I don’t know why anyone should ever have to mention this or deal with it, but I just deleted a couple of comments in ABL’s Naomi Wolfe thread. Two different commenter names, two different email addresses, both pushing the same theme, the same IP address for both. If you can’t make your point without resorting to sock puppetry, you don’t have anything worthwhile to say.
Soonergrunt wrote at Balloon Juice from 2011-16.
Twitter: @soonergrunt
Free Toys. Because Everybody likes free, right?
It’s a slow day here at work.
If you guys are like most computer users, you know your way around the programs you use pretty well, but you don’t update them anywhere near as often as you could. This can result in unintended security risks to your PC, conflicts with other, newer software and drivers, file-type mismatches, and other headaches that keep people like me charging you $60 to do 10 minutes worth of work.
One of my personal favorite sites on the internet is File Hippo.
When you install as many free third party apps as I do, you don’t want to just accept the defaults, including the default option to let the application check for updates. Before you know it, you’ve got twenty apps hitting the net every time you logon, slowing you down to a crawl. Instead, select “no” to that option, and download File Hippo’s update checker. Let one program do all the checking for you. It tells you when there are updates available, and links you to a page on the File Hippo site where all the updates it found will be linked. Even if you didn’t download it from File Hippo, if they carry it, the checker will support it.
Some of my personal favorite programs and applications are CCleaner, Recuva, Defraggler, and Speccy, all from Piriform. Many of you have heard of CCleaner–a powerful but simple registry and hard drive cleaner. Recuva can recover–I think they’re from Brooklyn–files that were deleted accidentally. Defraggler is, as I’m sure you can guess, a disk defragger. What makes it really cool is that it can defrag individual files as well as the whole disk. Speccy is a simple but pretty thorough tool to dig the specifications from your system–what processor, chipset, graphics, how many RAM slots, and so on.
When I want to manipulate photos, I use ACDSee. I can do just about everything I need to do, which is mostly red-eye removal and things of that very amateur nature. Obviously professionals and the really serious photo editor people will use Photoshop, but this is free. I also use Paint.NET. More powerful that MS Paint, but still free. I hear good things about GIMP, but I’ve never used it.
One of the biggest security threats comes in the form of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. Intentionally mal-formed PDF files are frequently used to crash Adobe Reader on the target system, thereby granting access. My default PDF reader is Foxit Reader. Nothing beats keeping the files themselves secure, so I use TrueCrypt to keep my important data–tax and financial stuff, for example, the safest.
I’ll get into some other programs and applications over the next few weeks, but these should suffice for jumpstarting the conversation. What are some of your favorites, and where do you find them? I know somebody out there uses Linux a LOT more than I do, as I’m only just getting my feet wet with anything deeper than the front end and internet apps. And Mac users–if you really must–please chime in with yours as well. Many of these programs are either cross platform or have analogs in the other ecosystem anyway.
EDIT: Also Too–Open Thread.
Free Toys. Because Everybody likes free, right?Post + Comments (90)
I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.
Test, test, test…1,2,3, umm, is this thing on? I know you’re out there, I saw you post in the last thread.
When I was fifteen, my parents were at a movie and the keys to the truck were right there by the door. I hope this endeavor ends better than that one did. I feel a little like Chief O’Brien, come to think of it.
Well, I won’t be a regular clockwork poster. Firstly because there’s a stable of great writers here already whose work I respect, even as I’ve disagreed with almost all of them at one point or another. Secondly because I have work. And while I do from time to time comment from work, I can’t maintain discussion threads while running around doing service calls. For those of you who don’t know, most of you are my employers because I work for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs as an IT technician. It’s a great job, and I thank you all deeply for paying me to do something I’m fairly good at for people who do important work. You might see some more of my posting vice commenting on the weekends. I’ll likely post about military and veteran issues, computer hardware, some types of computer games, politics (of course), very very occasionally union issues, and whatever else strikes my fancy while trying to stay out of the way of the smarter ones–which is to say all the other front pagers. And now for the obligatory disclaimer–nothing I post should ever be construed as the official position or opinion of the US Government, the Departments of Defense or Veterans’ Affairs, the American Federation of Government Employees, or pretty much anybody else, and sure as hell not John Cole or any of the other Front Pagers.
Now, in addition to the inevitable hair pulling, teeth gnashing, and loud pompous pronouncements that “Balloon-Juice has jumped the shark”–all of which I did the moment John offered me this gig–this is an open thread.
ETA–for those who missed it, here is TPM’s “Debate in 100 Seconds: It’s a Scary World Out There”
Just to let you all know–I was waiting for John to give you all a heads-up/fair warning kind of announcement, but he’s no doubt busy with the second most wonderful dog in the world (after my dog, of course), as he should be. Being me, I got too impatient to wait after he gave me the keys this morning. Since I have family business to attend tomorrow and I understand there’s some kind of feasting event on Thursday, I just hit ‘publish’ at the opportune time.
I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.Post + Comments (288)