Topics

1

Living Room / should I ragequit?

« on: May 02, 2011, 08:37 AM »

How can I still talk with you with you people if you condone even appluad killing a person, even more so killing without trial? I mean where is justice without a justice?

I am so sad, I don't know what to do. This used to be the nicest forum in the world. But right now I find it more and more repulsive. This is actually the fifth attempt trying to express my feelings in a more or less coherent way.

Should I ragequit? Should I speak up in that forum? Should I stfu&gtfo?

Is this still my forum?

I go cry now...

2

Living Room / The great toilet paper debate

« on: April 27, 2011, 06:00 PM »

Graphjam answers the eternal question.

3

General Review Discussion / Day of the Review - link/create/renew reviews

« on: April 22, 2011, 08:01 AM »

Looking back at the superexceptionally successful fund raiser campaign I thought it might be a good idea to have a campaign for reviews as well. Since reviews are not as essential as funds, the effort will be less: not a whole month of frantic updates and watching the moneymeter grow but maybe something less elaborate. Let me elaborate (haha, pun intended):

How about we have a month-long campaign for reviews, but only set aside one day of each week. That way it would run for a month --enough time for the newsletter readers to catch up-- but won't occupy people too much. The idea is to look for reviews on other sites and post about them on review day; or to review older reviews and renew them (if that's possible: some of our reviews are very exhaustive, redoing them could become exhausting); or to post newly created reviews on this very day.

I want to include external sites so we can build a library of reviews if you will. There might be lists of reviews out there, but I don't think they are maintained by the fine Donationcoder folks.

What's your take on this?
In our irc channel this idea was regarded with favor

Which day should we pick? Should we try for a month and optionally extend for another month?

4

Living Room / c-base logo animation in public place

« on: March 30, 2011, 08:30 AM »

[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

A member of c-base recently took footage from a public place, Alexanderplatz, in Berlin and rendered a 3D animation of our club's logo on top of the world time clock, which is sadly not on the map...

It's quite cool because people seem to look at the twisting logo

5

General Software Discussion / Firefox 4 RC in 64 bit for Linux

« on: March 19, 2011, 09:10 AM »

I wanted Firefox 4 in 64 bit, just like the rest of my system (except that bloody skype), so I dug and poked and found what I was looking for.

Basically I took the actual download URL and hoped the mirror server would let me browse its directory listings, where I then found the archive.

6

Living Room / blogpost: 25 Things I Hate About Google, Revisited 5 Years Later

« on: March 19, 2011, 06:55 AM »

[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

Five years ago, I wrote a story called “25 Things I Hate About Google.” (...) I thought it was worth revisiting that story on its five year anniversary, to see how many of those “hates” have been fixed.
(...)
In my story below, I’ll provide what I originally wrote and how the situation looks today. Each section will begin “Hate” if things haven’t changed, “Love” or “Like” if there’s been a fix, and there are some “Mixed” and “N/A” along the way.

-http://searchengineland.com/25-things-i-hate-about-google-revisited-5-years-later-67969

This article reaffirms my general, vague dislike for google search. I have not really compared google to my favorite search engine duckduckgo. But DDG feels much better than google search.

It's quite an exhaustive revisit, but there is a scorecard at the end, so you don't have to read the whole thing

7

Living Room / Low Dosage Phenomena

« on: March 19, 2011, 06:41 AM »

From one of my feeds related to science comes this snippet:

Coulter and O'Reilly, arguing over science. America really has become an idiocracy.

-http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/will_radiation_hormesis_protec.php

On the one hand it is easy to laugh about fools, but I think these particular fools are dangerous because of their influence on other people.

Anyway, the actual article is longer and explains things better and more coherent (for me at last).

8

Living Room / Nice close-up pictures of African volcano

« on: March 18, 2011, 08:40 AM »

The Big Picture usually has many striking pictures of various events and locations, and this one is not any different. A couple of scientists or researchers want to get REALLY CLOSE to an active volvano.

Above you see my favorite picture which shows a person really close to the crater and also gives a sense of scale. There is another picture with a person standing right on top of the rim! 

I believe all the nice pictures, including the one above, are by photographer Olivier Grunewald.

9

General Software Discussion / the vimperator comandeth

« on: March 13, 2011, 03:34 PM »

Yesterday my browser was misbehaving, but I could make it do what I wanted. I considered it challenging enough to share the experience

I added the style definitions to userChrome.css, restarted firefox and lo and behold — those bloody buttons where still there, taking up screen estate!

10

Living Room / Nice summary about hackers and Chaos Computer Club

« on: February 12, 2011, 01:31 PM »

BBC produced a nice summary about hackers in general, about CCC in particular, and about the last 27c3 in detail. I like this piece, because it does without fear mongering.

BBC News - Chaos Computer Club hackers 'have a conscience'

11

Developer's Corner / Programming Contest in German Freezine

« on: December 13, 2010, 05:06 AM »

I know y'all are busy with NANY but there is a programming contest in a free German online magazine, to which I want to draw your attention.

They manage to make a new issue each month using free software such as LateX. I wish I had more time to take part in this; but maybe some of you guys want to take a shot at it - there is win to be had!

Here are the German instructions, but despite being a German magazine they also provide English instructions.


I know 6 days is kinda short, but you guys might also be kinda smart

12

Adventures of Baby Cody / Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany

« on: December 02, 2010, 04:57 PM »

Cody has arrived!

At least that's who I assume to be in the package, because customs was kind enough to show what's inside:




Baby Cody was VERY eager to finally get out, after having endured such a long time in the envelope, being tossed this way and that, stamped, shipped, lugged, hurled; everybody would try to get out! So he poked through the envelope:



A little later he was almost free:

13

Developer's Corner / Challenge: algorithm for counting progressively/exponentially

« on: September 16, 2010, 01:56 PM »

I have tasked myself with writing a function that will count up to a number in a dynamic fashion, that means it'll start with large steps that become smaller and smaller as the counter reaches the target. So while at first it would start counting in the thousands, at the end it would only increment using 1.

However, it seems I have lost all mathematical ability since leaving school. I cannot for the time of my life come up with the algorithm! There is only half-ideas and flashes, but nothing like "start like so, then for every iteration check this and that, calculate the increment by whatever and increment"; I can design and implement complex applications, but I cannot see this one algorithm.

When plotting the counter value it should look similar to this image (taken from a wikipedia article about Sigmoid functions^w), more precisely like the upper right quadrant: it increases steeply at first and then flattens ever more.

So here goes the challenge:

Can anyone tell or show me the algorithm (easy, I think) and can anybody explain this algorithm to me, maybe step by step.

14

Living Room / help me help cryptome.org

« on: March 07, 2010, 09:51 AM »

What is Cryptome

I'll just quote freely from their website:

Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those.

It is similar to the popular wikileaks. And like wikileaks they accept donations.

What's the background?
The other day I received my first paycheck in a long time and decided to donate small amounts to various organizations and persons: journalists that still are journalists and have not become press release distributors; organizations that help, support or otherwise 'enable' whistleblowers; and of course donationcoder.com!

Paypal does not want me to help them
A person I trust recommended I help out cryptome as well, so I donated 25.00 USD. A few days later I received 2 DVDs in my mailbox. But shortly before that, they seemed to have refunded my donation completely. It seems, paypal no longer wants to work with cryptome

Can you help me?
Now, I still want to at least pay for the DVDs I received. I am looking for someone in the USA to send a check to the person behind cryptome:

John Young, Cryptome, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024
Checks/Money Orders: Make out to "John Young"

-http://cryptome.org/0001/cryptome-sar.htm

But only AFTER I have sent this someone the appropriate amount in DonationCredits or "directly" via paypal.


I hope someone is willing to help me out here Feel free to contact me via PM or, if you want more privacy, use this PGP-key to protect your email to me.

15

Developer's Corner / Programmers Challenged, Gauntlet Thrown

« on: March 03, 2010, 02:56 PM »

The Challenge

I hereby challenge all of you. That’s right, I’m taking off my hypothetical still-wish-they-were-in-style white glove and slapping you in the face with it.

 

It goes on with more details about the challenge and comes to

The rules:

   1. You need to write one program, every day. Duh. Any language. You can not duplicate functionality. This means a Hello World in Java is fine, but don’t go and make a Hello World in Python afterward.
   2. You need to post the code online. If it’s an embedded project, post a picture/video of it working. Everyday, I will take the lead on collecting these pictures and posting them the next day online.
   3. The deadline for submission of your code/pic/video is MIDNIGHT that day. The result is posted the next day on our website.

So, if you have a program that is just waiting to be released, head over to hackypedia and read the challenge, then pick up the glove and slap em with your awesomeness

I think it's a good way for us donationcoders to draw more attention to our supergreat community 

16

Living Room / looking for a movie: this time with vikingers or so, bearded men for sure

« on: February 17, 2010, 02:59 PM »

After my last quest was completed so quickly, I once again turn to you to help me find an old movie.

This time it will be even more difficult because I only remember one scene: it is snowing, a lot of people (maybe the whole tribe) are in the mountains. They are progressing slowly because the men in front use debranched trees to pack the snow on the path they want to take. The men are standing shoulder to shoulder and lift their trees to then ram them on the snow, lift the tree, advance a tree-width and ram down the trees again. The other men are behind them to switch when one is tired. The rest of the people are carrying lots of stuff.

Maybe they had to relocate because of disaster, disease. Or maybe they are fleeing from war or so. They surely are not taking this trip for fun.

I do not remember on which continent it is supposed to take place. I doubt it's newer than 1995. I also do not remember if it was an action movie, fantasy, documentary, cinema production or b-movie. I still hope you can help me! 

17

General Software Discussion / Praise: Fastspring

« on: January 26, 2010, 12:35 PM »

I have to sing praises for Fastspring.

A few weeks ago I bought the game Machinarium from Amanita and liked it very much. So later I bought their Christmas pack as well. It's a cute game!

But then I lost all my data on my harddisk due to a failed OS update and a botched rescue mission. When I wanted to play the game I realized of course it was no longer there. I then sent an email to Fastspring and explained the situation and also provided the payment information I got from my paypal account. Just one day later I received emails which contained the download links! 

There was no going back and forth, no double or triple checking who I was; no automatic answer like 'did you read the faq' or stuff like that.

So hats off to Fastspring for excellent customer service! 

18

Living Room / Third DC meet-up of the German faction

« on: November 30, 2009, 01:55 PM »

I would like to invite all the Berlin-based users and friends of donationcoder.com to the third get-together.

Again, c-base seems like a good place to meet. So, I have decided this meet-up shall take place on Sunday, January 3rd at 6pm in the mainhall of c-base.

Participants will receive one super-awesome mug, specially created for the meet-ups at c-base. If you already received one such mug, you may not get another one though The mugs are huge with a handle large enough for the whole hand!

key	value
date	January 3, 2010
time	6:00 pm or 18:00
place	c-base
contact (if forum doesn't work)	[email protected]

I hope to see some more faces in January!

19

Living Room / looking for an old science-fiction movie

« on: November 27, 2009, 02:34 PM »

Many (more than 10) years ago I watched a science-fiction movie. I do not remember much of it though, just glimpses of scenes.

• In one scene the astronaut is driving on the moon surface in a moon buggy. After he passes, a robot rises from the dust and looks after the buggy. Like all other robots in that movie it has a red eye.
• In another scene two astronauts finds a human skeleton in a brightly lit room that could be a control room or so. Shortly after this scene, insectoid red-eyed robots attack and are fended off with machine guns.
• Towards the end of the movie an astronaut seems to sit in an escape pod, the ramp is aimed at the earth.

That is everything I can recall from this movie.

Do you have any ideas whatsoever, which movie this might be?

20

Living Room / Helvetica makes google beautiful again, greasemonkey scripts for tired eyes

« on: October 08, 2009, 06:59 AM »

I extensively use a few applications from google: mail, reader, calendar. From the beginning I was put off by their design but had gotten used to it.

Then I heard about Google Redesigned which was different and therefore better then the default look. It is quite a solid extension, with only a few very minor kinks.

But then I lifehacker mentioned helvetireader, helvetimail, or helvetical (I forgot which of those 3), and I became very much intrigued.

These are scripts for either greasemonkey or stylish; I chose the greasemonkey variant because I already had greasemonkey installed.

What these do is to dramatically reduce the visual noise on the applications' websites. I copied (copying is not stealing) screenshots from each project's website. Behold the beauty of Helvetica!

Helvetimail:


Helvetireader:


Helvetical:



Between Google Redesigned (GR) and Helveti*, I am currently strongly in favor of Helvetica. However, GR integration is smoother: the new style is active "before" the google application is loaded, while the greasemonkey scripts seem to wait until the browser finished loading to then activate their style.

Both GR and Helveti* are much more visually appealing than google's default look.

21

Living Room / recommendation wanted: which wireless network device, not usb?

« on: October 05, 2009, 02:22 AM »

For the "classroom" in my club I am looking for wireless network cards.

They should not be USB devices, as these tend to be borrowed but never returned. So they should go into, say, the PCI slot.

They must work with linux.

I need about a dozen of these. I already have a WLAN router thingie that supports this .n-draft, which people tell me is supposed to make things faster.

Which device can you recommend?

22

Living Room / Second official DC Germany meet-up

« on: August 18, 2009, 06:06 PM »

I want to announce the upcoming DC Germany meet-up in Berlin. It will happen between Agust 20th and 31st. This is on rather short notice but I only just remembered to post this.

Anyway, to quickly find a date I created a doodle... erm date-finding thing.

hadez and I are already in, regardless of the date. So if you prefer a certain day, mark it so. The day with the most votes wins. It propably won't be the 20th or 21st, though

23

Adventures of Baby Cody / Germany

« on: July 25, 2009, 04:57 AM »

I want to host BabyCody in Germany!

Naturally I'll show him around c-base

24

Living Room / stunning 3D projections on buildings

« on: July 24, 2009, 06:22 AM »

These two movies are very cool:

http://vimeo.com/4238052
http://vimeo.com/5677879

It's simply amazing what they can show on buildings! Color me impressed  

Edit:

here are some screenshots:

25

Developer's Corner / A Brief ... History of Programming Languages

« on: May 08, 2009, 07:55 PM »

Here is another attempt at explaining the history of programming languages:

1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave "hello, world" into a tapestry.

-http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Very insightful!