Favorite Files

1. AutoHotkey
2. Autoruns
3. Comodo Firewall Pro
4. Eusing Free Registry Cleaner
5. Eusing Free Registry Defrag
6. Event Log Explorer
7. FFDShow
8. Filemon
9. HostsMan
10. ImgBurn
11. IsoBuster
12. KeePass Password Safe Professional Edition
13. Mozilla Thunderbird for Windows
14. OpenOffice.org for Windows
15. Paint.NET
16. Spybot - Search & Destroy
17. SpywareBlaster
18. Stickies
19. Sysinternals Suite
20. UltraVNC
21. VLC (VideoLAN) for Windows (64-bit)

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - Comodo Firewall Pro

   3.0.25.378 (Jul 27, 2011)

   DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE BETANEWS VERSION. This vesion is wildly out of date. As of writing the current version is 5.5 and is available either directly from Comodo or on CNET,
   
   The new versions have addressed almost all issues reflected in reviews on BetaNews.

2. 
   Review - VLC (VideoLAN) for Windows (64-bit)

   1.1.11 (Jul 15, 2011)

   Hilbert: I love checking out new things so I spent some time on the foobar site to see how your comparison review fits.
   
   It appears that foobar is heavily oriented to audio for which I use dedicated audio programs.
   
   Regarding the size of the install, it also looks like a lot of functionality that is ready-to-go in VLC has to be added through plugin installations to foobar?
   
   As a consumer end-user, I find all the plugins befuddling. VLC just runs with features that make my experience more enjoyable, like single-frame advance, very-short hops to very-long hops and so on that are not part of MPL or foobar from what I can see. VLC allows me to take repeated single-frame snapshots or export and entire time sequence to stills. I really enjoy these features.
   
   I have no idea what an MP4v file is but so far I have had no need to find out as all my video runs with audio working fine. One of the things I like about VLC on the audio side is that it allows the user to boost loudness beyond the windows volume control. I see in the foobar forums that users are advised that needing to raise volume in this way is an application fault with their source so foobar shouldn't be expected to address it. Or install another addon.
   
   I will install foobar and use it for a while, but if the forums are an indication, I doubt I'll be retiring VLC in the foreseeable future.

3. 
   Review - Sysinternals Suite

   Build 6/8/10 (Jun 9, 2010)

   As there is never a change log or whatsnew.txt, assuming that file attributes are a reliable indicator, the changed files in the June 8, 2010 release are:
   autoruns.exe
   autorunsc.exe
   procdump.exe
   procexp.exe
   sigcheck.exe

4. 
   Review - OpenOffice.org for Windows

   3.2.1 RC (May 7, 2010)

   The value that you find in this software will depend heavily on your needs. If you are a business that requires outstanding wordprocessing software for clerks, quick and easy presentation building and mainstream spreadsheet work, OpenOffice will more than meet your needs.
   
   However the reservations some reviewers hold are not all off-base. The database component of OOo is not up to business-class database jobs. It handles small databases with ease and can connect with virtually any existing database files you have. For example a common use is to use OpenOffice Base to manage Thunderbird e-mail address books into more comprehensive client files. But it is not the equal of MS Access. If you have serious database needs you need to look at MySQL with a report writer.
   
   Also, if you genuinely need tight integration between your office suite and your e-mail program, OOo does not offer that. The fact that the e-mail, calendar and contact functions are all external programs highlights the limits of so-called "office suites." However, by comparison, even though MS Office has these functions in the same suite, they are not truly integrated any more effectively than OpenOffice and Thunderbird. For example, in neither package can you click on a contact in the address book, add an appointment in the calendar and attach the letter you just wrote in the wordprocessor. Wide is the gap between integrated office functions and the overkill of full blown CRM, but no one seems to see a need to bridge that gap.
   
   Still, if you have typical users on computers whose work consists of 80% word processing documents, OpenOffice is simply outstanding. It has many features that MS Word lacks, yet lacks nothing that MS Word has.
   
   Complaints about the spreadsheet, Calc, may or may not be on target as I have never had need to input complicated scientific formulae into my spreadsheets. More than 90% of typical business users will also not have such a need. If you do, then test it.
   
   The lack of natively importing or saving Microsoft presentation format is not an issue if you are building your own presentations. It becomes an issue if you want to open presentations others have built in MS to edit them to your own needs. The ability to publish your presentations to web, or to save them in a slide show of image files eliminates any worry about sending your presentations to MS Office users. Sending ppt files is pretty classless anyway since the recipient must open the files and view them first as editable pages and then either runs them in slide show mode or flips through them singly. A web presentation is much nicer.
   
   Conclusion: for the vast majority of business and government computer users OpenOffice exceeds their needs. Every government dollar spent on commercial software like MS Word is an abuse of taxpayers and every business dollar so spent is an abuse of shareholders.
   
   Limit the commercial solutions like MS Access to those employees who genuinely need the added functionality.

5. 
   Review - VLC (VideoLAN) for Windows (64-bit)

   1.1.0 pre3 (May 3, 2010)

   Release notes from the Project site:
   
   by Jean-Baptiste Kempf
   Sat, 1 May 2010 10:32:19 +0000 (12:32 +0200)
   
   VLC 1.1.0-pre3 - The Luggage
   
   Third test release of VLC 1.1.x branch, with minor fixes over VLC 1.1.0-pre2, but notably:
   
   - Translation updates for most languages
   - Multiple fixes in the Qt UI
   - Fixes for MS-RTSP support
   - Fontconfig on Win32 simplifications and fixes
   - Mozilla plugin updated for Mac64 and xulrunner 1.9.2 compatibility
   - Fixes for Alsa audio output

6. Comment - Microsoft-backed group goes after Google search, claims unfair competition

   1.1.0 pre3 (Aug 13, 2011 - 4:36 PM)

   Microsoft's greatest anti-competitive coup was not against, clearly superior at the time, free software such as Netscape, but against competing commercial products. IBM's OS Warp was by any objective measure light years ahead of the existing Windows OS. Windows could not even multi-task and third party addons like Desqview were necessary just to do rudimentary non-sequential computing. Microsoft did not innovate to compete. Instead it went to PC manufacturers and intimidated, bribed, threatened and wooed them into marketing all PCs with Windows pre-installed.
   
   Someone here wrote "Microsoft's monopoly was organic." Phooey. It was calculated, financed and organized. We're seeing the same abdication of the competitive market to Google and Apple today.

7. Comment - Apple intimidation drives developer innovation

   1.1.0 pre3 (Aug 13, 2011 - 4:22 PM)

   In the good old days, primary suppliers had many retail outlets that provided the billing, hosting/in-store display, etc. But if your house can only contain furniture that is made by the same company that built your house, then it doesn't matter how many furniture stores there are. You just have to accept the "advantage" that the house builder also has a furniture store for you. Wouldn't app developers and consumers be better off if apps were being marketed by many "app stores?"

8. Comment - Apple intimidation drives developer innovation

   1.1.0 pre3 (Aug 13, 2011 - 4:15 PM)

   Your quote:
   
   Next, you have no apparent idea what the meaning of the word "monopoly" is : "Firstly, the control Regarding: "Apple is trying to take away from publishers so that it can charge them more money, from a monopoly position." How is it again that Apple has a monopoly? We don't know how many Kindles have been sold by Amazon since they don't release sales figures, but it goes to reason that they have sold many millions to day."
   
   If you understand competition economics, as I understand you to be implying, "monopolistic" behaviour by one actor does not obviate monopolistic behaviour by another. Tho I agree in this case it would be more precise to speak about anti-competitive behaviour than monopolistic.
   
   The conceptual challenge for some is the merging of physical goods with intellectual goods and the seeming incapacity of many to embrace a genuine free market. I have no animus toward Apple, nor love for Google and I am completely ambivalent about Microsoft. If I had my way, hardware companies would be excluded from retail sales not directly related to their hardware (so parts and service), I'd ban mobile device locking and product exclusivity arrangements would be a sad, short-lived memory. (Including, no Walmart, no! You cannot forbid a record label from selling in other retail outlets.) Everything should be geared to competitive behaviour to the extent practicable and where it is not practicable then the defensive mechanisms understood since Adam Smith should be employed to reduce damage to free markets.
   
   So I think your point about Kindle is a good one. Book sellers have no business manufacturing hardware that ties consumers exclusively to their bookstores. Frankly they have no business in hardware manufacturing at all. There is of course a dilemma in how far society should go telling businesses in what they can and cannot invest before the rules themselves have negative consequences for free markets, with particular worry for me as to how we might affect (mal)investment decisions. I concede I do not have a robust answer.

9. Comment - Apple intimidation drives developer innovation

   1.1.0 pre3 (Aug 13, 2011 - 3:48 PM)

   The least anti-competitive of the majors is much-maligned Microsoft which built a company on open access for generic hardware which resulted in Windows machines continuing to occupy the massively largest share of desktops with an historically unchallenged amount of choice. You want to build a machine that will run Windows -- have at 'er. You want to write software that will run on Windows? Bless your soul, no commissions to Microsoft required. Microsoft's ventures into being anti-competitive have generally blown up in their face and could reasonably be seen as a result of machinery-envy -- you know, "Apple gets to force everyone to carry its apps on its machinery, maybe we can extort machine makers to carry ours."
   
   Apple IS and always has been anti-competitive and Google tries really hard to be anti-competitive. Both have created models, using the regulatory power of the state, that monetize individual people, is transforming personal physical property into indentured corporate property.
   
   Proclaiming that the monolithic integration from purchase of physical objects to experience of created art (books, games, spreadsheets, whatever) and through the psychological behaviour and experience of the customer -- simply proclaiming that is not anti-competitive does not make it so.
   
   A comparison to our analog market would be giving consumers the "opportunity" to choose a retail store once, sign a contract with that store with similar restraints as a cell-data "plan" and then forcing those consumers to conduct all their purchases for everything they buy to buy it in that store while charging anyone who wants to sell anything to those consumers hefty commissions. We would never stand for it. Many have reservations just about the fact that retail dealership contracts in some sectors prohibit privately owned dealerships from carrying competing lines of identical equipment (auto dealers for example). The logic for restrictive trade contracts is always contrary to consumer interests. Always.
   
   But because we are dealing with digital consumption we have been persuaded that competition is something entirely mysterious and only of importance to the largest corporate entities.
   
   Excuses are accepted as gospel, such as "it is required for innovation." Poppyc***. The greatest innovations in software for consumers happened when the PC became ubiquitous and the vendor of the operating system could not control the software that would work with that OS. There were literally millions of applications written for Windows while Apple was still squeezing out pennies from its developers. Competition was driven with a fury because kids were able to write software in their bedrooms and then distribute it as shareware or freeware and it happened in the hundreds of thousands spread by networks like FidoNet -- the precursor to the Internet, not the phone company.
   
   I hope this article reflects some realistic optimism that HTML5 -- and the recent announced intention of Mozilla to move toward more OS functionality -- will reinvigorate genuine competition. But sustainable solutions require serious legislators acting to protect real competitive markets rather than regulatory management of monopolistic organizations and oligarchic industries.

10. Comment - After getting booted from Google+, Anonymous announces its own social network

    1.1.0 pre3 (Jul 19, 2011 - 12:57 AM)

    In the real world, real services require real funding. Few independently wealth people choose to devote their carefree days to coding, managing and maintaining services for the free expression of others. Given the very belligerent tone of most Anonymous communications (regardless whether the tone is justified or not) it is unlikely that mainstream revenue sources will be eager to participate.
    
    At the same, mainstream users who care little for the niceties of privacy or social causes, can be expected to avoid joining a new service operated by folks who have built a reputation with the ominous and, to many juvenile tag, "We Are Everywhere - We Are Legion - We Never Forget - We Never Forgive - EXPECT US"
    
    Hell it scares me just to have a comment about them because now I suppose I should expect them.
    
    I known none and have heard rumours of no mainstream user who would be comfortable on a social networking platform on which they would have to be gods-truth afraid that they might say something that upset the Anonymous service provider. Most of us mortals have enough trouble coping with the manipulations of the mainstream services, let alone having to set up at our front door with a shot gun and a tank of Canadian Club (the young ones watching the back and windows). Now, isn't that exactly what every teen dreams of when they envision their perfect social service....