Existing users, 
User Name sporobolus
Member Since 2003-10-09
Total number of Feedback Posts: 55
Total number of comments: 42
Last 10 Feedback Posts by sporobolus [ Search for All ]
Apple Airport Extreme Update 2007-002 (Mac OS X)
improvement even with Apple routers 
i seem to get a stronger signal from my Aiport Extreme (g) and Airport Express configured for WDS; has anyone tested this empirically (because the Apple meter may be fibbing about signal strength)? and it may be a little early to be sure, but so far i haven't gotten the almost-daily network drops which required restarting my MBP before it would accept an IP address from my home routers not sure if this is a factor, but though my own routers are Apple hardware, i often leave home and use cafe wireless, plus there are a number of other-branded wireless nodes within range of my home (though i don't join them) i give Apple poor marks on documentation because it is not clear exactly what problems i should expect to have been solved [alert admin]
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Saturday, March 10 2007 @ 11:37 AM PST
acqlite 0.2.9 (Mac OS X)
works, but *always* crashes or hangs after a time
i'm running Acqlite 0.2.9 on Mac OS X 10.4.7 on a dual 1GHz G4, but i've observed this behavior on previous versions of both OS & Acqlite: after a period of time with 75+ downloads pending, Acqlite will usually crash; sometimes instead it will hang in a state where only one (instead of 5) peers is listed, and while the interface is active, no downloads can be instigated or resumed; in this latter state, attempting to quit causes a hang with the normal quitting message displayed for hours also, though my machine does *not* go to sleep, the display sleeps; often after waking the display Acqlite goes into an unusual pattern of fluctuating memory allocation (growing then shrinking by hundreds of MB) and lots of page faults slowing the system and hanging Acqlite temporarily; after anywhere from 30 secs to 10 minutes, it will recover and operate normall [alert admin]
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Tuesday, September 19 2006 @ 07:53 PM PDT
StdMap 4.4.5 (Mac OS X)
adjusting my rating by way of another "review"; i came on a bit strong first time, however i still think respect is due to the non-mathemeticians who may encounter this listing on versiontracker through no fault of their own; a nod in the right direction was the addition of some serious on-open eyecandy through the references in the help i have learned that the Standard Map was originally constructed to describe the dynamics of magnetic field lines [alert admin]
Friday, September 01 2006 @ 02:47 PM PDT
Vectoraster 1.0.0 (Mac OS X)
cool concept, fun to play around with, and pretty clean interface for a 1.0 shareware project; i used the "character" point shape and various dingbats for some interesting images; wish i could change more parameters, like maybe specify a collection of characters, rather than just one, for the "character" spot pattern (which creates great patterns with dingbats) you can create extremely complex vectors with this, which will take a long time to render and print [alert admin]
Sunday, July 30 2006 @ 03:09 PM PDT
Man Handler 1.2 (Mac OS X)
pales in comparison to ManOpen
unlike certain other efforts, this is a nice, clean, simple implementation, but it seems likely the author dove in without awareness of ManOpen, which in comparison to ManHandler adds:
- hyperlinks to related man entries
- apropos
- a command-line tool
- proper text styling
- printing that works
- ability to search within a man page
- ability to page with space/shift-space
- lots of control over the overall experience/appearance
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 29 2006 @ 08:23 PM PDT
LiteSwitch X 2.6 (Mac OS X)
i've used the previous version for years and it's an essential part of my workflow; some people may not appreciate what it adds to Apple's default application switcher, but it's easy enough for them to give it a thorought evaluation before buying there are many people who have felt deprived when they bought an Intel Mac and couldn't run LiteSwitch, so this release is good news [alert admin]
Friday, July 28 2006 @ 05:49 PM PDT
Sound Grinder 2.5.4 (Mac OS X)
the installer should warn you that you will have to log out with a dialog *before* you install; it's sometimes very inconvenient to log out all of a sudden and lose track of everything in progress; also would like a choice of what folder in which to install (i keep /Applications organized in subfolders) [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 15 2006 @ 06:09 PM PDT
PandoraMan 1.0.7 (Mac OS X)
so, what's new with this release?
PandoraMan is nice, but i'd like to know what this new release is for; there don't seem to be notes on the developer's site either ... [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Sunday, July 09 2006 @ 08:05 PM PDT
NTI Dragon Burn X 4.1.20 (Mac OS X)
i bought this because it allowed me to use a drive not natively supported on Panther, and because it was inexpensive; i was able to forgive its faults as a temporary workaround, but now that i'm on Tiger, it still sometimes crashes burning discs with unicode names and frequently hangs my drive, and any other apps using the drive (iTunes, Disk Utility, etc) until i reboot; i've sent several problem reports via the support page but never gotten a peep of a response; the interface is also a joke, completely out of sync with UI standards it's starting to seem as if development on this product has ceased and it is just being milked for whatever sales can be made [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful
Sunday, March 19 2006 @ 07:29 PM PST
StdMap 4.4.1 (Mac OS X)
hint -- drag mouse across the blank window to draw some interesting pictures ... hard to know why something like this would be submitted to VersionTracker when the description, the interface, the help, and the references cited in the help are all written using the odd language of mathematics; i can tell this app involves theoretical mathematics and pretty pictures, and i can imagine what "area preserving mappings" might be, etc., but that's because i've had close friendships with a few mathematicians; i think most people will be befuddled by the lack of even a paragraph of description in lay terminology [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 1 of 4 users found this helpful
Friday, January 20 2006 @ 02:32 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by sporobolus [ Search for All ]
yes -- still doesn't support international characters properly
i can confirm this irritating problem still exists; try the Les Baxter tracks here: http://lix.in/105909 the comments for these display normal roman text in iTunes, but in Media Rage just as strings of numbers
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, February 21 2007 @ 04:43 PM PST
if you have never used it, please don't rate it
please at least try the software before entering a "review" rating
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, February 02 2007 @ 08:57 AM PST
you asked "how could it be easier?" -- it could be easier if the interface were consistent with the rest of the OS, for example if there were some way to delete items from the burn set other than a tiny button with an X on it; or if one could create folders in the burn set with something other than a tiny button with an icon that looks like it means "open folder", or…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, August 23 2006 @ 07:16 PM PDT
if you don't see the point, it may be you just don't work in a way that makes something like LiteSwitch helpful; by the principle of your review, a blind person might rate binoculars as useless ...
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, July 28 2006 @ 05:53 PM PDT
anyone with access to the machine can boot into single user mode and read the files of any account
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:32 AM PDT
anyone with access to the machine can boot into single user mode and read the files of any account
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:29 AM PDT
speed = productivity for some of us
i've had a VueScan license for years, and usually my needs for it are fairly casual, but when it came to cataloging hundreds of my dad's vintage prints, i did calibrated scans of each and the processing speed mattered
some of what VueScan does occurs after the scan is completed; on large scans i found color correction and JPEG compression can take a significant amount of time -- much more time than it took me to…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:24 AM PDT
anyone with access to the machine can boot into single user mode and read the files of any account
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:22 AM PDT
anyone with access to the machine can boot into single user mode and read the files of any account
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:22 AM PDT
speed = productivity for some of us
i've had a VueScan license for years, and usually my needs for it are fairly casual, but when it came to cataloging hundreds of my dad's vintage prints, i did calibrated scans of each and the processing speed mattered
some of what VueScan does occurs after the scan is completed; on large scans i found color correction and JPEG compression can take a significant amount of time -- much more time than it took me to…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, July 27 2006 @ 11:20 AM PDT
