Pen's Gotta Have It Thread/Reviews

[DSF Guest 8]

The link below is for a version that will work on FF3.

To manually install goto File:Open File:Browse to the file you just downloaded!

MinimizeToTray 0.0.1.2006102615+
by Mook, Brad Peterson

Minimizes Mozilla windows into the system tray. Also includes a right clickable tray icon menu to further load only the windows you want visible.

MinimizeToTray's extension options allow you to configure your desired behavior. The three options are:
1) Always minimize to the tray instead of to the taskbar.
2) Minimize to tray on close.
3) Require a double click to restore from the tray.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Mrs.BlackCrypt]

Thanks for the install instructions...now I will NEVER forget them!!!

[DSF Guest 8]

UK law firm looks to begin prosecuting file sharers

Davenport Lyons has been working with the music industry in the UK to sniff out P2P users. Now it will ask the UK courts to force ISPs to release information to identify them.

The firm is looking to identify about 7,000 individuals in total. Representatives said they will seek an order from the High Court Wednesday, and will use the information to launch civil suits against those individuals.

Swiss company Logistep assisted in the identification of the individuals by IP address, which will be provided to the court as part of the request for an order.

Davenport Lyons has already had some success in prosecuting cases. Most recently, a British woman was ordered to pay nearly £16,100 ($30,200 USD) in fines for the trading of video game files over P2P networks.

As many as 25,000 others may be prosecuted for game piracy by the firm, with offers to settle by paying a £300 ($563 USD) fine before it goes to court. The first 500 who ignore the actions would be the part of the first wave of lawsuits.

Gamemakers Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland, and Codemasters are being represented by Davenport.

The firm also has used its legal muscle in controversial cases where people with open wireless networks were prosecuted for illegal downloads over their networks, even if the networks themselves did not materially participate in the trading.

"Illegal file-sharing is a very serious issue resulting in millions of pounds of losses to copyright owners," partner David Gore said. "As downloading speeds and Internet penetration increase, this continues to be a worldwide problem across the media industry which increasingly relies on digital revenues."

UK record labels and the government are already working together to send out letters to the most prolific file sharers, in a program that began last month.

Critics of Davenport Lyons and the entertainment industry were quick to dismiss the recent game decision, noting that the defendant never appeared in court, as well as the prosecution strategy.

"Davenport Lyons picked on six individuals who didn't mount a defense, and so far, they have default judgments from four of them at least. Many of those that responded and denied the claims, just as we previously reported, have been left alone," TorrentFreak said on Wednesday.

[DSF Guest 8]

Lots of MP3's? Don't care for fixtune? Want more control?

I ran across this free program called Mp3tag v2.41 - the universal Tag Editor. I like it better than fixtune because I am a control freak. Fixtune is great for editing tags fast automatically, Mp3tag is great for a smaller quantity of Mp3's with more user control.



From the author:

Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs.

Mp3tag supports the following audio formats:

Advanced Audio Coding (aac)
Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac)
Monkey's Audio (ape)
Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3)
MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible)
Musepack (mpc)
Ogg Vorbis (ogg)
OptimFROG (ofr)
OptimFROG DualStream (ofs)
Speex (spx)
Tom's Audio Kompressor (tak)
True Audio (tta)
Windows Media Audio (wma)
WavPack (wv)

Main features:
Write ID3v1.1-, ID3v2-, APEv2-Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once
Full Unicode support
Support for embedded cover art
Automatically create playlists
Recursive subfolders support
Remove parts or the entire tag of multiple files
Rename files based on the tag information
Import tags from filenames
Format tags and filenames
Replace characters or words from tags and filenames
Regular Expressions
Export tag information to user-defined formats (like html, rtf, csv, xml)
Import tag information from online databases like freedb or Amazon (also by text-search)
Import tag information from local freedb databases
Support for ID3v2.3 (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-16) and ID3v2.4 with UTF-8

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[BigMac63]

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

This is what I use, and it works great.

[DSF Guest 8]

Interesting... the "open" computers work great too!

Macintosh clone company Psystar is attempting to fight the idea that it's preparing to cut and run with a quick buck earned from selling cheap knockoffs of Apple's popular computers. To wit: Faced with a lawsuit from the Cupertino monster, Psystar says it is prepared to fight and will countersue the company under a pair of Antitrust Acts, saying that Apple's restrictions and the tying of its OS to its own hardware are anticompetitive.

Specifically Psystar wants Apple's EULA invalidated and asks for monetary compensation, too.

When Apple first announced its lawsuit over a month ago, I guessed that Psystar was likely to pack up its things and scoot out of the country, taking a nice haul and lots of unfulfilled orders with it. But Psystar seems to have some fight in it. According to a report at Cnet, it's "business at usual" at Psystar until the courts say otherwise (though the company now calls its machines "OpenComputers" instead of "OpenMacs"). In fact, Psystar says it even plans to release something "like a notebook" in the near future. (That sounds, oddly, like a "notebook.") The company is still taking orders.

Who will prevail in this case? The line has to be on the side of Apple, which has the resources and dogged tenacity to crush a small competitor like Psystar, but antitrust accusations have caused serious problems for at least one notable tech company (eg. Microsoft), although Microsoft has a substantially greater market share and was pursued by the government directly for years before drawing any real judgments against it.

Curiously, Psystar is said to have a legal license agreement with Apple and also claims that it is not modifying Apple's software in any way when it sells computers loaded with the OS. Rather, Psystar claims it is simply modifying a PC to run MacOS, and not the other way around. Is that something Apple can legally have any say over? Seriously, I want to know the answer. Tell it to the judge, man!

[DSF Guest 8]

Acer dropped the price on the Acer Aspire One just in time for the back-to-school shopping season, and now Inforworld reports that HP is running a sale on all its Mini-Note PCs until the end of August. Right now, the lowest priced model is the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC at $499, which is the Linux version with a 4GB of storage, VIA C7-M ULV processor, webcam, 8.9-inch screen, and 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM.

I've been going back and forth between the Acer Aspire One ($349) and the HP Mini-Note ($599) since the price change because of the keyboard, but the specs on the HP Mini-Note don't justify the $250 difference. I'll deal with the slightly cramped keyboard if it means saving the extra cash. Besides, the Aspire One has a better processor, and a few more options that make it a great traveling companion.

If HP wants to compete with other netbook makers, it will have to lower the price on its mini-computers a lot more and that's exactly what may happen if the netbook price war continues through the holiday season. According to the New York Times, analysts believe netbooks could sell regularly for $299 in the future, and we might even see prices drop to $249 before the end of the year. Apparently netbook makers realized they had to be more aggressive on price in order to remain competitive, which always works to our advantage.

[Trips]

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

This is what I'm thinking. I'm dragging this 11 lbs 15.4 monstrosity for two miles each way and thinking theres gotta be something better than this. It also makes me sad that my last regular laptop had the same specs as the acer net book except for the bigger screen

[DSF Guest 8]

I work on a lot of computers that are completely trashed. After I load the operating system an absolutely must have program is PC Wizard from CPUID software. I have been using this paticular piece of software for 10 years or so and it just keeps getting better.

The new version, unlike some software, actually is better .


Since 1996 PC WIZARD is among the most advanced system information programs on the market. PC WIZARD 2008 is a powerful utility designed especially for detection of hardware, but also some more analysis. It's able to identify a large scale of system components and supports the latest technologies and standards. This tool is periodically updated (usually once per month) in order to provide most accurate results.

PC WIZARD 2008 is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance, Video performance, MP3 compression performance.

PC WIZARD 2008 can be distributed freely (ftp, archives, CD-ROMs ...).

Hardware Information

* Mainboard / Bios (Connectors, ID String, MP Support ...)
* Chipset (FSB Frequency, Norhtbridge, Hub, Direct Media Interface, XMB, NSI, ...)
* Main Memory (FPM, EDO, SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, DDR-2 SDRAM, DDR-3 SDRAM, RDRAM, FB_DIMM, Timings ...)
* Memory Profiles : EPP (SLi Ready), Intel XMP.
* Cache Memory (L1, L2, L3, Size, Frequency ...)
* Processors (Type, Speed, Multiplier coeff., Features, Model Number, Vanderpool Technology ...)
* Coprocessor
* APM & ACPI
* Busses : ISA, PCI, AGP (2x, 4x,8x), SMBus/ i2c, CardBus, Firewire, Hyper-Transport ... )
* DMI / SMBIOS
* Mainboard Sensors, Processor, Hard Disk & Battery (Voltage, Temperature, Fans)
* Video (Monitor, Card, Bios, Capabilities, Memory, Integrated Memory, Frequencies ...)
* OpenGL & 3Dfx
* DirectX (DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound (3D), DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectX Media)
* Keyboard, Mouse & Joystick
* Drives (Hard Disk, Removable, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD ...)
* SCSI (Card, Controller, Adapter, Devices ...)
* ATA/ATAPI & S-ATA (Devices, Type, Capabilities, S.M.A.R.T. Features, RAID)
* Ports (Serial, Parallel, USB, IEEE-1394)
* IDE & SCSI Devices
* Twain & WIA Devices
* PCMCIA (PC Card) Devices
* Bluetooth Devices
* Sound Card (wave, midi, aux, mix, AC'97 codec, High Definition Audio)
* Printers (Local & Network)
* Modem (Features, Speed ...)
* Network (Server, Connexion, Firewall ...)
* Security (Scan Ports ...)
* PocketPC & SmartPhone Devices

System Information

* MCI Devices (mpeg, avi, seq, vcr, video-disc, wave) & ACM
* SAPI
* Passwords (Outlook, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Dialup ...)
* DOS Memory (base, HMA, UMB, XMS, EMS, DPMI, VCPI)
* Windows Memory
* Windows (Version, Product Key, Environment, Desktop, XP Themes ...)
* Windows UpTime (Boot, Shutdown, BlueScreen, System Restore Points ...)
* TrueType & OpenType Fonts
* WinSock (Internet), Telephony et Remote Access
* OLE (Objects, Servers ...)
* Microsoft® Applications
* Activity (Process, Tasks, Threads)
* Modules (DLL, DRV, 32 & 16-bits) & NT Services
* Internet Navigator (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, FireFox)
* ODBC
* CMOS/RTC
* Resources (IRQ, DMA, E/S, Memory)
* System files (.ini, .log, .bat, .nt, .dos ...)

System Benchmarks

* Processor (Dhrystone (MIPS), Whetstone (MFLOPS), Mandelbrot fractal ...)
* L1, L2, L3 Cache, RAM (Bandwidth, Latency ...)
* Main Memory (Bandwidth, Latency ...)
* Hard Drives
* CD/DVD Rom
* DirectX 3D
* Video
* Removable/Flash Support
* MP3 Compression
* VISTA Experience Index


MEMORY and CACHE: These benchmarks measure the maximum achiveable memory bandwidth. The code behind these benchmarks method is written in Assembly (x86, SSE, SSE2, SSE3). Memory benchmarks utilize only one processor core and one thread.

PROCESSOR : These benchmarks measure performance in terms of Integer Millions of Instructions Per Second (Integer MIPS) and Millions of Floating Point Operations Per Second (MFLOPS). The code behind these benchmarks method is written in Assembly (x86, x87, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW!). Processor benchmarks are HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

Tools

* Can save, print, e-mail a report
* Can save a TXT, RTF, HTML, PDF or CSV report
* Can export any graphics as BMP file
* Can export text and graphic with the clipboard
* Web update Wizard
* Communicate with Motherboard Monitor
* Dump (Hardware registers, System BIOS, video BIOS ...)

Use this 100% free software to learn more about your computer and its components, detect/diagnose any problems in your computer, and increase your computer's performance.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[binary_jester]

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

Nice. I'll be checking this out. Thanks.

Also, I hope Pandora stays up. Great idea, although I have no idea how they were making any money.