Wednesday, March 26, 2014

fix windows explorer folder jumps

This is an extremely annoying bug in Windows 7. Because of so many user complaints going on for YEARS, Microsoft finally called it a "bug" instead of a "feature". However, Microsoft isn't going to fix it in Windows 7, but they finally did fix it in later versions of Windows 8 before final release. (Microsoft's ongoing business model of actually profiting from bugs by making users pay for upgrades that fix basic design flaws -- or maybe don't.) See http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/window...

HERE'S A FIX: Install the solid freeware app Classic Shell, which tweaks both Explorer and Start Menu behaviors. Among many useful features, it has one called "Fix folder scrolling" that solves the problem of the selected folder jumping to the bottom of the pane.

Also, there is another closely related "feature" annoyance you can fix in Classic Shell. Disable the folder pane's horizontal scrollbar, and the folder list won't suddenly jump to the right when clicking on a folder with a long path. You can still see the full name by hovering the cursor over what you CAN see.

A few independent programmers can fix these problems, but Microsoft's army of well-compensated coders can't. Well, not CAN'T -- it's WON'T. Their managers won't let them. There's not a dime in profit in fixing these bugs for current users, so they won't. Security fixes are different, however, primarily because of liability issues for Microsoft.

Tutorial:


MS forum:


Monday, March 3, 2014

Wolfram programming language

More than any other computing language, knowledge about the world is built into the Wolfram Language, which is exactly what powers the WolframAlpha search engine. In addition, functions for seemingly everything — over 5,000 of them — are built right into the language, which enables you to create user interfaces, graphics objects, graphs, and more, programmatically.
“The knowledge graph is a vastly less ambitious project than what we’ve been doing at Wolfram Alpha,” he told VentureBeat when we asked him about its relation to Google’ knowledge projects. “Making the world computable is a much higher bar than being able to generate Wikipedia-style information … a very different thing. What we’ve tried to do is insanely more ambitious.”

http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/24/knowledge-based-programming-wolfram-releases-first-demo-of-new-language-30-years-in-the-making/


http://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-language/
Wolfram Language can graph your Facebook friends ... or the links to your personal website.