Replies

Thanks! It is actually the opposite. The new installer is non-MSI, while the old installer was an old version of Installshield that I am retiring. I think the solution may be to rename the icon, let people install the new version and then have them use uninstall at their leisure to remove the old one. I’ll have some instructions to help them understand that they have (this whole problem started because the InstallShield installer was failing more frequently on some systems, leading to my discovery of a much simpler and less expensive alternative).

Thanks! Are you confirming that the installer simply records the name and location of the .lnk file for later use by the uninstaller? My concern is that, by using a completely different installer, I need to use a different name for the Desktop shortcut, to prevent the original installer from deleting it if they uninstall the old version after installing the new one. The new version’s executable is in a different subfolder of “program files.”

After a couple of back-and-forths ending with a screen shot of an older version displaying the desired behavior, I’ve been told they have submitted my request to development. My guess was that a change in the controls on their configuration dialog had eliminated the default behavior (or a change in Windows 10 broke their implementation). In the meantime, they gave me a link to a “clean” installer for 8.0.2 instead of the latest version, which was 8.1.0. That has fixed the problem:

http://cdn01.foxitsoftware.com/pub/foxit/reader/desktop/win/8.x/8.0/en_us/FoxitReader802_enu_Setup_clean.exe

From the XP system, the files have no security tab, but are not marked “readonly” or “hidden.” From the Win 10 system, the Security tab says “You do not have permission to edit or view this object’s permission settings.” Other files in other subfolders of Public are showing “normal” security settings and can be copied.

The files that I cannot copy are in a subfolder of Public that I marked to “Share with other users on the network” in an attempt to solve this problem (about a week ago). It seemed to work (manually), then it stopped working. So after your reply I UNmarked it for sharing (assuming that the global setting for Public would then become the default) and the copy worked. However, marking the folder for sharing in order to make the copy work and then unmarking it in order to make the copy work isn’t a set of evidence that leads me to trust the results. 😉 I guess I will have to keep observing.

(To be complete, note that one of the files in question is created by running a 7-Zip command line on the XP system from a batch file that then terminates. The other is a checksum text file created by running FCIV on the first file.)

Also sounds like “confirmation bias”. For anyone interested, there is a nice set of similar effects listed here, plus a decent set of sources and references to further research confirmation bias.

Or so I’d like to believe 😉

Don’t we all? 😉 I actually went back and forth between slightly different fallacy definitions (there are actual websites where people argue about these instead of spending their time properly on Facebook posts), but “confirmation bias” seems right (unless the person is doing it deliberately for a paycheck).

One thing I have consistently found: People bring out this excuse—that Snopes, Politifact and other fact-checkers are “biased”—after having a plainly false claim debunked by one of them and being unable to prove otherwise. It has long been the case that the “liberal bias” argument rests mostly on counting the number of “negative stories” about, or in the case of fact-checkers “false” ratings given to conservatives. However, this is a “questionable cause” fallacy, claiming that the number of negatives results for conservatives is due to a bias without considering the possibility that there might be more negative stories about conservatives to be discovered.

In fact, the “study” that supposedly proves that Politifact has a liberal bias comes from the right-wing funded “Center for Media and Public Affairs,” long a source for distorted interpretations of facts that favor the right-wing views of money sources like the Olin and the Scaife foundations. This was the same outfit that produced a study that supposedly “proved” that Fox News’ coverage was more balanced than that of the major broadcast networks, and a study about PBS’s strong “liberal” bias that simply ignored its conservatively oriented shows in reaching that conclusion. Oddly enough, the latter was produced in time for Congressional debates about funding for public broadcasting.

Two quick amplifications about “satire sites”:

1) Many of them will actually admit on their “About us” page that they are a satire site, which I’m pretty sure their lawyers made them do, because…

2) …they don’t actually publish “satire” they publish “stories that sound like they are true.”

I would recommend to all that they put a sticky note on their monitor or a blank card in their phone case on which to note the sites like these that violate the basic rules of both “news” and “satire” (as well as the trust of their audience). Learn to look at the link referenced on posts in Facebook, because you can save yourself a lot of time (and embarrassment) by simply replying “Sorry, that’s a click-bait site.”

That’s interesting. I checked that link out, but wasn’t sure if it was a hotfix for XP or for 10 (oddly, it says to look in a nonexistent “Applies to” section to find out). However, I did have a French keyboard installed on the XP system, which I was not using, so my first iteration will be deleting that keyboard to see if that solves it. If you happen to know if that would have been a fix to the XP, let me know (although I’m a little leery of messing with my XP system these days).

It’s a Visual Foxpro application that uses the internal VFP database. My clients set it up as a published application on the server, so the security is handled by the group rights that allow their users to access the app and the specific folders for which it needs rights (all via either their own WAN or via a VPN). So it is completely self-contained, running entirely on the server as opposed to a true client/server type of application. There is some transfer of image files that are referenced by the database and of course, reporting.

I didn’t have a chance to try it because I decided to return the machine (keyboard was just too danged small) and had already wiped it. I’ll keep it in mind when I get another laptop.

I’m wondering about this part of this column:

“As for .Net, Microsoft is killing it for good reasons. Also dating back to 2002, it’s now hopelessly outmoded — a clunky, hard-to-maintain, teetering structure of patches upon updates upon still more patches.”

It sounds like the programming environment to which many were urged to switch is being retired. This was news to me, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve missed (since I didn’t switch). Could anyone elaborate on what this actually means? Is there some kind of migration path?

I’ve tried to use Comcast’s meter a number of times, and it always seemed to be unavailable when I really wanted to check it (and the desktop version never accepted my password). It worked this time, so maybe the bugs are out of it. However, I’m really wanting to compare that stat to a secondary source (in the previous two months, I was charged for three additional 50 Gig units, but both months I exceeded the threshold for the 3rd unit by only 2 and 3 Gigs. Oddly, when I was checking on options for changing my service, the site seemed to be directing my attention to a plan that was only slightly more than my total with the extra charges.)

The only decent version of Works was 4.x IMHO. But it did suffer from incompatibility.

I’ve been using Works 4.5 for client billings for years because of the easy integration of the database with the built-in word-processor and I was dismayed (to say the least) when that was replaced by Word and nothing more than mail-merge. However, I swear that I later saw a version of Works in which the internal word-processor and its capabilities had been restored. However, I don’t know which version that might have been.

What I have done is a Backup, Export to HTML file then share that file. It’s like a Web page and can open in my Browsers and the links are clickable.

That is essentially what I’ve done, but Firefox (unless I have not stumbled upon it) doesn’t have a way to limit the export to just a certain section of one’s bookmarks. So I have to open the exported file and remove a large number of bookmarks that I don’t need or want to share.

However, between your reply and that of iTobaman, it occurred to me that I could open the exported file in Notepad and edit out everything that was not the header and the section of links I want. That worked and now Firefox also opens the page with the correct formatting. The only other challenge left is to get the whole thing to have a right margin instead of spreading across today’s wider screens, but I think I’ll need to put it all in a table to do that.

Thanks! That would make a lot of sense if I was starting from scratch. Plus, although it would be easy enough in Notepad, I could also start with a clean word-processor document that was then exported to HTML (which would make it easier to put it all in a table so that wide-screen browsers did not stretch the descriptions to a hard-to-read width). My bigger problem is the current document, which runs to 65 pages when opened in a word-processor, and needs to be transferred. I’ve looked at the structure of the exported bookmarks and could write something to parse out the pieces I want, but I was hoping someone had beaten me to it.

[Addendum] After years of easily opening the file in Word and seeing the formatted rendering, your reply eventually sunk into my brain and I realized I could open the exported file in Notepad directly to slice out the unwanted content. Thanks again…