SyMenu Forum

Gianluca

all messages by user

11/03/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	Thank you @sl23. You are always so supportive and I'm grateful you are in this community . The next step will be the graphical review of the details panel where a lot of good ideas have already been put on the table. I think, after that , the app management will become very smooth and easier to use. Let's see what happens next. BTW even if you haven't had any updates so far, you can test the hiding system for all the grid columns you don't need and check if the new program status, moved on the same cell as the checkbox, suits you.
11/03/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: The only thing that jars me a bit is the update pane appearing and moving the columns when you tick a box, but I don't see a way around that. What do you think about it? I hate that behaviour. For real. I don't remember that, but it was probably the main reason for the horizontal approach. But, like you, I don't have an idea on what to solve it unless I resize the entire form to prevent the grid resizing. Anyway I hope a better idea will pop up.
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	Dear @FLOSS You surely used the wrong tone but it's not a problem for me, I'm used to dealing with all sorts of morons. But your last messages instilled in me the doubt you could be a good person and you can probably be a great addition for this community instead of being a pain in the ass. So I agree with you, "it could be a misunderstanding". As a rule of thumb, I suggest the users to not put too many topics in a single post because it's impossible to answer everything in a structured (I like structured things) and useful (for the readers) way. I will reply only to some of your questions/topics and I would like you to open new threads if you want to go further with any of these arguments. Community policies. You are still in this community because I never kicked out anybody. Literally. Not even the morons. Well... except some Chinese friends that in the past used this forum to publish advertising for shoes, t-shirts or whatever. Instead a lot of people voluntarily went away because they felt this community doesn't suit them, but this was their choice. So don't worry. I can delete inappropriate contents but you won't be banned. Security. Well you are partially right here. The user's email is, for now, stored in clear in the user database. It's a thing I've always wanted to fix and I'll surely do it when I have some free time. The passwords instead are quite safe because they are hashed before storing them in the DB. The communication from your browser for the web site and from SyMenu are encrypted with SSL. Anyway my intention is to change this reasonably safe setup improving its security with a TOTP. SyMenu requests a single login, so the burden to produce and supply the system with a TOTP key is occasional on the user side. But the security will improve. The SyMenu credentials on your local PC are stored inside the SyMenuConfig.zip file. So unzip it and open the simple xml file you'll find inside. Open the xml and search for the identity key. You'll find some attributes in this key like a guid, your username (in clear) and your encrypted credentials. Try to decrypt them as you like (maybe with a brute force attempt?) but you won't succeed because the crypting method is AES-256. Why a symmetric encryption instead of a safer asymmetric algorithm like RSA? Simply because I can't give the burden of managing a private key to users that don't understand anything about that. Well I've almost forgotten. The encryption is salted if you are asking yourself that. So have a good time trying to crack this. Probably you underestimate who I am when you tell me that "you don't know how much I am into security, but you doubt I am not very much." but you are perfectly right when you say that "Firms with millions of capital failed with this.". Maybe is it one of the reasons for which I'm trying to get some money from this project? To make it flourish and improve it? To give the best service I can to you? I'm not a greedy person as you suggested, I'm only trying to do the best here because I'm the person who cares more about this project. The legal stuff. You again are partially right here. It's true that some programs should require an explicit authorization to be redistributed. And I'm very happy if someone can help with this, studying the licenses and asking for permission from the authors that require for an explicit authorization. In the same way I will be very happy if the authorization won't come because this way I know for sure I have to remove the program as I did in the past. I want this project to remain legit but again I'm quite alone to attend all these tasks, the community is not so collaborative and the people that already help are literally overwhelmed. If you want to help with the legal thighs, please be my guest. PA. A paragraph apart is dedicated to my old friend J. T. Haller. His license doesn't mention that redistributing his software is forbidden. Well he can't do that unless he wants his community to wake up and turn around him. What he was complaining about, last time I read his rants, was that SyMenu is stealing the bandwidth of the PA website . Dear John, you are on the Internet a download is meant to be downloaded... Plus the majority of his software is hosted on SourceForge. So what's the real point for this? The other complaint was that I'm unpacking his software without using the PAF unpacker. He even creates a terrifying message when the unpacking is made "the wrong way". So you can ask why I'm not using the right PAF unpacker. Well the problem here is that the silent unpacker is reserved to the PA Launcher and if you are not the PA Launcher it doesn't work. You can use the "explicit unpacker", that is what you get when double clicking a PAF from Windows, but it's not the way a user wants to be assisted in SyMenu. The entire "installation" phase must be unattended, exactly the same way the PA Launcher works. Where I live these kinds of "measures" are called software protection. That means that John considers the PAF software as his own property and not a nice share with the world. Then the right question become: How aware are his contributors of this protection? The PAF packages are not John work, at least not entirely because he has a great community with him that does the majority of the job. A lot of his people think their own job is done for sharing, that it's open, that the intention is to spread free software. How conscious are they about the real policy of their boss? Do you know that a past version of the PAF packager has an explicit protection against SyMenu and Lupo Pen suite? Since I imagine you are (or was) a member of the PA community you should know that in the past I asked John to collaborate because SyMenu could be a game changer for the entire portable movement. Or was the community kept in the dark? He simply ignored me and from then on tried to sabotage my project, mentioning it together with other projects that are sadly known to pack portable cracked programs. So am I really the terrible criminal I'm depicted to be? edited by Gianluca on 10/10/2024
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: Every single app is downloaded from the official site. Well to be crystal clear some apps, neither old nor abandoned, are actually redistributed because their own web sites prevent the direct download. In this case, if the redistribution is not explicitly allowed by the license, I'll remove them with no problems at all. I only need that someone ask for that, because it's not possible to read thousands of licenses... apart from the section where a program self-styles as a freeware software that is what interests me more. I don't expect to receive "cease and desist" injunctions because a kind and friendly message is enough for me. Usually the download prevention from a web site is not there for license reasons, above all if we speak about freeware software, but to be sure the users know the authorship of a program or to prevent abuses. BTW SyMenu gives all the merit to the authors in the program's details tab and during the download. Anyway if someone has something to object, I'm always here to help.
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	JackoBongo wrote: But why don't you make it open-sourced? It's really simple. SPS is an open standard. Do you want the schema? I can tell you where to download it. Or you can use a software that reverse the xml itself and get it by yourself. A schema can't be protected, it's open by definition otherwise the data loaded in it can't be shared. If you want to create and post a new SPS for a software we still don't have in the suite you are free to do that. If you want to push it in the SyMenu system to share it, you can do that without telling me anything. I will only review your job to be sure you haven't done anything wrong or bad for the community. I created a software for the volunteers that are helping me. It's a tool (SPS Builder) available in the SyMenu suite that guides you to create and push your SPS in a really simple way. But if you don't like it you can use a different software, or use Notepad. So, my friend, everything is already available for everyone. The problem nobody seems to understand is that we have 1.700 programs here. And a lot of them change every day. The proud suite editors helping me are less than 10 but I'm maintaining by myself at least half of the entire program collection. I need an army here. Because the target is to add every single freeware software on the Internet, not a number as small as 1.700. If I don't have an army I need money to dedicate myself more and more to the project.
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	FLOSS wrote: If I have to register to update your soft, I cannot anonymously redistribute my prepackacked bundle of portable apps and symenu to my friends and share it via cloud or my own server. And finally we got it! Read MY license available here https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#Licence And above all read 2.b: "You may not distribute registered copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to third parties without written permission. Official versions available for download from UGMFree’s websites may be freely distributed." What does that mean? It's possible to redistribute the SyMenu installer package (zip) but not a registered copy (a configured copy to be clear) without my permission. And you haven't requested my permission. This kind of distribution is causing me a lot of problems and it's one of the main reasons you get the login today. BTW... I'm thinking about suing you for license infringement FLOSS wrote: I was lucky to have a pc which I didn't update and updates are still functioning. SyMenu will function forever, even outdated versions will do. The update of the suite programs instead will work only until I decide the time has come. After that moment the system won't download anything more if you are running a SyMenu outdated version. FLOSS wrote: Reading your lines I am impressed that your are familiar with salting accounts, but sorry I don't trust you As I told you before, I'm dealing with any kind of animals so you won't be banned unless you publish shoes advertisement. But you are free to go when you want. Trust is the foundation of this community, if I don't deserve your trust probably this community is not suitable for you.
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	JackoBongo wrote: [...] you'd simply publish your work on Github where you could keep control of the sources while getting help from the community ... and maybe get an army at some point. I'm always surprised when people attribute magical powers to the open source world. If I understand your idea, if I put the SPS on GitHub I'll attract dozens of people that are ready to help me in any way. Outside of GitHub instead, for example directly in the SyMenu's house, that is here, the hidden army can't reveal itself probably because they can act only on the official Open source temples. Otherwise the Gods curse them. Forgive my irony but now I'll try to be more constructive with a proposal for you or whoever wants to accept the challenge. Take 50 SPS. Not more because I don't want you to waste your time but if you are a time wasting guy, take them all. You already know where to find them... if not, they are inside a zip file located in the [SyMenu]\ProgramFiles\SPSSuite\SyMenuSuite\_Cache\ folder. Put them in a new project in GitHub. Now invoke the sleeping army of contributors. Since GitHus is such a magical place they will come in droves. For a while you and the army try to maintain the SPS updated. To ease your work I suggest you use the SPS Builder because one of its possible uses is to work with local files. In a month from now we can check if your solution has worked for real, if a community has arisen in that magical place and if they are efficient and precise, enthusiastic and faithful. If you (or any other person) succeeded, I grant you that I change the pointing of SyMenu to the GitHub repository to give away the entire SPS system to the community. Because without SyMenu, SPS is currently not so useful. Indeed what I think is that in a month you won't be able to involve anybody, your SPS will be outdated, and you'll be discouraged and disappointed. And a bit disenchanted about GitHub powers. The open source movement is terrific and works perfectly for mainstream projects. We have hundreds of working examples. But the great majority of the projects, even those published on the magical GitHub, are currently dead or maintained intermittently by the original author. SyMenu is not mainstream, the community that is helping is really strong and resolute but it is small. I can't understand how GitHub can change that but I'm really impatient to be denied.
11/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	Syngensmyth wrote: OK, I did it. No big deal. I just survived two 737 flights so I can live through this too. 737 Max?!?!?
14/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	hausenfefr wrote: Please stop being an Asshat. Dear hausenfefr, You are free to think whatever you like but not to insult anyone. My real attitude is the one you learnt to know in (almost) 20 years of SyMenu. If you really think my attempt is an "extortion" my only other option is to abandon the project. Because no one can force me to continue, not you, not anyone. But since I'm not a bad person, in this case I will probably do what @JackoBongo suggested, i.e. putting SyMenu on the magical GitHub. The army of sleeping devs will wake up and emerge to continue the SyMenu development, probably better than I did in this year, update the SPS twice a day, and you'll be all happier than before. So these are my two options. Your options instead are much more. If you don't agree you can abandon the program. You haven't paid for this, don't have an obligation, you can delete it and move on. You could have supported the project when I was in need with your time, with your help. Because dear hausenfefr you tell me you are supporting SyMenu but it's the first time I hear from you, so you are a taker and not a giver.You can stop suggesting SyMenu to your friends. What you can't do is to insult me.
14/03/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	Thanks for your support sl23. As I already said I'm used to dealing with a lot of strange humans. I'm not surprised to find the same kind here. Anyway I would like to borrow his sentence "never meet your heroes" and change it to "never meet your users". But I love SyMenu users too much to say that
24/03/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	SiggiSy wrote: I just realized, that the last update of SyMenu adds some "User-Control" with Login, etc. I'm one of the persons that won't update until it's clear what's realy in you mind? Well I thought it would be clear after almost, two months of discussion. Please read this: https://www.ugmfree.it/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=891 Probably you haven't realized what's going on because you are one of the reasons I created the login: people who take the benefits of a twenty-year project like this without saying a single word, without thanks one single time, without helping or supporting. Then a login comes and someone pops up warning me to not do this or that to not disappoint people like him, people that I never knew existed. Please! I don't care a lot if you trust me or not, you are a stranger, a taker. You've been a taker for probably years. If you don't agree with the direction of this project you can go, I'll survive. What I care about, a lot, is the opinions, the ideas, the suggestions, the criticisms of people that take part in this project actively. So if you think you are other than a taker, you should try to help instead of warn me. Your idea about a monthly donation could be a good one but I've no experience in that. Are you experienced with it? Want to help? Why do you think asking for an email and a nickname is so dangerous? I'm living in the EU and I am perfectly aware about the consequences of managing personal or sensitive data because of the EU and Italian privacy laws. I know I'm managing no sensitive data and one only personal data (the email). BTW if you want you can use a temporary email, I don't care, I don't prevent it. What I only want is to count you. But if you think my data management is dangerous or amateurish or have any kind of suggestion or think that I don't understand what I'm doing and want to help with this, please be my guest. And a last thing: as I already told another comedian, you are free to say whatever you like here but don't insult nor threaten me. What's that sentence about the wrong path (in bold)? Who are you to speak about right and wrong? Obi Wan Kenobi?
01/04/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	g3o wrote: SyMenu remains usable without login, but: After starting the program for the umpteenth time, a pop-up appears informing you that SyMenu is a non-commercial project by a private individual and therefore requires donations. Those who pay at least 12 euros receive a login with which they can download program updates. Hi Christopher.I'm interested in your suggestions but they are not so clear to me.So if you don't bother too much, please explain them better. First thing I don't understand how I could measure the number of SyMenu executions without a login system. SyMenu is a portable program and can rely only on its local files to track any activity. When you execute it for the nth time, you can easily reset the counter that probably is stored in a configuration file and you are fresh as new. A safer way to check these kinds of things is moving the check online but, since I have to recognize every SyMenu installation to do anything, I need to create a system to make it unique and asking for a login is a good way to succeed. With the current approach I could track how many times a certain user has downloaded the suite definitions. With the login I can even count the number of downloads and show the popup if I want to do that. Without the login everything becomes difficult or impossible. You are suggesting to send a login to the users to make them download the program updates. What it's not clear here is what program update do you refer to? Because with the singular word (program) I suspect you are referring to SyMenu. SyMenu is free and will always be free so no donations will ever be forced for it. If instead you referred to the programs (plural) intending the SPS suite, this is the real point of all this mess, well I don't understand what's the difference from the current approach. I'm asking for a login immediately, instead of asking for it after the nth execution. If the difference is that I'm asking for your email, please relax, I explicitly said more than once that I don't care if you use your real email, an anti-spam email, or a temporary email. Use whatever you want. Even if you lose your (false) credentials and want to regain access to SyMenu you can do it with a new false email and you'll lose nothing of your local configuration. So, please explain, what's the real point? Because for sure there's a point but I can't see it, I have a problem in understanding all your concerns guys. More than one person is afraid I can sell his personal data. What personal data? I never asked for your real name, nor for your real email. So I'm really not understanding what's the real point here. To be crystal clear I only need to count how many people are using this part of the programs (the SPS part) to decide if I can go on forcing everyone to help with money, or if I can go on asking nothing but slowing down my pace of updating and stopping the addition of new programs, or if I can abandon it completely because it's too demanding. One last thing I already said but it's useful to repeat it again. You can refuse to update SyMenu because for now I'm allowing the definition download even with outdated SyMenu versions. But this thing will end soon. I'm only leaving all the users the time to update then whoever asks for the new definition with outdated SyMenu version will receive a 404. So please decide if you want to be an active part of the community registering yourself or if you prefer to use SyMenu without the SPS. Or, naturally, if you leave. edited by Gianluca on 01/04/2024
02/04/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	You are right and in fact I'm not counting on mathematics but on psychology and statistics. Me as a psychologist. Why should anyone face a registration process twice or more if his credential can be reused for the same purpose more than once? Here I'm counting on the boredom of the registration process I created (captcha, license to read, mail to receive, activation link, credential to copy and paste in SyMenu) and on the chronical lack of time of people that use more than one SyMenu installation. I imagine they are very busy people that appreciate everything that could be considered a shortcut or a time saver (and I hope SyMenu is one of those tools). So why make a useless and boring process more than once? Me as a statistician. From my knowledge the great majority of the SyMenu users are newbies. For this reason I imagine those parts of the users have only one PC and in that PC they have only a single version of SyMenu. The remaining minority consisting of IT professionals, PC lovers, and other strange beasts (for example I'm a freeware compulsive collector ) can create the user multiplication you refer to. BTW I think they already fall back in the first category, the people who hate losing their time, so the problem could be really irrelevant. Anyway, among those people, someone creating different logins for every SyMenu installation may exist but what is the statistical weight of this phenomenon? If a bunch of people creating different user logins are statistically relevant, it means the SyMenu community is so small that I don't care to count its members anymore. What do you think? Does it work?
05/04/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	p1r9t3 wrote: Is there any update for 4k monitors? I have a hard time using with 4k as everything is scrunched up. I'm very sorry for this problem but I can do nothing until MS improves their library to scale the desktop programs well. In the meanwhile you can activate a workaround that changes the resize system with a raw but reliable image zoom. You probably see a little blurring on form fonts but the controls positioning will become perfect. The workaround is described in the manuale here https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#Advanced_menu_Options_General The last checkbox in the main option tab (Check this for issues on HD monitors) is exactly intended to solve your kind of issues.
17/04/2024 Topic: http://spsconsortium.net is down Gianluca Administrator	Hello. Yes the file has to be validated but I abandoned the web site that hosted the schema. My bad. I have to move the schema to this web site. Anyway there's a reason for which the xsd schema is not so important and it's because you should use SPS Builder (see this page https://www.ugmfree.it/spsbuilder or download it through SyMenu itself) that validate your SPS against the schema and that help you to understand where the problem is with clear messages and alert. If you need any further help, please let me know.
19/04/2024 Topic: SyMenu 8.01 Gianluca Administrator	Markzxc wrote: Is there some problem I'm unaware of, or is there something wrong with my system? Good question. To give you a reply I need to know your system specs. Especially the OS version. Anyway, if SyMenu starts it shouldn't have any of the problems you suffer. For the admin requirement try to check inside the config folder if the file available has limited security attributes. Those files must be accessible (read and write) from your normal user otherwise Windows refuses SyMenu to read them when executed with that user. So this is for sure an issue caused by a misconfigured permission. If I was in your shoes I would try another thing too. Check the files on the SyMenu root for this problem: https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#SyMenuPluginBlocked It's usually a problem tied to the plugin files but it could affect any other file download from the Internet.
22/04/2024 Topic: Who (the hell) are the SyMenu users? Gianluca Administrator	donutz wrote: Can I also install it on my laptop with the same user name? Sure you can. As long as you are using SyMenu personally. Probably in the future I will limit the number of versions one single person (login) can use but I think I will place the limit in the field of the five to meet the requirements of all the users, even the hard core ones.
22/04/2024 Topic: http://spsconsortium.net is down Gianluca Administrator	When SPS Builder alerts you that VirusTotal check is lacking it's because you need to submit the package to VT. You can submit the package in several ways. You can do it with the SPS Builder itself, checking the relative checkbox. If SPS Builder alerts you that the package was previously unknown to VT you have to wait one or two minutes and then press the Refresh button near the VT checkbox. This delay is due to the time VT takes to analyze the package submitted by SPS Builder with all their AV software. For an unknown package you can even upload it to the VT website manually, wait for analysis, and only then open SPS Builder and process it because, at that point, the package won't be unknown and the VT check will be instantaneous. I hope it's clearer now otherwise please ask.
23/04/2024 Topic: Captcha not received. Are you online? Gianluca Administrator	My answer is really simple: are you online? The captcha is downloaded from this web site so your SyMenu needs to be able to reach it. I suggest you check your connection and check your firewall. If you don't receive the captcha you are offline so there's no sense at all to access the Get new apps form because you need to be online to use it.
23/04/2024 Topic: Captcha not received. Are you online? Gianluca Administrator	Unfortunately I have to start from the obvious because I don't know you. The next test is to check if you reach the captcha dispacer available at this url https://www.ugmfree.it/api/v2/CaptchaApi/[your GUID] with your browser. If you successfully reach it, it means it's probably a firewall rule that is blocking the SyMenu request. In that case, please, check your firewall In the meanwhile, since you have to get your GUID to complete the captcha url request - BTW you'll find it in your SyMenu configuration file and it's called guid - please send it to me in private so I can check if any error is available in the web site log.