Messages

226

Living Room / Re: Charities

« on: May 07, 2011, 02:02 AM »

Are you just curious about our habits or compiling some sort of statistics? The way your post is phrased gives me the feeling you're asking for more than simply curiousity. I've got no problems voting but I'm curious why I'd be voting, if that makes sense.

227

Living Room / Re: Save Stargate Universe

« on: May 07, 2011, 12:47 AM »

I'm good with most of the rest of your assessment also, except the Andromeda outfits, they were just fine in my book.

-Stoic Joker (May 06, 2011, 11:51 AM)

Oh, it worked, don't get me wrong. It was very pleasant to watch. I just think I'd have taken the show a teensy bit more seriously had her costumes been toned down a little: she was the bloody AI of a military battlecruiser like ship.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an episode from Doctor Who (the latest series) about statues that were actually aliens...and that was a freakingly good episode! So if there are more of those I am inclined to follow that series as well.

-Shades (May 06, 2011, 11:55 PM)

There's a couple of those. The first one involving those was definitely among the very best (I think it was THE best episode at the time of its first airing). Did it focus on some random girl visiting some house, or did the episode play in some sort of giant cave? (Those are the only two I can readily recall, although I think there was a third episode with those too.)

Either way, there's a number of really excellent episodes, and I can recommend watching them. The last two Doctors were/are awesome.

228

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 06, 2011, 11:10 AM »

Oh, that sounds good. I approve.

229

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 06, 2011, 09:45 AM »

Amen, brother, amen!

Exceptions have their own issues. They are nice, but they also have a certain degree of non-determinism attached to them from the coders point-of-view once one starts dealing with 'black boxes', also known as functions-in-other-libraries-you-do-not-have-the-source-for.

I have a lot of reasons to dislike Java, but one thing it does right (in my opinion) is that it requires an explicit listing of exceptions a function can throw, or it will throw a compile error for an error not caught. It requires you to be aware of the state your program can be in at the time an error occurs, assuming you do not subscribe to the stick-your-head-under-the-sand school of programming. Exceptions as they are in C#, C++ and related languages are little more than GOTOs with a bit more structure - but in the end, the flow of execution can still be very abhorrent and unclear, leading to bugs that by their very nature tend to happen in unusual situations and are thus hard to find and reproduce.

230

Living Room / Re: More Personal Data $old...

« on: May 06, 2011, 09:16 AM »

That news is hardly new. I think it is 2 weeks old at the least by now.

Either way, it is worrying.

231

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 06, 2011, 09:15 AM »

I actually like the fact that GC takes care of a lot of that, since freeing the memory has nothing to do with compacting the memory, which GC takes care of also.  And the costs of doing this are not insignificant.  If the item hasn't survived GC once it passes from scope, it's very unlikely that it will be around in any case.

-wraith808 (May 06, 2011, 08:51 AM)

I could live with the implicit free() far better if it was at least deterministic to doing the Dispose() and destructor stuff the moment it passes out of scope. But I do not know when it happens. It could be ages until it goes through its cleanup cycle, and whether or not destructors run can simply make a giant difference on decisions taken later on in the program. But it is not deterministic, so I advocate being explicit, but that works best if it is required or the point is indeed moot.

you know... to me an explicit free() or too is just like capitalizing your ts and spell tjekking and all that stuff, an putting your dots and periods and shit after your sentences it certainly makes it a hole lot moar readable dont you think

232

Living Room / Re: Save Stargate Universe

« on: May 06, 2011, 08:29 AM »

I'll give you that one hands down. SciFi Friday used to be mandatory on our household. Right up until they ruined it with (2 hours of) wrestling. What moron decided that qualified as Science Fiction?!?

-Stoic Joker (May 06, 2011, 06:29 AM)

That's... ugh. I've got no words to express my disappointment in the world right now.

On Star Gate in general, it seems like they're really just been spit-balling in the hopes of reproducing the chemistry of the original series. But it's hard to clone Jack O'Neil. He really made the show work, at least for me (McGuiver fan).

-Stoic Joker (May 06, 2011, 06:29 AM)

Correct. Except that they are trying to turn it into a more modern Star Trek Voyager at the same time, or a Stargate Atlantis without that annoying McKay and a darker feel. They're not making their own story, but they rip off stuff left and right and middle and inbetween. I know everything steals from everything, but you are supposed to make it mesh rather than have it act like a textbook case of Televised Multiple Personality Disorder.

Talking about Star Trek.. I really want them to make a more proper Star Trek series again. Enterprise was sad. I'd love to see a show dedicated to the TNG/DS9/Voyager universe, except focus on the 24th century with the Timetravel Command or whatever it was called. Time travel can be cheesy, but the current examples of the scifi genre have no problems being cheesy either as this thread has already proven. With the right touch, I think they could make it into quite a nice and varied show.

Farscape I could never get into; I think I saw one season but that's about where my ability to stomach it ended. Firefly was nice while it lasted. One show I miss is Andromeda, and not because of the interesting outfits the computer-girl wears (which imo could have been toned down). I liked the setting and the ambition of one man trying to restore a nation piece by piece, which had more focus and potential than many other shows I've seen.

The final show I will mention is Doctor Who. There's no competition for that british case of brilliance. The last bunch of Doctor's have all been excellent.

233

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 06, 2011, 08:03 AM »

Lambda expressions and anonymous delegates are 2 examples where "scope" kind of alters meaning.

You can have a method finish, but your lambda expression code can still be running. They're nice, terse ways to express functionality, but they come from functional programming and look somewhat odd in the context of OO programming, and are counter-intuitive when you look at them the first time.

I'm sure there are other reasons for object lifetime not being entirely determined by scope, but that's one look at "scope".

-Renegade (May 05, 2011, 03:57 PM)

I fully agree, those things do change matters. My particular rant is towards the following C# pattern:

[Select]

public bool SomethingSomething(string filename)
{
    SomeClass sc = new SomeClass();
    // or ...
    SomeClass sc2 = obtainClassForFile(filename);

    // Do stuff
    sc.DoStuffWith(sc2);

    // The end.
}

Nobody ever frees sc nor sc2. Should I have used using() on this so Dispose() gets called automatically? Maybe. Or maybe not. This pattern works just fine for temporary 'local' types like arrays and the sort.

Woop de wooping wah wah, the GC helps me out by taking the worry of free()ing things away. But now nobody knows WHEN it happens exactly. And there is the pain of garbage collectors running and slowing down your app as a result unless they are very well optimized. Most of the time, it makes no difference.

But it messes big time with our ability, as programmers, to recognise bad situations. I am a big fan of Joel Spolsky's Making Code Look Wrong article, even though I fail to use those techniques properly half the time as I code too many little things where it does not matter rather than big systems with different sorts of data where such consistency does shine. It explains very well how for code to be maintainable and understandable after you have written it, recognisable patterns are ideal.

In the case of local variables I gave above, you cannot ever be certain you used it properly, unless you decide to throw a using() statement around every temporary object you create (and that will lead to code that is overly verbose which has its own issues). The simpler code I wrote above cannot ever tell you 'I did this right', but it can only say 'it looks fine to me'. No! You want the code to say 'Damn, this looks totally wrong!' and get down to fixing it. You do not want code that says 'It might be wrong, but it might not be.', since you either end up ignoring the pattern, or you fruitlessly debug tons of correct code - neither of which is healthy to your sanity in the short term or the long term.

Sorry, I rant again. But I'm a bit more awake right now than I was last time I posted.

234

Living Room / Re: Save Stargate Universe

« on: May 06, 2011, 04:17 AM »

I personally feel SG:U is decent, but that it made a few crucial mistakes.

For one, it keeps focusing back on Planet Earth and its issues with the Lucian alliance, which I think is pretty much the last thing anyone cares about in this show. They should have called it SG:Homeworld Command or something if that was going to be the main theme.

Second issue is that they keep wasting entire episodes on stories that basically consist out of 'oh, this didn't warrant a full episode, nor did this, so lets smash them together'. Such as the one where a certain someone thinks it is fun to prank someone into a cryogenic pod for most of a day. Or that random person in that recent episode who suddenly starts freaking out when under attack and puts everyone in danger. Yes, I know there is a degree of coping involved for the people on Destiny, but after all this time it should be obvious we want the story of _Destiny_ to go somewhere, and not get stupid stories nobody cares about that would be called 'filler' in anime. Or that random curing of Chloe - I still feel the only reason she was cured by the aliens was because killing the character off would have gotten fans riled up and the show canceled even faster.

I hope they'll save it, if only because it was starting to get a bit better at times. And because I fear what sort of crappy thing they'll replace it with.

235

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 05, 2011, 11:50 AM »

I know of it. I hate that. Forcing me to use a GC language is one thing - not giving me sufficient control about when stuff gets released is another.

There must be some sort of technical reason, but the entire Dispose() thing is a disaster that feels as if they came up with it after the fact: 'oh, crap, some resources actually can't be garbage collected'. I am actually too tired to remember what exactly got me angry about the entire GC&resources thing in the first place; I just remember it gave me tons of shit when devving at some point. It's not exactly the same thing you talk about, obviously.

The entire GC affair just shows to me how people forget or don't learn the importance of symmetry and responsibilities when programming. You allocate something, you need to release it. That simple rule has helped me personally so much about learning where the responsibilities lie in code, given me so much insight that pure OO did not show me, and most of all it taught me how to keep programs working. So many of those new applications (usually .NET ones) are just so pathetic: huge memory hogs, crawling to a slow the longer you run it. People simply don't care about their garbage.

236

Living Room / Re: Congratz to the US Military Forces!

« on: May 04, 2011, 04:19 PM »

Both of you please shut your nutritional orifices, or pour nutrients inthere rather than spewing fire like a PMSing dragon.

You both have good points. 9/11 hurt tons of people. It left a scar on history, and on the lives of many people. However, two wars that were started on pretenses and killed easily 100 times the amount of people killed during 9/11, the majority of whom had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and/or terrorists.

If some KKK offshoot managed to kill 3,000 people in China, would the Chinese government be in its place to invade the USA? One can go on and bring up things like political influence, monetary support, and radical minorities to point out how different it would be from Al Qaeda and 9/11, but sadly that is not even the point I am trying to make here.

The WTC thing affected only a few people in comparison. Those wars have affected many, many more, and generations more will be affected in far worse ways than those in the USA. Those wars have started unbridled hate of muslims all over the world, have led to assassinations from emotional people who were afraid of what they do not understand, and most of all, have torn societies apart. The way I see it (and no, I'm not muslim, nor do I have muslim acquaintances) the USA has started its own WW3, with the Jews having become the Muslims who are treated just slightly nicer, and all that remains now is to wait for the 'allies' of the eastern world to make a fist and invade the USA.

Is that a dark, gloomy opinion that will offend many of you because it pretty much equates the USA with Germany and Bush with Hitler? Probably. But if those countries use the same morals of justification as the USA does, it is a distinct possibility. And since many say they are to be less moral than their western counterparts... wouldn't it be reason to fear more? Killing Osama turned him into the martyr he wanted to be for many in the countries affected by the 'war on terror' - and I argue that is scarier than pretty much everything else.

I'm not going to post about this subject anymore. I urge others not to post about it anymore either. Everyone is free to their opinion, and I urge that we don't fight because we do not share the same joy over the death of a man, no matter how evil and despicable his acts. Let's go back to the donations, the coding and the software we love, mmk?

P.S.: I have already fulfilled Godwin's Law, thus any and all reason to further discuss the subject are hereby void.

237

Living Room / Re: should I ragequit?

« on: May 02, 2011, 11:27 AM »

I guess I am a hard person to get excited. I have not followed any of the threads about OBL, nor am I happy or upset about him being taken out. If there is one comment I have to make, it is about how this was apparently a perfect textbook operation where the Americans had no losses... yet they killed almost everyone they encountered.

Yes, it is a war. Yes, they thought Bin Laden might be there and I am sure he and his compatriots were very dangerous. But imo that should have been extra reason to try and catch him alive, rather than walk out with a corpse: after all, he is the REASON whole wars have been waged. Now, I am no American, and law-wise I have no 'right' to all that remains: a bunch of official documents to soothe us with. But that entire political climate led to assassinations in my country which imo messed up my government, and thus I actually find myself hoping for WikiLeaks v2 in this matter so I can get some answers. The entire planet was affected by this, so I can very much understand why some people are annoyed that people are celebrating about a dead corpse that cannot speak back.

The best thing to do is to take a deep breath and accept other peoples opinions. They don't mean bad by it; they just have been affected by it in different ways.

238

General Software Discussion / Re: Playing With UI Design... (Looking for comments)

« on: May 01, 2011, 11:06 AM »

I'm no fan of those custom GUIs either. That said, this one grates my eyes. (Sorry.)

In my eyes, besides the neon-green progress bar, I think it lacks contrast. Gradients are pretty old fashioned as it is, and yours go from pretty dark gray to a rather light shade, while your buttons seem to have the exact reverse-gradient (to&from colours mixed around). I'm not saying 'make your buttons slasherfest-red', nor am I saying 'dump the 80s grays'... I'm saying 'a good UI draws attention to the elements that matter', and the buttons get little, the progress bar gets too much, and wtf am I looking at the background anyway?

I hope that helps.

239

Living Room / Re: The great toilet paper debate

« on: April 29, 2011, 05:30 PM »

That's actually one of the reasons listed as a Pro for "over the roll." See #2 in the Advantages section for Over.

-Deozaan (April 29, 2011, 04:39 PM)

Bah. I do not think of it as an advantage of the over method; rather I think of it as an obvious flaw in the under methodology that immediately wipes it as a viable alternative.

Anyhow, besides saving paper (I presume), this dilemma might well be one of the reasons so many public places go for the pile of precut folded paper dispenser thingies where you have to drag the pieces of paper out in the most troublesome way ever. In my case, I tend to drag like 5 or so along with my attempt because I have issues grabbing a hold of the paper, so the saving paper might well be a crappy argument... meaning the over-under debacle may well be the major reason for that stuff to exist.

240

General Software Discussion / Re: right click to print a file?

« on: April 29, 2011, 05:15 PM »

If you do a notepad.exe /p myfile.txt, does that print it the way you want? (You may want to configure notepad to display the stuff the way you want first, obviously.) If it does, it is trivial to add an option in a context menu to print .txt files using that command.

241

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 2011-04-28 Bits Du Jour - NeXuS Ultimate

« on: April 29, 2011, 12:10 AM »

Yes, but you need an account for that. My point is that I do not see the point in giving my information to yet another website that is just trying to get my money anyway. If they want my information, they need to work for it. If they want my money, they'd better work really hard.

Until I see something I really want to purchase, I am not giving them anything of mine.

242

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 2011-04-28 Bits Du Jour - NeXuS Ultimate

« on: April 28, 2011, 09:00 PM »

I can't say I have bought anything from Bits Du Jour in the past, so my opinion is probably void, but I do know that I do not fuss about looking at their site every single day. Back when I could see all the stuff, I'd check like every week to see if there was something I might like and keep an eye out for. I never really quite found what I was hoping to find, though.

Either way, I can't be the only one reasoning that way, right? Is BDJ not hurting itself and the software it is trying to sell that way? It's like an extra barrier for any potential customer that does not already hawk over that site on a daily basis.

243

Living Room / Re: iPhone in White

« on: April 28, 2011, 06:25 PM »

That Sony ad was totally not racist in my eyes. At least, that is assuming people felt offended that the negroid man was in a 'submissive'/'lesser' sort of meaning. In my eyes, it is clearly art and no such meaning should be seen in it.

However, if white people felt offended the woman looks like a total crack girl from the streets who sells her body for a coin, then I am tempted to agree, and say it is pure racism against white people. God forbid a white girl would EVER do such a thing!

(Yes, this is all satire. Everyone can take offense to that ad, and all it shows is that they are narrowminded idiots who feel far too insecure about their place in the world. Half the stuff in our museums would not exist if people like them had a say over things, and in that regard, I pity the future generations who will consider these years amongst the dullest years their museum has works of.)

244

Developer's Corner / Re: Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)

« on: April 28, 2011, 04:31 PM »

Why are you sending SIGKILL to the server anyway? And if it is some sort of bug, it should probably be a segmentation fault. Either way, I doubt your link to the fastcgi stuff since that message is about 8 years old and I really think that bug has been fixed by now.

245

Living Room / Re: The great toilet paper debate

« on: April 27, 2011, 09:43 PM »

I should go to bed, but the wikipedia article regarding this debate has amused me enough to put it off.

   o-------|
  / /---\  |
 / |  O  | |         Sue me,
   |\---/  |         I am bored.
   |       |
           |

With disastrous results, I might add.

246

Living Room / Re: The great toilet paper debate

« on: April 27, 2011, 08:19 PM »

I'm an over person, but not for any of the reasons listed there.

Toilets are toilets. With the 'under' method, just how often do you think that people will brush their fingers against the wall trying to get hold of the paper? Maybe people will clean toilet seats, and toilet pots, but will ANYONE clean the wall underneath the toilet holder? Do you?

I know I don't. Thus: over it is.

247

Site/Forum Features / Re: I think we should close the Company Complaints and Compliments Section

« on: April 21, 2011, 02:13 PM »

I think a few people have hit the nail on the head here. Nobody wants the flaming, but the section has a purpose which requires proper moderation and guidelines to come to its fullest potential.

First, I think the name might need a change. The fact 'complaints' come before 'compliments' sticks, and I must say I tend to always think of it as the company complaints section. Moving the wording around, or maybe naming it something like 'Company Experiences' or 'Company Support Stories' might move the negative connotation away.

Second, proper moderation is a must. I can't say I really noticed any of the topics that bring out this supposed worst, but I think keeping stuff on topic and keeping users from unnecessarily emphasizing the same aspect again and again in a negative context (while not detailing their personal experience with the company) should make a big difference.

248

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

« on: April 12, 2011, 02:34 AM »

Yes, on and on and on and on and meow it goes.

This one is pretty good in its own way. Far more serious tho.

249

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

« on: April 12, 2011, 01:58 AM »

More kitten awesome

Yes, I had to stay within the bounds of the trend I set with my previous video recommendation... yet I gave it a totally different sort of spin this time around.

250

Developer's Corner / Re: Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)

« on: April 11, 2011, 04:57 PM »

Broken hardware is my bet. Several years ago, in a bit of a convoluted setup involving a big room, several bookcases and a troublesome place where the wire came out of the wall, I had a router that balanced on a bunch of heavy law books. And when cleaning, someone apparently made it fall off those books before putting it back as if nothing had happened.

The results were extra-ordinary: rather than have the network connection die or anything of the sort, stuff just started getting garbled. Websites had garbled images with random lines and color shifts and the sorts; HTML documents had random characters happen and so forth. So somehow this entire affair happened somewhere inbetween the layers of error-correction; I suspect the router had its memory or cpu get messed up, but had its networking interfaces still work peachy.

Perhaps your situation is similar in nature here.