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8351

General Software Discussion / Re: LastPass - What are your thoughts?

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 07:06 PM »

Keypass and KeePassX  

Very secure and totally local. I even get access to the source code.  

-40hz (January 21, 2011, 04:37 PM)

I haven't tried KeePassX, but I've tried Keypass.  I find Roboform to be way easier to use.  Am I missing something?

-superboyac (January 21, 2011, 05:09 PM)

Nope.

When I say easy, I'm referring to mainly its integration with browsers (FF, IE for me).  It seems like all of these softwares are equally "easy" in their ability to store passwords and whatever confidential information.  The key feature that makes or breaks it for me is the browser integration.  

Bingo! It's the difference in the weight we assign to convenience and how we define it.

For me, being able to carry my password list on a USB key (and needing to open it and do a cut & paste to handle a particularly hellacious password) is a fair trade off.

Browser integration is less important to me because my PWL mostly contains network access codes and server administrative credentials. These passwords are very log (25+ chars) and truly random. Because of the length and complexity (and the number of them) they're impossible for me to memorize. And because the bulk of them are not for my own network assets, I don't dare store any of them on a repository I don't personally control.

For personal stuff I like Password Depot as suggested by fellow DCer BethUK in the Roboform thread. I could see using that to handle low security things like forums and website logins. I do memorize all my financial institution passwords however.

Guess I'm just a little more concerned about security (i.e. paranoid) than most people. (Must be my old hacker roots showing. )

Oh well...

8352

Living Room / Re: New evidence supports Oracle's case against google

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 06:24 PM »

Yeah! "Let's get it on!!!"

8353

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 06:18 PM »

Can you thumbnail sketch what was tried and failed,

-Stoic Joker (January 21, 2011, 02:09 PM)

I tried disabling each USB device one by one to see if the keypad would be identified or reinstalled on the same port after being unplugged then replugged. No such luck. Even went so far as to uninstall a few that I couldn't clearly identify just in case. No joy there either. Even after full reboots.

there may have been a secondary issue with the keypad.

Likely. But there's a limit to my patience with stuff like this. Especially after I groused to a fellow tech and he said he had a similar experience with the same device.

Probably goes a long way towards explaining why there was a handful of them in the clearance bin where I found it.  

Can't say I've had this specific problem, closest I've had is where a device will no longer work in a specific port because of mechanical problems, (socket/plug contacts no longer have good contact).

-4wd (January 21, 2011, 04:55 PM)

Socket s/b good. I plugged an external HD into it and copied off 10Gb worth of files this morning. No problems there. I suspect it might have had a bum receiver now that I'm thinking back. The keystroke light didn't flash as regularly as the instructions said it was supposed to.

You could try GhostBuster to show/remove the ghosted devices and then uninstall the USB driver so that Windows has to reinstall it on next boot.

Wow! Didn't know about that tool. Just ran it. I'm thinking that just might have solved the problem. Too bad I no longer have the keypad.  Oh well...either way GhostBuster just found a home on my tool key. As you said, its interface is much easier to look at compared to DevMgr.

8354

Living Room / Re: New evidence supports Oracle's case against google

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 05:49 PM »

Ars Technica is also on it. Link here.

This incident is very clearly not a case of Android stealing code from Sun or J2ME. It's a handful of test cases from an unrelated and publicly available Sun reference implementation that got uploaded by accident to AOSP in a zip archive supplied by a third party. It's a tacky mistake, but it's hardly serious or damaging. At worst, it warrants a takedown notice. It's certainly not a smoking gun as one might assume when viewing the code out of context.

Mueller's new findings offer several new files that weren't known before, but it's still basically the same stuff that Oracle presented in its previous filing that everyone dissected back in October. You can see Groklaw's untangling of the issue from last year.

 

8355

General Software Discussion / Re: LastPass - What are your thoughts?

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 04:37 PM »

Keypass and KeePassX  

Very secure and totally local. I even get access to the source code.  

8356

General Software Discussion / Re: LastPass - What are your thoughts?

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 03:46 PM »

I am not the least bit comfortable with any password utility that I don't have complete control over.

So the simple fact LastPass stores anything anywhere but on my local hard drive is an absolute deal breaker for me. If they ever decided to release a version that did not require web access, I'd be much more interested.

And yes, I'd also be willing to pay a reasonable price for it if I decided to use it. 

Since LastPass already caches your PWL locally, there is nothing technically preventing it from being a purely disk-based solution. It's simply a business decision not to allow it to work that way...

8357

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 01:48 PM »

^Tried that with the keypad. (I'm a big Nirsoft and SysInternals fan BTW.) It didn't help for that problem.   

8358

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 01:35 PM »

I'm amazed they haven't fixed this by now. It's seems to be a well known issue.

I recently bought a Targus wireless keypad. In the troubleshooting section, the official 'fix' if this device fails to work (or permanently stops responding later on) is to switch USB ports and make a note not to ever reuse it on the problem port.

When I first installed it, it worked just fine. For a week. Then it stopped. Once switched to another port it was fine once again. But only for two days. It refused to work at all on the third port I tried. That's when it finally got moved over to my last USB port - where it occasionally disappears and requires a full reboot to get it back.

Targus's tech support suggested I reinstall Windows if port #4 goes south on me. A gentleman who was not (but should have been) named "Peggy" said (in very bad English): It is very easy to do. I have reinstalled Windows dozens of times on my personal PC.

I got off the phone shortly after that. And the keypad (sans battery) went out with the trash the following morning.
 

8359

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 07:46 AM »

Thank you.

You will be glad to know that the "pegs" icon is version 2. The first icon used "pegs" each with an area of 1 pixel by 1 pixel. This new improved version has pegs with an over generous 2 x 2 pixel area.

I always say it's worth going that extra pixel, erm, i mean extra mile, for those that appreciate it.

-nudone (January 21, 2011, 07:06 AM)

Could you make them eye-strain powder blue while you're at it? I like eye-strain powder blue screen elements. They're so web 2.0! They're so..."simply Picasso" artsy!

8360

General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by 40hz on January 21, 2011, 05:18 AM »

However, I am in complete agreement with fenixproductions on the subject of what their dev priorities should be. I'd be a lot happier (as would potential business customers) if they could focus on stability, product 'completeness,' and doing something about load and switch speeds first.

-40hz (January 20, 2011, 09:22 AM)

The good news is that's exactly what they're doing in this version. In v3.4 they'll begin to add new features according to the dev roadmap.

-zridling (January 21, 2011, 04:08 AM)

That is very good news indeed! 

8361

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 08:22 PM »

Not much of a reply. The gist of it is "We're sorry you feel that way about it." Welcome to one more manifestation of the art of the empty gesture.

At no point do they address the issue of renegging on their former 'lifetime' upgrade terms. Even in the face of two comments directly calling them out on it.

Apparently the company has rationalized things sufficiently to itself that it doesn't see the need to honor it's license with former customers; or enter into any meaningful dialog to resolve the issue other than invite people to contact them privately.

Very sad.

8362

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 06:56 PM »

Back to the nursery with the anonymous nany!

-cranioscopical (January 20, 2011, 05:37 PM)

Would that be the "next" NANY badge?



I always thought those colors screamed: Fisher-Price!!!  

8363

Living Room / Re: If somebody offers you swapping your PC for a mac cold turkey: would you do it?

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 06:03 PM »

My PC costs considerably more than a Big Mac Cold Turkey sandwich. 

So why would I want to swap?  It's not even a Fun Meal!  

8364

General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 09:22 AM »

But still, there's nothing to say something that works well can't also look good. I'm a real bug about interfaces. If it's something I'm going to staring at for several hours at a pop, it could at least look pretty AFAIC.

However, I am in complete agreement with fenixproductions on the subject of what their dev priorities should be. I'd be a lot happier (as would potential business customers) if they could focus on stability, product 'completeness,' and doing something about load and switch speeds first. Perhaps they want to establish a highly visible distinction between Libre and Oo as a marketing move. Which is fine so long as the other more important issues don't get back-burnered while their team futzes with the 'fun' stuff.

Just my 2 anyway.
 

8365

General Software Discussion / Re: Wikidforum - New forum software with wiki and CMS support

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 07:04 AM »

@Renegade - I'm mostly a text command type person. But I'm also blessed with a good memory for detail. So remembering tags and key sequences comes pretty easy to me. Most people I know aren't so lucky.
 
I think focusing on the number of keystrokes or mouse moves misses the primary point of why there are GUIs. It's not to save hand motion. It's to remove the need to memorize sequences.

I look at a GUI as more of an on-screen command reference than anything else. It allows you to find something more easily than would be the case if you had to check a reference card or manual to do something.

Just my 2 ALT+0162s 

(Although it could also be ALT+155 if you're using UTF-8 )

8366

Living Room / Re: Robert Kiyosaki Is Predicting A $6,000/oz. Silver Price In The Next Couple Years

« Last post by 40hz on January 20, 2011, 06:35 AM »

When somebody comes to me with "information" about things like silver's future selling price, I just run it through the IFSEPBD (Incredible Fifteen Second Explosion-Proof Bullshit Detector) function. It consists of asking one simple question: Why are you telling me this?

Within fifteen seconds (max) of receiving an answer, you somehow always know exactly what you should say or do in response.

It's almost like voodo...

8367

General Software Discussion / Re: Wikidforum - New forum software with wiki and CMS support

« Last post by 40hz on January 19, 2011, 01:09 PM »

SB is so infuriating when he's right.

Seriously, what's the BFD about having to master syntax elements when they could just be programed into an editor app. We have text expanders, spellcheckers, template tools, code generators, autoformatters, grammar checkers, voice recognition, and just about everything else built into word processors thes days. And that's just to deal with composing everyday language. What's so special about wiki that it doesn't feel the need to offer user amenities. Is it simple geekiness? Elitism? Or are they just trying to deter some of the riff-raff?

Back when I first learned to code, one of the first things they taught us was:

"For data entry, if specific characters or control sequences always need to be entered in order to do something, then they should never need to be entered at all. Don't be a lazy programmer and make the user do it. Let the system put them in instead. Boring, arbitrary, repetitious tasks are what computers are designed and built for."
 

8368

Living Room / Re: How to Get the Most Out of Your Laptop with Linux

« Last post by 40hz on January 19, 2011, 06:06 AM »

The article recaps my recent experiences running Linux on a laptop: start with the live CD and go from there. Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 seem to have it down best for what I've tried it on. This is the first distro that got all the hardware working (including wifi right out of the box) on an aging Toshiba I was about to send to recycling. It's since been passed over to a very creative but cash-strapped young writer who is now producing some remarkable work with it. I'd call that a win.

Also nice to read an article where somebody is basing their opinions and conclusions on an actual installation. I'm constantly amazed by the number of articles that are doing reviews where NIX is installed on a virtual machine. That wouldn't be considered a valid test/eval environment for a Windows release. So why is it acceptable when reviewing Linux? (This is a pet peeve of mine in case you couldn't tell. )

Excellent article!

@z - thx for sharing.

8369

General Software Discussion / Re: WRITEMONKEY 2.0 for Windows

« Last post by 40hz on January 18, 2011, 09:12 PM »

I am sooooooo there!

+1 w/tomos - thanks cmpm  

8370

General Software Discussion / Re: VideoLAN pulled from Apple app store

« Last post by 40hz on January 18, 2011, 07:55 PM »

FYI - Just checked. GNU Go is not showing up in the app store.

Is anybody honestly surprised? 

8371

General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by 40hz on January 18, 2011, 01:30 PM »

Looks good.

Have to say I like it.


Nice to see they're obviously thinking "wide screen" monitor layout - as opposed to Ubuntu who seems to be fixated on stripping down and jamming themselves into "tablet" and "netbook" layouts. Especially with that "new direction" they've unilaterally announced for their future desktop.

8372

General Software Discussion / Re: Structurer for Windows?

« Last post by 40hz on January 18, 2011, 11:16 AM »

Nowhere near as elegant as Structure - but Windows already has a command (XCOPY) that will let you do that.

Syntax is: XCOPY source destination /T /E

Where:

   /T = Copy directory and subdirectories but exclude the actual files
   /E = Include any empty subdirectories

So if I had a directory on the C-drive called Library, and I wanted to make a copy of its structure in a new directory on the D-drive and call it EBooks the following would do that:

XCOPY c:\Library d:\EBooks /T /E

To get something like templates, you could always create a directory of all your standard folder structures and do an XCOPY of those.

Again, not very pretty, but very efficient. When we needed to clone multiple empty data directories to 50 new business workstations at a time, this was how we used do it. (Actually, it was scripted and a little more involved than that - but it still used XCOPY.)

---

If you're using Windows 7, the XCOPY command has been superseded by Robocopy.

Robocopy is XCOPY on steroids. Command syntax is similar to XCOPY (i.e. command source destination /options) with some big differences in the option names. For the above example, the robocopy command would be:

ROBOCOPY c:\Library d:\EBooks /E /NOINFO

Robocopy will also work under Windows XP, but you'll need to download it (as part of a resource kit) from Microsoft since it's only gets included with Windows 7. Fortunately, you don't need to resort to the command prompt.

If you're using Windows XP or later (or you'd just prefer having a GUI to work with) download a copy of RichCopy from Microsoft. On the options page, you can tell it to just copy the directory structure.



The included help file will tell you about all the other nifty things this powerful little utility can do. Give it a look when you get a chance. Very 'cool tool.'  

Note: if you're running the 64-bit version of Win7, there's a free 3rd-part 64-bit GUI that uses the Robocopy engine and works much like RichCopy. It's called rbcSYNC and it's published by Steitz IT Solutions. Download a copy here.

Luck!

8373

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by 40hz on January 17, 2011, 04:16 PM »

About half way through The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Effects, 4th Edition, 2009 by Isaac Victor Kaplow.



This is the update to his previous The Art of 3-D : Computer Animation and Imaging, 2nd Edition, 2000 and The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging (Design & Graphic Design), 1996  both of which I've read and own.
            

Very good introduction to the theory and techniques behind digital composition. Not too much in the way of how-tos for specific software or platforms. This book is more about the "theory of cooking" and "understanding the ingredients" than it is a cookbook. If you want step-by-step instructions for individual CGI apps, you'll have to go elsewhere. However, if you want to understand how all those complex CGI programs actually work, you'd do well to start with this book.

Well written, very understandable, and nicely illustrated. In many respects, you can find almost as much inspiration as information in this book. This edition joins its elder siblings in my main bookcase.

If you're interested in CGI and animation - and you want to understand what you're being told (or just stop bluffing about it to other people) give this book a read.

Note: since this is the 4th edition, I must have missed one somewhere along the line. But if so, Amazon doesn't list it.

It's amazing how much has changed for CGI since 1996. And even more amazing - sometimes how little. 

8374

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor able to handle very large files

« Last post by 40hz on January 17, 2011, 12:33 PM »

I'm not a coder by any stretch, but I do occasionally have to do things with very large text files.

Normally when in Windows I'll use Notepad++ since I'm most familiar with it. When I encounter a file it chokes on, I've had very good luck with EmEditor (www.emeditor.com).

Since it doesn't keep the entire file in RAM it can handle huge files.  It's not free however. A single license will set you back somewhere around $45 USD. Last time I looked they had a full featured trial copy available for download. Wouldn't cost you anything to try it out on your file first.

Might be worth a look if somebody can't point you to a freebie.  

If I were working in a NIX environment, I'd just use VIM. Never found anything it couldn't handle.  

8375

Living Room / Re: Forum / Thread Etiquette

« Last post by 40hz on January 17, 2011, 07:57 AM »

My understanding is that twit filters are a per-user setting, so they wouldn't prevent the 'target' from posting.  It just would make it so that if (for example) I never wanted to read another thing that mouser wrote, I could have the system help me out with that instead of having to avert my eyes.

Since it's a personal setting, I see no particular problem with enabling it (no one can force anyone to read posts anyway).

-mwb1100 (January 17, 2011, 01:46 AM)

The reason I thought they weren't a good idea is for more practical reasons than anything else.

What I've seen happen in some forums I'm involved in (where filters are used) is that the person filtering doesn't see all the posts.

Sooner or later what happens is that two separate conversations start to develop because of it. Things get challenged that were already explained, questions are asked that were already answered, etc. because the person who is blocking is missing pieces of the dialog.

This can create a great deal of frustration for the other participants. Usually the person who's doing the blocking ends up feeling they are being treated unfairly when they're eventually told: "Well, if you could be bothered to read the entire thread before you post something..."

So that's why I feel it's not a generally good idea.

I'm all for allowing someone to block somebody from PMing or otherwise messaging them. Because messages are private conversations. But a forum is a public one. And in order for a public conversation to be conducted effectively, all the participants need to be on the exact same page.

Works much the same way in the non-digital world. At a social gathering, nobody expects us to have a conversation with someone we don't really want to talk to. But we are expected to act politely and civilly towards them while we're there. And when they're rude, not to respond in the same manner. It's the responsibility of the hosts to deal with the chronically unruly and impolite.

Just my