Recent Posts

876

General Software Discussion / Re: Confirmed: UAC designed to annoy us!

« Last post by Lashiec on April 13, 2008, 02:06 PM »

Remember that there is TweakUAC: all the benefits of Vista's new security model and no hassle

877

General Software Discussion / Re: Tracking firefox extension (add-on) updates - how?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2008, 06:11 PM »

Well, Firefox automatically does that for you. By default, it checks for updates to your themes and extensions. And once Firefox 3 reaches to the release state, there are no more changes to the API until Firefox 4, and so your extensions should work with every minor update. Of course, there are lazy coders out there that check for specific builds of Firefox, because they seem to ignore what a wildcard is

Also, Firefox 3 allows you to install extensions from the addons window, but I ignore if such installation actually checks for version compatibility before installing, that is, filtering the results by the returned version.

And yes, in the case you want to track updates, WebSite-Watcher or a similar app with monitoring capabilities like Newzie would help.

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Living Room / Re: Do you collect anything?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 11, 2008, 03:30 PM »

And christ, $160 if I want a mouse+keyboard to go with that...

-f0dder (April 11, 2008, 08:38 AM)

o_O, is that because of some special tax on Mac input devices?

879

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: KlipKeeper (A FARR2 Plugin by hamradio)

« Last post by Lashiec on April 11, 2008, 03:20 PM »

OK, I encountered a weird bug caused by KlipKeeper, though I ignore whose fault is. So, I type 'kk' as usually, and select some text I recently copied. The portion of text is a bit long, and as KlipKeeper only shows a tooltip if it's in "+sall" mode, I have the idea to scroll the window horizontally, which to my surprise is possible. After some milliseconds scrolling, the text gets unreadable, so I hit the left key to see if scrolling back solves the issue. Then FARR jumps to the normal view populated by the recently launched programs, clearing the 'kk' from the search box, and bolding all the text beside every result. Weird.

So I exit the program, after fiddling with the fonts settings to no avail, and it seems that exiting the program solves the issue. But, oh tragic fate, once I type 'kk' again, the world goes to bold text again. So, did I hit a weird bug or what?

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General Software Discussion / Confirmed: UAC designed to annoy us!

« Last post by Lashiec on April 11, 2008, 03:09 PM »

Straight from Redmond comes the revelation that the much criticised UAC elevation prompt built into Vista was designed simply to annoy those users confronting it. Now you can direct all your hate towards Microsoft without any reservation

No, it's not a joke

Another take on this revelation, complete with some links analyzing why it would be a good idea.

881

Living Room / Now even your ISP is tracking you

« Last post by Lashiec on April 10, 2008, 11:06 AM »

Remember how people around the web wasn't happy about Google tracking practices for the sake of "improving" advertising? Well, it seems some U.S. ISPs are doing the same using deep packet inspection, not only used to disrupt P2P traffic it seems. For now, nothing is confirmed about what and how is being tracked, and although some ISPs list such practise in their service agreements, it's not that it appears bolded among the rest of the text. Oh, and BT is also going to test it in the UK.

Article in The Washington Post

Woohoo
via The Tech Report

882

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: MiniMe (aka MaxiMe)

« Last post by Lashiec on April 10, 2008, 10:30 AM »

The problem persists, so PM on the way.

Something that could be nice is to deactivate the script automatically once you launch a full-screen application, if such thing can be detected. The other ideas sound good to me

883

DC Gamer Club / Re: Assassin's Creed (PC version) contest

« Last post by Lashiec on April 10, 2008, 10:20 AM »

So, does it need the NASA computer or what?

884

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Lashiec on April 09, 2008, 10:27 AM »

FYI
Denis thinks about stopping developing his apps, including ReNamer. 
Please say him an last "Thank You Denis"    ==> I may not be able to develop and support these tools any longer... read full post.

-AbteriX (April 02, 2008, 01:01 AM)

Thankfully, after the responses, he opted for the right path: Development will continue!

885

Living Room / Re: Do you collect anything?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 09, 2008, 10:09 AM »

I don't think I really collect anything, simply I buy things I want

But for now, I don't have so many crap at home that I'm forced to live outside of it

886

Living Room / Re: British money is about to get really cool

« Last post by Lashiec on April 09, 2008, 10:02 AM »

Most of the more mature economies would do well to get rid of the lesser coins. 1 cent, 5 cents, 1 pence, etc. This isn't anything new. It's been well known for 20 years.

-Renegade (April 09, 2008, 09:34 AM)

NO, we don't want to give businesses more reasons to round up the prices again, just like it happened when most of Europe started to use the Euro. Talking about Euros, they could learn a design lesson or two from the UK guys.

Ehtyar or Wordzilla, shows us one of those bills

887

General Software Discussion / Re: Malware writers now number one software makers

« Last post by Lashiec on April 09, 2008, 09:58 AM »

So, where is the link to send some credits for these hard-working fellas?

888

General Software Discussion / Re: Lists Of Microsoft's Fame And Shame - 2008

« Last post by Lashiec on April 08, 2008, 01:19 PM »

Nice read, but I thought he was going to pinpoint the shameful products from Microsoft as soon as I read the title. Oh well, the author makes some good points, and there are some interesting products listed there. I'm sure that a few statements that are going to raise some eyebrows as well, particularly the last paragraph ;D

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General Software Discussion / Re: GAOTD & Virus

« Last post by Lashiec on April 07, 2008, 05:53 PM »

Incidentally, the best security experts and software come from the Eastern Bloc, just starting with Eugene Kaspersky (Russian).

This is just the typical behaviour of anything related to Agnitum, its firewall used to cause a lot of havoc a few years ago. Didn't know they jumped the antivirus bandwagon, too.

890

Find And Run Robot / Re: Is "Launch and stay open" broken?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 07, 2008, 05:25 PM »

Works fine here, but I recall it failed sometimes in the past.

891

Living Room / Re: Upgrading Video and Power Supply on an Dell XPS 400

« Last post by Lashiec on April 04, 2008, 06:16 AM »

Josh, perhaps this may be of your interest.

892

Find And Run Robot / Re: What New Major Feature is Most Important for you in Find and Run Robot?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 04, 2008, 05:58 AM »

I couldn't care less for indexing, considering that Locate32 is a keystroke away. Unicode support, and a redesign of the preferences screen (tree-based, please) would be welcomed though, right now I have to 'hunt' checkboxes one by one, no good. And some polish here and there.

893

Living Room / Re: Microsoft extends XP--for budget laptops only.

« Last post by Lashiec on April 04, 2008, 05:42 AM »

Well, this was expected, but kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing. It's a shame they're extending Home and not Professional though.

I have been playing with Vista (32 bit) for the last couple of weeks - my biggest gripe is the HUGE (and I mean exponentially H...U...G...E) waste of disc space. I installed a fresh version of Vista Home Premium (mainly because I got a free OEM copy) and updated it from Windows update - by the time it was complete it had used 16Gb of hard disc space before installing any applications!

-Carol Haynes (April 03, 2008, 08:13 PM)

Vista using 16 GB of HDD space it's not good news, such requirements suggest the use of vLite to cut down the bloat.

If Adobe insist on 64-bit Vista I think they will find a huge group of people cross grading to the Mac. Who in their right mind would want to be forced to use Vista for PhotoShop ?

-Carol Haynes (April 03, 2008, 08:13 PM)

Er, only the 64-bit edition of Photoshop CS4 requires Vista, AFAIK there will be a 32-bit version. BTW, Mac is not getting a 64-bit version, so I'm afraid people will cross grade to Vista from the Mac using Boot Camp, now that's funny

894

General Software Discussion / Re: Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 07:07 PM »

Mmmm, supposedly the Pioneer drives are right now the best in the market, along with a certain Samsung model. Even then, in this day and age, any branded drive should have absolutely no problems at those speeds.

(For those claiming off-topicness, fear not. Sony also makes DVD drives, which is somehow linked to the original story that prompted the thread )

895

Living Room / Re: Windows Vista SP1 Now available....as toilet paper

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 06:58 PM »

I hope the Japanese purchasers don't mistake the toilet paper as the operating system, and the Vista box as the... em, you know

896

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: High Software Prices!

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 06:35 PM »

Personally, I don't have a great issue with it, as long as they charge a sensible price for the OS, and a small fee to activate some major features, like as I mentioned the other day, Media Center, or controlling Windows with the voice (as long as it's clearly something people with accessibility problems is not using).

Perhaps something like BitLocker as well, or Internet Explorer maybe. Nobody will miss that one . Essentially, big features of the OS used by a certain niche of the market, and for which free alternatives exist.

897

Living Room / Re: More April fools stories

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 06:21 PM »

Lookie, a green monochrome monitor!

Blizzard developing new software ports, and introduces new characters for WoW

J Allard does it again

898

General Software Discussion / Re: Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 06:07 PM »

A Lite-On LH-20A1H, but none of the ones I ripped is included in the "dirty list" that includes those infected with the infamous rootkit (I wanted the G3 one at one point, but decided to buy another album).

Even then, although I ripped quite a few copy-protected CDs, those which are clearly marked as such, are HARD to obtain perfect results from, with constant spin-up and down of the drive, resulting in 1x speeds like you say, and the CRC never matches those stored in the AccurateRip database, so I bite the bullet, changed to burst mode and ripped IT (only one, for the sake for my patience) in a few minutes. Even though it's not a bit-perfect copy (by technical standards), it sounds perfectly fine to me, which is what matters. The type of music also helps :P

899

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 05:55 PM »

Semi-fixed, although the damage has been inflicted already, with people tearing apart his/her X-Fi and everything.

Add to that the release of the new Asus Xonar DX sound card, that emulates EAX5 (don't know how true is to the source, though, reviews are forthcoming), and I say Creative is in a pretty bad shape regarding it sound card business. And they're not doing much better in their other fields of expertise. Bad karma I guess, considering their history.

900

General Software Discussion / Re: Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2008, 05:46 PM »

The worst thing is that they didn't pirate something like Photoshop or Windows, but an administration tool developed by a small software company. Pitiful.

Ssssh! Don't tell anyone that I did rip copy-protected CDs edited by Sony