Recent Posts

951

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:52 PM »

Why is it we are just focusing on Google?

-Josh (May 31, 2010, 04:33 PM)

I am extremely leary of all the companies you mentioned and more, but I think the reason why people focus more on Google is because they are the most successful, they pride themselves on very rarely if ever deleting *anything*, and also pride themselves on their abilities to correlate that data & make it work for them whether it be serving ads or who knows what else.

Another reason people focus more on Google than anyone else is that it seems like 85+% of all web pages I visit report back to either www.googleapis.com, www.googlesyndication.com, www.google-analytics.com, or all of the above. Even when during the course of the day I actively avoid going to Google's sites Google is trying to dip into my business.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the other search engine sites you mentioned don't have equivalents for those three sites mentioned above, do they?

952

Living Room / Re: two-monitors ergonomics

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:38 PM »

This probably isn't the correct place for this post, but what the heck...it relates.

Seven years ago I was facing needing a new monitor & this was in the infancy of LCD monitors where no matter what you chose you were going to have to accept shortcomings that were not present in CRT monitors at the time so rather than have to deal with deficiencies in my monitor I ordered the biggest, best CRT I could find...an NEC FP2141SB 22" Diamondtron monitor. Other than desk space occupied it easily trounced every LCD monitor when it came to image quality.

Fast forward to today & my monitor is starting to have problems & I am needing a new monitor yet again. I've been heavily researching monitors for the past week and....what the fudge??!!?!! And even these years later it's the same landscape..."no matter what you chose you are going to have to accept shortcomings that are not present in CRT monitors"!!

Even if you go high-end with an IPS-based panel you are facing the risk of getting one with dead pixels, color uniformity issues, etc. And don't even get me started on the sRGB vs. wide gamut hoo-ha!!

What happened to progress?? Bah....maybe I'll just pay to have this Death Star-esque CRT fixed & see what the LCD/LED monitor landscape is like again in another 7 years.

953

Living Room / Re: It's Official: Apple Is Now Worth More Than Microsoft*

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:27 PM »

One thing stands out in my mind and that is this statement I have heard over and over again which rings true:

"Microsoft is a software company which dabbles in small electronics. Apple is a hardware small electronics company which dabbles in software computers."

-Josh (May 31, 2010, 07:23 AM)

Fixed that for you, Josh! 

954

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:24 PM »

I have seen the same problem only when I connected my DVD player via HDMI. I think my HDTV - though it claims to be HDMI-compliant - was very poorly designed WRT HDMI. When the DVD player failed to work well on HDMI I switched and put my Roku player on the HDMI connection - same problem. The TV is the common element here.

-J-Mac (May 31, 2010, 05:06 PM)

HDMI is a whole 'nother ball of wax. HDMI was first released at v1.0...then came v1.1...and v1.2...and v1.3...now v1.4 is on the horizon. These are hardware revisions & there's no way to upgrade to a newer version of HDMI short of replacing the equipment & now there are Blu-Ray discs & players that demand being hooked up to other equipment that is at least HDMI v1.3. Anything less than that & the disc will not play. At all. Now all these people who have older equipment have to replace their components or settle for not being able to watch any newer movies.

Forced obsolescence is the rule of the day. Yeah...they've got us right where they want us.

955

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:19 PM »

I agree that DVD formats should comply with DVD spec - but I thought that copy protection was included in the spec of DVD formats, just as it is in Blu-ray.

-Carol Haynes (May 31, 2010, 12:34 PM)

The DVD format was from a simpler time. The only DRM that was officially part of the specifications was the CSS encryption that the movie industry thought that no one on God's green Earth would ever decrypt....until along came DVD Jon.

With their only defense decimated the movie industry had to resort to trickery such as fake data paths that are never accessed during the playing of a movie but an attempt to copy it would resort in a bad copy. That's why Blu-Ray has so much DRM layered upon it. The movie industry didn't want to get caught with its pants down again...but in true fashion, those layers have been breached as well.

956

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:15 PM »

Hm... The DVD in my Comp is a Plextor PX-740A (over-burn capable Dual layer etc., etc.) - I hadn't really thought about the basic disk layout (DVD9) aspect of the issue. I rather assumed (...) that all the factory pressed DVDs were dual layer - causing the earlier disk copy methods to be lossy trying to "fit" the movie on what was available to consumers (single layer blanks) at the time.

-Stoic Joker (May 31, 2010, 11:43 AM)

Nearly all retail DVDs sold are dual-layer these days, but it's not the size of the disc that we are discussing, but rather the specifications that each portion of the track layout must possess (or not possess...which is how DRM works on DVDs).

...Guess I'll be going on the market for a (non Sony) DVD player as the built in unit is too old for the current disk protection shenanigan level.

If you are in the States may I suggest a Philips DVD player such as the DVP-5990? Less than $60 everywhere, has a USB port for photos and movie files (DivX and WMV), and entering a "magic code" on the remote makes the player region-free allowing you to play DVDs from around the world.

957

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 XP Mode now doesn't require hardware virtualization

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 05:09 PM »

I downloaded this within the past month so that I could run a 16-bit game made for Windows 95 that doesn't run on 64-bit Windows. The game runs, but unfortunately it has performance problems while performing simple operations like click the mouse or dragging something from one place to another, so I end up getting frustrated real quick and don't play the game anyway.

-Deozaan (May 31, 2010, 11:30 AM)

Microsoft added XP Mode to Windows 7 for businesses that have proprietary programs that won't work in newer versions of Windows. There's no hardware acceleration of *anything* so as you found out it's not a solution for those looking to play older games.

958

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 11:10 AM »

Most DRM works by introducing out-of-spec data into the DVD's layout. The DRM relies on the ability of most DVD players to be able to gracefully recover from these errors and keep playing your movie. Unfortunately, some players will choke on these shenanigans & the problem is only getting worse.

The DRM peddlers keep getting farther and farther out of spec in an attempt to curtail disc duplication & it's having the unwanted effect of a greater number of players are unable to process their way through the error-riddled mess.

Cost of your player has nothing to do with it, either. Sony DVD players, which are usually some of the priciest, have the worst results with heavily-laden DRMed titles because Sony players adhere to the DVD data spec very closely.

Usually when I run across a title I know has a lot of DRM I'll run it through AnyDVD first before watching it & I usually have a better experience not to mention not having to sit through all those un-skippable segments at the beginning of the disc.

959

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 11:00 AM »

Sure, they make their money from advertisers. Do they collect and store data to be used by some higher powered big brother to spy on users? Doubtful.

-Josh (May 31, 2010, 07:20 AM)

And what of the companies who are buying the data from Google? Can you vouch for the intentions of these unknown entities as well? I'm sure they are buying data from other sources as well & aggregating and correlating it all. It does not matter if a piece of data is not personally identifiable. Once you get enough pieces of this kind of data regarding a person the correlation of the data makes the data cluster personally identifiable. There have been numerous university studies that have shown this.

Bottom line is if you (or anyone) is not concerned with the data you share with companies that's fine, but don't criticize those of us who do want to keep the knowledge about ourselves private even if you deem that knowledge to be trivial. What's trivial to you may not be to me.

960

General Software Discussion / Re: HowTo repair/replace tcpip.sys ?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 10:51 AM »

Today my question merely is if I should install Outpost Security Suite 7 now, or if I should wait for "SP 1", so to speak? No, Outpost is not XP or Vista, there will be no SP 1, but ... you know ... will it be stable on my unstable Vista? Hmm... Online Armor++ already is working well...

-Curt (May 30, 2010, 10:30 AM)

Took the time today to poke around Online Armor's site and I cannot speak towards the strengths it has over Agnitum's OSS as I have never used Online Armor, but I can speak towards the few 'deficiencies' I found (And, of course, what may be a deficiency to me may not be of consequence at all to you):

- Online Activation: Online Armor requires online activation for its licenses whereas Agnitum's OSS does not. I won't get into the arguments about this, but I always try to avoid online activation wherever possible.

- VB100: Agnitum's OSS regularly brings in VB100 awards and that gives me a warm tingly feeling inside. I don't know Online Armor's track records with VB100, but I'm thinking if they had something to crow about it'd be plastered all over their site alongside all the other reviews & testimonials.

- 64-bit support: In order to get access to the Online Armor 64-bit exe you have to send an email to be included in the private beta. Agnitum's OSS has a mature, publicly tested 64-bit exe that has been working spendidly for me on Windows 7 x64 thus far. Of course, this bullet point is meaningless if you do not run a 64-bit OS.

961

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Burning Studio 10

« Last post by Innuendo on May 31, 2010, 10:37 AM »

After unsubscribing to all their newsletters a week ago I received an automated confirmation email titled "You canceled the Ashampoo Newsletter" and so far I believe I have not received any more of their emails.  I have no idea why this process is not working for some people but I am glad it did for me because it seems like I was getting their emails almost every day...

-cchian (May 30, 2010, 11:28 PM)

To be fair, my experience happened a year ago. They may have finally fixed their code.

962

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: SIIG USB 3.0 Card $40 free shipping at Egg

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:50 PM »

Must be nice to have the luxury. Esp. when I see how they kludge together these off the shelf systems I think they do it deliberately to make them a pita to upgrade... so you'll just buy a new one.

-MilesAhead (May 30, 2010, 08:45 PM)

Well, it is a luxury...which is why I went 5 years since my last system purchase. BTW, "off the shelf systems" is a dirty word around here. I don't allow them in the house. 

963

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: New MakeMKV beta

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:49 PM »

I'd rather not get hooked on a program's features and then have the rug pulled out from under me later, so to speak.

I'll wait to see if there are any sales on the horizon.

964

General Software Discussion / Re: What to use to back up 1:1 ?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:46 PM »

Curt, you may want to look at some file managers like Total Commander, et al. as some of them have file synchronizers built in to them that rival some of the pro stand-alone software for a cheaper price for more features.

965

General Software Discussion / Re: HowTo repair/replace tcpip.sys ?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:42 PM »

Today my question merely is if I should install Outpost Security Suite 7 now, or if I should wait for "SP 1", so to speak? No, Outpost is not XP or Vista, there will be no SP 1, but ... you know ... will it be stable on my unstable Vista? Hmm... Online Armor++ already is working well...

-Curt (May 30, 2010, 10:30 AM)

If Online Armor++ is working well you may want to stick with that, but I am a beta tester and while the first two betas were rather rough, by the time we got to the private RC candidate things were running smoothly. Then came the public RC and then the final which is up for download now.

If you're still curious, though, I suggest you run down the list of features OSS has and see if you'll be missing anything important if you stick with Online Armor++.

966

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Burning Studio 10

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:38 PM »

Same here.
I didn't wait 8 months before applying my own kill filter… sure felt like it, though 

-cranioscopical (May 30, 2010, 09:52 AM)

Makes me feel better knowing that I wasn't the only one. If I had been I'd begun to think I had been operating their unsubscribe page wrong. 

967

Living Room / Re: New Wheels

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 10:04 AM »

Looks like all that's missing is an afterburner flaming out the back like the '60s Bat-Mobile!

968

General Software Discussion / Re: Uninstaller Roundup - Revo - Total - ZSoft & the less magnificent seven

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 10:00 AM »

I have to post a warning to potential Total Uninstall users: One of the program's anti-piracy features is that it will refuse to run/register if certain firewall programs are installed on your system (there's at least 10 the author has blacklisted) so if you are interested in this program make sure it works with your firewall before you send the author any money.

969

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 XP Mode now doesn't require hardware virtualization

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:57 AM »

Yes, they changed that a couple months ago. Of course, I didn't find out till after I committed to buying a new setup with Hyper-V support, but I needed to upgrade my setup anyway. It was starting to get too slow for some of the things I enjoy doing.

970

General Software Discussion / Re: HowTo repair/replace tcpip.sys ?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:55 AM »

I was merely using a link I had in Firefox, leading to the "Security Suite" page. The link was 'old' so it was (of course) leading to version 2009. I didn't stop to think they would have a special page for the new version 7. Yeah, I know... sometimes the answer is too easy...

-Curt (May 26, 2010, 12:10 PM)

Glad you got it sorted, Curt. While some companies are guilty of the behavior April and others have outlined, Agnitum has publicly stated on more than one occasion that the lifetime license for the security suite is valid for all future versions (2010, 2011, or whatever else the name changes to).

It was a very good deal the offer they had & I think they realized it was too good a deal because they haven't repeated it yet even though the firewall program seems to be on perpetual sale for a lifetime license.

971

General Software Discussion / Re: HowTo repair/replace tcpip.sys ?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:51 AM »

touché 

-Curt (May 23, 2010, 03:17 AM)

Hope I didn't come off too harsh with that. Just re-read it and I meant it more as a teasing than an "I told you so" so I hope you didn't take offense. You got the problem fixed & that's all that really matters in the end.

972

Living Room / Re: It's Official: Apple Is Now Worth More Than Microsoft*

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:48 AM »

I find it interesting that I see Apple computers all over the place on TV and hear from all these satisfied Apple computer owners on the internet, but I can't seem to find one in real life and believe me, I've tried. Nobody I know and nobody they know own an Apple computer.

I make a special point to go observe the Apple PC area every time I venture into Best Buy and the observations are always the same. Plenty of people wander up and start playing with the Macbooks, iPads, etc., but the end results are consistent: After 30 seconds of playing around with the device they remark to the person they are with that it is too expensive for what it does, shrug, and wander 10 feet over to where the more practically priced PC notebooks and such are.

The reason Apple is so profitable is because of their MP3 players and their cell phone. Without those Apple would probably yet again be perilously close to bankruptcy and waiting for Microsoft to bail them out again with another check.

Even Apple realizes their computers are not the focus of their company anymore as they changed the name of the company from Apple Computer to just Apple.

973

General Software Discussion / Re: a copy of Motherboard Monitor?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:37 AM »

hmm.. didn't realize that MBM had stopped development. if the last version is from 2004 then it's no use to me as my current PC was built in 2007. anyway thanks for the suggestions, will try them out.

-lanux128 (May 24, 2010, 08:52 PM)

The author stopped development because he said that motherboard manufacturers at the time were becoming really resistant to providing the technical specs needed for his program to operate. He'd wait months for his correspondence to be answered and the answers he needed would be incomplete or nonexistent.

MBM is only of use who have very old systems. It's a shame because it was truly awesome with all the functionality it provided.

974

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: SIIG USB 3.0 Card $40 free shipping at Egg

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:31 AM »

I purchased this card about a month ago at this discount.  They have the discount again until the end of May.  $40 minus a penny, with free shipping:

-MilesAhead (May 24, 2010, 05:07 PM)

Not a bad deal...I'd pick one up, but I was building a new PC anyway so just made sure to pick a mobo that had USB 3.0 built in.

975

General Software Discussion / Re: Anybody Know About DiskTune?

« Last post by Innuendo on May 30, 2010, 09:29 AM »

So I would like to know if I should implement these registry tweaks if I use another third party defragger such as MyDefrag or Puran Defrag? Based on what I've read so far, these tweaks apply to WinXP and Vista (but not Win7?) and serve to prevent the native Windows background defragger from disrupting the third party defrag's optimization.

-sajman99 (May 24, 2010, 02:00 PM)

Been a while since I've used Vista, but I'm pretty sure if you run the built in defrag program and go into options you can turn off the background/boot defragging.