losing a customer?

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Kilmatead
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Kilmatead »

<Ctrl+B> is an exercise in self-flagellation... you'd think that even something as simple as "copy $F $I" would work, but it doesn't. At the end of the day, it's <Ctrl+My+Backside>. If it takes three times as long to figure out what's wrong with my syntax as it does to just do the job manually, it's not worth the trouble. He meant "real" scripting. :wink:
pj wrote:That front-end to the post-processing scripts would put x2 into a class above all other file MANAGERS.
Except that all other file managers have had scripting API's since... well, since forever. And ever. And then some. And flattening. And other stuff. Exactly how does adding that to x2 make it "better than the others" as opposed to merely "playing catch-up to"?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but since I work with spades all day long, it's easy for me to identify them. :D
drac wrote:I suspect that Kilmatead spends more on libations in a week than it would cost to upgrade to a new version of X2 every couple of years.
Kilmatead, as it happens, doesn't actually drink. He also lives on significantly less than you might imagine, so upgrading anything for him is a big consideration. These are the choices honest men must make when faced with the lives this century suggests for us to live... :shrug:

I confess I find your argument against lifetime licenses as somewhat... specious. Plausible, and no doubt supported by most developers because it makes sense - yet some of the best developer service/attention I've seen has actually been from free or "one-off" products, ironically. (e.g., Classic Shell). The false promise of dependable revenue is not an impetus to "better" development, it's actually an inducement more to mainstream conservatist pandering and "tried and true" methods of promising Much yet dribbling-out Little over as long a period as possible.

It's tempting to say (as my counter-argument traditionally "should" say) that innovation is actually more romantically born of failure, hunger, and the desperation that "no one really cares anyway" - why do you think Apple is so successful? They have never (ever!) "invented" anything - they just repackage the failures of others and sell it back to the witless rich at the greater cost of the poor. It's a perfect system. As this thread was started upon, people generally purchase according to their perceptions, and rarely to anything other than their "wants du jour" - a blind chimaera for a dispirited and helpless populace. There really is a reason we should be careful what we ask for.

Yet that is not my argument, for I don't pretend to have one. I'm just an experienced pessimist who's expectations of the world were only ever his greatest weakness: lifetime licenses make sense for the consumer precisely because they neuter the businessman where it counts the most. Beyond that, if one isn't prepared and vigilant enough to look after their own perceived "needs", they certainly best not expect it of others. I pay the farmer to mind his crops so I don't have to - I don't pay him to paint the inside of my eyelids with a utopian vista created of his sustenance. I have Thomas More for that, as is only proper in a world where we engender our own disappointments from the hopes of others. :wink:
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drac
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by drac »

One can get great service for free from an altruistic developer of independent means. So without knowing the financial situation of the person you mention, it is moot as related to this discussion. If you paid those farmers one time and expected produce for life, you would be very disappointed in their future performance or you would have paid a LOT of money upfront. While money is not the only motivator and often not the prime motivator, it is important - particularly if you do not have enough of it for the basics of life.

Hearing that Kilmatead does not drink is like hearing that the sun is not hot. A core belief is shattered. This is going to take some getting used to.
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Kilmatead »

drac wrote:One can get great service for free from an altruistic developer of independent means
His philosophy was simply that he already had a job that paid him well enough to live, and anything above that is just selfish. As I imagine Nikos will attest, no one who goes into software production does it looking to get rich - that would be unrealistic. Making a few extra bob off a hobby is the most anyone can expect. Too many kids these days hear of hungry developer <x> who created iphone game <y> in his bedroom and struck a goldmine - or pull out the name of "minecraft" thinking that it "can't be that tough as long as you have the right idea". In the journeyman days where one worked for a "company" and just programmed as a 9-5 thing, one had no choice but to adopt your classical capitalism (and detached expectation of its persistence) to rationalise the pursuit of the middle-class form (that's middle-class in the Victorian sense of the word, not the American nightmare it later became.)

Not everyone (myself included) is either mercenary, or idealistic and of independent means - some just treat the world as it is and do not ask for more than they need. It is a most common disease in the West for the last century or so that people grow up and expect to successfully imitate a dream of what was never real in the first place - and that they have some "right" to do this - yet in the end all they really do is sadly prove the axiom that bad things happen to good people. The two things are not unrelated in cause, as disparate as they seem. "Success" in business is a lot like that.

And you misinterpreted the farmer reference - I do not consider a lifetime license as "apples forever" as an apple is a disposable thing (as are the farmers), but I do consider single-version licenses to be little more than recipes without ingredients. Monster children born of disappointed parents. They got no soul, as even the developer himself longs to throw them away and move on.
drac wrote:Hearing that Kilmatead does not drink is like hearing that the sun is not hot. A core belief is shattered. This is going to take some getting used to.
All stereotypes hold a grain of associated-truth (as opposed to unexpected reality), and can be imagined all the more lively for it; I, however, am more a quiet Rimbaud via J.P. Donleavey than your romanticised Behan via Rabelais. Such is life. May such failings etch themselves into my wounds to become honest with the rejected normality of "what I'm supposed to be". Anyone can write a book, but the unprepossessed write that book's preface last. Often best that the reader approach it the same way. :wink:
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by pj »

Kilmatead wrote:<Ctrl+B> is an exercise in self-flagellation... you'd think that even something as simple as "copy $F $I" would work, but it doesn't. At the end of the day, it's <Ctrl+My+Backside>. If it takes three times as long to figure out what's wrong with my syntax as it does to just do the job manually, it's not worth the trouble. He meant "real" scripting. :wink:
pj wrote:That front-end to the post-processing scripts would put x2 into a class above all other file MANAGERS.
Except that all other file managers have had scripting API's since... well, since forever. And ever. And then some. And flattening. And other stuff. Exactly how does adding that to x2 make it "better than the others" as opposed to merely "playing catch-up to"?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but since I work with spades all day long, it's easy for me to identify them. :D
"...put x2 into a class above all other file MANAGERS.... that I use". There, is that better? :shock:

OK, maybe the first statement was a bit of buttering up. Even though I know butter doesn't work on Nikos, I still try now and then.

BUT, and that's obviously a big "but", after I stumbled upon X2 over 8 years ago (probably via a Lifehacker "Best 5 File Managers" article or some such) I haven't looked seriously at any other fm, so my amended statement stands on it's own shaky laurels. And that's NOT butter, but bitter truth. I admit I'm a sucker for "Best of" articles, and I'm still looking for that perfect text editor :)

In the meantime, I have to contend myself with dreaming of a day when I could write things like:

Code: Select all

Dim objFL as FileListObject
Set objFL = X2.Filelist("C:\")
For each file in objFL
   If .size > MaxSize Then
     ...
   Else
     ...
   End If
Next file
with lots of exciting stuff in the "..."'s. Actually, I'd probably use it to process files across slow server links so i didn't get impacted by the slow response times and could go do better things, like read the latest news on the Kentucky college basketball team. :)

---------------------------------------
PJ in (just because I live here doesn't mean I grew UP here) FL
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by namsupo »

And you misinterpreted the farmer reference - I do not consider a lifetime license as "apples forever" as an apple is a disposable thing (as are the farmers), but I do consider single-version licenses to be little more than recipes without ingredients. Monster children born of disappointed parents. They got no soul, as even the developer himself longs to throw them away and move on.
So what you are really saynig is, by buying a lifetime licence you are buying a small part of the developer's soul, and they must henceforth slave away all of their days in some sort of Kilmatead-created purgatory? :)
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by drac »

Kilmatead,

So he WAS an altruistic developer of independent means.

Having never met you my image of you comes mostly from comments you have made. I did not think of you as Behan on my own volition - over time your own comments created that impression. I do admit that I LIKED my image of you. When reading your posts I could picture you sitting in your stone cottage outside of Dublin with a computer and a pint, mulling over your response, honing it to literary perfection with a wry smile spreading over your lower face and a leprechaun-like twinkle in one eye. THIS is the Kilmatead of my imagination. Of course I "knew" it was fantasy - but what is wrong with that. As long as I acknowledged it for what it was, where's the harm?

PJ, I am not sure there is such a thing as a universally "perfect" anything. The text editor that I found most powerful and feature rich is UltraEdit. Its maker is NOT altruistic so it is not free or even cheap - but I found it to be very good.

If you haven't looked at any other FM in years, how do you know that X2 is still the best one for you? If you DO look and find that nothing out there bests X2, you may be more content about it not having everything you want. And if you should find another FM that has that of which you dream, then that is also a positive. Life is too short to settle for less than what you consider perfection.
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Kilmatead »

namsupo wrote:must henceforth slave away all of their days in some sort of Kilmatead-created purgatory?
In a perfect world, yes! :D There is no better way to enslave a person than to have them willingly give up part of their soul. :wink:

And purgatory has such a negative connotation... I prefer to think of it as a practical example of the principle of Voluntary Servitude, which all men in this century submit to anyway, until they set themselves free by actually surmounting the illusory partial loss of their soul. If you really boil it down, I'm just giving them the opportunity to redeem themselves from the madness of Don Quixote, which they themselves do not recognise as madness until they conquer the illusions this world portends. :shrug:

Disclaimer: the above may (or may not) necessarily reflect Kilmatead's actual opinions on this subject. He reserves the right to be historically flippant on a regular basis, and maintains that the world is impossible to comprehend without the perspective such flippancy incurs.
drac wrote: I did not think of you as Behan on my own volition - over time your own comments created that impression
Though many days did I spend frequenting McDaids off the Grafton St. twenty years past, the essence of Behan's favourite haunt never really rubbed off on me, its high ceilings and dusty brocade shelving preserved the echo more for others of my coterie. On occasion, and more apt, the literary pub of choice was Grogan's a few blocks West through Coppinger Row - even having our own experience peppered with the violence that so favoured Behan's, the blood seemed to flow easier beneath the craggy Beckett portrait that hangs there on its annual 6-monthly tour. There was a time the barmen there knew my name, and the names of companions lost, but now I frequent it only in my mind, the remembrance of a raucous soul, a youth of cigarettes and the high Scots busking days away.

I do know a little something of the practice and profession of the hops and porter, and the times spent unwastefully therein. As one's soul matures, the outward mellowing betrays not the wrath within. It is, as it always was, a cool rain. :wink:

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fuxs
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by fuxs »

nikos wrote:just curious, is there anybody using the ribbon in this forum?
I do. :shock:

[Edit: Transferred my answer into the ribbon poll thread which I just spotted]
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drac
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by drac »

Kilmatead,

Great picture. Thanks for sharing.

So your past comments and the image they helped form in my mind, were more or less accurate. Maybe the details were slightly off but in whole, there was truth in them.

As for the current day Kilmatead, you have your memories which seem to be pleasant for you, if not a bit raucous. Pleasant, though maybe tinged some sadness. I cannot tell if you miss those times, regret parts of those times or possibly some of each - as might be true for me.

The body matures, the conscious mind matures, but I think for most, the maturing of the soul does not happen in just one lifetime. Even a lifetime as full as yours seems to be.
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Double »

...who knew that a potential refugee could provoke such wisdom, am i worthy to be here right now? ;)
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by pj »

drac wrote:...PJ, I am not sure there is such a thing as a universally "perfect" anything. The text editor that I found most powerful and feature rich is UltraEdit. Its maker is NOT altruistic so it is not free or even cheap - but I found it to be very good.

If you haven't looked at any other FM in years, how do you know that X2 is still the best one for you? If you DO look and find that nothing out there bests X2, you may be more content about it not having everything you want. And if you should find another FM that has that of which you dream, then that is also a positive. Life is too short to settle for less than what you consider perfection.
I use UE for many functions and even have it on an accelerator key.

I still pine for the highly configurable DOS/character-based editor Personal Editor from IBM. A public release was made using the terrible Personally Developed Software store, but internal users had access to an advanced version that was even slicker. I had macros attached to every key on the keyboard. Ah, nostalgia is but bittersweet.

However, evaluating editors (and I've evaluated many and currently use several such as SlickEdit and customized SciTe's for AutoHotKey and AutoIT) is much simpler and less time consuming than evaluating file managers. The wide breadth of functions, features, etc. almost make it prohibitive unless there is the one "must have" feature. For me, x2's FLATTEN capability into a separate scrap pane is that feature. Instead of endless pawing through bloated directory structures, I flatten the entire thing and search, filter and sort to my hearts content. Programmability of the aforementioned search, filter and sort processes would be icing on the cake!

---------------------------
PJ in (Sunny, Sunny, Sunny - sung to the tune of "Money, Money, Money") FL
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drac
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by drac »

I agree that comparing editors is a BIT easier than comparing file managers. But with so many similar features in editors, it can be time consuming.

Other file managers also have the flatten feature and they also have programming. Not sure how those two features combine so do not know if you would be able to program the exact operation you are looking for. Of course those other file managers may be more expensive or have other issues that X2 does not have. As you say, it is not easy finding "the best" file manager for each of our particular needs. What is best for you may not be best for me.
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Tuxman »

drac wrote: they also have programming.
Let's hope so!
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Enternal »

Wow! So much text here about file managers and stuff off tangent!

@drac
Sure. Comparing editors is easier. But... at least it seems to me that editor comparisons are... violent.

Well either way, I continue to do what I always do. Use as many file managers as I feel like it. Obviously some of you here already knew that I'm a big fan of XYplorer but I somewhat frequent here enough since I also enjoy xp2. The only file manager I never ever manager to really use is Directory Opus. It's pricey and the way they track if you actually own a license is so... virus like. It's scary even if you're a legitimate user. As lease nikos isn't crazy. But I thought Greek people are supposed to be crazy while Australians are relaxed? My generalizations are failing me. :)

Although... you do have to admit that for XYplorer that's written in VB6, it does a great job of supporting portable devices, an actual scripting language that's useful, and it's completely portable. Right? right? ... *silence*
Kilmatead
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Re: losing a customer?

Post by Kilmatead »

Enternal wrote:Although... it's completely portable. Right? right? ... *silence*
Ooh, details in the fine-print. :wink: While obviously we're all seriously and passionately violent about our text editors (only wankers and douches don't use Scite), and file-managers are a mere afterthought, how is x2 not "completely" portable? Are there gradations of portability? Or was your implied emphasis of completely just in my own suspicious imagination? :D

Or did you mean "portable as part of a stock text-editor license"?
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