Useful 3rd party tools to complement TC

[SQUIRE]

Catfish is a lean, mean CD & file cataloguer you might like to try that seems faster (subjectively) than even Locate. Has a very tiny footprint and very few bells and whistles, but does the its job perfectly. Extremely fast searching too.

[majkinetor !]

USDownloader

For rapidshare, megauploads,.... all other uploading servers.

Works like a beast. Brothers from Russia were extraordinary excelllent this time. One of the best things around. It even has integrated OCR for noisy, textual verifications bitmaps, not to mention plugins for all major servers there.

[icfu]

Do you remember Geosucker, FDDP, etc...?
If you do, you maybe also remember why FreeDrive and the like have died in these times.

Well, the beast is out now so let us watch the free sites disappearing once again. Thx anyway, it rocks.

Icfu

[SQUIRE]

2 majkinator !

Interesting little ripper that USDownloader - thanks. Looks like Rapidshare is still safe though, as it can't seem to overcome RS' anti-bot security (OCR not good enuf?).

Part of me is sorry not to be able to fire-and-forget the downloads, but OTOH I wouldn't like to see the free file servers die as icfu predicts they will. I think they're a terrific resource for all sorts of obscure 'stuff' that you'd take 1000 years to find on P2P.

[OT]
From an ancient thread in Hacker's Graveyard: Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion - a winner, thanks! Now available together in an omnibus edition too. Will get the rest soon.
[/OT]

[Edit]
Knickers, I shot my mouth off too soon, sorry! I had downloaded a beta version from the mirror site and that didn't work. Version 1.3.3 DOES get past Rapidshare's bitmap scheme. So a battle is won but not yet the whole war. Wonder what the counter counter-measures will be?
[/Edit]

[majkinetor !]

2 SQUIRE, 2 icfu
I don't see problems with USDownloader icfu ... as I don't see problem with AutoHotKey or progy that maps GMail as drive... are you following me ? What USDownloader does is pure, legal, workaround for many people - those behind corporative firewalls (I never managed to download anything from rapidshare, until now), those with small pockets, slow internets etc... And if it dies, who cares ? You are first out there not going to be sory because of this, because it is not natural to pitty big corporations. Other will emerge, maybe with better protection techniqes and then, we will have new UsDownloaders with more sophisticated alghoritms... It is evolution. Natural low !

I am really surprised you think this way icfu. Imagine the one who created this program - is it because he is evil ... because he wants to shut everything down ? No.... it's not that.

[OT]
Hyperion..... finally Get the rest soon
[/OT]

[SQUIRE]

Philosophically you're right of course - evolution is unstoppable. Big fish eat little fish, big stars grab smaller ones, big galaxies gobble up small galaxies, and small black holes succumb to big ones. Something new always results and only the fittest survive. If the small, slow, inefficient file servers don't see the writing on the wall and get their act together now then they might just as well put their collective heads between their legs and kiss their collective ass goodbye.

I see the crackers, hackers and clever programmers as rather like Nature's predators - ever circling the IT herd and ever ready to cull the weak and ineffectual. And the Devil take the hind-most! Hopefully the end result is a better, stronger, smarter breed?

I gotta bad feeling that survivors of the future will be those that know "there are but 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand the binary numbering system and those who don't."

[Sheepdog]

[OT]

and small black holes succumb to big ones.

I disagree. Small black holes are stronger than big ones because their gravity is more intense so the mass is compressed more. After a small black hole annexed a big black hole its getting smaller than before. I believe.

sheepdog

[SQUIRE]

Small black holes are stronger than big ones

You're right, well spotted! I'm going to jump into the nearest one now!

[majkinetor !]

[OT]
Well nobody knows what is going on inside black holes - As my understanding of such psihycs phenomena goes, all lows of space-time are broken in that point ... so it can be anything acctually (even a yellow dot).

[Sheepdog]

[OT]

and small black holes succumb to big ones.

I disagree. Small black holes are stronger than big ones because their gravity is more intense so the mass is compressed more. After a small black hole annexed a big black hole its getting smaller than before. I believe.

sheepdog

[Sam_Zen]

2 SQUIRE
You're right about the binary number system. This should be taught to children from the beginning.
The awareness that the decimal system is just an option.

2 Sheepdog
A black hole getting smaller and smaller is leading to a 1 point situation. Dimension zero.
But how about negative dimensions. Minus zero would mean the absence of that 1 point.

[Sheepdog]

[OT]

2 Sheepdog
A black hole getting smaller and smaller is leading to a 1 point situation. Dimension zero.
But how about negative dimensions. Minus zero would mean the absence of that 1 point.

Not necessarily. If there is an infinite divisibility there hasn't to be a Dimension zero.

The concept of Infinity is one of the most inconceivible things for Human Beings, I think. It is because one could not grasp it, in both meanings of the word. It contradicts all we can see and feel.

sheepdog

[majkinetor !]

You're right about the binary number system. This should be taught to children from the beginning.

Right !

A black hole getting smaller and smaller is leading to a 1 point situation. Dimension zero.
But how about negative dimensions. Minus zero would mean the absence of that 1 point.

The SheepDog is right there, but I guess your thought MIGHT be right too when black holes are in question which would mean that some other space/dimension/time/whatever is stealing matery from our dimension. I am aware that well known quantum physics David Deutsch has been constructin quantum computers to use matery from other parallel universes to drive its computition engine ! This was supproted by some magor companies at that time. So this can be ralated to your negative dimension....

Anyway, such places are for right reasons called singularities .
My background comes from faculty of Mathematics so I really don't see a problem here - it correlates to what is known in Math as "beeing dense". It is said that Q numbers are dense among R numbers. Everywhere you "touch" among R numbers there is one of Q among them, on every scale (metrics). R on the other hand is special case, that is I (irational) because R = I U Q. So, that Q set is really what allows every imaginable and not-imaginable scenarios like we have here now. What is even more confusing U can measure those sets and it turns out that N, Z, Q are all the same and are measured X0 (alef zero) while R (I) is measured to be c (continum). It is not yet discovered in math if there are some other values except X0 & c. This is theoritcal explanation why singularites can never reach negative dimension (for now ) becuase metrics allow for it to change its dimensions and still stay in known metrics model.

This is one thing, and like I said, laws of physics and math doesn't function any more in such extreme places so we realy can't know anything and probably we never will. But it is enough to know that black holes are fundamental mechanism for making galaxies what they are since it is discovered that every galaxy have black hole in middle like every plantary system have its "Sun" in the "middle". But you have to be some extraordinary beast to keep all those stars (which are extraordinary beasts themselves) united...

it is because one could not grasp it, in both meanings of the word. It contradicts all we can see and feel.

That is just right explanation. We are born, we live and we die. Everything around us has beginning and end we don't know about other things and this is limitation of our micro-space. Even in math.. you can learn those things, learn that they exist but people still think about that as Science Fiction.... what about inifinity dimensional spaces like the one I had in "Theory of Real and Complex Numbers" a.k.a TRIK on my university. Nobody can imagine THAT.... even me

2 SQUIRE
After several years you took to choose your avatar, why did you choose THAT ?

[SQUIRE]

Infinity - the nearest we've come to it is when the old computers used to immediately crash and burn when we divided by zero! Such an innocuous symbol in a mathematical expression and there's even positive and negative versions of it but trying to conceptualise negative infinity? - my feeble brain surrenders.

If you guys haven't already done so, you ought to to have a peep at the stunning photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope for a glimpse of infinity.

[SQUIRE]

After several years you took to choose your avatar, why did you choose THAT ?

What, you don't like my avatar?

I chose it because it looks like an alien created in the 21st century when in fact it's a design dating back 500+ years (just like me). So it's even older than Sam, Sheepdog, you and me!

It depicts a stylised dragon and is a mother-of-pearl inlay on a Ming Dynasty table. Notice that I am a mine of useless information - I bet you're sorry you asked the question!