Messages

101

Living Room / Re: Steve Jobs is dead.

« on: October 06, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Honestly, this is one of those times where the old saying "If you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all" would probably be very appropriate. Unfortunately the insanity of the fanbois pushed me over a threshold where I felt the real counterpoint was more than necessary.

102

Living Room / Re: Steve Jobs is dead.

« on: October 06, 2011, 02:37 PM »

But because he didn't (Publicly, or in his name?) donate massive sums of money to "help" the 3rd world (Can anybody truly say that any amount of money is actually helping them?

-Stephen66515 (October 06, 2011, 01:53 PM)

The situation is of course much more compilacated to just shipping money into the countries. But I can truly say it helps, I've been in Kenya working with people who are on the frontline as it were. For €30ish they have they can, and do, take a kid out of the dumps (literally, the kids are living like wild animals in the dumps) and feed and educate that kid for a year.

The toll of their decisions is lives spent- not lives not save, but spent- on the fires of their ego, hate, etc.

-wraith808 (October 06, 2011, 12:50 PM)

I concede that this is a very philosophical point. Is murdering someone more or less 'evil' than choosing not to save them. There is no easy answer to that question.

Anyway, as f0dder suggests the charity thing is but one example, what I hate is the way he did business. Personally I'm not the type to celebrate greed and revere those who do whatever it takes to make money.

[edit] slight tweak of bad grammar

103

Living Room / Re: Steve Jobs is dead.

« on: October 06, 2011, 12:32 PM »

Why does that make you a horrible human being?  Different views (that don't affect anyone outside of your not doing the same as they do) makes you a horrible human being?

-wraith808 (October 06, 2011, 11:31 AM)

It's not the only reason why I dislike him, but it cemented my opinion of him.

104

Living Room / Re: Steve Jobs is dead.

« on: October 06, 2011, 12:02 AM »

I suppose it was very heartless of to say that, heartless in the sense that such a comment is utterly unnecessary on the night of his death. For that I do apologise

I have no doubt that there were many who truly loved him, his wife and children as an obvious example, to them my sympathies go out as his death will leave a very painful void in their lives.

But the IT and business world are worse for his presence in them, and I see first hand some of the damage his clueless fanatics cause -

In my fathers school the "unofficial" IT department is headed by Apple zealots who are utterly clueless about everything to do with computers, yet of course see themselves as experts. They have connived the school to purchase Macs and iPads to help teach the students. That is public money from Irelands cash strapped educational system being spent on computers costing double the price of their components and tablets whose locked down natures means the school is at the mercy of Apples decisions on software. This is not unique either, you hear of this happening all over Ireland.

To me this a a sin of enormous proportions, the same money could buy maybe 5 times as many netbooks, each of which would be infinity more useful in a educational environment.

In the broader world, the closed ecosystem of Apples products is pure evil and in no way is it in consumers interests, Steve Jobs personally crusaded for this setup and together with Apples marketing department he preyed on the most technology clueless of people to establish this precedent and used it as foothold for enforcing his vision upon everyone else.

105

Living Room / Re: Steve Jobs is dead.

« on: October 05, 2011, 07:56 PM »

Steve Jobs showed little inclination to use his personal wealth for philanthropic purposes.

And, strangely for a self-professed Buddhist, he did not embrace environmental concerns

-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12215485

Says it all really, what a horrible human being he was.

106

Living Room / Re: Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

« on: October 05, 2011, 11:03 AM »

Here's a followup from HTC

HTC Public Statement:

HTC takes claims related to the security of our products very seriously. In our ongoing investigation into this recent claim, we have concluded that while this HTC software itself does no harm to customers’ data, there is a vulnerability that could potentially be exploited by a malicious third-party application. A third party malware app exploiting this or any other vulnerability would potentially be acting in violation of civil and criminal laws. So far, we have not learned of any customers being affected in this way and would like to prevent it by making sure all customers are aware of this potential vulnerability.
 
HTC is working very diligently to quickly release a security update that will resolve the issue on affected devices. Following a short testing period by our carrier partners, the patch will be sent over-the-air to customers, who will be notified to download and install it. We urge all users to install the update promptly.  During this time, as always, we strongly urge customers to use caution when downloading, using, installing and updating applications from untrusted sources.

-http://www.xda-developers.com/android/official-announcement-by-htc-regarding-security-vulnerability/

107

Living Room / Re: Hoping for a Patent Bloodbath XD

« on: October 05, 2011, 10:48 AM »

Seeing fanbois get their knickers in a knot when they can't get their hands on the latest iDevice just because their precious, innovative, company used someone else's tech would make me so happy.

108

General Software Discussion / Re: iTunes Password Recovery (advice) Needed

« on: October 04, 2011, 09:39 AM »

The worrisome thing seems to be that passwords can be retrieved from browsers like that.

-Renegade (October 04, 2011, 12:07 AM)

The browser themselves have to be able to get at the password in plaintext if they're to submit it to the server, so unless they store the passwords in another password encrypted database it's no real surprise other programs can recover them.

109

Living Room / Re: How many slaves work for you?

« on: October 03, 2011, 04:46 PM »

Damn you, now I gotta take the silly test (when I get home) just to see where they go with that question. Although I'd tend to disagree if they count paying for it as a slave against you. It should be a 1 slave credit for being a slave (yourself) to your own proclivities.

-Stoic Joker (October 03, 2011, 03:52 PM)

They don't count it in the total, they just point out that the sex-industry is largely based on exploitation of women rather than empowerment. That's probably true, but without getting into a political discussion, there are some regulated sex industries out there which do work, so the site not counting it one way or another feels correct to me.

110

Living Room / Re: How many slaves work for you?

« on: October 03, 2011, 12:49 PM »

Mine was 31, but I couldn't really get fill out the food one acccuratly I felt, that's why I'd have loved to see a break down of the different sections.

111

Living Room / Re: Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

« on: October 03, 2011, 08:03 AM »

I do like that MS put major restrictions on the sort of bloat carriers and manufactures love to add. The popularity of installing "stock" android roms show how annoying the custom UIs to some people out there, myself included.

Nonetheless, that MS went the Apple way of only allowing apps be installed through their marketplace is disgraceful. Honestly I don't understand how such practices don't fall foul of of various regulations to support competitiveness.

112

Living Room / Re: Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

« on: October 03, 2011, 07:27 AM »

So far it's strictly Android. I believe MS put restrictions on what software manufacturers and carriers can preinstall which would mean tracking apps like this very dodgy HTC android one would have the be vetted by MS, and I bet would not be allowed.

113

Living Room / Re: How many slaves work for you?

« on: October 03, 2011, 02:41 AM »

A breakdown of how the different areas affected the total would have been nice. I'd be particularly curious as to the human costs behind the cheap high-tech gadgets we so enjoy.

114

Developer's Corner / Re: Cross-platform mobile apps development: MonoTouch/MonoDroid, Marmalade, etc.

« on: October 02, 2011, 06:29 PM »

I didn't have the luxury of waiting to see how that turns out so I opted to write a portable C++ core and glue it to separate Android/Java and iOS/ObjC user interfaces.

-Eóin (September 28, 2011, 09:55 PM)

I can see how you can glue a C++ core to iOS/ObjC, but how do you do it for Android?

-f0dder (October 02, 2011, 05:47 PM)

With JNI and the NDK. It's messier that ObjC++ of course, but a few lightweight headers and you can make calling make calling static and member methods on Java side very easy. For example, once you have the object handle of an android Button widget you can call member functions with something like the following

Code: C++ [Select]

1. void button::set_text(const std::string& text) const
2. {
3.         handle->call_method<void>("setText", "(Ljava/lang/CharSequence;)V", jni::to_jstr(text));
4. }
5.  
6. void button::set_enabled(bool enable) const
7. {
8.         handle->call_method<void>("setEnabled", "(Z)V", enable);
9. }

Like I say, it's a bit messy, but I've managed to make it clean enough to not get in the way. The JNI interface seems complete enough that a more experienced programmer could surely write a Boost.Python, or luabind wrapper to automate all the boiler plate.

115

Living Room / Re: Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

« on: October 02, 2011, 06:16 PM »

It really does seem too stupid I admit. HTC did make a public response to the data collecting: XDA-Dev - HTC Responds Once Again…, but that was before the security issues were discovered.

116

Living Room / Re: Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

« on: October 02, 2011, 04:47 PM »

I like HTC devices, indeed all my smartphones tend to be HTC. Plus, given their "turn a blind eye" to the hackers policy coupled with their more recent help to the hackers by providing a bootloader unlocker I had thought the company was being pretty darn not evil.

So I must say, this development really disappoints me. Thankfully though, as a user of custom roms (CyanogenMod) it at least doesn't affect me, but is still inexcusable.

117

Living Room / Re: Lady Geek -- Helping businesses sell technology to women

« on: September 29, 2011, 07:16 PM »

Nothing funnier than good satire...

118

Living Room / Re: Seriously, Youtube is becoming impossible!

« on: September 29, 2011, 11:54 AM »

Give them time...Soon they will be edited into the videos themselves during upload...Can almost guarantee that.

-Stephen66515 (September 28, 2011, 09:48 AM)

Except then they'd hugely increase their storage costs as they'd need to maintain different copies of vids for different ads.

119

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: September 29, 2011, 11:27 AM »

Here's a new (new to me that is) singer I'm really getting into, goes by name Gotye.

120

Developer's Corner / Re: MonoTouch / MonoDroid (Mono for Android) VS Marmalade, etc.

« on: September 28, 2011, 09:55 PM »

I'm using Marmalade to develop a game, I started back when it was still called AirPlay SDK. Being primarily a C++ coder I wanted to stick with the language and Marmalade allowed me to do that and avail of many of the Boost libraries too (not all though). The whole build once, then deploy to any platform really does work too, it is a fantastic dev environment.

BUT... a 2nd app I'm working on really requires a good UI, and I'm a stickler for wanting my applications to have the "native feel". Marmalade claims in a future version (the next version even) that it will support native UIs. I didn't have the luxury of waiting to see how that turns out so I opted to write a portable C++ core and glue it to separate Android/Java and iOS/ObjC user interfaces.

The type of app you want to develop is important, how much OS integration will you want?

121

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« on: September 25, 2011, 09:31 PM »

I've had several PDAs that used a stylus, and I could still use my fingers with them. Having both options would be nice... You could do it 15 years ago... Seems like we're regressing there.

-Renegade (September 25, 2011, 09:21 PM)

Resistive screens inherently support both stylus and finger. These days, the much more common capacitive screens need a special stylus, but those are readily available

122

Developer's Corner / Re: Community Content on MSDN

« on: September 24, 2011, 10:16 AM »

Yes, but maybe only 2 or 3 time in the past 2+ years. One was a very helpful bit of sample code though, so kudos to that contributor

123

General Software Discussion / Re: Why 2012 may finally be The Year of the Linux Desktop (courtesy of Microsoft)

« on: September 23, 2011, 10:30 AM »

If find it hard to believe MS will be able to get away with this legally speaking, considering that the EU forced them to offer a browser choice, they will surely also be forced to offer an App Store/Marketplace choice too.

124

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« on: September 16, 2011, 11:42 AM »

Speaking of drunk coding, I've often found that when a bit tipsey I actually quite enjoy working on a tedious or mundane bit of code which I was otherwise putting off. Only works for a very low level drunk and it's not really something I would set out to do in advance.

125

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« on: September 16, 2011, 10:48 AM »

I don't tend to post anymore when tipsy, in years past I've probably regretted one or two drunken posts.  Off hand I can't think of any purchases, at least not any I later regretted.

I do however very often play Starcraft 2 online while quite drunk. Needless to say I lose a lot of those games very badly.