About Us

Who is Fourth Ray Software?

Fourth Ray Software is owned and operated by Peter Vanvliet as a sole proprietorship, and is based in Houston, Texas.

Personal Bio

Fourth Ray Software is not some fancy corporation with elaborate offices and lots of overhead. It is just me, working from home. Doing exactly what I love to do. At this time, there are no other employees. All software products are of my own design; I come up with the ideas for new products, do the design and architectural work, write the source code (which is all written in C++, by the way), test, document, and support the products by myself. When you contact Fourth Ray Software for technical support or to share your thoughts about the products, you are directly interacting with me. This is what I do full-time. And I love it!

I have been creating Windows software application's professionally and commercially since 1990. Initially, I worked as a senior consultant for a local consulting firm, creating Windows-based software applications for a large oil company and later for an engineering company. When that consulting firm was merged out of existence, I started working at a software development company for a couple of years. After that fell through, I started Visual Sage, Inc. in August 2001, full-time, and later renamed it to Fourth Ray Software in 2004.

Why Create Fourth Ray Software?

Fourth Ray Software was created to produce and make available Windows-based software applications that help you to be productive at the computer, and do so in an ethical way. So, we do not participate in any data-collecting schemes, nor giving you "free" software that in reality isn't free because you are giving up your private data, as a lot of the larger corporations are doing these days.

Because we are a small company, we can make changes quickly. When something new or better comes along that helps us to make our products even more intuitive, even easier to use, we can implement that rather quickly, rather than waiting for years for it to filter through a corporate bureaucracy. This makes us be able to be responsive to your wishes and ideas about our software, where applicable. Our objective is to create Windows-based software products that help you accomplish your tasks as quickly and as easily as possible. You are receiving a software application that has over 35 years of real-world, practical knowledge and experience built-in.

The reason why our company's slogan is "Shining a new light on software", is because we want to do our part in creating simple, easy-to-use applications that help you become more productive in some small way, without all the "nasties"; bring a positive light into the world, not a dark and sinister one.

We license our commercial software based on a one-time license fee. Once you pay the one-time fee, you will be able to continue to use the application "forever". Therefore, we do not charge for arbitrary upgrades when they are released, and we certainly do not participate in the practice of charging you a "monthly rental fee" to be able to continue to use the application. This is a fundamental part of our "Shining a new light on software" slogan.

Fourth Ray Software is an ISV (Independent Software Vendor). Your support of our company directly impacts us.

Funding

Rather than getting involved with external investors, and thereby losing control of the company, we are fully self-funded. Our budget is quite small, but it does allow us the creative freedom to solve the problems we see in using today's computers. We don't have a large marketing budget, so our "advertising" is purely from word-of-mouth, and those who "stumble" across this web site.

What's In The Future?

Fourth Ray Software now has well over 25 software applications. That is a lot to maintain. So, the rate at which new applications might appear in the future will slow down significantly. Our primary focus is to first maintain the existing applications, before we entertain creating new ones.

Versions of Windows

All of our software is designed to be run on Windows 7 and later computers. The market shares for Linux and Apple's Mac are simply not there (when compared to Microsoft Windows), so we have no plans to support either of those operating systems. And, our software is intended to be used on desktop or laptop computers that run Windows, so we don't support any mobile devices.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As was inevitable, "artificial intelligence" is now here, and it is likely here to stay. So, what does that mean? AI can only regurgitate what it has been fed. It is not "self aware". It does not have a divine soul. It is simply able to piece together related information based on all of the data that its parent company has fed into its database. For the Web, it simply means that it is the "next generation" search engine. AI is perfect for doing repetititive tasks. In that sense, it is no different than a robot arm in a car manufacturer's factory that knows how to put a bolt in a frame that has a hole at such-n-so location in 3D space. Nothing magical. It has all been pre-programmed in by a human. The same thing with the Web-based AI. It has been fed all manner of data.

What AI is not able to do is to be fully creative. I cannot find creative solutions. It can only repeat all or portions of what it has in its database. So, a paint-by-number drawing is something that AI can do, because a human tells it to paint the area enclosed by the number 1 with blue, number 2 with yellow, etc. But to have it draw something that no one has ever drawn, it cannot do that. It can only draw what it has gathered from all of the stuff that it has been fed with. Humans can be creative, because we have a connection with the divine, that source from where ideas come from seemingly out of nowhere. A machine is never going to be able to do that.

So, for us, as a software company, we will continue to work on our software applications. We are not seeking to become the "next Microsoft". We create unique and creative solutions to problems that other companies are not solving, or that make it way too complex for the average user.

Also remember that, since AI has to be based in the "cloud" (in other words, it runs only on corporate servers), when you use it, you lose all privacy, as everything you do with AI will be tracked, monitored, stored, reported, and shared, within that company, with their advertisers, and with the government of the country within which that company operates. Even if they claim otherwise, it is best to assume that they do it anyway. With Fourth Ray Software's applications, all of your data stays on your computer only; it is never shared. We have absolutely no intention to integrate any form of AI into our software applications.

Trust

Fourth Ray Software does not participate in any adware, malware, phishing, spam, or any other nefarious or underhanded schemes. When you install our software, you only install our software. No secret tracking or advertising applications are installed; no web browser hacks are installed; nothing but our software application is installed. Our installation programs do not contain viruses. Period. If your anti-virus program complains about our installation program, if you indeed downloaded it from this web site, it is reporting a "false positive". Some anti-virus companies allow us to file a complaint and have them manually check our installation program for themselves, but since we are a small company, they pretty much ignore us.

If you have any questions about the products, feel free to use the Contact link at the top of the page. Enjoy browsing this web site, and enjoy using the products that we have put our heart and soul into! Tell your friends, co-workers, and family members about our products. Everyone can use at least one of our products!

We also maintain web sites for a select few clients. If you are interested in seeing that list, please visit this page.

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