Joseph's Profile

Member since May 18, 2001

  • Name

    Joseph Badger

  • Location:

    United States of America

Favorite Files

  1. DivX for Windows
  2. Dr. DivX
  3. DVD Decrypter
  4. Easy CD-DA Extractor
  5. Mozilla Firefox (v2) for Windows
  6. Mozilla Thunderbird (v3.1) for Windows
  7. OpenOffice.org for Windows
  8. Paint.NET
  9. SimpleDivX
  10. VLC (VideoLAN) for Windows

Recent Posts

  1. Review - Paint.NET

    2.6 Final (Feb 25, 2006)

    It has been said of MS Office: "80% of users don't need 80% of the features, so why pay for them when you can use a free suite like Open Office?"

    Exactly the same sentiments apply here. I have used Photoshop and as nice as it is, the only reason I'd use many of the features is to see what they do or show off to friends what I can do with Photoshop. Hundreds of templates, brushes, and special effects may be pretty or interesting, but for my needs it is overkill in the extreme.

    Removing red-eye, adjusting the tint/hue, cutting out my sister's ex-husband from the family portrait—I can do it all with Paint dot NET for free.

  2. Review - SimpleDivX

    1.40 Preview 14 (Jan 20, 2006)

    Crashed when I tried to run it. "Mencoder encountered a problem and must be shut down..."

  3. Review - Weather Watcher Live

    5.6.1 (Nov 9, 2005)

    I love this program! Though I also use forecast fox, it's nice to have the data available without having an open browser window.

  4. Review - SimpleDivX

    1.40 Preview 11 (Jun 27, 2005)

    I give this a score of 5 because the quality of the final AVI is great—on my computer.

    But the term "DivX" is misleading. It isn't true DivX™, it is mpeg-4. I have a "certified DivX" DVD player for my TV and it won't play. It won't play on anything but its own player.

    This is a fine product, but it shouldn't be using the DivX name.

  5. Review - Weather Watcher Live

    5.6 Beta 7 (Mar 18, 2005)

    Very nice program. They fixed the "Server not found" problem I had with the last version. And this is so much faster than going to Weather.com, especially when I want to jump from general info to hourly forecasts to 10-day outlook. I guess Weather.com's advertising is what is clogging up my 56k connection.

  6. Comment - eBay Lets You Know What it's Worth

    5.6 Beta 7 (Nov 12, 2005 - 6:26 PM)

    While this "service" may provide a helpful guideline for inexperienced bidders, it's no replacement for doing research and paying attention to what is on the item's page.

    I don't know how many times I have gotten excited by a low-priced item then saw a truly outrageous shipping fee.

    I have occasionally paid "more" for an item, but because of reasonable shipping the total cost was much less.

    Though I don't begrudge them the right to make money, I am not fond of power-sellers. Their shipping fees are (in my opinion) much higher than the actual cost of postage.

  7. Comment - Sony to Help Remove its DRM Rootkit

    5.6 Beta 7 (Nov 3, 2005 - 8:59 AM)

    I don't know if this works or not, but if you are logged on to WinXP as a limited user (that is, without administrator rights) you can't install software, right?

    Would that prevent the DRM software from being automatically installed? Antivirus companies tell us it is supposed to help protect us from trojans and that sort of thing.......

  8. Comment - FCC Approves Telecom Mega-Mergers

    5.6 Beta 7 (Oct 31, 2005 - 11:03 PM)

    Yeah, that sentence—like many newspapers anymore—is poorly written.

    It should be "SBC (soon to be known as AT&T) and Verizon..."

    C'mon, news services. Just because computers are equipped with spell- and grammer-checkers doesn't mean you shouldn't employ competent proofreaders.

  9. Comment - Anti-MS Group Aims to Block Vista

    5.6 Beta 7 (Aug 9, 2005 - 3:50 PM)

    Right. The OS, with absolutely no other programs to get in the way, will run fine on 128 MB. It's when you begin adding applications, and expecting to run more than one at a time, that 128 MB becomes insufficient.

  10. Comment - Freenet: Anonymous P2P by Year's End

    5.6 Beta 7 (Aug 4, 2005 - 3:34 PM)

    I own the A.C. When I bought it, it came with a big red disclaimer warning that most of the bomb-making "recipes" were more likely to blow up in your face, taking your hands with it, than create a useful explosive device.

    I have a small explosives background from the Navy, and they weren't kidding—I wouldn't want to stand next to the guy following this book's instructions.