On the other side, most users simply don't care. All they want is to be connected to the internet. So dumbing down is an easy game.
I truly don't comprehend it. There are apparently people out there who don't care that their computer doesn't do exactly what they want. Or people who don't care that they have to click twice as much to reach a function even though a computer's purpose is increasing efficiency. Simply put, the computer serves me, not I the computer. (By extension, my data belongs to me, not to some server in the great blue yonder.)
Actually this is part of the reason that Windows drove me away. Not only malware (foistware, whatever) like Flash and Java, but even Windows itself doing all manner of things behind my back. Sure, you can tame it, disable automatic updates or set it to download only, etc. but I think the whole design philosophy breathes it. There's also stuff like sticky keys (whatever that is) annoying me whenever I hold the shift key for a few seconds on a computer that isn't mine. The good guys at Microsoft during the development of Vista and I guess the good guys at Opera lost or were losing during the development of Opera 11ish. Where by good guys I mean those who care about the user in such matters as functionality, backwards compatibility, and simply not forcing their own vision as The Right Way™.
Years back, I used to use McAfee, eventually I dumped it in favor of AVG because McAfee was a resource hog. Now, the stealth download attempt puts McAfee on my permanently banned list because no antivirus suite that has to be installed by foistware is to be trusted.
Completely agreed. Such shady practices are the definition of malware as far as I'm concerned.
"I wouldn't dismiss software getting downloaded along with Java"
Nor with Flash. Happens all the time. I tried Safari around the same time I tried Steam and it pulled iTunes along with a Safari update. #$%$ Apple. As if it weren't enough that their products lack as much nativeness as can be.
Regarding your point 1, I always wonder how a user can become more advanced if everything's hidden. Windows Vista and up hide the menu bar, so the file associations feature might be hard to find.
Furthermore bcbear86 claims that Chropera messed up his .torrent file association. Does Chropera have support for torrent?
Yeah, that led me to wonder whether it could've been Opera with Java bundled as opposed to vice versa. Then again, how long has it been since that even existed?
However the above is not a mandatory requirement for portable software IMO.
You could argue that I'm talking about transferable, not portable, but I believe any distinction between the two to be completely artificial. This is easy to see when talking about e.g. foobar2000 and Opera, both of which artificially disable functionality related to its transferable aspect just because it happens to be in portable mode. Whether the program is "portable" or "transferable" depends on how I use it at that particular moment.
NB Opera should disable the default browser check in portable mode and it should run as a single-user profile, so I do in fact believe an installer option is appropriate. Although I'm not convinced the default browser check option is ever appropriate by default, but that aside.
Under no circumstances should portable software leave any trace in Windows' registry without user approval. That's my understanding of "portable" at least.
Yes, that is quite correct. My problem is when they take it one step further and remove the possibility for explicitly user-initiated action. There's a reason they come with an "associate a dozen file types and several protocols" button in the first place. On properly written applications you can also select which of the dozen supported filetypes you wish to associate with the application in question.
Foobar, µTorrent, PDF XChange, Reaper and EmEditor, offer intuitive switches between portable and installed modes, and one doesn't need to re-run the installer to make a switch. They're not that bad.
You can relatively easily make them portable as a switch from being regularly installed as long as you figure out what to put where, but can you do the reverse as easily? Like I said, they tend to gray out the file associations function. (Okay, you can associate files with Windows, but it's a bit of a bother seeing how you can't even resize that window… if there's one thing I hate in Windows it's that too many OS-related windows are unresizable.)
I can probably be grateful to the "portable movement" for causing this change in software, instead of it terminating with an error message like this:
"The application configuration is incorrect. Please run the installer from the original CD."
I don't know about the others I mentioned, but by my definition µTorrent, foobar2000, and Opera have become less portable since the portable movement made them "portable". In each case we're essentially talking about now more-hidden single-profile support. The error of which you speak didn't affect me that much because applications that did so automatically weeded themselves out of my application stack over the years.
(I don't think you need a collaborator, another writer to share the work or credit; but a good editor [human reader whose job it is to make an author's work salable - palatable to a particular audience/market] could do you a world of good.)
I agree.
Hey, that's cheating... Never do it. Of course you must be prepared for having your talent recognized only after your death... that's the way of the Great Writers.
I think most texts can only improve from having a second set of eyes take a look at them. They might point out a certain formulation is a bit coarse, or that something doesn't really make sense to them. Of course, the eyes of someone who normally reads Twilight would probably be of little help, and the eyes of a professional editor might be more helpful to create something marketable than to create something of higher artistic value.
Also note that in this case, the quality of the Dutch is definitely superior to that of the English. The story is the same, but the prose flows significantly better. This is partially a problem of translation in general, partially the fault of the method I used: machine-assisted translation. I used Google Translate to create a base translation with surprisingly good results, after which I fixed the worst mistakes and translated some cultural references into English. This allowed me to create a very serviceable translation in mere minutes, but it's not a good translation. In some instances simply because there's some Dutch sentence structure or word choices seeping through, but I believe primarily because a machine doesn't know anything about the rhythm of language.
Sign of the times. Here, what sells are those abominable Dan Brown's thingies... as well as "books" written by... TV celebrities... I suppose that the last ones don't even uses an Editor, they just hire some ghost writer to do the entire job...
It's funny, isn't it. In school you're badly punished for plagiarism, but outside of academics most people have ghost writers.
(I don't think you need a collaborator, another writer to share the work or credit; but a good editor [human reader whose job it is to make an author's work salable - palatable to a particular audience/market] could do you a world of good.)
Have you tried to sell you fiction? I think you should!
Thank you for your kind words. I never gave it much thought really. I saw a short story competition recently and I didn't care for their restrictive definition of a short story. I thought it wouldn't include classics by Poe or Joyce (nor a variety of famous Dutch authors). That is, how can I take seriously a competition that implicitly excludes such classics?
Also, short stories and poetry are pretty much unmarketable (at least in Dutch). That means to write a novel, and probably one that goes along with some current trend or other. In English it almost certainly means a literary agent. Then again, what isn't hard.
File associations are useful. How else would you open a text file into notepad, or a picture in a graphics editor? Use a one huge honking send to menu that takes a second or two to load?
That's a severe defect of the "portable" philosophy. A truly portable program would allow me to lift it up, plant it wherever I like, and then allow me to use its "make this the default for…" function (if available). Instead "portable" programs tend to gray that out, so you have to use workarounds. I vehemently disagree with e.g. foobar2000 and Opera on this point, both of which thus made their seemingly simple "portable" installer option a timewasting display of uselessness. For Opera/Presto you need to extract the installer file with 7-Zip or use the /singleuser flag. For foobar2000 I forget, but I think it was something like this.
I basically only object to those non-portable software products that operate on large data sets (like video games with large worlds, google earth comes to mind, even though I don't use it anymore) and clutter up the users/ directory. They should have configurable working directory(-ies) for their varying tasks, but instead they dump everything into my users/ path.
On a slightly related note, I once installed… I think it was Microsoft Office 2003. It doesn't really matter what it was, but I told it to install to D:\Whatever because I didn't want it hogging up all my space on C:\.* To my surprise it then proceeded to fill up C:\ with a gigabyte or two of "base files" while only putting a few dozens of MBs on D:\ related to the actual Word, Powerpoint, etc. Makes you wonder what the point of allowing the user to choose a directory is at all.
Something even dumber occurred when I tried Steam back in '04 or '05. I erroneously assumed I'd be able to choose where the program downloaded and where it would try to install things. Not so. It also left a hogging, instability causing(!) process open constantly, so it quickly disappeared from my system.
* On Windows I'd been using a division between /, /home, and to some degree e.g. /bin and /usr for years before I discovered this kind of configuration came with most Linux distros by default. C:\ for OS and perhaps some programs, D:\ for programs that don't require installation to run or for those too large to fit on C:\, and E:\ for my data. This allowed me to wipe and reinstall Windows without really affecting me much.
Yes! That's what bothers me about Pesala's stay calm and dispassionate messages. Staying calm about some of that drivel is equivalent to swallowing the hogwash.
Quote from: somewhere (unbeknown to me at the time, The Vision Behind Opera 15 and Beyond)
Off-road mode in Opera 15 adds SPDY to the mix so that your pages render even faster.
No, it doesn't. Opera 12.10 already added SPDY (proof, or perhaps the official changelog is more to the point). Whoever wrote that is either ignorant or lying.
The myth that Opera 15 added SPDY is by now well-spread thanks to that very blog post. Not even my tech writer friend bothered to correct his post on Opera 15 when I informally pointed out this falsity, which I find somewhat disconcerting. Orwellian is right: soon the Opera Minitrue will remove these traces of the past to which I link. One of them is scheduled to disappear on March 1, 2014. And with Disqus, the Minitrue doesn't even have to bother deleting anything, because nothing can ever be found that way. It might as well not be there at all.
Some of us are passionate about dispassion. I prefer being passionate about the truth.
I include below a complete copy of the thread linked by ersi, since someone at Opera appears to have privatized it. [edit]ersi noticed too.[/edit] ---------------------- Opera 18 took my defaults and won't give them back
Quote from: bcbear86
I am running Windows 8 Pro x64 and my daughter installed O18 yesterday and when I went to open certain file types (.rar, .torrent, emails, etc...) They didn't open in the normal program. I have fixed the .rar and emails, but the .torrent files won't open anymore. I have tried the Windows set default programs to no avail. I have done regedit to check file associations to no avail. I even pointed the .torrent files to notepad to no avail just to see what happened. Everything was working fine before the O18 install. Please help!!
Quote from: Pesala
To open Torrents you have to use Opera 12.16 or earlier. In Preferences, Programs, Details, check the file types that you want to open in Opera. Check HTML, Protocols, etc., if you want Opera 12.16 to be your default browser again.
Quote from: bcbear86
I just want to put the default back to uTorrent, not Opera. I have already uninstalled Opera to see if that works and no go.
Quote from: LinuxMint7
Right click the .torrent file and select "Open with...", the select utorrent from the program file list that appears and place a tick in the box at the base of the list that says something like "Always use this program" or some such.
I'm not using Windows at the moment, so can not tell you the exact wording.
Quote from: ersi
Quote from: LinuxMint7
Right click the .torrent file and select "Open with...", the select utorrent from the program file list that appears and place a tick in the box at the base of the list that says something like "Always use this program" or some such.
I'm not using Windows at the moment, so can not tell you the exact wording.
Yes, it should work to right-click on a file type, .rar, emails, etc. select a program to open it with and check "Always use this program".
Another possibility. IIRC, there's a setting in utorrent too to make it the default for torrent files. Same with most email programs Open the program up, find the setting and make it the default. With Opera 18 gone, it should stay like this until someone installs this or some other evil program on your computer.
Quote from: bcbear86
...my daughter installed O18 yesterday...
To prevent children from ruining your workspace, have multiple user accounts in your computer and always remember to lock the screen when you are away. I know Windows is not good at separating user accounts and delimiting their permissions. This is one of the important reasons why I moved over to Linux. I have lots of children, siblings, relatives, and neighbours running around in the house. Multiple user accounts with strict permissions became rather vital.
Quote from: bcbear86
Quote from: LinuxMint7
Right click the .torrent file and select "Open with...", the select utorrent from the program file list that appears and place a tick in the box at the base of the list that says something like "Always use this program" or some such.
I'm not using Windows at the moment, so can not tell you the exact wording.
I did this and it went through the motions of changing the default but never actually changed it.
Quote from: ersi
Another possibility. IIRC, there's a setting in utorrent too to make it the default for torrent files. Same with most email programs Open the program up, find the setting and make it the default. With Opera 18 gone, it should stay like this until someone installs this or some other evil program on your computer.
Did this too to no avail. I even tried a System Restore Point and it didn't fix the issue. Ah well, It may be time for a reinstall of Windows
Quote from: bcbear86
Quote from: ersi
To prevent children from ruining your workspace, have multiple user accounts in your computer and always remember to lock the screen when you are away. I know Windows is not good at separating user accounts and delimiting their permissions. This is one of the important reasons why I moved over to Linux. I have lots of children, siblings, relatives, and neighbours running around in the house. Multiple user accounts with strict permissions became rather vital.
I found out that when Java was updated, it had an option to install Opera and she didn't uncheck the box.
Quote from: Krake
Quote from: bcbear86
I found out that when Java was updated, it had an option to install Opera and she didn't uncheck the box.
Could you please provide a link for the location Java was updated from? I'm asking because I'm not using Java but I would like to check the installer myself.
The last tale I wrote was back in April, so I really ought to write something again. I frequently write directly in English, but this particular narrative was originally composed in Dutch. It probably shows. -------------------------------------
Tunnel Anxiety
The GPS spoke and the driver obeyed. He had seen the sign GPS, but the dark gaping tunnel mouth looked rather scary, so he turned right as the unit ordered. Therefore he now rode on a friendly, welcoming country road. It snaked through a large green pasture, enclosed with slim ditches. While a small hare hastily hopped off, leaving behind his meal consisting of now-swaying grass stalks, the driver decided that this road was truly sublimely chosen. A Mirkwood would not be found in such an environment. No, the only trees that earned more than the epithet bush-like, grew in a manner strongly reminiscent of a battleship. The mighty bow pierced the pasture without any hassle. Captain Owl was busy talking to a virgin eagle owl, who ordered him to aim the heavy calibers for the Ilian bushes — the same bushes that bordered the road. But the larks seemed not to be disturbed by these activities, so the driver felt reassured.
In the new Scooby Doo movies, the Mystery Machine was equipped with a wisecracking, sarcastically mocking GPS. The driver was only too happy that his navigation system did not come from a cartoon, when it suddenly came to life. “Dude, what what are you doing? I just told you that you had to drive straight forward, but now you’re suddenly on a lousy back road. Turn around quickly, because that road has a dead end in about a kilometer.” Well, why had he turned right, against the advice of the GPS? A quick glance at the dashboard proved that it was only half past eight. The sun was shining pretty bright already, but with the A/C on gently it couldn’t be noticed. Hours a-plenty and why had he even wanted to go north? The current northeastern course was much more pleasant.
It was already half past nine when he looked at the clock again. Hadn’t the GPS claimed that this road had a dead end? Sure didn’t look like it. In the meantime, the landscape had started to change. The flat polder landscape gave way to gentle slopes, nicely fitted by the propulsive glaciers in the last glacial.
This road was really nice and quiet. The only sign of life were those three rams, who did not want to let him pass through the cattle guard — no matter how much he honked. Eventually he had gently pushed them aside with the bumper. Although only a few tens of minutes had passed, the road started to climb and was increasingly surrounded by spruce. A dilapidated wooden sign welcomed him in Nifolland, which was quite appropriate given the emerging fog.
Gradually he began to find it a little odd that he hadn’t seen anything for such a long time. The tank was almost half empty, so he would be forced to return if he didn’t run into a gas station soon. Remembering that he had a (currently very quiet) GPS, he let his car come to a standstill to look for a pumping station on the device. But as soon as he had found the right menu, the GPS said: “There is no turning back. The only accessible gas station is located one hour onward on this route.” With a shrug he let out the clutch and the sound of a lone car reached the ears of the dealer long before the driver became aware of the first signs of human civilization in hundreds of kilometers through the damp vapor.
“It is recommended to seek shelter from the upcoming snow storm,” said the GPS suddenly. “The Nifollandic Meteorological Institute recommends that no one goes on the road for the next few hours.”
The door put an old-fashioned bell in operation. The interior of the shop at the gas station was paltrily furnished. On crooked shelves stood foreign brands of unrecognizable engine oil and bags of junk food. He bent closer to read the gothic-style letters. Barbecue chips with sooty-sea-beast flavor. They probably also had those make up your own flavor competitions over here. Nevertheless curious, he picked up a bag and went to the counter, which was still vacated.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
A noisy silence was the only answer.
“I want to refuel and buy a bag of chips!”
When still no one came, he decided to refuel, took the chips, and on the counter left what he owed. But how he was to find accommodation? Absent-minded he opened the chips and put some in his mouth, when suddenly a shouting dwarf came running. “Stop! Stop the thief!”
The driver hurriedly looked around, hoping to make the right impression on the local population with a good deed, when he was suddenly struck down by a punch on the jaw. Regaining consciousness an unknown amount of time and dazedly looking around, he saw three dwarfs menacingly standing around him. While he aimlessly blinked, the oldest dwarf — the same who had beaten him down — started to talk.
“This long john took off with the veteran’s food. Arrest him!”
“He’s obviously not from around here,” said another dwarf, recognizable as a police officer by a blue cap.
“I don’t care! In the cell with that worthless oat!”
“But wait…” the driver tried to say, but a simultaneous “QUIET!” by all three dwarfs locked the words in his mouth. How many days had gone by in the meantime while he was in jail, was not entirely clear to him. The dealer’d had the last word and now he was sitting here, while the snow blew through the open, barred window. The loneliness was becoming less pleasant, and when the lock of the cell door opened he looked forward to a brief conversation. In addition, he still did not know what was going on.
“Warden, could you tell me what crime I am accused of?”
“That is not my job. If you’re here, you’re guilty. You know what of.”
“But no, I do not know that at all. Couldn’t you ask? I want an appeal.”
“Appeal? Who’s here is guilty. That’s how it is and no other way.”
“But what if you were wrongly accused of something?”
“The law does not make mistakes. But I’m not here to keep you company: we have found your companion.”
“My companion? I’m alone.”
“Sure, sure. You can figure it out among yourselves.”
It turned out that the people in this remote hamlet were not familiar with the concept of a GPS. But it is true, the device had recently shown some rather strange antics.
“Say lazybones, what are you doing? I have come to save you.”
“…how do you mean? You’re a GPS. You can only show the way.”
“And now I will show you the way out of this cell. What an idiot you are. Who swipes a bag of chips?”
“But I left compensation.”
“Dude, I have a currency-information function. They work with gold and silver coins.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“You’re already too lazy to look on the map. Should I have to think for you as well?”
“No, of course not. That I can handle.”
“I haven’t noticed you thinking for shit. See you later, until you think again.”
“Wait! Do not leave me alone!”
While the blizzard raged, the driver thought. For hours, days or years the driver thought. He meditated and fasted, but the GPS remained silent, until one day he dreamed of a big river. “Yes! You got it!” exulted the GPS.
“But I—” do not get it, he wanted to say, but the GPS interrupted him.
“Turn to the left and touch the door handle.”
“A cell door has no handle on the inside.”
“Turn to the left.”
He opened the door and walked outside, where the blizzard had subsided. The snow was swirling gently down and gently he swirled toward his car. On the way back the once beautiful landscape seemed formless and empty, but at the end of the road waited the unknown tunnel mouth. “Turn left,” said the GPS, but he turned right into the tunnel. It is said that the GPS slyly smiled. It is also said that the GPS smiled happily, maternally, paternally, neuterly, and so on. Yet everyone agreed that the GPS would still lead the way for many others. But where to no one knows.
There's a mod that does HTML5 video and audio. It looks alright, but since it hasn't been updated since 2011 it uses some outdated stuff. Also, mp3 won't work on all browsers, but Vorbis has better quality anyway.
Actually Opus is significantly better still, but I think it's only supported in Firefox. I'll take it into consideration, but it'd require you to have a proper file host.
Btw, I was reading some poetry last year and decided to try my hand at poetry translation.
With Presto there's always been a steady improvement one version to the next, but with Webkit it always seems like they're too busy implementing the next -webkit-nonsense to fix bugs. Is there any proof yet that Blink's any better?
Wait, what? I occasionally use Opera Mini when I'm not on wifi and I have something of direct importance for me (e.g. bus/tram times). Some stupid "SmartPage" would probably use more than 10 times as much data as the one bookmarked page I check with images disabled. Ugh, that's awful.
Quote from: ersi
Quote from: bcbear86
I found out that when Java was updated, it had an option to install Opera and she didn't uncheck the box.
Quo vadis, Opera? Bejeezus...
I guess I can simply c/p what I said about Google:
Besides a quick check whether you're indeed upgrading Flash and not some malware, who expects an update to install a new browser or some other piece of unrelated software? On top of which, there isn't always a checkbox either. Software companies tend to "forget" that, especially if you set it to update automatically. As if you automatically want to install other crap on your computer.
And if Google is offering money for such practices, why shouldn't one blame Google? Last I checked the person who pays a hitman also goes down for murder.
Quo vadis? I think I'll go straight for Et tu, Opera?
Disk usage should be fine. I don't know how long it'd take the database to reach hundreds of megabytes, but by that point performance might be more problematic than size. Honestly I have no idea, other than that as long as we stay below 1GB everything's peachy, and that'd take a long time to reach.
Bandwidth usage is harder to get a handle on. We've used 186MB this past week, but we have only a skeleton crew. Below 20GB/month everything's great. If we assume a 20 times greater activity for an active forum that should still easily be within acceptable limits.
These are not hard limits in the sense that our account allows for more, but you understand I shouldn't use more than about half of it.
In conclusion, so far it looks like DnDerbirds are go. (That sounded better in my head.)
