Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with computer and software

Writer meets arthritis

grumblebee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:18:40 -0800

Mac voice-recognition software for a writer with arthritis. My father's arthritis is making it more and more difficult for him to type. This is hard for him, because he's been a writer for decades (over 25 books and countless articles). He is considering switching to voice-recognition software.

Here are some things to note:

- He is originally from England but has lived in the US since the 1950s. He is a very clear speaker, but his accent is a mix of British (cockney originally) and American.

- He owns a Mac.

- He is not highly computer literate, but he lives in a university town and could find people to help him set things up if necessary. He probably will have trouble if the voice-recognition software itself is overly complicated to use.

I am looking for any advice and experiences with this. What is the state of the art these days? What's available for the Mac? What is the experience like for people who are heavy users?

Make me more geeky!

stevyb — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:56:05 -0800

How can I (non-programmer), create a customized installer? (see details please!) I have an application that I have to install on alot of workstations, but it requires to install some MS Office service packs before the ACTUAL .exe file is installed. AND THEN , we still need to copy some data files into different directories. Only after the 20 step installation READ ME is followed to the tee, does the application launch and work correctly. Sorry, I don't know what language it was written in and I don't have any programming experience. I was hoping to make one EXE that does all of the steps automatically in a wizard type format. Sorry for the long explanation!

Great idea for a course--horribly misdirected.

k. — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:16:41 -0800

I'm taking an innovative course on using technology for humanitarian causes, taught by a professor I really like. But it's awful! How can I tell him what I think, and/or turn this disaster of a course into something worthwhile? My hopes were high at first, because I was really excited about the topic: I wanted to learn how to use my technical skills to do something good for people, instead of just to make money. I'm hoping to find a job in my field that does some kind of good, since I'm not sure I could stand it otherwise.

But the course turned out to be very different: it seems to be entirely about giving people computers. Dumping gadgets on people is of questionable long-term value, and, most importantly, it doesn't teach us students anything about how to use our skills--which are not about donating technology but about making it--to make the world better place. We read case studies of projects that gave people technology, and we're installing a computer lab made from donated computers in a local public housing project. While this kind of community-service might help some people in the short term, it sure isn't teaching us any new technical skills or any ways to use our existing skills to help people in the future.

I don't think using technical knowledge for the common good is an unreasonable idea. Engineers Without Borders does it all the time; so does the Humanitarian FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) Project. And, given that we're adept at crunching numbers and have a GIS expert on hand, I'm sure there's a lot of climate- and environment-related stuff we could work on as well. All great things, but not what we're doing in this class.

The course is small and somewhat student-directed, so I may be able to push the class (or my own work in it) more toward something I could actually learn from. But I have to do this very carefully, for two reasons. First, our class is effectively committed to the housing project's computer lab, so any additional projects or "field work" we take on has to be in addition to our work on that (in other words, at least some of us have to continue the work on that and probably most will). Second, I don't want to seem oppositional or offensive, because I really like the professor--he's a fascinating person and one of the best teachers I've had--and I want him to like me too.

How should I express my doubts about the course, and how might I try to shift the focus more toward material from which I might actually learn something?

High fidelity DVD ripping

sloe — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:28:33 -0800

High fidelity DVD ripping: collecting short videos from separate DVDs without losing any quality Hello

I have a bunch of short movies on separate DVDs that need to be strung together without losing any quality. This is for a screening so, if it is possible, preserving the image fidelity is important. Also note that these are independent artists so there are no copyright/encryption concerns here. I was thinking of a couple of different ways of tackling this and I was wondering if anyone with experience could let me know which is most likely to succeed and suggest software to accomplish this. Different solutions:

I) Rip the DVDs uncompressed to laptop hard-drive and play from there

My concern here is that the uncompressed DVD video will be gigantic and I don't know if the laptop graphics card can handle the data rate (I don't have the specs handy - it's not mine that will be used - it's about 1 year old and mid-range quality). Will the laptop play them back smoothly? What software would you recommend for lossless rips?

II) Rip the DVDs to a hard-drive, burn a new DVD containing all of them

This will work - but will there be quality loss in the uncompression/recompression? Any tricks for eliminating/reducing the quality loss?

III) Copy the video data directly

I don't know if this can be done, but it'd be great to just grab the raw DVD data, copy to the hard-drive, and burn it to a disk containing all of them - either to play consecutively or with a menu (the entire image as an iso won't be useful as it's not just a copy of a single disk I need to make). If this can be done, what software does it?

Thanks for any help in advance.

Help me rescue a .QIC backup file?

Prevailing Southwest — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:00:18 -0800

IT Filter: Anyone know of a resource or protocol for opening .QIC files (Old Windows backup file format) short of finding a machine with Windows 95/98 on it? Had a laptop stolen and this is the only format in which I still have ALL of my writing from college/grad school. Any help is appreciated (please no lectures on backing up files... have learned my lesson.)

Bringing Big Brother closer to home.

kaibutsu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:38:14 -0800

I'm curious about 'trojan' software for tracking a computer after it's been stolen. Human Interest Part: A very cool local bike co-op recently had a bunch of equipment stolen, including an old computer. This got me to thinking about the possibility of tracking a computer after it's been nicked.

Technical Part: So I'm thinking it should be possible (and even easy) to write a script such that a machine transmits it's IP address and a bit of identifying data to a trusted source when it connects to the net and every ten minutes or so thereafter. On the other end, another machine is set up to receive said data. This could potentially be either a pair of personal computers that are stored in separate locations, or a central server at Google or something that everyone uses. Presumably, the IP address could then be used to obtain a physical location for the missing computer, should it ever be stolen.

Questions: Does it exist already? And if not, I'm curious about the feasibility of this as a project. The weak link that I have little real knowledge of is how accurately one can turn an IP address into a physical location. Any thoughts?

FWIW, I prefer linux/*nix-friendly answers, though hearing about existing software for Windows wouldn't put me off.

I also fully understand how creepy this software would be on a personal computer; I ask mainly for the purposes of an organization that would be trying to track a usually-stationary computer.

Put me on a continuum

Clyde Mnestra — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:50:28 -0800

What free software (or adroit use of SmartDraw or basic MS Office products) provides a template for making pretty continuum figures/charts for inclusion in a Word document? I would like to produce something that is at its core like this, but allowing me to (a) introduce stacking (that is, easily superimpose another X axis on top, or various vectors), and (b) introduce a little more glam (e.g., like this).

I know that I could generate something crude by freedrawing. I also know that in Excel or SmartDraw I could generate a timeline, which looks approximately right but is miserable to work with if the basic values on the X axis are not chronological data -- as they are not. I have to believe there is something out there with a friendly, free, elegant template!

If it helps, this is for a formal set of figures in a social science paper, in which the continuum illustrates degrees of restraint on the latitude of various actors -- with successive figures illustrating additional constraints by stacking or superimposing them on the X axis. I have Word 2002.

Thanks!

Vectors of Computer Virus Infection

mary8nne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:08:37 -0800

What are the common form of Computer Virus spread these days? I remeber back in the day it was all about Word macros, then Outlook attachmets auto-running, but therse days is it all Internet Browser Exploits? How does your computer get infected these days? Can you get a virus just by visiting a webpage (but not running any aps / agreeing to intall anything)? Do viruses these days need you to explicitly agree to run something?

If you are 'really really careful' about what you do and do not run then do you really need Anti-Virus software / Spyware etc?

I recently seemed to get infected with this Antivirus Pro but I'm not sure where it came from. It could have been a Facebook thing.

What do I need to look at when buying a new laptop?

reenum — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:28:05 -0800

I'm in the market for a new laptop. Should I get a PC or Mac? What specs are important for me to look at when making a decision? My Toshiba Satellite A65 seems to be on its last legs, so I think I'm getting a new laptop.

In researching, I've become confused as to which specs really matter when looking at a computer.

Here's what I would use it for:
- E-mail, IM, and Web
- Watching DVDs
- BitTorrent
- Word processing and spreadsheets
- Tracking my finances
- Some music creation (mostly breakbeats)

I've seen some places say that I need as much RAM as possible, others stress the importance of a large hard drive, yet others say I need the fastest processor.

Also, any recommendations as to brands that are more reliable than others?

Please help!

What iPhone flashcard application will best help me study for the bar?

yesno — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:19:17 -0800

What iPhone flashcard application will best help me study for the bar? The flashcard category is filled up with crapware. I would like a flashcard application that gives me access to quality decks focused on the multistate portion of the bar exam. I currently have MyStudyCards, and the decks it lets you download of of middling quality and there is nothing about the bar specifically.

I wouldn't be averse to purchasing an account with Flashcard Exchange if I could be certain I could export decks from it to the iPhone application. I mean certain; I once had and then got a refund on that site. Though it's the best in terms of selection (it seems to me), its export options are limited and I wasn't able to get its CSV files into the Mac application I was using at the time.

Finally, a big bonus for an application that uses that intelligent question-interval stuff. But access to decks that are specifically about the bar is the number on must-have.

Please do not recommend an application unless you know it has access to bar-related decks (not just a "law" category)--it's too expensive to buy iPhone apps that may not have the one feature I need.

Software to generate notated music from singing?

Flunkie — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:41:57 -0800

Can I sing (or hum or whistle) into my computer and have it produce notated music? I would like to sing (or hum or whistle) into my computer and have it produce some form of notated music - sheet music notation, MIDI, or preferably both. I figure there might be some software out there that would let me do this, given the existence of games like Rock Band (which detects the pitch you're singing at).

Assume (as I do) that I am not tone deaf, and that I have a halfway decent singing voice.

Windows, please; freeware is preferred but not required.

Thanks in advance.

Computer image freakout

Waldo Jeffers — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:32:24 -0800

Why do many programs on my computer "twitch" up and down uncontrollably when my cursor is on them? When the cursor is over the task bar or at the top of the screen, they stop. Many of my programs (iTunes, Firefox, Explorer) do this sort of flipping, twitching thing when the cursor is on them. The whole page goes up and down quickly as if it's banging the upper and lower extremities of the window. If the cursor is on the task bar or at the top of the screen, they cease freaking out. Is there something wrong with my mouse? Not all programs do it, although the problem's getting worse.

What do I teach my kids instead of line number BASIC?

majick — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 11:32:14 -0800

What's the modern day equivalent of old school "line number" BASIC as a tool for young children to play and learn with? As with many of us of a certain age, I spent a lot of time writing software in line number BASIC learning how to break problems down into component algorithms and generally getting a sense of how electronic computing works. The advantages of such a language as a learning tool are pretty well known: the constrained vocabulary and relatively powerful primitives make it fairly easy to learn, although obviously not the kind of thing you'd want to write production software with. I'd like to share at least a sliver of this experience with my own children, but the chances of getting them to sit down in front of a crumbling TRS-80 or Apple II in order to learn are slim.

So instead I'm looking at other options. Ideally I'd like a language and execution environment that is somewhat multiplatform, has graphics and sound support, uses a language I know or can learn relatively easily in order to teach, and most ideally is procedural rather than OO. A few I am considering are:

LÖVE - a Lua system for creating games. Lua looks fairly approachable although I don't know enough of it to teach, and I'm not entirely sure about making young children wrap their brains around the idea of callbacks in order to get anything done.

Pygame - a framework for Python game creation. I only speak a little Python but it's learnable, I suppose, and the presence of an "immediate mode" interpreter is compelling in terms of being able to learn the basics interactively. However, I'm not at all convinced I want my kids using an OO language before they understand procedural programming. That seems like putting the cart way out in front of the horse in terms of depth of learning.

Squeak - a Smalltalk implementation. Yet another OO language, although at least a fairly pure one, and I can probably dust off my long-rusted Smalltalk skills to teach it. But honestly, who even knows or cares about Smalltalk any more?

Scratch seems like a Squeak-derived project of some kind, and the visual programming approach seems aimed at very young or only partially-literate learners. I'm not sure this is the kind of thing I'm interested in at all.

Processing has some of the attributes I'm looking for, but may not be an ideal learning language due to being extremely visual in emphasis, the OO, and the Java syntax.

Visual Basic is really BASIC in name only; it's not a language I want to teach, nor one I'd want my children to bother with, and it's tied utterly to a platform I don't particularly care about.

So, folks, I'm not seeing a very attractive range of tools. What am I missing? Aren't there tools for kids to just sit down, play with, and make things? Or is the entire concept of teaching fundamental computer literacy an obsolete one in the modern age of children surrounded by closed, sealed, consumer-oriented devices that are made by distant wizards?

Does not compute

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:59:05 -0800

Home computer hosed - what means this message: "load needed DLLS for kernal" ? Homemachine is a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T40 running Windows XP. Worked fine until this evening, when it gave me the Blue Screen of Death twice, then refused to boot, returning this error message: "load needed DLLs for kernal." I do not have Windows disks for this thing, which I bought off E-Bay.

I don't give a damn about the computer, but I give a large damn about the files on it. Are they gone, or can they be recovered? Thanks in advance.

Ancient software for recent humans?

Mr. Anthropomorphism — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:38:26 -0800

Can anyone recommend great Apple II software for a kindergartner? I recently acquired and revived a couple of old Apple //e's. I've been having a lot of fun learning about a whole era of computing that I'd missed out on.

My daughter--a few months away from turning 5, but an excellent reader--also seems really enthralled with them (she thinks it's "silly" that these machines are older than her old man).

She's gotten into Word Munchers and a few other games that we've played together, and I'd love to find some more educational-ish stuff that she can dig into.

The problem--quite the opposite of the one I was anticipating--is that software is too abundant! There are literally hundreds if not thousands of disk images that have been ripped and archived online. It takes a few minutes to download, transfer, and write an image to disk, and it's hard to tell what any one program has to offer until you do; so if anyone out there has any good memories of particular titles, please help me narrow down the list!

Do I have to Rebuy MS Office When replacing a computer?

GregX3 — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:37:06 -0800

Do I need to rebuy MS office if I'm replacing a computer? I bought a Dell computer about two years ago and added the include MS office option. That computer died and I'm ordering a new Dell. Do I also need to include office on this one? Or when I bought the last one was I buying the office software which I can now use on this new one?

Help me rid my computer of clutter for faster performance.

mintchip — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:20:22 -0800

Help me rid my computer of clutter for faster performance. My computer says it only has ~7MB free, 35 used. Lately the performance has been less than dazzling...it's quite slow, actually.

Over the past two years I've added a number of programs, but not THAT many. As far as I know I've got MS Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, several photo managing programs, printer software, a PDF maker, camera software and some miscellany. (It's annoying that every add-on and peripheral requires installation of another memory hog, but anyway I digress). In any case, I'm unsure of what has used up so much space. I had a lot of images on it but I've moved these to an external drive.

For troubleshooting, I've run two different spyware removal programs (Spybot is one of them) plus CC Cleaner. I've also tried to degfrag, but I haven't noticed any improvements.

How can I figure out what is cluttering up my computer, and then how can I remove it? What steps should I take to get the performance back up? I've tried to remove programs that I don't think I use, but there are several that I don't recognize and I'm afraid to screw something up.

FYI, its a Windows laptop running Vista.

Turn John Hodgman into Justin Long

lukemeister — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:39:51 -0800

What are the Mac equivalents of great Windows software? This was a great question about what a Mac person should install on a Windows box. I'm going the other way, as my office kindly bought me a new MacBook Pro. I'm a scientist and haven't used a Mac since OS 7.5. For the past decade my machines have been Windows, Linux, or dual-boot. Freeware/shareware programs I use a lot under Windows: Cygwin, Essential PIM, FLVplayer, IrfanView, Maxima, Openoffice.org, Scilab, Winamp, Xemacs, Xplorer2 pro. Commercial software: Mathematica, IDL, occasionally Microsoft Office. I'm mostly interested in freeware or shareware such as great text and image editors, tex/latex, and other nerdware. Thanks! Naturally, the new laptop runs Leopard.

Client-Server Antivirus versus Client-Only

cimbrog — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:41:50 -0800

What is the major advantage to using one of the large server-based anti-virus solutions over putting individual anti-virus software on all the client computers? I am currently looking for a new anti-virus software package to use at my workplace. We have about 40 systems, mostly laptops, and the anti-virus up until now has involved a stand-alone program on each computer. When trying to determine what software to go with, I need to determine if I want to follow the same route or of I want to go with a client-server setup. The main problem is that I'm not sure what the benefits of a client-server anti-virus solution would be for us. Any advice would be welcome.

Software Update has no permission

silsurf — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:00:57 -0800

G5 PPC Tower never lets me auto update software? I have two computers, a G5 tower and a Macbook.

They are running the same OS X level, except one is Intel and hte other PPC. For as long as I have had these two computers, the PPC never allows any software (other than the Apple Software Updater) to auto update, like when the software does a version check and a dialog box comes up to ask if you want to update. I say yes, it downloads the updates, prompts me to install and restart the software, then I get a dialong box that basically says I do not have permission to execute. The wording is not alwasy exactly the same. Here is a screen shot from the CyberDuck attempt this morning:

Any thoughts appreciated.

Henry

I feel like the Flash at a disco.

Shepherd — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:05:07 -0800

Why is MP3 playback sssuuudddeennllyy gggrriiinnddiinngg doowwnnnn? Until about six months ago, give or take, I could listen to MP3s on my computer pretty much regardless of whatever else I was doing. I did a pretty routine wipe everything/reinstall everything (XP Pro, upgrading from SP2 to 3 after the reinstall) back in May.

Recently, the MP3 player has started to grrriiinnnddd when I do pretty much anything on the computer. I've gone from WinAmp to QCD to Billy to try to minimize the program's CPU "footprint," but it persists. The songs start to stretch out, like HAL at the end of 2001 but with more digital artifacting. The MP3 players never crash, but stutter and grind to a halt, then slowly get up to speed, then start staggering again.

This happens when I open a program, or a document, or save something, or copy a file from one folder to another, or check my e-mail, or load a Web site like MetaFilter, etc. etc. Pretty much everything other than typing or moving the mouse -- and sometimes it just starts to spontaneously stutter as well.

I have an up-to-date Avast!, Ad-Aware and ZoneAlarm (free versions of all) showing no viruses, malware, etc. on my computer.

I've used the Ctrl-Alt-Del resource manager to see what's hogging resources, but the open programs like Firefox, Celtx, Thunderbird, etc. all clock in about 25K for CPU resources, and this "grinding" often happens when I'm running at about 50% of CPU in use.

Nothing on my computer has changed in terms of hardware since before and after this big reinstall and the consequent MP3 grind. No major software changes, either. It's really danged irritating. Is it SP3? General resource creep making all the programs that used to not kill my system resources suck up all my system resources? The difference between six months ago and now is extraordinary: I used to be able to just listen to music while doing whatever, and now everything makes playback stutter and stall.

I've reached the limits of my knowledge. Insight, folks?

How to stop torrents at work?

numlok — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:13:20 -0800

I'm sure this question will not make me the most popular student at the dance, but is there a way to identify (via IP) machines running BitTorrent clients within an internal network (ie. work)? My company has around 50 employees, and the old, "Please don't torrent at work" doesn't seem to be doing much good anymore. It brings our email and web browsing to a near standstill, and dropping by the "usual suspects" is not only tiresome, but doesn't seem to find all the sources of traffic any longer. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

How to read PDF files on Amazon Kindle?

omaralarifi — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:30:24 -0800

How to read PDF files on Amazon Kindle? If your answer in which I have to convert it to whatever file type(s), then please guide me in step by step process (in details if possible) to fully read PDF files in my Amazon Kindle.
Thanks

Recommend easy-to-use software for elderly people

biwa-shu — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:13:04 -0800

Help me with some free, easy to use software for elderly people to use on a computer. Specifically: hands-off, self-maintaining security, and a good replacement for Windows Explorer. I have to set up a computer for my wife's mother to use to Skype us while we're abroad for a year. I imagine that we will also send her pictures or video via Skype chat that she will want to save and view later. My first challenge is choosing free security software that maintains itself and doesn't have too many dialog boxes popping up; then, if possible, I want to find an alternative to Windows Explorer that makes it easier to save and find files.

Help me bring my comic to life.

lpsguy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:22:30 -0800

Help me bring my comic to life. What's the best software for me to use most efficiently animate a 2D comic? I'm a dinosaur. I'm a syndicated newspaper cartoonist doing a weird daily single-panel cartoon. It's time for me to bring some of these babies to life for the web. The reflex action is to go to Flash, and I'm prepared to buy it and get cracking. But is Flash overkill? I'm going to scan already drawn images, separate the figures into pieces, do some slight movement and add voices and a little music. I'll probably never use all of the capabilities of Flash. So is there something cheaper and more to my needs? I'm using a MacPro and have some background in video and audio editing if that helps. I also have Photoshop and Illustrator. Remember, though I hope to animate one or two a week, I have to do it while still producing a comic every single day for, well, ever. Googling leads me to software that can do more and I wonder if I need software that can do less. What do you think?