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Messages - CWuestefeld [ switch to compact view ]

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26
The pricing for WinAntiRansom on the website is all mixed up. The web page describing the product says $14.95. If you click on the buy with PayPal link, it tells you $29.95, and if you click on the credit card link, it tells you $19.95.

27
Upgraded to 42.0 x64 yesterday.

After a full day using it, between two different computers, it seems quite stable. And subjectively, it seems better for memory usage than WaterFox was.

28
Thanks to a tip in ghacks - http://www.ghacks.ne...irefox-42-comes-out/

I see that there's finally a 64-bit version. But it won't be visible on the site - follow the ghacks link to the ftp repository.

29
Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor
« on: October 22, 2015, 12:29 PM »
I've seen this one before, it's a great explanation. But those three values are the easy ones - how do you fit in Henry, Farad, and so forth?

30
Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!
« on: October 13, 2015, 03:17 PM »
OK, I'll join the game.
20140610_194747-small.jpg
It's a '13 Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Grand Touring Edition.

The specs are ridiculous, with a 3.8 V6 liter engine making 340+ hp. With a 8-speed transmission and paddle shifters, it does 0-60 in less than 5.5 seconds. To be sure that you appreciate its engine, there's actually a duct that focuses the sound of the engine into the cockpit.

I got this when the maintenance on my Subaru WRX start getting excessive. Since I'm in TX now, I don't need the AWD, so opted for something sporty with rear wheel drive.

However, in the GC I don't feel anywhere near as "connected" as I did in the WRX. I think that's largely down to the wheelbase of the GC being much longer, so its turn-in is inherently less quick. Also, the GC doesn't have a limited-slip diff (this is fixed in the current year edition), which causes wheel slip at corners, which triggers the traction control and makes the car bog down (so I always disable the traction control, except in the rain).

Oh, and one other complaint - the user interface and bluetooth connectivity in the entertainment system seems to have been designed by a summer intern.

But man, is this car fast. It doesn't matter how fast you're already going, there's always plenty more power to accelerate further. And it's the first car I've ever had in which I have to actually be careful leaving a stoplight so I don't spin the tires.

31
ever tried this?

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

This used to be my go-to conversion tool, for video and audio. But the byzantine process the developer makes you go through to get to downloads to upgrade was just so ridiculous that I quit trying.

32
I bet that submitting a sitemap file through the normal mechanism would help. I know they pick up our sitemaps and get them into the index *really* fast. I'm less sure about how this affects their cache.

33
Living Room / Re: TSA's master keys leaked, 3D printed
« on: September 10, 2015, 11:37 AM »
The big difference here is that if the bad guys can get into my suitcase, they might steal my socks.

The potential damage to us if and when somebody backdoors our secret data is far more serious.

34
Developer's Corner / Re: Hack font v.2
« on: September 02, 2015, 01:50 PM »
Here's a huge gallery of programming fonts, together with pros and cons of each.

http://www.slant.co/...st-programming-fonts


35
I just got my refund. But I'd be happier if I had a MatchStick without DRM...

In any case, they are processing refunds as promised.

36
They killed it. https://www.kickstar...fox-os/posts/1266549

Unfortunately, we are unable to continue on this journey, and we will be refunding all Matchstick pledges.

After struggling with the DRM development based on Firefox OS for most of this year, we realize continued development of DRM, though showing early signs of promise, will be a long and difficult road. We have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to reliably predict the completion date of the DRM development without significantly more research, development and integration.

This seems kinda fishy, since many, many backers didn't even want DRM in the first place. Why not go ahead and ship without that, then? I would have been happy.

Anyway, they say they're refunding everybody's money.

37
Anyone want to summarize a "magic bullet" method of separating the fake ones from the real ones?

Check for spelling and grammar errors. I have never seen a phishing or scam email that didn't have such errors. But a company like MS is going to have everybody from their marketing department to their lawyers proofreading anything they send, it's not going to have such errors.

It seems that the folks who engage in scams like this are the kind of people who think they can get by without having to do their own work, and so they never did their own studying back in school, either.

38
even legit sites that you'd keep whitelisted might be compromised

As the manager of a web development team, this is something that I'm always paying attention to, much to the annoyance of some partners and even customers. You might be surprised how many third parties want us to directly reference js code that lives on somebody else's servers (for example, to show fancy interactive product info from the manufacturer).

My position is that my users have agreed to trust *me*, but they don't even know that they'd be implicitly trusting *you*. I don't have the authority to transfer my users' trust like that, so I simply will not allow your code to run in my site.

We've made a couple of sort-of exceptions. If they'll give us the code to verify ourselves, and host on our own servers, it's much less of an exposure. At least I can still have control over the stuff that I have responsibility for, rather than just abdicating that security consciousness.

39
regardless of the efficiency of the security software used, it invariably comes down to the user being presented with a dialog

Read the referenced article. They specifically address this, and the test results shows what portion of the results are dependent on the user making the right/wrong decision, and which ones are the result of the software making the correct choice automatically. Hint: the top AV programs were handling it correctly on their own, in almost all cases.

40
Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process
« on: July 09, 2015, 01:46 PM »
Bravo to IainB for the above discussion. I'd like to extend it a bit farther, if I might.

Some factions in our culture take the position that scientific results should directly drive public policy. So, for example, a finding that income inequality has increased, or that obesity is a health threat, should automatically lead us to institute policy to combat that problem.

But this belief is mistaken. Identifying a problem, or finding a correlation, is science. Determining whether something ought to be done, and indeed, whether that action should be executed by the government, is another question entirely, and one that cannot be answered by that same science. Before we can make that determination, we need to consider (I don't mean to argue on either side of these issues, I just mean to show that there are questions that must be answered before action is appropriate):
  • Is it actually a problem that society as a whole should have any say in? This generally is determined by personal values, and so reasonable people are likely to have different opinions. For example, given that obesity threatens my health, is it not my personal decision whether I prefer to have a shorter life of gustatory pleasure, or a longer ascetic life? Thus, the scientific outcome doesn't automatically mean that something *must* be done.
  • Would the costs of doing something exceed the costs of the problem itself? In the climate change debate, for example, we hear a lot of bickering about the evidence. But I don't see so much cost/benefit discussion about the likelihood of various outcomes, and the actual human cost of each, especially discussions that directly compare the cost of implementing greenhouse gas reductions.
  • Is the government the right agent to affect the change? Forcing everyone to act a certain way is a very blunt tool to use, and thus possibly ineffective. Even when the government can do something, it may be that the best approach is just to set up an appropriate system of incentives so that the private sector can work out the details.

Thus, a statement of the form "scientific studies show X, therefore the government must implement regulation Y" are flawed.

And I'd like to take that a step farther, too. In political discussions we frequently hear things like "candidate X isn't intelligent enough to be President", or even outright name-calling intended to disparage a candidate's intelligence (e.g., "dumbya"). I submit that science is the job of the scientists, and not the job of the President. There's no need for the President to understand biochemistry or chaos theory or orbital mechanics; as the country's Chief Executive, the holder of that office needs to be able to execute, and that involves being a good manager: knowing how to find the best people to handle an issue, and delegating to them. Beyond a basic threshold, raw IQ points aren't what we need in our Chief Exec, we need a specific management skillset, one that has nothing to do with the sciences.

41
It almost seems like that and extension signing are designed to break extensions.

This is really frustrating. Luckily, you can pretty much disable this annoyance. Check out the add-on "Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks":

While it used to be possible to disable add-on compatibility checking entirely, by setting the extensions.checkCompatibility preference to false, it is now necessary to set a different preference for each new application version. This add-on re-enables the functionality of extensions.checkCompatibility irrespective of the current application version and disables checking by default. Checking can be re-enabled by disabling the add-on (which can be done without a restart) or by toggling the preference.

I have yet to find anything that gives me trouble after setting this.

42
But it says all we have to do is download the latest...   :mad:

I suppose that they're (a) talking to developers and (b) letting us see a pulse. But it's awfully tone-deaf for them not to realize just what responses this will evoke from those of us that funded it.

43
Living Room / Re: Comparison of FREE Cloud Storage services.
« on: June 08, 2015, 02:07 PM »
As an amateur photographer with 100s of GBs of photo files, I was excited to see Amazon's announcement of free unlimited photo storage.

This seems like the perfect thing for me, but after researching further it seems like it's all but useless. They only support up- and down-loading photos *explicitly*, and the tool for bulk uploads is reported not to work very well either. To make it perfectly clear: their app doesn't do any updating at all. You can only upload single files or whole directories.

44
I hate to get political here, but yes: Cash for Clunkers was an epic failure.

It didn't help the economy. Studies show that almost half of the money went to people who were going to buy new cars anyway.

And it was bad for the environment. By destroying a pile of moderately used cars that got traded in, the price of other used cars rose significantly (as was noted above). The result is that poor folks can no longer afford to replace the really old rustbucket they're driving, so the worst polluters are staying on the road instead of being retired.

The law of unintended consequences can't be avoided, even by - especially by - governments.

45
[Feature] On History Options you can now choose to have FARR automatically add all applications that you launch outside of FARR (that have foreground windows), automatically added to FARR launch history; this makes them visible in main window on display, and makes them faster to find.
This is a fantastic addition, I'm very much looking forward to it.

[Feature] New option to require search words to match on left hand boundaries of words (whether contiguous enabled or not) -- can be useful in reducing spurious matches.
Will this be invoked by something in the typed search text, like "^mysearch" or something? Or is it a global option that you set for everything.

46
I have a hard time seeing how this can fit into copyright. You're not actually making a copy of the software/data, you're just modifying pieces of it in place.

This is even more innocuous than making backups of your own music, because with cars, there is no copy. You're not changing form, as if you want to be able to hear your CD on an MP3 player. No, you're going to continue to use the original software/data on precisely the one device that the manufacturer sold/licensed it to you for.

47
Living Room / Re: Why are car stereos so flimsy?
« on: March 31, 2015, 12:40 PM »
I haven't noticed a "flimsy" problem in car stereos. That especially true because moving parts are almost extinct. The motors, servos, etc., that were necessary in the classic autoreverse cassette deck, or CD players/changers, are much less useful today. My current car I've had for a year, and I have yet to put a CD into it, even though that's supported. All my music comes from Bluetooth, or a flashdrive, or radio. So the only moving parts are the buttons and knobs.

But what I have seen is that while the demands on the stereo's user interface and overall usability of interaction has increased, the makers haven't kept pace. The UI on my car stereo is just awful, I swear it must have been developed by a summer intern.

48
Living Room / Re: New Bill Would Repeal Patriot Act
« on: March 25, 2015, 01:19 PM »
I also haven't read it yet. But if it's as described, this is probably the most important potential legislation we'll see for years. Although DC isn't the best place for the discussion, I'd urge all of you to call your legislators and urge them to get on board.

49
This doesn't answer your question, but....

In the novel Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson discusses an approach that is probably both faster and more efficient.

They distribute a lichen everywhere they go on the planet, leaving behind the means to pump oxygen into the atmosphere. Every one of these little things grows and multiplies, powered just by the existing environment and sun. And that multiplication means that once things get going a little, you've got a huge mass of little factories converting atmosphere for you, all for free and at an ever-increasing rate.

50
The reference book bit really hit home with me, so true.  It is a painful experience.  However, I do have to say that on the flip side, I have found it extremely handy to be able to take screenshots or clip text and such things like that.  Interesting.  I wonder how this will go in the future...how do we marry the two together?

One thing that I do find pretty useful in this vein is Evernote. I can copy out interesting pieces from various sources, including images, and tag them appropriately. When I want easy access between them, I can just search for the appropriate tag(s) to focus on just those. But I don't want to derail the discussion into note taking (for which there are already a zillion threads around here) - I just mean to acknowledge your point, that the digital realm does have some good solutions in this area.

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