Rants and Raves

Before using software the backs up encrypted media please check the laws in your country and insure that you are in full compliance.  In some countries there may be conflicting laws, make sure you understand the issues before proceding.

DVDDecrypter was one of the absolute best utilities for decrypting DVDs for legitimate backup purposes; you can still find copies of it on the internet, and you can read all about it and the end of it’s development.

Now DVDFab is probably the best product for Windows.  Three’s a free version, as well as two different commercial versions of it for sale by the developers.

• http://www.dvdfab.com/
• http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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 ImgBurn uses a user interface similar to DVD Decrypter (which was used to decrypt and rip DVDs); however, ImgBurn is designed to create and burn images of non-encrypted discs.

It supports a wide variety of disc formats, and has a number of additional features for building images and verifying them.

Definitely a tool well worth twice the price; maybe ten times the price!

Oh yeah, it’s free…

• http://www.imgburn.com/

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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Well, at the moment that appears to be the case.

I got an email on Thanksgiving with the subject:

The Wall Street Journal. $1.99/wk. Get the REAL Bailout news…

From what appear to be a professional SPAMmer (chargecarde.com) — and I say professional SPAMmer since the return address in the email was set to my own email address, not theirs.  My SPAM filters caught the email, but I go through the SPAM on occasion just to see what unethical businesses would resort to such tactics during hard economic times.  After all, big business never really cares about the consumer or the law — they only care about what makes them money and what they can get away with.

The laws of the State of California make sending unsolicited commercial email (aka SPAM) illegal — and of course theft of service (you pay for your internet service) is illegal in every state.

As I said almost twenty years ago when the SPAM epidemic was on the rise; we must fight back, we cannot support SPAMmers or those who support SPAMmers.

Take a minute out of your day, and from a “throw away email address” write The Wall Street Journal and let them know how you feel about SPAMming and SPAMmers — here’s some email addresses for you (normally I wouldn’t include mailto links, but I have no issue with SPAMmers getting their email addresses harvested by SPAMbots).

• Ashley Huston, US Corporate Comunications <ashley.huston@dowjones.com>
• Daniel Bernard, General Manager, The Wall Street Journal Online <d.bernard@wsj.com>
• Lynne K. Brennen, Vice President, Circulation Marketing <l.brennen@wsj.com>
• Kristie Sells, Executive Director, Customer Operations <k.sells@wsj.com>
• Brian Quinn, Vice President, Advertising Sales and Marketing <brian.quinn@wsj.com>
• Alan Murray, Executive Editor <a.murray@wsj.com>
• Almar Latour, Managing Editor <a.latour@wsj.com>
• Dave Pettit, Deputy Managing Editor <dave.pettit@wsj.com>
• Kevin Delaney, Deputy Managing Editor <kevin.delaney@dowjones.com>
• Darren McDermott, Senior Editor <darren.mcdermott@wsj.com>

And make sure you avoid doing business with:

wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal
4300 Route 1 North
South Brunswick, NJ 08852

or

ChargeCarde.com
SPUR Media Group
PO Box 99
Fortson, GA  31808

I will share any and all responses I get from The Wall Street Journal, SPUR Media Group, or any agent representing either; and will continue to consider legal action to recover damages under California Business and Professions Code Section 17538.45 and potentially Chapter 19 of the Revised Code of WA, RCW 19.190 (since I also have a legal presence there).

NOTE:  It’s been over a week since I contacted The Wall Street Journal about the email I received on their behalf; I’ve yet to get a reply, so it would appear that The Wall Street Journal intended that the email be sent and understand that they violated the law.  So in fact the Wall Street Journal is a SPAMmer.

Tags: ! ALERTS !, Email by roger
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Tomorrow is “Black Friday” — so named because it’s the day many retailers start to make money for the year (black verses red ink on the ledger).

I personally don’t have the desire to wake up at the crack of dawn and fight the crowds for a handful of great deals… I’m more than happy to slumber in my bed while the hoards fight their way through retailers who create a frenzy in the hopes that they can make their sales quotas.

This year has shaped up a little different than many in the past…

In years before there have been “leaks” of Black Friday special (whether they’re really un-official or not I’ll let you decide).

This year it appears that many retailers have actually provided “previews” of the Black Friday sales; and others have slashed prices in advance of the holidays.

My guess is Black Friday will have record sales (after all, it’s a down economy, and many who will spend money this year will be looking to make it go as far as they can)… but my guess is that the rest of the weekend will no have spectacular sales (unless retailers keep up the insanely low prices and continue to offer lots of lost-leaders).

Remember, many retailers had to place orders for the holidays before Labor Day; and the “public” melt-down of the economy happened after that… so if retailers were in denial about their own numbers at that point and believed “the economy is strong” lie the administration perpetrated then they ordered and ordered and ordered… which means there’s stock that has to be sold.

My guess is that we might not see really deep discounts the week and weekend after Thanksgiving weekend, but by the next week and weekend through xmas we’re going to see retailers panicing to clear out as much inventory as they can and minimize the potential loses for the season.

Some retailers will probably make money this season (typically discounters do moderately well in a down economy; so if there’s money to be spent it’ll generally be at retailers that offer value); though we may find out just how bad the economy is.

Bottom line, if you’ve got money, and have a shopping list (or are open to big ticket purchases at great prices), you’re probably not going to have to deal with Black Friday — and just wait until after xmas; retailers that don’t sell will have to clear out the merchandise (just to pay the interest on the money they borrowed for the inventory).

It’s starting to feel a little bit like xmas!  HO HO HO!

Tags: Deals, Shopping by roger
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Another successful upgrade of the blogging software.

If you have your own web site, consider WordPress software for it:

     http://www.wordpress.org/

And if you just want a site for your BLOG consider WordPress hosting for it:

     http://www.wordpress.com/

Tags: Blogging, Communications, Computers, Software, Technology by roger
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Do retailers really think consumers are stupid?

Take a look at Circuit City’s “One Price Promise” on their web site… pay particular attention to the exclusions.

One Price Promise?  Yeah… you can be confident you’re likely to be screwed over if you’re not an informed consumer.

I’ll spend my money elsewhere — though I’ll be happy to force them to better a lost leader price by 10% with there “Unbeatle Price Guarantee”!!!

Tags: Shit List, Shopping by roger
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PDF (Portable Document Format) was developed by Adobe Systems in 1994 but as of July 1, 2008 it’s an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008) and there are a host of tools, many free, that allow you to create, view, and work with PDFs.

If you need to create PDFs on your Windows machine from various applications consider Bullzip.  It installs a printer (uses GhostScript lite — it will install it for you if you don’t already have GhostScript) that allows you to “print” to PDF.  It’s totally free, and totally worth it.

• http://www.bullzip.com/

For more advanced PDF manipulation, you can learn how to use GhostScript or try out the PDF Took Kit (Pdftk) form AccessPDF.

• http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

You’re probably better off to do an internet search on GhostScript, but here’s where you can find links to information and downloads.

• http://ghostscript.com/

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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PDF (Portable Document Format) was developed by Adobe Systems in 1994 but as of July 1, 2008 it’s an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008) and there are a host of tools, many free, that allow you to create, view, and work with PDFs.

Personally I’m not a fan of the Adobe reader; it’s fat (way fat) and slow (way slow — and I don’t need their “accelerator” running all the time) so I choose to run Foxit Reader; they have versions for Windows, Windows Mobile, and Linux available for free (they have other products as well).

• http://foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/down_reader.htm

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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Gas Buddy has a new feature… a trip calculator for gasoline — it’ll attempt to find the best gas prices along the way for you on your trip.

It does a reasonably good job; but it doesn’t take the strategy into account that you can top off your tank before you enter a higher priced gas area and only put as much as in at higher prices to make it through to a lower price area; but it’s a start.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/Trip_Calculator.aspx

Tags: Deals, Shopping by roger
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ARGH!!!

It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen — something goes wrong when shutting down Windows or logging in and all of a sudden you can’t launch the application.

Generally I’ve seen this with Microsoft Office applications or other Microsoft applications…

Here’s a list of things to try (this is probably the least invasive order, but look through the list and decide which you want to try first):

Look at the owner of the application; if it’s SYSTEM not administrator change the application and shortcut permissions to be read / writable by administrator (you may have to delete and recreate the short cuts).

1. Uninstall the application, reboot, run a registry clean, reboot.
2. Uninstall the application, reboot, run the Windows Install Cleanup Tool, reboot, run a registry clean, reboot.
3. Delete the current user, and re-create the account (this will work if other users have no problem running the application, if all user accounts have the problem it’s not likely to work).
4. If this is in Vista, turn of user access control (UAC), run as an account in the administrators group, and see if that resolves the problem (if it does, it’s got something to do with permissions and ownership — but it might be in the registry).
5. Consider what type of plant you’d like to put in your planter.

If none of these work you can do an internet search and probably find lots more approaches; basically this related relates to either a corrupt user profile (generally you will be notified of Windows when you log on that it wasn’t able to restore the profile or settings) or if you could never run the app (and neither can any other user) it has something to do with permissions (most common in Vista).

For registry cleaners you can use a free piece of software, but I recommend you consider purchasing CleanMyPC:

• http://www.registry-cleaner.net/

You can find information on the Microsoft Windows Install CleanUp Utility here:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

If you don’t know how to change permissions (ACLs) you might want to use a tool like SetACL:

• http://setacl.sourceforge.net/

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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