Change File Type

Former Gov. Jim Florio: Aiding the poor, middle-class benefits all

By James J. Florio

The trauma that the nation has been put through while enacting a normally routine debt limit extension is one more piece of evidence that our political system is not working.

That system relies upon a minimum degree of comity to function. The need to compromise to reach a consensus is essential in our diverse society. Rigid incivility characterizes our current politics. It is important to understand how we got to this place, if we are to change the course.

All of political history can be categorized as continuing tension among groups of people divided into those benefitting from the existing system and those who aren’t and, therefore, advocate change.

In normal times, this struggle and tension stay within acceptable bounds of moderation and are conducted civilly due to the expectation that change is attainable. However, in some periods, the stakes become so high for each side — and the prospect for change so remote — that traditional rules of conduct fall by the wayside. Political intervention becomes ideological warfare. Hope disappears, and the very existence and survival of the contenders is threatened.

The Populist Era of the 1890s, when our largely agricultural economy was threatened by growing industrialization, is an example of such a time. The Great Depression of the 1930s — pitting the working class against financial interests — is another period of extreme divergence of views as to the common good.

Our current situation finds the forces of the status quo largely defined by those who have wildly prospered over the last decade or two, confronted by the vast majority of people who consider themselves middle class or working class. The evidence of legitimate concern about the vastness of the chasm that separates advocates for, and challengers to, the status quo is abundant.

The purchasing power of the great majority of citizens has decreased over the past decade. Wages are stagnant and job opportunities are decreasing. Insecurity reigns for most people. It has been estimated that the top 400 affluent families control more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. The extreme economic disparity between the very well-off and the rest raises questions about the viability of the concept of upward mobility, which has always been the social and political safety valve for this country.

Our current extreme economic division raises social, as well as economic, threats. People who have worked their way into the middle class now face the specter of falling back into the ranks of the poor — losing not only homes and income, but perhaps, as importantly, status and self-esteem. Working-class people without work lose their very identity. Under such conditions, people become alienated from the existing system and want it overturned. Hence, the tea party — and compromise and moderation become sinful.

Change File Program Association, Icons And Context Menu Actions ...

Windows has a utility called Default Programs that allows you to configure or change the default applications associated with specific file extensions. This feature was added to Windows XP through Service Pack 1, and comes default in later versions of Windows. While the Default Programs utility was revamped and made more useful in Windows Vista and 7, a particular feature found in Windows XP edition of the utility was taken away. That was the ability to change the default action when a file with a specific extension was double-clicked in Windows Explorer.

Types is a simple freeware utility that makes the task of changing program associations, icons and context menus a lot easier. More so because it brings back the ability to change the default action that was removed in Windows 7 and Vista.

Types integrates with Windows Explorer, adding a new ‘Edit file type’ action to the context menu. So you can simply right click on a particular file type and easily change the default program associated with it. Alternatively, you can access Types from The Control Panel.

Once Types is launched, you can change default program by choosing the appropriate item from the Linked Class menu. From the actions menu you can change the default behavior of the program when executed. These action appear on the context menu of files of that particular file type. For instance, the default behavior of MP3 files is to play when double clicked in explorer. You can push down the ‘Play’ action and instead make MP3 files add to a queue in Media Player.

What I liked most was the ability to force Windows explorer to show a particular file extension even though explorer is configured to hide them.

The file extensions is displayed in the File types column while in details mode, which is different from the way explorer displays file types when the ‘hide file extension’ option is unchecked in Folder settings. When explorer is asked to display file types, it shows the full file name along with the extension in the file name column. This often causes problems when renaming files, as you have to be extra careful not to change the extension. This problem is absent in Types.

The drawback is that you have to manually edit each file extension setting in Types. Technically, this is impossible to accomplish since there are hundreds of extensions, but for all practically purposes, we only deal with a dozen or a couple of dozen different file extensions at most. So this is perfectly doable.

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