Activity for July 29

Review - SkyFex Remote Desktop
3.0.2 (Oct 30, 2010)

Tried it to evaluate it against GoToMeeting and other similar products. The product free mode lets you have a session of up to 30 minutes (only 5 in control).

The fact it keeps the Winows 7 Aero display causes it to be very very slow and its 30 minute session time limit makes it annoying when trying to help someone who is not tech savvy.

Meh.
Review - FastCommand
3 (Oct 30, 2010)

Tried it to compare with the legendary Launchy to see if it offers anything new. Unfortunately it is entirely in German and it offers no way to change language so one can't tell exactly what it does.

Still, unlike Launchy which is useful from the moment you install it. FC seems rather bulky and not intuitive. Worst of all, there is an installer but there is not uninstaller (at least could not find it in the add/remove program.

Bottom line - avoid it!
Review - Launchy
2.5 (Apr 8, 2010)

2.5.0 Release Notes (from the installation):

Added Simon Capewell as a developer. This release owes quite a lot to him.
Thanks Simon! ?
Faster performance
Better behavior on Linux – Thanks Mike! (d9b5)
OS X now supported
Icons displayed correctly
Environment variables updated correctly when system changes
Controly includes more items, thanks Fabian!
New shortcut keys
New controls:
Shift+tab or Shift+bkspc deletes previous tab
Shift+Ctrl+Enter launches in elevated mode (Vista and Win7)
Down arrow shows history (when there is no current search text)
Default skin built into executable in case no other skin is found
Launchy now has an icon in the system tray
Skins are simplified and easier to create
Directory browsing auto-completes correctly

----------------------
Been using Launchy for many years and have updated to 2.5 - a great little program just turned better.
Review - NTFSearch
1.0 (Dec 30, 2009)

Upfront I was wondering what NTFSearch may bring to the table for $5 when the excellent Everything Search (www.voidtools.com) is already giving you the best NTFS search possible for FREE.

My skepticism proved correct. NTFSearch is worse than useless. Installing it one gets the following text message:

> Welcome to the program NTFSearch
> NTFSearch is the ideal program to search files very fast.
>
> You use the shareware version of NTFSearch. In this version, you are
> only allowed to search for expressions with exactly 6 letters.
> You have the possibility to use wildchars (*). In the shareware version
> it is not possible to print or export the search result
>
> I wish you a successful search with NTFSearch!

And indeed it only searches for files with EXACTLY 6 characters and doing slowly and with messages only in German.

Anyone who needs ultra fast sub-sub-second search for any file, with any file pattern on disk with many hundreds of thousands of files show just download the free and awesome Everything Search and not waste his(her) time on this lame program.

And for the author - try to bring something useful before trying to charge people. Although the Everything Search was free, I happily donated money to its author because it immediately became an indispensable tool for me and I feel a moral obligation to pay for the service it gives me every day.
Review - WinMount
3.1.1225 (Dec 29, 2008)

With Pismo Technic's Pismo File Mount Audit Package (strange name for sure) you get this functionality for ZIP and ISO files for $0 (that is for free). Why waste $50?

I would have not written this if they were more modest with their pricing ($20 and south).
Comment - Google acquires 1,030 patents from IBM to play defense
3.1.1225 (Jul 29, 2011 - 12:26 PM)

IBM has been a friend of open source for a long time. They have the biggest patent portfolio and they expressly take a defensive stand with it. I do not know the details of the deal and Google might have paid a lot, but it strikes me as if IBM is trying to use its huge patent collection to cool down the patents market -- they could lose the most if software patents get stroked down due to the growing misuse by big companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Apple on one hand, and pure patent trolls (like IV) on the other hand.

Whatever the reason, I applaud IBM for their willingness (Apple would not sell or license a patent unless they are caught pants down 'stealing' other's patents).
Comment - Can Apple stop the Android Army's advances?
3.1.1225 (May 21, 2011 - 11:53 AM)

Actually, with such a low price for the iPhone 3GS/4, it would be quite profitable to buy this damned device and install Android on it... good hardware with great software - a winning combo.
Comment - Thanks for giving up my identity to hackers, Sony
3.1.1225 (Apr 27, 2011 - 6:48 AM)

Credit card companies can generate a unique credit card per transaction (one-time or repeating) that is unique in the sense that the combination of payer name, expiration, payment, payee and original transaction time are unique (possibly payment and date could be relaxed). I am not sure why this is approach not in widespread use but with such a system, the problem that Sony got into wouldn't have been that bad. Now just think what happens with the typical small e-commerce web sites and the knowledge that they are (for the most part) at least as hackable...
Comment - Thanks for giving up my identity to hackers, Sony
3.1.1225 (Apr 27, 2011 - 6:40 AM)

That is irrelevant. They could have avoided encrypting and still prevent the break-in. Even with encryption, the strength does not matter as much as the use pattern. The database can be encrypted so that if the disk is stolen, the data cannot be read but the applications still need to access the database and this is where the data encryption is typically bypassed.
Comment - Apple patents parental controls for texting, 'sexting' a target
3.1.1225 (Oct 14, 2010 - 5:53 PM)

>> @ed: Many may look at such an invention with skepticism as to its practicality,

Many years ago, when someone had an idea for a useful software product or service, he would have created a high-level design of such product and went on to implementing it.

Nowadays, one creates a high-level design document and have it signed by an ignorant patent examiner as a patented innovation. This way, the potential competitors are discouraged from implementing such or similar service.

Ed, is there anything innovative in this thing other than the mere utterance of the idea by a Jobs minion?

With that said, here are a few other uses for the technology:
1. Force the writer to add PBUH (peace be upon him) after each reference to a prophet.
2. Prevent messages that do not contain each letter from the ABC at least once
3. Use the iPhone4 magic antenna gap to deliver the offender an electrical shock upon utterance of such censored words (Pavlov had a patent on an earlier use of that technology but Apple added so much more)