an overweening need, but strikes me it'd be awfully handy.  There are retrievers for Office and for specific Windows versions that dig out the activation key(s) and the authorization key(s), but they tend to be pretty version specific.  Surprisingly - to me, anyway - there's not a generic tool to find or reset such things in Windows.  Not just the MS products, but all products.  For instance, what if you needed to find the registration data for, say, Acronis True Image, or perhaps for an Easus product ... maybe even for some shareware product.

Yeah, the algorithms for such a beast would be tough  .  And many  .  But it still surprises me that there's nothing extant in the field.  Or have I missed something?

What's your favourite retrieval system?

834

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Some behaviour productivity-like questions (maybe you guys can answer them)

« Last post by barney on September 23, 2011, 10:56 PM »

Sorry, but this strikes me as a request for an absolute answer to a nonspecific question, one that is posited with several nonspecific - and questionable -  variables.  Guess that's why I'm not an economist  .

835

Living Room / Re: In search of ... a bluetooth ear piece finder

« Last post by barney on September 21, 2011, 05:09 PM »

Not that I'm aware.  But, then, BD is a typical daughter  ... she'll mention a problem if it's important, then neglect to mention if it's resolved  .

836

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a way (Excel macro?) to convert Lat-Long co-ordinates

« Last post by barney on September 19, 2011, 10:17 PM »

Thanks, all, but this has been rendered moot  .

BD told me when she got home from work today that they have given this as a project to someone else.  What she was expected to do as an incidental task has now become a full time effort for someone else  .

On the plus side, we both have picked up a bit of knowledge - thanks to you all - that can only help in the future. The sudden reassessment and reassignment is galling, nonetheless <gr-r-r-r!/>.

837

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a way (Excel macro?) to convert Lat-Long co-ordinates

« Last post by barney on September 19, 2011, 02:12 PM »

but I can't tell you exactly how to do that without seeing the input strings.

-CWuestefeld (September 19, 2011, 12:47 PM)

Aye, and there's the rub  .  BD is getting these values from third parties and has no control over the format used.  So far, she's seen numbers with deg-min-sec symbols, some with a minus (-) prefix, some with a N/S/E/W suffix, some w/o symbols but separated by dashes, some with dot (.) separators, some with deg-min-sec spelled out ... a real mishmash.  A simple deg-min-sec conversion I could handle - as could she, for that matter - but neither of us is conversant with VBA enough to be able to set triggers for all the variants to date, much less what might come.  If she can paste a list into a column, then have that column transcribed into another column in the proper format, all is well.  However, if she has to correct the format prior to that paste, nothing's been gained.

I know VBA is powerful enough to manage this, but I'm not familiar enough with its syntax to build such a parser on short order, nor do I have the time to study VBA for the purpose.  Time is the crippler here, for both of us.  That's why we're trying to find a pre-built solution .  Guess the solution will be to set a separate sheet for each parsing mode  , but while that will help reduce the time element, it's not really a satisfactory solution  .

838

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« Last post by barney on September 18, 2011, 06:09 PM »

Optimist!  I seldom shave  .  Pretty much weekly or three (3) times a month.  Might be the original shabby - er, make that shaggy - coder  .  OK, prolly not, but I try  .

839

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« Last post by barney on September 18, 2011, 11:14 AM »

I don't recall the DOS program name that became InfoSelect

-barney (September 15, 2011, 07:51 PM)

Tornado Notes.  It was mentioned in another DC thread recently.

-rjbull (September 18, 2011, 10:29 AM)

Yah.  I vas dere.  These short-term memory lapses get frustrating  .  On the other hand, things don't keep me awake at night very much  .

840

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a way (Excel macro?) to convert Lat-Long co-ordinates

« Last post by barney on September 17, 2011, 10:12 PM »

Nope.

This is an ongoing thing, with new locations on a semi-regular basis.  Might be one (1) a week, might be a hundred.  That's why I'm looking at the spreadsheet resolution - if it's just one (1), http://transition.fc...DDDMMSS-decimal.html or http://www.direction...te/latlong-converter would work just fine.  However multiple tens of coordinates would be quite time-consuming.

Actually, I thought perhaps it could be done with AHK or AutoIt!, but corporate paranoia reigns supreme in this arena ... BD is not allowed any software on her laptop that was not installed by her IT group  .  Otherwise, I have an old VB (5.0) - if I can find it  - app that did exactly that (from my MCI days).

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General Software Discussion / In search of ... a way (Excel macro?) to convert Lat-Long co-ordinates

« Last post by barney on September 17, 2011, 09:30 PM »

BD (Baby Daughter) has been tasked with converting some Lat-Long deg-min-sec coordinates to decimal.  There are a number of Web services to accomplish this, several with .gov TLDs, more with .EDU TLDs.

There are also several forae that discuss Excel macros to accomplish this end. 

However, nothing I've found so far really fills the bill  .

BD's requirements are to take a [significant] number of degrees-minutes-seconds values and convert them to a decimal equivalent.  I'm thinkin' it would be nice to be able to reverse that process, as well.

It's been a decade since I did anything with Excel (Office 2000), so I'm more than a bit rusty  .

Checked DC - several discussions involved - but nothing I found seems to cover this.

Anyone have a pointer to such a bit of code?  (I'd personally prefer an application for this, but considering the number of conversions to be made - and corporate paranoia - a spreadsheet solution would be better).  (If it matters, they are using Office 2003, soon to upgrade to 2007:  really progressive  .)s

842

General Software Discussion / Re: Have all UI designers gone insane? (Warning: very short post)

« Last post by barney on September 15, 2011, 11:05 PM »

Maybe not the languages ... maybe the folk that use 'em  ?

843

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« Last post by barney on September 15, 2011, 07:51 PM »

Hey, I kind of enjoyed using WordStar ... but, then, I've been accused of having a masochistic streak  .

I do recall a dust-up on several of the BBSs I frequented about MS corrupting the HELP key from F3 to F1.  Didn't matter to me, but then, I never had a keyboard with a side load of function keys, either.

Heard your [ex-]girlfriend's protests quite a bit when MCI went to MS, Excel and Word.  At the time, both WordPerfect and WordStar were more capable then MS Word, QuattroPro la misma in.re. Excel, and Word and Excel both ran in individual windows on DOS boxes.  A real hassle to support, but as usual (then), MS got it right about version three (3).

I don't recall the DOS program name that became InfoSelect, but I used it a lot.  And I fell in love with Borland's Paradox, just couldn't afford to get it for my home system.

Actually, I kinda miss the old DOS autoexec.bat ... from bootup to shutdown, never left it.  I was in control! 

844

Living Room / In search of ... a bluetooth ear piece finder

« Last post by barney on September 14, 2011, 07:03 PM »

Baby Daughter (BD) bought a Jawbone - don't know which one - for her [shudder  ] iPhone.

Now she cannot locate it  .

Anyone know of a means to track/trace a bluetooth ear piece?  Kinda like unto calling a lost cell phone?  (Google's been no help.)  She'd really like to locate it  .

845

General Software Discussion / Re: Building Windows 8: I need longer arms!

« Last post by barney on September 08, 2011, 09:51 PM »

Let's see ... I'm gonna rush out and replace all four (4) of these 24" monitors, along with the smaller ones?

Hm-m-m-m.  Prolly not.  I'm with Carol on this one, mostly ... tablets, phones, touch makes sense ... touch on laptops could make sense for some applications,  but most business usages of which I'm aware require lots of text, very little navigation.  Browsing might benefit, maybe some graphics programs.  But can't you just see AutoCad by touch?  (How finely can you calibrate your fingers?  I have trouble with Sudoku or Crosswords on a seven (7) inch Nook  .)

846

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... backup program identification

« Last post by barney on September 04, 2011, 10:40 AM »

Nice bit of software, thanks.  It didn't work  , but looks handy to have around  .

Finally found a GlobalCatalog.wbcat, which is a Windows backup file, so apparently s/he was using Win7's backup w/o knowing.  However, all the .wbcat files were moved to a common location, "I just wanted to keep it neat, so I did some housecleaning."    Oh, well, mebbe Win7 can figure it out  .  Or I can set Explorer to display creation date, I guess.  What a mess!

847

General Software Discussion / In search of ... backup program identification

« Last post by barney on September 04, 2011, 09:20 AM »

  When it rains ...

This may be a bit odd  .  I need to identify the program that made a system backup from the files that it produced.  There are several sets of files dated a week apart, including .zip and .xml files along with a few that have no extension.  (There are about six (6) months worth of files for [apparently] weekly backups.)  However, the little - darling?  yeah, that's the word! - doesn't know what program was used to perform the backups.  Memory failure  .

Google searches have netted nothing on this.  There many,many,many pages on how to find the files produced by various backup programs, but not a one (1) I can find on how to identify the software that produced the backup files.

Any ideas on this one?

(The little darling is a software junkie, so I can't just try what's installed ... too many  .)

848

General Software Discussion / Re: backup software - file-by-file sets

« Last post by barney on August 27, 2011, 10:36 PM »

Been using SyncbackSE, for coupla years ... the free version impressed me enough to buy it.  Tried several other apps that purport to image a drive, as opposed to a simple backup.  To date, I've been underwhelmed.  Have tried Easus, Cobian, Comodo, but reverted to SyncBackSE (paid) every time.

I'm also using Syncless 2.0 for in-use data syncing 'tween local and remote data files.  

Several of the progs you've mentioned would seem to merit further investigation, but for the most part, save for a reliable imaging system, I'm satisfied.  I've tried CloneZilla, but frankly, considering past experience, I'm loathe to test its restore capabilities.  Have versions of Paragon, and one (1) other that I cannot at the moment recall, for imaging, but the same thing applies ... I'm afraid to test the results.  My backup experience was born with DOS 2.1, and it was a valuable experience, indeed  .

849

Living Room / Re: In search of ... external video support

« Last post by barney on August 27, 2011, 09:35 AM »

The ViDock 4+ is likely the one, although I've yet to ascertain the power requirements on the Sapphire.  Currently have a Kensington Universal w/DVI, but when I upgraded to Win7 Ultimate, it lost the capability to access another monitor - 64-bit drivers not extant <sigh /> - so I'm a bit loath to trust the other USB docks.  Too much of the information I'd need is not published in the specs  .  That's part of the problem with the ViDock series. 

When I bought that Sapphire card a couple of years ago, one (1) of the pieces of information that was not published kept me from being able to use it.  The only slot it would fit on the tower was at the very end of the row of slots ... and the card is a double-wide, so even had I forced it into place, I'd not have been able to access half of it - it'd have been blocked by the case  .  The missing piece of information then was which side the motherboard access plug was  .

If I'm gonna lay out ~$300 for the ViDock, I wanna know it'll work before purchase  .

850

Living Room / In search of ... external video support

« Last post by barney on August 26, 2011, 02:51 PM »

Folk,

I'm looking for something that will allow me to connect a laptop to multiple external monitors.  Right now I'm interested in the ViDock series, but I'm not really comfortable with their representation of the specs.  I assume, from the online literature, that the ViDock will take pretty much any card - I have a Sapphire, HD5770 that I've never been able to use - but what I don't see is whether there'll be conflict between that card in the ViDock and the GEForce 3xx in my laptop.  Don't know how well nVidia and ATI cooperate  .

So, any of ya have any experience with the ViDock series?  I know there are some hardware nuts here  .  It seems a bit pricey, at least for the one I think I'd need, but if it'll let me do what I want, it'll be worth it.

OK, for hardware configs, this is a Dell Vostro 3700, i7 processor, 4G RAM, Win7 Ultimate.  Currently I'm connected to one (1) external monitor via the HDMI slot.  I tried another monitor via the VGA slot, but the video driver only supports two (2) monitors  .  I'd like to stretch that to three (3) or four (4), if possible, but at least two (2) extermal.