Messages

251

Living Room / Re: All-In-One Multi-Touch Computers - Thoughts?

« on: January 26, 2012, 03:23 PM »

Can't you just use generic display drivers for those monitors?

- Oshyan

252

Living Room / Re: Google Ends Privacy

« on: January 26, 2012, 02:07 AM »

I'm with Josh and Deo: I willingly signed up for these services and can choose to cancel them at any time should I be dissatisfied with the utility/privacy balance. This change is expected and reasonable *given how Google has operated for years, which we all knew about*. It's not as if Google suddenly became this big information aggregator and it's all weird, new, and scary. They may be consolidating *more* info in a single place and associating some with others, but it was all there before. Frankly if it helps make the services better, I'm in favor.

And the beautiful part is this: if it *doesn't* help make the services better, Google will eventually lose market share and we'll all jump on some new bandwagon that does it bigger and better. That's the simple truth that everyone upset at Google seems to ignore. Nobody forces anyone to use Google's services. Is it frustrating to some that Google forces you to have a G+ account to use an otherwise unrelated but still useful service like Youtube? Yup. But if you don't like it, use Vimeo. Perfectly valid alternative. Does it bother some people that Google's search results now incorporate social influences by default? Yes, in fact I'm one of them. But A: I can turn that off (thankfully) and B: if I don't like it, I can use one of the many fine alternatives already mentioned in this thread.

And let's not forget that other organizations have been doing similar things for ages. Want to download the Windows 7 beta? Oh, I'm sorry, you need a Windows Live ID. Want to use Skydrive? Same. How about Hotmail? Your hotmail *is* a Live ID. How about Yahoo? Oh, yep, same. Yahoo Mail, Flickr, etc. etc. all use a Yahoo ID to login. And let's not be naive and think that *they're* not all aggregating their data behind the scenes. If MS is *not* using data from their other services to influence search it's either because A: they haven't figured out how to do it yet (given their many blunders in the Internet space this would not surprise me) or B: they don't think it's the solution to the problems they and Google both have as search engines for the "wild and wooly west" of the Internet (e.g. spam, scams, etc.). It's certainly not because they're worried about your privacy.

In the end it seems like this sums up people's complaint pretty well: "Google provides a lot of awesome services for free and I want to use them, but they have control over the systems and their functioning and don't always change them in ways I like, and worse yet they insist on collecting data on me so they can make money from my use of their services." So basically people want something for nothing.

- Oshyan

253

Living Room / Re: It's a great day :-D

« on: January 26, 2012, 01:52 AM »

I reckon that's a drunk cat. What could be happier?

Thanks for sharing your happy. Happiness is like DRM-free digital goodness - it's easily shared, it can be copied freely and you don't lose any of yours if I get mine.

- Oshyan

254

Living Room / Re: Ripped off as an employee? "Free food" + the employment contract.

« on: January 26, 2012, 01:48 AM »

The numbers vary by whom/how you ask I guess, but bigger statistical samples tend to result in more accurate results. Let's consult GlassDoor.com:
http://www.glassdoor...-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm
Google is the #5 best place to work, with 735 reviews. Believe it or not IBM doesn't even make the top 30. But Monsanto does. My point is not that Google is great, just that those numbers don't mean a lot. Oh and Proletar doesn't appear to have Facebook. Er..?

- Oshyan

255

Living Room / Re: Can U Say Crap-O-Riffic??

« on: January 21, 2012, 04:55 PM »

Remind again why RAID is so awesome?

- Oshyan

256

Living Room / Re: Apple & Textbooks

« on: January 21, 2012, 04:52 PM »

The price of text books *is* insane, even used ones, even after you factor in the money you can recoup from reselling used ones back to the store. It's all pretty crazy. But Apple and forcing the purchase of $600+ hardware just to view vendor-proprietary text books is also not a solution. Unfortunately schools are so desperate for a magic bullet they'll try anything now, especially if it's from that darling of educational technology called Apple.

- Oshyan

257

Living Room / Re: Sansa Clip Zip: Wow!

« on: January 16, 2012, 12:01 AM »

Yes, beware USB for serious audio stuff. ASIO drivers are often not available, which means no support (without a kludge like "ASIO4All") in apps like Reason.

- Oshyan

258

Living Room / Re: "Save the internet"

« on: January 15, 2012, 05:00 PM »

To defeat big media, you need to put them out of business in a clear and true capitalist fashion such that it gives them no grounds to go running to the government begging for intervention.

-40hz (January 13, 2012, 03:42 PM)

Is the more correct capitalist solution to the problem not buying at all, or buying from their competitors (indies). I'm not sure why you don't see that as at least as good a solution -if not better - than simply not buying at all. In my view, not buying can more easily be translated into "rampant piracy" (because surely people need music/movies/tv!). Also I think it's a harder pill to swallow to buy *nothing* for most people. If they could just shift buying habits to independent media, it still sends - I think - a strong message and people get to continue enjoying (some) media. It also tells artists/producers where they should be going to get more customers, further weakening the major's position, whereas if *nothing* is selling, artists/producers may panic, buying into the RIAA/MPAA/etc. party line of legislation to survive, *or* just give up entirely. Giving them an effective route to success with their product (independent publishing/promotion) steers them in the right direction, I think.

- Oshyan

259

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR and Indexing Option - Feedback Requested

« on: January 12, 2012, 11:10 PM »

I'm pretty sure MFT-based searching is what we're talking about here, but it still requires creating and maintaining an index/database for faster searching.

- Oshyan

260

Living Room / Re: "Save the internet"

« on: January 12, 2012, 11:09 PM »

I reckon perhaps more effective than an outright boycott would be a massive move over to independent media. After all, with a sudden drop-off of sales and no corresponding rise in other legitimate media business, they can just claim piracy has had a huge jump and they need even more draconian laws to handle it.

- Oshyan

261

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy Remote access to another PC?

« on: January 12, 2012, 11:02 PM »

UltraVNC is my VNC client of choice. TightVNC has potentially better data encoding, but the new version lacks a display driver for mirroring, which makes it dog slow in my experience, especially over high bandwidth (e.g. LAN) connections.

- Oshyan

262

Living Room / Re: Hosters are impossible. (A.k.a. get me what I want, not what I don't want!)

« on: January 07, 2012, 08:33 PM »

They haven't been supported for over a year. Basically, open one tab, and login on your @gmail.com account. Next, go to mail.example.com and login there. Nowadays, they log you out on the other one: only a single mailbox active seems supported nowadays. In days gone by, I could have three of the buggers open for days, and that was convenient, especially on the email-checking area. Logging in every time I need to use another account however is a big big bummer.

-worstje (January 07, 2012, 06:36 PM)

Odd, I thought they added *explicit* support for this within the last year or two, where you now have a drop-down menu from which you can easily switch between accounts. And yes, you can have multiple accounts logged-in and open at the same time, on different domains. I currently have 3 separate accounts logged-in, 2 regular Gmail, one GApps on a domain. Or is that not what you meant?

- Oshyan

263

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Extender replacement due out in 2012. It's called Storage Spaces.

« on: January 07, 2012, 08:25 PM »

Wooo! Can't wait to put Win8 on my HTPC. Not only will Metro actually make sense there, but Storage Spaces will rock for big (HD) movie storage!

- Oshyan

264

Living Room / Re: If you had a medical implant would you rather it be closed or open source?

« on: January 05, 2012, 09:37 PM »

It's not science though, it's politics. The science is what tells us fluoride is unnecessary. It's politicians in various forms that keep fluoride living on in our water supply. And Stoic, I agree, I grew up drinking water out of a spring, now that I live in a city I try to only drink filtered tap water (takes out the fluoride and chlorine). Hardly any cavities, especially compared to my friends. But that's all anecdotal and not really necessary given there is "hard science" showing essentially no benefit, not to mention potential risks from ingesting it. As Renegade said, the only potentially beneficial effects shown were with *topical* application, and even then then are apparently better options for preventing tooth decay.

- Oshyan

265

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« on: January 05, 2012, 09:28 PM »

The other issue is the prices.  Most shareware is going to be minimum $20.  That's not much, but most people would consider it too expensive unless they were really serious about it.  The app prices ($2-5) are much more acceptable psychologically to users.  They'll buy it just to see.  That's where you want to be, even more so with Windows.

-superboyac (January 05, 2012, 04:48 PM)

I was under the impression that 99 cent apps sold a lot better than the $2-5 range. As I understand it the $2-5 range is still a really tough one even on mobile devices. I wouldn't be surprised if more expensive apps ($5-10 or even $20) actually sold better. It would jive with PC-side pricing realities where very often pricing your app at $20 actually results in a lower perception of value and thus lower sales than pricing at say $40 ($39.99). There was a lot of discussion on this in the Sagelight thread a while back.

- Oshyan

266

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« on: January 05, 2012, 04:28 PM »

I think the vast majority of people using Google, Facebook, and many other free services don't really (actively/consciously) recognize that they're the product, that the company is making money off of them. If they do know, they don't care that much, and it's not the reason they feel entitled to get things free nor expect to get new features implemented, etc. I don't know precisely the reason that *is* the case, but I don't think it's to do with the fact that money is being made somewhere. The *opposite* effect - paying customers generally being nicer - may have more to do with the "overjustification effect" than anything, in fact.

As to the potential success of "freemium", well of course there always needs to be *some* source of profit. But there's no reason that sales of an application needs to be its sole or primary source of income, or indeed generate any income at all. Many other industries have done this for years. Newspapers sell advertising. Websites have web ads. Free-to-play MMOs have add-ons and trinkets you can buy. Money is always being made somewhere, it's just a matter of how palatable it is to your overall user base.

- Oshyan

267

Living Room / Re: If you had a medical implant would you rather it be closed or open source?

« on: January 05, 2012, 04:21 PM »

Getting rather off-topic now I guess, but in regards to fluoride in the water, let's consider not what harm it may be causing (which is debated but documented), rather what *good* is it doing, if any. The evidence for any positive benefit from fluoride at concentrations as low as in our water supply is... scant. In other words we're ingesting fluoride for no good reason. There are a variety of theories, ranging on the "conspiracy spectrum" from "We had good reason to believe it was beneficial when the policy was implemented" to "We needed a good way to get rid of excess fluoride from other manufacturing processes" (the latter of which seems rather far-fetched but quite scary if even remotely true).

Regardless of the reason it's there, the only useful question in my view is whether it actually does any *good*. Continuing something simply because it does not/may not do any harm is not reason enough to continue.

- Oshyan

268

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: FINAL: The Official WriteUp for the NANY 2012 Event!

« on: January 05, 2012, 12:42 AM »

Congrats everyone and thank you for sharing your coding talent and time with us!

- Oshyan

269

Living Room / Re: Upgrading RAM amount; please help me choose.

« on: January 04, 2012, 10:11 PM »

Or you could save all the swapping around, which is *hands-on* time, and just let Memtest run over night. But I'll agree I've done my share of swapping things about for diagnoses purposes too. Usually when I'm impatient.

- Oshyan

270

Developer's Corner / Re: Web designer needed to convert a Joomla template to a WordPress theme

« on: January 04, 2012, 10:09 PM »

9 times out of 10 I find 1 or more references to say the logo file and then I can replace them on a case-by-case basis or do an automated search-and-replace.

-JavaJones (January 04, 2012, 05:36 PM)

That's not quite what I meant though - I know I can be long-winded and that doesn't help clarity. It's not about finding the image. It's about making your own image, with your text and maybe a logo, that fits the style of the theme. If you take the theme I used as an example and replace the brown-and-blue "obsidian" header picture with, say, Google's logo, the effect will be rather crappy, wouldn't you agree?

So basically when you buy a commercial template like this, you may also need to buy the services of a professional graphic designer who will make a logo for you that goes well with the theme. That, or you have to name your site "Obsidian"

-tranglos (January 04, 2012, 07:02 PM)

Ahhh yes, I see what you mean. Unfortunately that's much more a matter of artistic/design skill (which I too lack). As you say, hiring a graphic designer would be the best bet in that case, but not cheap.

- Oshyan

271

Living Room / Re: What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

« on: January 04, 2012, 10:07 PM »

Ads are common and are often integrated into the video (overlaid actually). The video uploader doesn't put them there but they *can* benefit from it if they sign up for ad revenue share or something. Hence the benefit to the uploader.

- Oshyan

272

Living Room / Re: Upgrading RAM amount; please help me choose.

« on: January 04, 2012, 06:04 PM »

J-Mac, nice one on the new Puget system! Let us know what you think of it (and your overall experience), I still haven't reported on mine, but I'm still loving it 2+ months later.

SBAC: Your BSODs could be Comodo, that's definitely something I'd check early on, but do seem potentially hardware-related. Run a memory scan (Memtest86+ is my recommendation). Also, did you actually move/change any hardware *inside* the case recently? If so you might have bumped something...

- Oshyan

273

Living Room / Re: What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

« on: January 04, 2012, 05:56 PM »

I'm glad they show view numbers on search results, I use those as indicators a lot of times and while total number of views sometimes steers me wrong (depending on the search), it's still useful. But use thumbs up/down numbers on search results would also be nice.

As to whether there's money in this, do you see ads when you watch the videos? If so then your answer is most emphatically yes, there is money in it.

- Oshyan

274

General Software Discussion / Re: movie database (offline, standalone)?

« on: January 04, 2012, 05:53 PM »

http://www.imdb.com/interfaces#plain
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/misc/movies/database/

- Oshyan

275

Developer's Corner / Re: Web designer needed to convert a Joomla template to a WordPress theme

« on: January 04, 2012, 05:36 PM »

Concrete 5 has some niceties but IMO is no better than Joomla in terms of overall comprehensibility, and a large number of its better extensions are commercial, unlike Joomla and Wordpress. If the capability you want is part of C5's default setup I *might* recommend it - its front-end editing and previewing capability with built-in versioning is pretty dynamite - but overall I'm not a huge fan.

Regarding how to replace a logo, I'm far, far from an HTML or CSS expert, but I manage to muddle through stuff like this fairly often. The main method I use with that sort of thing is a combination of "inspect element" (Chrome, or Firebug in Firefox, etc.), finding an image name or relevant CSS id, etc., and then doing a full text search on a folder full of my CMS files using e.g. PSPad (my editor of choice). 9 times out of 10 I find 1 or more references to say the logo file and then I can replace them on a case-by-case basis or do an automated search-and-replace. That's just an idea of how to get started, but if you were able to code anything at all, as you said about Wordpress, then I'd say your chances of understanding this stuff are well above mine and it's worth knowing a *bit* even if you *do* have someone else convert the template.

I think you should take Carol up on her offer to solve your Joomla issues though.

- Oshyan