CoffeeFiend

The obvious option would be to use a FileSystemWatcher but there's no such thing in javascript unfortunately. Your options are quite limited by sticking to a script that runs inside indesign. You could look into using WMI events (__InstanceCreationEvent specifically) which is quite ugly but does a similar job. It would be really handy if you could tell indesign to print a document from the command line (along with the presets, which printer, the printer settings and so on) but I don't think it has that functionality. The best idea I can offer would be a solution with 2 distinct parts: Part 1 is a script or program that monitors the folder(s) you want. When it sees a new document added, then it dynamically generates a script much like yours which serves to print the document as a PDF (that would be part 2). You generate that said script from a template, using a plain old string replace to fill in the indd & pdf names in it (hardcoded). Then after writing this "printing script with hardcoded paths", you automate indesign using its COM object i.e. create an instance of "InDesign.Application.CS5", then call .DoScript("our_printing_script_here.jsx", 1246973031) on it, then once it's done you .Quit() It's kind of an ugly hack but it should work pretty reliably. Your other option seems to be Inesign Server along with 3rd party tools such as BatchOutput Server (which is mac-only too)

Ouch I was going to say that it runs great on my 5 year old Core 2 Duo PC (the kind of PC you can find on the used market for like $150 now) but that's underpowered indeed (the CPU is more than a decade old). The good news is you might be able to find something better than that on craigslist for next to nothing.

That's pretty much what I said too:

FYI, the Photoshop CS6 beta has a free 60 day trial. If you want to edit video with Photoshop, this one actually does it. It can open, edit and save (encode) videos directly. Check it out here (that's a free course with some of the new features by Deke McLelland), just click on "Editing videos in the Timeline panel" near the bottom. Then again, there are many other programs who are better at that kind of stuff.

-Select the layer you want to drag stuff from, then make your selection (or don't, if you want the entire thing). -Make sure you have the move tool selected (press v) -Drag the selected part (or from anywhere in the picture window) to the other document's tab -Once the other tab becomes active, drop your content somewhere appropriate That's pretty much it in a nutshell. There's nothing more to it, other tricks, gotchas or whatever that I'm aware of. It's never not worked for me.

Sadly I don't recall running into this exact problem. Also, drag and drop works rather differently in modern versions (e.g. paste in place), as does the windowing modes, plus video acceleration and even a new layers palette in CS6, so anything I might say might work completely different from whatever version you're using. I *really* wish I could help, but remembering solutions to certain particular quirks of a specific version of a program I haven't used in over a decade isn't as easy as it may seem.

FTFY.

Not that anyone will really notice. Besides, it's been shot dead before. It was already fairly well known there won't be a silverlight 6, and that silverlight won't work on Metro IE (they're "embracing HTML 5" instead). Just like usual, they've pushed ridiculously hard for something that never saw much adoption, only to kill it moments later. The repeated cycles of this is very well known by developers. You waste so much time learning the new stuff, porting your apps to it, then they kill it off, and you start the cycle yet again. After seeing happen it enough times you being to doubt all their new offerings. I for one, won't be wasting my time with this Metro garbage. For one more version, probably in some "compatibility mode". They don't want to directly tell you "you're developing for an already dead platform", but now you know that it's no longer an option in the long-term. Yep. They expect everybody to stop using WPF and Silverlight (not that either is exactly popular), and to use WinRT (Metro) instead. I'll definitely skip on that. That's definitely not clear. But I won't be surprised at all the day they decide it's no longer supported, no matter how soon that happens.

I guess it depends on which kind of color blindness and to what degree. Two of us in this house have a mild case of it (it's not like always 100% on or off from what I've been explained). Both of us see like 97% fine or whatever. I mostly have a problem telling between some particular colors that are close to each other (it's mostly a funny source of entertainment, telling each other they're wrong). One of my daughters (yeah, I know, it's WAY more prevalent in men and the most common type only affects men) simply can't see a couple of those numbers hidden in dot patterns when she gets her eye exam. BIG time. Or colors on some wire, like 25 pair cable that's widely used for communications. The problem is the exact same in both scenarios (at least for me it is): between a dark-ish red and brown, or a dark-ish orange and red. It's not uncommon to be completely unable to tell which one is which. Thankfully, when it comes to traditional color-coded resistors you can quickly and easily measure them. And with modern technology moving to SMT devices everywhere the problem is solved. The colors have been replaced by numbers... which creates a different problem: you need very good eyesight to read the tiony numbers. Especially on the smaller parts. Most 0805-sized parts are still easy to read but 0603-sized parts and smaller can be quite the challenge for the naked eye. if not outright impossible, especially for those with presbyopia. I do find Google translate pretty handy for getting the general meaning of some text, or translating the odd word you've never seen now and then. It's not perfect but it's better than most other translation methods, other than having someone who speaks both fluently who can translate for you -- and even then it's not always an easy task for that person. There's 3 of us at work who proof-read or translate text. Most of the time we'll have at least two persons read it. One might come up with a better suited word for something, or turn a sentence that doesn't "feel right" into something that "flows better" (or even catch a typo the other has missed). Lots of things don't translate well like bphlpt said. I suspect that it translates differently in most languages. For example, in french one could say: "un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras" which has absolutely nothing to do with birds or bushes. It's also darn hard to translate that literally. You'd probably have to resort to something I enjoy far too much: verbing nouns.

They're already pushing for cloud stuff with the skydrive crap in Win8 Most businesses think exactly like you. MS is also desperately pushing for its azure cloud services. Too bad nobody uses it. And it goes down on leap days too. Last I checked it was significantly more expensive than most of their competitors (including Amazon which is quite popular for cloud storage, cloud hosting and cloud computing power). Low usage caps on internet usage in Canada also makes cloud-based stuff seem like a much worse option. +1 to that.

It's just a commenting style. It's easier to follow this way (IMO) than a long winded reply without clearly seeing what one is replying to. In other words, it's meant to put things in context. Sometimes it's hard to sense sarcasm and such things by reading plain old text (no smilies or anything either). I thought you were totally serious. I've seen plenty of people who would say things like that and even weirder things (it's the internet, weird people aren't exactly uncommon), even on this forum. If I read it again it now makes sense, especially if you insert a period after "variant". Not to say they are not used or that you don't know what you're saying but I have yet to come across one. Since were talking about cheap window units specifically I'll provide one example: LG/Goldstar uses Samsung's SAM87RC series MCUs (for example the C8475). OTP? Absolutely. But EPROM on a modern MCU i.e. a windowed part? We must have different definitions of modern then. Unless you meant EEPROM which is quite something else and not a separate ROM chip like you were talking about in your first post. That wasn't the intent and I'm sincerely sorry if it made you feel that way. Also, the moderator status doesn't really make one all that special, it mostly means we waste time deleting spam or warez posts on a daily basis.

I've heard of it, but I've literally never actually seen anyone who used it. Not a single person. Not one. None. Virtually 100% of the people I've seen upgraded directly to Excel 4.x. I'm aware of that but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make (perhaps you aren't). It's totally possible that it was nice but it wasn't all that popular (never seen anyone use it either). I've used R12 Win on Win95 and it was a joke indeed (R12 DOS definitely rocked for its time). Plotting under Windows seemed so strange as well. By the time it turned into a decent Windows app I had mostly stopped using it. As for UNpowerful hardware, yeah, tell me about it. I've seen plenty of people run R12 on 386's (and even seen some unfortunate people with the wrong stepping of the 386 who couldn't run it) with 4 or 8MB of RAM. Every time a n00b entered a fill value that was too high it would lock the machine for a half hour or more. Either ways, there were very, very little common non-DOS programs back then. A lot of people around that time used only DOS apps (be it business apps or games).That's what made Win3.x pretty much useless. Aside from using MS Office, I'd say 90% of the use of Win 3.x I've seen was Solitaire, Minesweeper and MS Paint.

It finally looks like Paul Thurrott doesn't care all that much for Win 8. Not only he's been describing its usage as "a jarring experience" lately but his latest article has some more interesting parts: That says a lot. ...and I bet those that did say they would don't actually work in a corporate environment in the first place. It's simply unthinkable. I haven't emailed yet but that certainly sums it up. pcworld's newest article (based on IDC's report) mostly agrees with me: Android and iOS gaining a bigger lead, Win8-on-ARM devices not selling, Win8 getting zero adoption in the business world (and IMO very little more in the consumer world -- 99% of it due to "it's what your Dell ships with"), etc. It seems like it's only Microsoft management who doesn't get it. They'll have to face the truth at some point.

Citation needed. I'd hardly call it that. Not even near. It was mostly useless. Besides MS Office 4.x there was so very little non-DOS apps. For the most part it felt like a unnecessary launcher of MS-DOS apps: WordPerfect 5.x for DOS, Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS, all Borland "Turbo" compilers were for DOS (same for pretty much all other compilers), AutoCAD was DOS only, dBase for DOS (ditto for Clipper, Paradox, Clarion, etc), most file (de)compressors like LHA/ARJ/PKZIP and so on were DOS cmd line tools, almost all text editors were for DOS (like QEdit, several ANSI editors or even edit.com), if you wanted to copy/delete files or whatever most people did it from the cmd line or otherwise using more DOS tools like XTree or Norton Commander, almost all networking happened via DOS apps (novell netware's software stack along with NE2000 cards, laplink cables, DOS-based apps that would use [X/Y/Z]Modem to transfer files using a modem, etc), most picture viewers were for DOS (e.g. compupic), etc. Almost all games were DOS games too. Almost all the work and all the fun happened with MS-DOS. By the time it started getting anything interesting Win95 was already out (and far better all-around -- Win3.x was *so* clunky). I certainly don't miss it one bit! I'd like to call it "World's most useless Microsoft operating system of all time" if anything (if win3.x can even be called an OS, with its MS-DOS requirement)

Or, for the lazy like me: Win + R services.msc [enter]

Not likely. Virtually all small-ish microcontrollers use onboard flash these days (others mainly use external NAND flash). The days of external ROMs are long over (last I've seen it was in 8051-based hardware from 10+ years ago where the code was too big to fit in flash at the time). Using a ROM chip would add unnecessary cost and complexity. It's not supported by most modern MCUs either (I'm really glad those days are over) It could be C, but something so simple and produced with such a high volume could be written in assembly as well (it saves a bit of flash, which saves a tiny amount of money on the MCU, which adds up nicely at this volume of sales). Using cobol here would make no sense. I've never seen or heard of a MCU programmed in cobol and it's not exactly popular for new projects on the PC side either (it seems to be mainly used on mainframes today). ...if you want to reverse-engineer the original firmware, yes. But that would take forever (even if you're used to read disassembled code e.g. figuring out where/how it drives the multiplexed 7 segment displays or interprets the IR pulses from the remote). And it won't be x86 assembly either (it might even be something no disassembler supports, including IDA Pro), and large parts of it will be specific to particular MCU they used (e.g. how GPIO pin directions are set, registers for clock prescaling, watch dog timers and so on). You'd also need to figure out what goes to which pin. Nevermind that it's almost certain that the flash is protected/secured anyway so it's most likely not an option in the first place. That's highly unlikely. I'd expect to find chips from many other MCU lines well before that. Either ways, it would be quicker to build a new controller from scratch and it's most likely your only option too. You'll have to figure out: -how to drive the compressor, condenser fan and evaporator's blower (using a relay, triac, etc) -the fan (blower) speeds might be done via PWM or multiple windings on the motor -how to read the existing temp sensors or otherwise substitute your own, and the pressure sensors too if there are any -ideally interface with the existing buttons and also reuse the 7 segment displays (otherwise redo it all from scratch) if you want to preserve its look -reuse the IR sensor for the remote or add your own (you'll have to record/analyze the codes sent by the remote yourself as well, in order to write code to interpret it later) -add anything else you might want as an extra (like for communicating with your PC) -create a new schematic for your new circuit then route the PCB (or use a proto board), repeat as necessary to fix design mistakes (create new prototypes) -using a pre-made board (like puntoMX already said) is a bit quicker, but it's not very well adapted to the task (e.g. the one linked to buy puntoMX can't read the necessary sensors -- there are plenty of others though. Lots of hobbyists would chose an arduino board for this kind of stuff) -write the code to drive the multiplexed 7 segment displays (or control a hd44780 LCD controller if you prefer), write the code to decode the infrared pulses from the remote control and so on -ideally you want the temperature to be controlled with a PID controller (have fun tuning it by changing the constants) -you have to recreate all the cycle types (standard, energy saver, etc) you want by yourself -you may need to calibrate your temperature sensors for better accuracy (a lot of popular sensors can have an offset of a couple degrees Celsius in either direction) -if you want to control it with your PC then you have to write that software as well i.e. design some communication protocol to make both exchange data, then write the code to make it work for both the MCU and your PC It's several weeks or a few months of full-time work for someone who *really* knows what he's doing. And knowing what you're doing is not optional here. You need to be pretty good at writing code in C for the microcontroller (this better not be your first project in C!). Same thing for the program you want to run on your PC if you want it to do anything interesting (communication, intelligent control, graphing, data logging, etc). It all has to be very stable too. You're also playing with mains voltage so beware (risks of electrocution, fire, etc). Also, when working in such equipment (rewiring stuff) you have to be careful not to damage refrigerant lines. This is definitely not a project for beginners. I could help (I've worked on a couple HVAC controller designs) but it looks like you lack a lot of expertise to make this happen on your own.

None of course. If they don't force this Metro garbage on everyone then absolutely nobody will use it. That would reduce their chances of their tablets not flopping from 1% down to a solid 0% and they're not about to abandon their dreams of actually being able to compete in the mobile device market (despite failing hard at it for years, with no change to that trend in sight). Yes, then we'd have a fine OS which everyone would love, regardless of what kind of device it would be used on, which would do the job beautifully. But MS doesn't seemingly care about that, all they want is to cram down that Metro down your throat. It feels like we're being respected by MS about as much as a $20 hooker is. What impresses me is all the long timers who have been following all the changes MS made for 2 decades (from MS-DOS to Win7), always staying cutting edge, following the the trends, complete fanboys and developers who don't like it. This guy is even a Microsoft MVP (and security specialist, book author, etc). It feels like basically nobody with knowledge and experience actually likes it (besides MS employees who are pretty much forced to). Metro on a desktop makes about as much sense as it would being forced to use a mouse to do anything on my phone. And the desktop being an app is just like having to start the dialer app on your phone so you can make a call. None of it makes any sense. The release candidate is supposed to be out next month, and unless there's some major changes done I won't even bother downloading it. Meanwhile, MS is ignoring the massive amount of complaints from tons of people on virtually every website, censoring the comments on their own blog to filter out negative stuff, and I'm pretty much expecting them to have sent a cease & desist order to the guy who had the fixingwindows8 site (it's definitely not a technical issue -- even his twitter is gone) to silence him as well. The wayback machine (archive.org) did seemingly have a mirror of it at but it's gone as well i.e. manually purged (something they don't typically do, unless a lawyer sends them a threatening letter or something). I've seen one MS contractor who voiced his opinion about Win8, and as he said "they told me what my opinion was" i.e. "you'll like it or you'll find yourself another job" basically. Yep. MS doesn't care about you or what you want or need. They expect you to take it like a a good little b****.

As-is, it requires you to click on "desktop" once. There might be a way to automate that though. I haven't tried yet. I don't know if I'd say "alternative to". But for now it'll sure be "complements Windows" as it can do a good amount of what we need -- or almost everything if you run some Windows-only apps in VMs. Yep. Another reason Metro garbage is a non-starter for anything serious, and a part of why we won't develop for it. Pure speculation. Apple tried to do something that's actually better than Win8's Metro i.e. Launchpad. It was basically "we'll let you run those smartphone-like apps on your desktop" which sounds kinda neat and fun (it's entirely optional! Don't want any of it? No problem, it'll stay out of your way). Not this "we'll force a smartphone UI on your desktop and push real hard for everything to become dinky apps" which is a completely moronic approach. Apple still failed, so I don't think MS' brain-dead approach will work any better. If Apple improves Launchpad it might turn into something half-decent for some users, whereas I don't see Metro ever not sucking real bad for most people. MS is forcing a touch UI for a smartphone on us, but Apple so far isn't. Apple is only forcing sanboxing for iOS apps, which is not their "main UI" (just for Launchpad), unlike Windows where the new main UI (Metro) does. These repeated failures will cost MS some market share. Not everyone will switch but a lot will get tired of it. And with more users on other platforms it will put that much extra pressure to develop cross-platform applications which lets more users to move to other platforms and so on. They're hoping to get some tablets sales but they're slowly forcing people to other platforms. Edit: Just a fun little observation. Before Win7 went RTM in July, it was already up to like 1% of the market share. Win8 despite having a developer and consumer preview is still sitting at like 0.1%. Win7 had a higher share of the market before the first beta was even out (due to a leak a few days before). Win8 is widely available and yet nobody runs it comparatively. I think that speaks volumes about what people think of it.

Big, gaudy square tiles, that is Either ways, Classic Shell 3.5 makes Win8 an okay OS. There's not much gained over Win7 feature-wise (fancier explorer and task manager mainly). It should be like a $50 upgrade at most IMO (without classic shell and with Metro forced on you then make that less than $0).

I saw it mentioned before. I thought it was yet another sucky, half-baked start button replacement (people never seem to write much about it). If you tweak the a couple settings (right click on the orb -> settings): -click show recent programs -click show search box -> access normally you essentially got Win7's menu (same look and feel), but it's actually better in some ways: -the recent programs are numbered by default -- you can just press the windows key to see the list, then hit alt + the number displayed besides the app to start it (sort of like Win+number for apps to the taskbar). I like it. -you can even reverse (upside-down) the list of recent apps which might be quite nice if you use the mouse a lot (less mouse travel for the apps used the most) -it has FAR more settings to make it work the way you like (click the "all settings" radio button at the very bottom) which is very nice. -if you enabled "search box -> access normally" then you can disable showing the "search menu" (and other junk you don't want, like the useless "help and support") -"Windows Update" is pinned at the top which is a lot more convenient than anything MS currently has to offer (besides manually pinning it there yourself) -you can disable the animations (which makes it seem faster -- it already feels faster than Win7's start menu before that! Search function included) -it has several skins (and being able to select if you want one or two columns), so it can look almost identical to the start menu of any version of Windows you'd like etc. There's just so much stuff you can tweak. It's exactly what Windows' own start menu should be like: do whatever you want. Definitely NOT this "let's cram a dumb smartphone touch UI down your throat". Classic Shell's start menu is so good I just might install it on Win7 too. You still get the occasional metro crap here and there (like network connections ) but it's like 98% gone. In fact, it seems to make Win8 mostly usable. There's still some small issues to fix (e.g. can't pin stuff in the start menu easily) but it's still a light-year ahead of Win8's metro garbage. An open source app just might be what saves MS from themselves.

All that I see is one sweaty, desperate, poorly dressed bald guy who thinks he's cool (ala which people are still laughing at) who's willing to sacrifice their main product in order to get a small share of the mobile market (something where they've always failed hard). Making Windows suck is all it'll accomplish (and backlash, driving people to other OS'es, etc). He should have been fired years ago. The guy's embarrassing to watch and he's making a lot of bad choices for the company too.

It's not so much the lack of the orb that's a problem for me (I don't really care if it's there or not -- hot corners suck though), it's all the Metro garbage and that atrocious start screen that is. And since there won't be a way to disable that then we'll stay with Win7 for the foreseeable future. Hopefully Win9 won't be such rubbish. Otherwise it's adiós Windows, and I really mean it. MS neglected a LOT of stuff in the latest versions of Windows, and even made a lot of things quite annoying but overall it was still better than the previous version. Not so this time -- the cons FAR outweigh the very short list of pros. The next computer I'm buying will be a Mac regardless.

Thankfully some people already figured out how to make programs compiled with the latest VC++ work on XP & 2003. Then again I don't see anyone moving to VS 11 in the near future, much less using the .NET framework 4.5 which brings so little besides incompatibility, the usual price tag and an overly depressing gray theme wtih CAPS.

You needn't be worried. Developers aren't stupid enough to drop support for so many computers anytime soon. I easily see us supporting XP for another 5 years at least (unlike at MS, client's king, and if we drop support they'll want our head on a silver platter) and Vista even longer. In this case it's MS' new tools that won't get used -- especially when it had so little new going for it and that the new dev tools suck too. That it's a failed strategy regardless. There's 2 options for Windows tablets: -x86/x64 tablets which are heavy, bulky, cumbersome, overly expensive, etc (very much unlike a tablet e.g. Lenovo's Ideapad Yoga) but have the advantage of being able to run traditional apps that are meant to be used with the keyboard/mouse and that will suck on a tablet anyway. Its only advantage is that you can awkwardly run software that's ill-suited for touch in the first place. I don't see this catching on any better than XP Tablet edition did. -ARM tablets which have absolutely nothing in common with traditional Windows besides the name. It doesn't actually run anything useful. It doesn't offer users or developers one single advantage over any other tablet OS. Less apps to begin with for users (I sure wouldn't buy one). And without users there's no money to make selling apps either. It's a LOT more like Windows Phone (which clearly doesn't sell) than Windows. Best case scenario, people port their iOS and Android apps to it, and it just becomes yet another tablet with the same stuff as all the others. But since MS wants to restrict the number of these in the first place, that all their mobile device attempts always fail pretty badly (Zune, WP, etc) and that their online services tend to suck (I don't expect the app store to be any better) I clearly don't see a bright future for it. We have no plans to develop for Metro/WinRT anytime soon, no matter where it might run. There's zero demand for it, it has essentially zero market share, and it's not cost effective in any way, shape or form. That's their plan. but the end result will be that they merely succeeded in creating their very worst desktop OS ever. If anything, turning our desktop OS into such a disaster made me associate Metro with concepts like "fail" and "suck", and so will tons of others (just like what "Vista" now means to most people). Yep, now I'll certainly want to develop for that and then buy a poor tablet where the same garbage I already loathe is forced onto me. Win9 can't come out soon enough and they can't afford to screw that one up so badly either. Then again, it's kind of like Intel does with their architecture (tick-tock), except that for MS it's more like Tick-Flop. Until then we'll keep hearing about downgrade rights for new PCs, people that need help upgrading their newly bought PC to Win7, start menu replacements apps and so on. Meanwhile, we're stuck with Win7 for the next few years (until around 2018 I guess) which will turn stale just like XP did after so many years.