Why having a spell-checker ?
Why torturing pupils with dictations ?
Perhaps the youngsters with their sms-codes are on the right way.

BuBBy : "'m not sure it would work as well (more confusing) for someone who doesn't have english as their primary language."

It work's

last comment from me

I had no problem with EAZ-FIX. I installed it and un-installed it several times to see if I could get it to cause a problem of any of the above mentioned types for me. No problems.

I installed EAZ-FIX and put it through its paces with several virtual machine and virtual disk programs installed. Two of the programs were operating in the background during two of the tests. The virtual disk/machine programs included: Acronis True Image Home v 11, Nero v7's virtual CD application, and Rvsystem's Returnil Virtual System Business v 1.62. The Acronis and Returnil programs were the two programs operating in the background.

To uninstall EAZ-FIX I followed the directions that accompanied the program. Clicking on the uninstall program listed in the Start Menu was all that I did most of the time. One one occasion I used Revo Uninstaller after using Uninstall in the Start Menu. Revo found a few entries in the Registry missed by EAZ-FIX's Uninstall program. No boot problems.

Microsoft's System Restore worked well after EAZ-FIX was uninstalled.

Why was my EAZ-FIX installation different from the rest? Adiós!

"wheee...."

Thanks. That was the word I was looking for. :)

Me too...faster I mean, it freaked me out a bit, but you are right, when it is all scrambled up like that, my brain just goes whee...and bypasses actually "reading" it and just goes straight to the "extract info" stage!!!:)))

The strange thing is - I think I can actually read that faster than text with the letters in the correct order. I think my brain gets used to only seeing the first and last letters and skims over the text easier (and getting the "general feel" for what is being said).

I'm not sure it would work as well (more confusing) for someone who doesn't have english as their primary language.

Now I'm worried, Bubby I could read that like there wasn't anything wrong with it at all!
What the?!!? :)))

Yes ... as long as the 1st and last letter are correct with the other letters scrambled, they can be read. Especially since I have a strange mind, or if your dyslexic!

I'll bet the sender used that scrambler I alluded to! Cambridge U rings a bell.

In my spam folder from the other day

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

copmom,
hackers and spammers are developing ways to fake email To/From data, and ways to overcome filters as fast as the good guys develop ways to stop them. It could be from a brute force dictionary mass mailing where they send out millions of emails at a time with variations of every word combination to spoofing, or a case where they bought an email list. They have software that automatically does the merge/purge and autofill of the To/From, as well as jumble the Subject lines to mispell words like pharmacy and viagra, so it costs almost nothing and takes almost no time to spew millions of pieces of spam onto the Net. Even if they began executing a few of these slimeballs, I doubt the problem would disappear. It'd just drive them deeper underground.

BTW- maybe someone else has stumbled across an interesting site on the net (it's buried in my favs somewhere) that shows that jumbling letters doesn't make it any harder for a person to read an entire sentence. Very cool. The brain works in mysterious ways.

Heck while I'm rambling... has ANYONE ever stumbled across a little timed test that determines how your vocabulary ranks simply by counting the number of words you know that begin with the letter "O"? Just another quiz I've lost over the past decade.

Gee, makes me wonder, since my domain server is filtering things, can't help but wonder if I've lost any legit. emails?? I have noticed the amount of emails I get daily have dropped down quite drastically!! 99% are usually junk!

One thing I'm curious about (like HOW do they do it!) are emails I get showing MY email address in the FROM and I never sent it! These too are usually junk!

I have the following saved in my ShortKeys program. When I had time to kill I'd hit reply and send them the following:

The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act requires unsolicited commercial email messages to be labeled (though not by a standard method) and to include opt-out instructions and the sender's physical address. It prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in such messages. State laws that require labels on unsolicited commercial email or prohibit such messages entirely are pre-empted, although provisions merely addressing falsity and deception would remain in place. The CAN-SPAM Act took effect on January 1, 2004.

No, no, you mistake me, it's a database I'm *saving*. For a reason.

I took on filtering a superspammed domain for a friend as he was then on dialup, I was on dsl- and 500-1000 spam days drove him nuts. he'd phased out of using it as much as possible, but there were a few people he couldn't convince to change.

I forward-verbatim the (very) few real mails and keep the spam for tweaking my set of filters- I'm filtering at better than 99.993% already, but I save the spam by category with an eye to collecting a solid dataset to teach a local bayesian filter in fast-forward. and the 9k are just the last week or 2.

His current mail domains and mine are immune to that sort of thing since we make up unique email addresses for every site and correspondent on the fly- which makes it easy both to ID the leak source and can any followup pork. *those* we delete.

Heck, the *reason* I went to the present system is because my ISP put in a spam filter that I couldn't opt out of, ate legit mail, still leaked like a colander and didn't allow pop3 access to the filtered 'graymail'- and I *despise* webmail.

My data, My computer. Period. Old-school hardcase on it.

In our business we've been hit many times with "purchases" from the different Nigerian people asking to order large quantities of what we have, then saying they'll overpay and we can pay for other items they've purchased when they send their credit card info., etc. I just reply NOT interested, we do not do business with Nigeria .. go find another sucker! Quite often, they do not take NO for an answer, which is why I use SpamFighter on my machine. All I do is block them. By the way, http://www.spamfighter.com is free to download and use. I liked it so much I paid for it for 2 years. Now I'm not flooded with all the junk emails I used to get. goodgotd if you have that many spam emails, you might want to download that program!

Well said BuBBY.. just like we had someone join in the comments when Direct Access by Nagarsoft was offered... that was helpful!

I agree about a developer or product support person from the giveaway company should be present to at least help users to get the program working and uninstalled (if desired).

Expecting a constant 24 hour presence is too much - but at least checking in to address any issues every few hours. Watching the comments & forums for the first 3 or 4 hours of the giveaway then perhaps checking in every 3 or so hours - and perhaps for the final 60 minutes.

This level of support to help people get the software working and be comfortable with it's capabilities - and know that if they purchase the product a support facility at least exists.

To basically throw the software at GOTD and walk away saying - well guys, you are on your own now. Is going to result in the problems you will see now. If today you were to ask everyone who installed (or tried to install) the software - their opinions of how they rate the program, eaz-fix could well be thinking about a name change to avoid the negative press (some reasonably happy people vs some very annoyed and frustrated users)

I think it comes down to the developer or company - if you want to make the most of the giveaway and create a positive impression - play an active part for that 24 hour period (or as much as you can).

If you ignore the users who are trying your product for the very first time - you lose a valuable opportunity to cement in users minds the value of your product and the type of service and support you provide.

I believe some developers have a big opportunity, their 15 minutes of fame (so to speak) and they completely stuff it up. Others just waste it by doing nothing special, and the ones who go the extra mile - people still remember today.

Robert,

You got lucky with the restarting system restore issue.

eaz-fix changed security permissions on my system and it was a lengthy process
figuring out how to restart the system restore service once my access as administrator had been taken away from me.

count your blessings ;-)

Hi Bubby ,Hi All,

It feels like putting my hand into a bee's nest coming to this forum.
Anyway,I still have EAZ-fix installed and there was no problem enabling system restore the easy way (right clicking My Computer,etc....)

But I did refrain from installing EAz-fix on my other PC with a 4 OS multibootsystem.
That would be be pushing my luck too far I suppose. ;-)

I appreciate EAZ giving support by email, but I would have preferred they frequented
GAOTD during the giveaway.

Have a nice day

~Robert~

As to people being warned about what they are getting into,I would suggest a daily friendly warning at each giveaway.

Hi ukprimaryteacher

Just copy and paste the command from the line below... yes there are some spaces in the
command line.
I hope it helps

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

Hi Vilulf,

I appreciated what you've written, it sounds like it might be helpful. Thanks again for being supportive. I just have one question: 1. Where you've typed "secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose" are there suppose to be spaces in this line?

Again, thanks for the effort of putting that information up.

I just pulled the "5 day" rule out of my hat because I can blink and see 4 days disappear. The 12 to 24hr head start would likely suffice.

See, I knew I'd inadvertently omit someone (Bladed Thoth) who should be amongst the top tier conscripts. Probably a bunch more that my crack team of personal memory assistants will bring to your attention shortly. :-)

I don't think (this is just me speaking) they would go with a preview. I suggested that for Wabbit and Bladed Thoth that perhaps giving them a 24 hour notice they could better try the software and produce a review in more detail. I don't think it is a serious risk that people (willing to write reviews or support users nearly every day) would divulge what the upcoming giveaways were.

The 5 days in advance I think might be a little optimistic. Even if there was a guaranteed 12-24 hours notice for reviewers would be better than nothing. Also it would help when the reviewer might not actually see the software 6 hours into the giveaway (because of where they live and time zones).

eaz-fix denied access to windows system restore, even after I uninstalled eaz-fix.

I had to do the following to regain access to the Windows system restore service:

1. Click Start, Run, type: %windir%\help and press Enter to open the Help folder.
2. Click Start, Run, type: %windir%\system32 and press Enter to open the System32 folder.
3. Copy and paste the file secedit.exe into the folder System32; copy and paste the file secedit.chm into the folder Help.

4. Click Start, click Run, type the following command and then press ENTER.

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

Then, I had to re-take "ownership" of %windir%\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe

via the file's properties / security permissions tab in winxp pro

then I executed %windir%\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe

and my system restore service was able to be restarted and is functional again.

I am still unsure if eaz-fix has been completely uninstalled because the uninstall routine did not show me a progress bar, or any confirmation of uninstall.

BubbyCo, just hoping that the random Geek will come by at the crack of midnight before all the early bird whiners arrive is risky. I realize that some downloaders won't agree with any reviews/ratings of even 70 geeks, and some will blow up their computers regardless how many warnings and bridge out signs are posted. Still, perhaps a partial solution would be to have a private conference board where a very limited few of the more computer & game savvy types (the LTA's - Lekanaw's Trusted Advisors) could be given a couple days advance notice for each program, time enough to consider it's strengths and weaknesses, and for Wabbit to compose timely Reviews. Then, they'd submit votes and observations about whether the software seems ("SEEMS"... no guarantees):

a) safe for newbies or potentially hazardous to PCs
b) good for kiddies
c) to make minor/major system demands
d) ??

GAOTD would have the final say, and the feedback ratings would go in the box above the comments. The output would have to be of a fashion that doesn't scare away members OR potential developers (i.e., patterned after marketmaker stock analysts who give a HOLD rating to stocks they really think people should sell), but I think maybe the result would be fewer nasty comments and an overall higher score for a product. Although it might behoove the developers to authorize the distribution of unrestricted use appls to, say, 5 volunteers, they could simply provide a link to the full trial version or a package with a 5-day extinction trigger.

I nominate you, Wabbit and maybe the Bar&Grill guy for starters. There are others whose due diligence I'd trust, so none of the regulars should pout if your name isn't on the above short list.

If I wanted to edit anything, bigun it was that first bit - my eyes glassed over, it started with GOTD's responsibilitys and ended in divorce and somebody committing suicide. I'm not to sure what happened with rebounding website visitors, MS-DOS the fact that you cannot type, but you like systracer.

Perhaps I just have trouble understanding someone who thinks a little too much like I do. ;)

I was shocked to arrive on the scene, maybe 16 hours into a giveaway to see somebody had quoted a discussion that took place months prior - when the vendor required an email address to get a key. What was said, was said and at the time I believe we were right to illustrate the final outcome where users who signed up, received spam email.

I reacted and commented only in response to another user who claimed that his email address had "been sold". Of course this couldn't be proven - but either with the knowledge and consent of this company, or through covert means - our email addresses ended up in the hands of TBG ("the bad guys").

Now back to the most recent giveaway - there really wasn't any risk of this happening on this day, yet people seemed to be like a frenzied mob out for a lynching - they wanted to see someone hang. It was stupid. In fact it should never have been allowed to appear on the forums.

In this case the users were very wrong. If someone removed the comments, the mob (now foaming at the mouth) would be screaming garbage about censorship, and cover up, and (shudder) free speech.

So whether you are right or wrong, you will still get the same crazy mob who get an idea in their heads - and like the Borg collective lose any ability to think for themselves or operate outside of the mob.

I agree completely that when commenting either in support for or against a program - that you do your testing first, and you should also state any assumptions you are working under.

At the end of the day - the decision is always the users to make- either in the absense of information, the presence of incorrect information - or with good advice - to proceed or not is always the users to make.

Years ago I remember a saying. Free Advice is worth what you pay for it (ie. nothing). If you want professional advice - it is probably going to cost money.

If you follow bad advice on a webpage, I'd be suprised if there was a legal remedy. If you want a guarantee - pay a professional who will write up papers what the work will involve and provide you with a quote. Then if you accept the quote and the worker doesn't deliver what they said they would - THEN you may have a remedy for damages.

Unfortunately on sites like this, many users have no choice but to trust the opinions of others - to shape their own opinions. There are also some people who try to appear larger than life and more experienced than everybody else. These users seem to always have something (usually critical) to say about everything. There are others who don't actually have their own opinions - but have an opinion about other users and what they say. After a while hopefully people can make their own minds up.

I think that several things are being missed here. I will try to mention a few.

GOTD does have several responsibilities to the visitors to its website. Failure to meet those responsibilities may not result in a stoning, legal action, or a shooting. I have never participated in the first two of these and I could be tempted to join in if the injustices became large enough.

If responsibilities are glossed over, this is what will happen. GOTD's core of frequent visitors will drop off sharply. There will be short periodic rebounds of activity on the website. The rebounds will start becoming farther apart and less intense. GOTD may think that the rebounds are signaling a resurgence in confidence of the readers and happy days are just around the corner. I have followed several companies go through this cycle. In every case the company borrowed money to get their website and inventory ready to respond to a high volume of sales and the ability to give promises of same day shipping - "all items are in stock". All went belly-up. Long term friendships and even longer term marriages were broken. I one case, a ruined reputation ended in suicide. Of course this would never happen to GOTD and its partners in enterprise.

Those resurgents of activity were due to intermittent rewards given in a conditioned response environment. Intermittent response works with human behavior just as well as it does with rats - 100% of the time. 100% of the time - not "9-times out of ten". The "intermittent" rewards could be made up of "sometimes a good prize"; "sometimes a bad prize"; "sometimes no prize"; "sometimes responsible behavior"; "sometimes irresponsible behavior"; "sometimes recognizing comments by website users and doing something about them"; "sometimes saying nothing and doing nothing". Get the idea? Sure you do. And, you don't have to be a bad person to get caught up in the above. "Fatigued, lazy, too many irons in the fire, too lay-ed back, too much this and too much that". My own website is a case in point.

Now about "EAZ-FIX". In the old days of MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups, several programs were on the market that took "snap-shots" of the hard drive, CMOS, etc. They worked fine if you used the recovery disk in the same machine that made it. I thought "EAZ-FIX" to be similar to those programs of the past and to today's "Windows" own "System Recovery" program. Was there any obvious reason to think otherwise? This fall GOTD had "Systracer" - a program that takes snap-shots and works very well for me.

Should GOTD visitors read the comments listed under the day's offering before trying the program themselves? Most comments are made by people who have not even downloaded the program much less tested it. And, over half of the people making comments that have downloaded the program can not even follow the directions given in the "readme file". I will not go into the quality of the comments any further because I have major short-comings - that include spelling. I can't spell. I can't type well with one hand and I can't spell most 3-letter and greater words. Neither is likely to improve. But, I hope that the quality of the comments by myself, the other GOTD visitors, and especially GOTD improve.

What is happening is "bad,bad,bad". I say that tongue-in-cheek but realize there is some truth in the statement also.

BuBBy, I don't think that you should edit this one. There are no names called, behavior slammed, and hopefully no feelings hurt by what I have written. I truly mean to harm or shame no one. You can see that I know that I am no "first prize" or "blue ribbon boy" myself. If we see trouble coming lets warn one another. We need to be mindful of telling the truth. An untruthful comment about a virus, or CMOS eater, or BIOS poisoner can harm and embarrass a software author. I do think that if a program eats a boot track or "truly" harms my computer that I should tell about it after making sure that it is not me who is at fault.

What he said. Ya, YouBetcha.

Download, unzip, very soon after it's available. (Gotta take meds at midnight, then wait 30 minutes for the RLS stuff to kick in anyway)

Usually update the saved text of the comments made on the previous giveaway, look over the readme.txt and root around the author's site, trying to find a version history, how-to's, plug-ins, etc.

Or at least a version number- like daymate, v6.23.

and then fall asleep.

(I've given up looking on the game giveaways, 90+% seem to be 1.0)

But installation?

Usually about noon here, ~12 hours in, so as BuBBy says, I won't be the first to crash and burn. Usually if a new activate.exe , install tip or download is needed, it's up too.

besides, 5 am is when cobian backs up the system, so I have a 'restore point' to fall back on... <g>

Hey guys, I really appreciate the support, and Robert, no I didn't take offence. I understand that for many people they could view me as part of the GOTD Team - because I can moderate posts/forums. But that is about as far as my personal or professional involvement goes. I wasn't even invited to last years Christmas party (I admit the airfares might've cost more than the party itself).

Even GOTD isn't "responsible" for the software - if there is a problem - they can't rewrite the program - it still has to go back via the distributor. This is why instead of instant fixes - we see a "rerun" a week or two later.

People are very quick to criticize the Giveaway team who I believe do a great job under some fairly tight conditions. Next time you hear someone criticize the Team, or another user, or even myself - ask yourself "and how would they know". Most people are just whinging out of their hats.(damn that intelli-censor).

I saw maybe last week, we had a day with no GOTD on offer. This was actually because GOTD hadn't received the giveaway in time from the supplier. Some people were critical of GOTD but it was not their fault.

The GOTD Team often seem to run on small lead-times between receiving the program and it going live on the site. To expect a team to install and master 14 programs a week to find and know about all the issues and bugs, and warn all the users before they download isn't really that practical. If we see a stinker of a program on GOTD (or a game) usually the user comments tend to drive the tone - and any positive words the developer was hoping would spread following the giveaway will be TD.

And I think yesterday someone mentioned "Where is BuBBy. He knows the answers" or similar. Well I was out... and I don't. Most days I don't get to find out what the giveaway is until everyone else does. So we begin the learning curve at the same time. Sometimes if I get a chance - I might check a few hours earlier (no I do NOT tell) - which might mean that I can do a little bit of reading about the program - maybe find some reviews, look for equivalent type programs, so I can answer questions - but the giveaway download start and finish is the same for me as everyone else.

As the new user named "BetterSafeThanSorry" might suggest - don't rush in to be the first to download, first to post, first to crash and burn. If in doubt - wait until at least maybe 5 or 6 hours into the giveaway, when a number of quality comments have been made. Then decide from those if this is a giveaway that you a) need, and b) is within your pc skills to install and maintain.

Read everything you can before you install. Don't rush. Remember to backup important files. Remember none of the programs come with any warranty or support. (in regard to warranty - most purchased software has no warranty either).

(Oh and "moderator" is not the same as "tech support". Just lucky there are some moderators who will spend a few hours trying to fix or resolve a problem for you, because they know what it means to be in a mess and not know how to get out of it).

I can't think of anything else to say... except don't throw sticks. You'll take out somebodies eye. (and always say please and thank you).<- My mum made me put that bit in.

Hi there CopMom,
I've been looking into this kind of sw for a while.
Have arrived at the conclusion nothing beats Acronis True Image.
Some ppl prefer Ghost, but after reading a lot, I go w what Gizmo recommended.
If u have a Seagate HD, it's free. I have some good links for some great reviews, if u need.

Hope ur feeling better.
If there are any more news, let us know, alright??
Manu {{{{{{ More Hugs}}}}}

Robert,
Don't really know what you meant, but we are very protective of *our* Bubby (not he needs our protection), as he works tirelessly helping everybody, always going above and beyond.
And we *really* like him a lot!!
Being new to the Forum, maybe u didn't know any of this.

Don't see what is there not to like that he is willing to tell it like it is about a sw or a company. A company that makes crappy sw, doesn't have a leg to stand on. And if nobody tells them, their products wont get better.

Peace, Manu