Messages

101

General Software Discussion / Re: programming language for math

« on: August 11, 2012, 05:18 PM »

I've read very good things about python with numpy. In particular, I found this article interesting: 10 Reasons Python Rocks for Research (And a Few Reasons it Doesn’t). I've never used it with that intent, though. And I agree with f0dder: you need to clarify a bit better your question

102

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DC Mug/TShirt Designs that would be nice to have an artist for..

« on: August 11, 2012, 04:26 PM »

Explorer

-sword (August 11, 2012, 01:56 PM)

Is cody drinking a beer?   (JK, of couse )

103

Living Room / Re: Staple of people from State and Europe !

« on: August 10, 2012, 03:09 PM »

The state has ZERO business in telling people what they can and cannot eat. None.

-Renegade (August 10, 2012, 05:57 AM)

I guess this depends a bit on where you live, but around here, the state pays for medical bills. And I don't want to pay the medical bills of the guy who decides to have his every meal at mcdonalds (even though I do have to, since there's nothing stopping this particular example)

104

Living Room / Re: Typing Speed Competition!

« on: August 10, 2012, 01:22 PM »

My score (and I feel like nudone: I'm constantly correcting my misspellings, bah):

105

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Axcrusik_s_grid Bug

« on: August 10, 2012, 03:53 AM »

There's something very wrong, if maximize and undo do not work on edgegrid also :/
Which OS are you running?

106

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Axcrusik_s_grid Bug

« on: August 08, 2012, 02:28 PM »

Hi! Welcome do DC!

Can you please confirm if in the other grids, the minimize button works? I can't understand why it wouldn't work in that specific grid and work on the others..

107

Living Room / Re: Typing Speed Competition!

« on: August 06, 2012, 05:21 PM »

(see attachment in previous post)
Mistyped soon with mouser, just to prove it's me

-Josh (August 06, 2012, 03:48 PM)

Ah Ah Ah Ah  

108

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« on: August 06, 2012, 04:57 PM »

Lost is definitelly a classic, even though it got terrible somewhere in the middle (golf episode, anyone?). It did get way better towards the end

Also, a +1 for sherlock: great actors (I love the moriarty character), good directing and an awesome story.
If you're a fan of science fiction with a pinch of humour, I recommend the last Dr.Who season, I had a blast wathching it

109

General Software Discussion / Re: SciTE regex replacement

« on: August 03, 2012, 06:54 PM »

Right, that makes sense. Then you need the expression to match the first character in the way you were doing before.
One way to solve the problem is to use:
regex: ^([a-Z])
replace: _$$1
This means: match the first character, replace with "_" concatenated with the character that was matched.
Depending on the regex engine, the "(" can also be "\(", and the "$$1" can be "$1" or "\1". (yep, it's annoying that not everybody follows the same syntaxes).

110

General Software Discussion / Re: SciTE regex replacement

« on: August 03, 2012, 06:03 PM »

If you try to replace "^[a-zA-Z]" with an underscore, it'll always match the first character, it's supposed to. Have you tried using only "^" (which denotes only the start of the line)?

111

General Software Discussion / Re: mswin vs linux in academia

« on: August 03, 2012, 04:05 AM »

Here's my opinion as a phd student in the systems area:
I believe it has absolutely no relation with ease of use of the operating system. As 40hz mentioned, at this level everyone could learn any of the OSs with ease.
For the guys around me, it seems to be a combination of several factors:
1 - there's a significant larger body of work for unix/linux (more people are using it, which makes others change too). example: my experience is that the software available from recent years of the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (the top conference in the Systems area) is mostly prepared to be ran in linux (despite much of it being cross-platform).
2 - we do much stuff that builds on industrial work (I'm thinking of Apache Cassandra^w or red hat infinispan) for which it is easier to find support for the linux platform.
3 - we build some stuff for the industry, which prefer to receive stuff for their platform, typically linux.
4 - our processing grids are in linux (using Condor High-Throughput Computing System^w). I don't even know if there's anything comparable in windows.
5 - I have this notion that for those who work lower on the stack (kernel level?), it's either harder or impossible to do it in Windows due to being a closed platform (I have no experience in this and may be wrong, though).
6 - much of our experience during the university is directed at linux/unix.
7 - the availability of the tools we use (gnuplot^w and graphviz^w are the only ones that occur, but there are many others): almost everything is an apt-get away from being installed, and if necessary we can install them in the servers to run with larger datasets. In windows, they are either harder or even impossible to install.

For the reasons above, frequently people use either linux or mac for their desktops, and linux for the servers. It is also frequent to go to meetings with other universities and find the whole room filed with macs. Last year's SOSP was here in Lisbon and I attended it, and my experience was that in general mostly only the people working at MS research use Windows and the percentage of people using mac is much larger than in the general population.

Having some kind of unix on the desktop simplifies the interactions with the servers (in our case, we have about 28linux and 1dual-boot (linux+windows), without taking into account the computing grids which are all linux). I have in the past used windows with cygwin to achieve a similar result, but felt that I was trying to "patch" windows making it look more like linux instead of using the real thing, and eventually had to change.

There's a notable exception to everything I said above: there are a few guys in our research group who had a few microsoft scholarships some years ago. Those guys have built stuff for windows for those projects and are still using it today as their main desktop.
Also, this applies only to the Systems area. There are other areas which I suppose are not as tied-in to linux since their tools are more windows-centric. (I'm thinking of the people-machine interface guys or information management. But I may be wrong )

112

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« on: August 01, 2012, 12:41 PM »

Immersive Explorer is designed to be an alternative to the default file explorer included in Windows (known as Windows Explorer).
It aims to provide an "immersive" experience to the user by focusing on the content rather than hiding it behind useless icons and large window chrome and borders. It will also avoid the user from having to open different applications and navigate between multiple windows when doing things as simple as viewing a picture.
For example, when the user want to see a photo, instead of opening Windows Photo Viewer in a new window, the photo will be displayed directly in the Immersive Explorer window.

-http://www.julien-manici.com/immersive_explorer/

I actually think it looks pretty good, I'd give it a try if I had windows.

113

Living Room / Re: New version of Chrome can WATCH and LISTEN

« on: August 01, 2012, 12:20 PM »

If you don't like it, just put up a mirror facing the camera and let Google reflect on that!

-cranioscopical (August 01, 2012, 11:39 AM)

You. are. awesome.

114

Living Room / Re: Google Fiber

« on: August 01, 2012, 03:34 AM »

What's the catch?

-Renegade (July 27, 2012, 04:38 PM)

Yes, especially for the "free" version!

-jgpaiva (July 28, 2012, 05:15 AM)

• Connection speed is capped at "regular internet speeds" ("up to" 5mbs down/1Mbs up - but no indication of the lowest speed) on free version.
• $300 up front & non-refundable if you upgrade to the faster speed later on
• Lifetime guarantee = 7 year service commitment if Google decides to bail out
• Privacy. Everything you do online will be data mined by Google. Count on it.
• Bug Brother is watching you! As was alluded to earlier, don't even think of doing anything that may be illegal on Google's network. So bye-bye to "sharing" copyrighted media, ferquenting the warez torrents, hacker darknets, and many other things you may currently enjoy, depending on your personal tastes. And expect full behind the scenes "voluntary cooperation" with any government snooping requests regardless of any public hand wringing over it by Google.

But the single biggest catch I can see is simply waiting for it to be available in your locale.

-40hz (July 31, 2012, 04:42 PM)

300USD is pretty steep, but still it's 3USD/month for 7 years, which is what, 10 times better than the alternatives there?
Privacy: I agree, but I'm not sure if the others aren't doing the same.
What do you mean with "bug brother"? You think they'd be more strict than regular ISPs? Why?

I'm starting to agree with wraith808: looks like it's a market push, and they'll bail out if it doesn't work out well for them. At least the consumer is the only one who comes out winning, this time

115

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« on: July 30, 2012, 12:35 PM »

...

-jgpaiva (July 30, 2012, 09:27 AM)

Understood, but it fit nicely with my dim view of corporate attitudes.

-Stoic Joker (July 30, 2012, 12:16 PM)

OK, carry on, then

116

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« on: July 30, 2012, 09:27 AM »

So the contestants are given trinkets for theirown "safety" ...

-Stoic Joker (July 30, 2012, 06:46 AM)

Well, that's my conjecture, don't know if there's any truth behind it
Personally, if I got an olympics medal, I would never sell it regardless of its value, so I'd actually prefer getting a cheaper medal and some money, since the medal is just sentimental.

117

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« on: July 29, 2012, 05:37 PM »

@jgpaiva but aren't the medals more valuable as collectibles than for melting down?  Stolen Superbowl rings likely go for more as-is on the black market rather then melted down for the metal.

-MilesAhead (July 29, 2012, 05:17 PM)

I agree, but now imagine how much they'd be worth if they were in fact true gold!

118

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« on: July 29, 2012, 04:54 PM »

Well, if I was an athlete and someone asked me if I'd prefer a 100% gold medal which I would never sell + no money; or a 1%gold medal + a large sum in money, I'd go for the latter every day of the week. Medals are symbolic, it's a good thing they are not gold: I don't think they are the kind of thing that should be ever sold.

Also, Phelp's house would be robbed day-in-day-out if his 17 medals were 100% gold (the alternative would be that he wouldn't be able to look at them every day unless he went to the bank ).

119

Living Room / Re: Google Fiber

« on: July 28, 2012, 05:15 AM »

What's the catch?

-Renegade (July 27, 2012, 04:38 PM)

Yes, especially for the "free" version!

120

DC Gamer Club / Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Free!

« on: July 27, 2012, 09:31 AM »

I wish that when companies like this decide to discontinue products, they at least made it open source. It could be so useful for someone who's making their own flight simulator.

121

Living Room / Re: Office Chair Curling - a new olympic sport?

« on: July 27, 2012, 08:31 AM »

Triple points if every occupant answers the knock.

-cranioscopical (July 27, 2012, 08:30 AM)

Too easy, you just have to yell "fire! fire!" as loud as you can

122

DC Gamer Club / Re: Portal 2 gets a new level maker! Woohoo - thousands of new levels

« on: July 26, 2012, 10:44 AM »

Congrats, Carol!

123

Living Room / Re: Big brother Microsoft listens in to your Skype IMs

« on: July 26, 2012, 08:11 AM »

Now that I think of this, would it be that hard (from a technical point of view) to encrypt voip calls in a similar way to how gtalk can be encrypted?
Also, can other clients access skype's network or does it only work with skype's client (and facebook's?) ?

124

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: July 25, 2012, 12:11 PM »

Actually I found #1 (Desenrascanco) rather interesting considering I'm half Portuguese ... and tend to function best in chaos. One of my favorite sayings is: The only thing you can plan on is that nothing will go according to plan.

-Stoic Joker (July 25, 2012, 11:53 AM)

I'm Portuguese and I can tell you 100%: improvisation is NOT one of the most valued skills here, especially when it's tied to lack of organization! Also, this lack of method and organization is probably one of the causes for our country to be in financial difficulties right now, in fact

[edit] I'm taking this too seriously, though. Hoping for cracked to provide some real facts is idiotic [/edit]

125

Post New Requests Here / Re: Request. Add feature to the free program

« on: July 24, 2012, 06:46 PM »

Given that altdrag is written in C, yes. It would be a considerable amount of work to understand how the program is implemented, and then I'd have to learn how to create the hooks for the middle button in C (which I have zero previous experience). I'm sorry, but if that's what you need, I really can't help anymore