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Topics - Edvard [ switch to compact view ]

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76
Non-Windows Software / The Selinux coloring book
« on: April 19, 2014, 05:34 AM »
So, RedHat's own Daniel J. Walsh whipped up a cute little article on how SELinux works over at OpenSource.com, complete with cartoons by Máirín Duffy.  Now the cartoons have been published as a coloring book for your up-and-coming junior Linux admins.  
First, read the article...

Your visual how-to guide for SELinux policy enforcement
For those who have never used SELinux, or would like an explanation...

SElinux is a labeling system. Every process has a label. Every file/directory object in the operating system has a label. Even network ports, devices, and potentially hostnames have labels assigned to them. We write rules to control the access of a process label to an a object label like a file. We call this policy.


Then, download and print out the coloring book:


Enjoy!  :Thmbsup:

from CodeProject News

77
General Software Discussion / Microsoft dropping support for Windows 8.1
« on: April 15, 2014, 01:08 AM »
Well... that escalated quickly.
(actually, it's not what you think, but what is this I don't even)

In what is surely the most customer-antagonistic move of the new Windows regime, Steve Thomas at Microsoft posted a TechNet article on Saturday stating categorically that Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for Windows 8.1, starting in May.


from Infoworld via CodeProject News

78
General Software Discussion / Microsoft open-sources the .NET compiler
« on: April 14, 2014, 10:24 PM »
.NET, Roslyn, and WinJS... Fell, meet swoop  :o


With The .Net Foundation, Microsoft Finally Bets Big On Open Source
For years, Microsoft has flirted with the open-source movement, trying to build bridges with developers that favor publicly released code over proprietary software. This week, the software giant finally made the big moves skeptics of its commitment to open source have been looking for.


from CodeProject News

79
General Software Discussion / Microsoft releases DOS and Word for Windows source code
« on: March 27, 2014, 12:54 AM »
From the "It ain't GPL, but it's better than a stick in the eye" department.
Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
...
As part of this ongoing project, the museum will make available two of the most widely used software programs of the 1980’s, MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing.


Now, what do the good folks at the FreeDOS project have to say about this?

... But don't get too excited about the possibility of merging genuine MS-DOS code into FreeDOS. From the download page: "To access this material, you must agree to the terms of the license ... which permits only non-commercial use and does not give you the right to license it to third parties by posting copies elsewhere on the web." The website makes it very clear the "source and object code to Microsoft?s MS-DOS operating system versions 1.1 and 2.0" is for "non-commercial use" only. It's nice that Microsoft released the MS-DOS source code, but this is not "Free software."

from CodeProject

80
Developer's Corner / PMOG: The story behind the rise and fall of GameLayers, Inc.
« on: March 17, 2014, 07:51 PM »
or: How to lose almost everything developing a browser toolbar game and live to tell about it. 

I played PMOG a bit during it's heyday, and I must say it was pretty fun at times, when you would run into a fellow PMOG'r on a random website, or go to some obscure blog and get mined, or find some cool new website while completing a Mission.  It added a new dimension to your surfing, made it more engaging and random than simply clicking on the next link like a monkey hitting the biscuit lever.  I was sad to see it go, and now a bit wiser having read the behind-the-scenes cautionary tale.

A Story of GameLayers, Inc.
Making online social games 2007-2009
by Justin Hall

Between 2007 and 2009 GameLayers made a multiplayer game across all the content of the internet.

I was the CEO of GameLayers and one of three co-founders. Here I'll share lessons and data from this online social game startup. This Story of GameLayers covers prototyping, fund raising, company building, strategic shifting, winding down and moving on.


from Umm... I forget

81
General Software Discussion / Lazarus 1.2 released
« on: March 16, 2014, 11:43 PM »
Finally after 2 release candidates, the fateful day came on March 4th (I was a little *ahem* late to the news).

The Lazarus team is glad to announce the release of Lazarus 1.2.

Downloads:
http://sourceforge.n...jects/lazarus/files/

SVN:
http://svn.freepasca...rus/tags/lazarus_1_2

Release notes:
http://wiki.lazarus...._1.2.0_release_notes

For those still skeptical, I and many others have found Lazarus to be a very capable IDE for ObjectPascal development, and yes Pascal is still a viable programming language (Delphi/ObjectPascal #15 at TIOBE!).  The only things I find really lacking (besides popularity) are good bindings for some common C++ libraries.  We're hard at work at it though, come join us!  
http://forum.lazarus...dex.php?action=forum
from

82
Living Room / Against TED talks
« on: February 25, 2014, 12:28 AM »
I've had a nagging suspicion for a while now that TED talks were becoming more and more like video representations of snake oil shows or SCIgen papers, but I always felt I was alone in this regard.  All the cool kids were into TED, and the water cooler conversations always seemed to include the sentence "... so I heard this one thing in a TED talk...", so what was wrong with me?

Turns out, I'm not as alone as I thought.

Nathan Jurgenson at The New Inquiry (not one of my regular hangouts...) has written a pretty good summation of what I've been feeling all along.
TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to deliver. It’s become the Urban Outfitters of the ideas world, finding “cool” concepts suitable for being packaged and sold to the masses, thereby extinguishing the “cool” in the process. Cutting-edge ideas not carrying the Apple-esque branding are difficult to find.


In case you haven't noticed, the phenomenon is endemic enough to warrant it's own Onion parody series, and comedian Sam Hyde even crashed the party back in October '13, with predictably hilarious results:


I'll give them this though, the folks at TED have taken the jabs with grace, and even offered their own tips based on the, *ahem*, advice subtley gleaned from the ensuing jocundity: http://blog.ted.com/...can-learn-from-them/
DED Talks. High TED Talks. Onion Talks. Here in the TED office, you will often hear chuckles as someone watches one of the quickly growing crop of TED spoofs floating in the ether. And surprisingly, there are some pretty good lessons for speakers embedded in these spoofs.

So, what say you?  Am I still alone?  Does TED tickle your futurist gland?  or leave you facepalming at all the nulla substantia?
Or, if you'd rather have your Ulnar nerve percussed, make up your own TED talk! -> http://www.vanityfai...nference-talks-humor  
The art of faux profundity:
TED-O-MATIC
9 Easy steps to your own audience-flattering TED talk
:Thmbsup:

from an IRC conversation. Come on in! Lots of happenin' convo!

83
Living Room / For Valentine's day: Creepy vintage Valentine's day cards
« on: February 14, 2014, 07:12 AM »
I don't normally like Buzzfeed, but they nailed it on this one:

27 Weird And Creepy Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards


from somebody's Facebook post

84
Non-Windows Software / The TTY demystified
« on: February 14, 2014, 01:10 AM »
Hmmm... I always wondered why an ancient technology is still an essential part of how Unix-like operating systems communicate internally between user and software.  Now I know the 'why', but I got the how as a pretty sweet bonus.  :Thmbsup:

Though I found the article easy to read and digest, I must say it's not quite n00b reading material, but neither is it restricted to brain rockets.  Enjoy:

The TTY subsystem is central to the design of Linux, and UNIX in general. Unfortunately, its importance is often overlooked, and it is difficult to find good introductory articles about it. I believe that a basic understanding of TTYs in Linux is essential for the developer and the advanced user.

Beware, though: What you are about to see is not particularly elegant...


from HackADay

85
Non-Windows Software / ArsTechnica article on next-gen filesystems: Bitrot and Atomic COWs
« on: January 20, 2014, 05:21 PM »
Interesting article delving into why RAID of any stripe (ooh, bad pun) and frequent backups won't always save your bacon, but a 'next-gen' filesystem like ZFS or Btrfs just might (no mention of any new filesystems for Windows).  I jumped into a Btrfs file system about two years ago, and it failed catastrophically about 3 months later.  Granted, it's still in a state of experimental flux and will eventually 'get there', but with all the benefits it promises, I'm hoping that's sooner than later...
Bitrot and atomic COWs: Inside “next-gen” filesystems
We look at the amazing features in ZFS and btrfs—and why you need them.
...
Let's talk about "bitrot," the silent corruption of data on disk or tape. One at a time, year by year, a random bit here or there gets flipped. If you have a malfunctioning drive or controller—or a loose/faulty cable—a lot of bits might get flipped. Bitrot is a real thing, and it affects you more than you probably realize.
...


from ArsTechnica, of course

86
Non-Windows Software / nixCraft: 30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013
« on: January 12, 2014, 11:47 PM »
NixCraft is one of my favorite general Linux "how the heck can I do..." sites, but this post really impressed me.  30 great softwares that you haven't heard of a million times already.  These guys do know how to pick 'em...

Vivek Gite picks his best open source software of 2013.


from http://www.cyberciti.biz

87
Living Room / The Dreams thread...
« on: January 03, 2014, 11:43 PM »
Dreams... not the "I hope to someday tame a hadrosaur and play Polo with giant robot pandas" kind, but the "I had a strange dream the other night where I tamed a hadrosaur and played Polo with these really cool giant robot pandas" kind.  I have vivid and bizarre dreams at least once every month or two.  Some I remember, some not so much, but I thought I'd share some of them and I'd like to hear about yours, especially if they are detailed and interesting.
Caveats, please...
Please no "I don't dream... ever" posts because that's such a killjoy.  
... and I die a little thinking of the dreamless void that you must suffer through each night. :(
Please no 'wet dreams'.  Seriously, TMI.
Please post your OWN dreams.  The telling is never as vivid in third person.


Post away!!

dreams-road-sign.png

In this dream, I visited my friend who was living in the crumbling round brick chimney of a condemned smelter plant or something.  The chimney was all that was left of the building.  He was telling me how years earlier he had produced a radio play in which Frankenstein's monster meets Leonard Cohen.  Nobody liked it, so the radio station fired him, which is why he was living in a chimney.  

I asked to hear it and he was all nervous about it and said the cops would arrest him if they caught him playing it for somebody; apparently it was either 'subversive' or 'offended the sensibilities of the community' or something.  I said I would love to hear it and would face the consequences myself.  He put the tape on and turned up the stereo and showed me some figures he had made to illustrate the play.  They were both crudely cut out of tin, and were attached to the chimney by thick wire wrapped around the outside wall.  One was of Leonard Cohen and looked like a child-size paper cutout of a man, but tin instead of paper.  The monster was full-size, but was colored black with two red spray-paint splotches for eyes.  

As the tape played, I began to realize that his play was simply too ahead of the times when he wrote it, and I thought to myself that people might like it better now that a few years had passed.  As I was thinking that, a group of about 5 women in their late twenties to early thirties were walking by on their way to a women's rights meeting, and stopped to listen.  They were all wearing athletic t-shirts, 70s-style jogging shorts and sweat bands, but they weren't jogging.  They admired my friend's tin cutouts and nodded their heads in agreement with what they heard as the performance played.  Eventually they wandered off and my alarm woke me up soon after.

Your turn...  :Thmbsup:

88
Living Room / Why do my cookies look like that?
« on: December 14, 2013, 09:57 PM »
Now that I have the Most Beautiful Wife in the Universe (tm), I am not allowed in the kitchen, and the dinner table thanks me for it.  However, I do admit that I have wanted to do something like this for a long time, but never had the patience or discipline.

Have you ever wondered why chocolate chip cookies can be chewy, crisp, soft, flat, thick, cakey, greasy, bland, flavorful, moist, or crumbly?
In this post I’m going to share with you how various ingredients and techniques can affect the taste, texture, and appearance of your chocolate chip cookies. This will hopefully help you understand how chocolate chip cookies work so you can make the PERFECT batch every time, whatever you consider to be perfect.


...And mouser alerted me part 2!  Enjoy!
Keep reading to find out how dark nonstick baking pans, cornstarch, egg yolks, cake flour, bread flour, and shortening affect chocolate chip cookies.
HandleTheHeat.com's Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies, PART 2

from somebody's post on my facebook

89
Non-Windows Software / ExplainShell explains those cryptic command options
« on: December 03, 2013, 08:48 PM »
Mouser mentioned this in IRC, and there's a nice little write-up at Ghacks here:
http://www.ghacks.ne...mand-line-arguments/

Explain Shell is a free online service that will break down command line arguments that you enter for you. If you do not know what the commands find . -type f -print0, tar xzvf archive.tar.gz or iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -s ip-to-block -j DROP do, you can find out now using the service.

http://explainshell.com/

explain-shell.png

Pretty snazzy!  :Thmbsup:

90
Living Room / Lavabit's court documents unsealed; what THEY wanted, and Lavabit's appeal...
« on: October 22, 2013, 11:59 PM »
Great stuff, and IANAL, but IMO Lavabit's got some good legs to stand on in their appeal.


The government has suggested that it's entitled to get Lavabit's private keys for three reasons: the Pen Register Statute, the Stored Communications Act, and a grand jury subpoena. Lavabit attacks all three of those in its appeal.


from somewheres I fergit

91
General Software Discussion / Let's get Chocolatey!
« on: October 14, 2013, 05:18 PM »
I see it's already been mentioned here, but I found it just recently when re-installing a Windows parition, and thought it deserved a little more exposure.
Let's get Chocolatey!
Chocolatey NuGet is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind.

Easy Install!
To install chocolatey now, open a command prompt and paste the text from the box below and press enter.
[Select]
c:\> @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%systemdrive%\chocolatey\bin


from 5 Steps to a better Windows Command Line

92
Developer's Corner / Article: OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell
« on: October 02, 2013, 12:33 AM »
I was looking up what others had done in the way of making a Box.com client for Linux (there is none, just mount your folder with WebDAV).  Apparently, a client proper accesses your account using the OAuth 2.0 protocol.  I briefly looked at what it might take to whip up something of my own devising, perhaps with a bash script or my budding Pascal skills, when I came across a OAuth library for Delphi/Lazarus (which I can't find now) and decided to look up Oauth and see how difficult it might be to implement.  
I stumbled across this article written by one of the principle authors of OAuth, Eran Hammer, who abruptly quit OAuth last year after 3 years of dealing with the process of working up OAuth 2.0 to a proper IETF standard.  Scary.  I don't think I have enough Jedi skills to get very far with this...

This is a case of death by a thousand cuts, and as the work was winding down, I’ve found myself reflecting more and more on what we actually accomplished. At the end, I reached the conclusion that OAuth 2.0 is a bad protocol. WS-* bad. It is bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it. It is the biggest professional disappointment of my career.

oauthdead.jpg

http://hueniverse.co...nd-the-road-to-hell/

He is actually kinder to the IETF board members in the comments, and clearly he was frustrated with the process as much as the enterprise goons.
Opinions?




93
Living Room / Do you like short films? Of course you do! Shortoftheweek.com
« on: September 20, 2013, 02:13 AM »
Short of the Week has been serving up epic bite-sized films to millions of filmmakers and fans since 2007. We seek to discover and promote the greatest and most innovative storytellers from around the world.
-http://www.shortoftheweek.com/about/


I only just discovered this website about a month ago, but it is now my second favorite website (after DonationCoder ;) ).  Films are all of good to great quality, sortable by Genre , Topic, Style, Country, Year, Collection or Playlist.  Also, subscribe to their RSS or Twitter feed to get notifications of new shorts as they get posted, even submit your own creations.  Enjoy  :Thmbsup:

from: the awesome part of the internets

94
Living Room / Hardware Question: Baseboard Management Controller communication failure
« on: September 14, 2013, 03:19 PM »
I picked up a couple of Dell PowerEdge SC1425 server racks from Craigslist for FREE.  One for me to play with self-hosted cloud services and shared storage, the other for my son to build a Blender offline renderer.  Now his machine is giving the afore-mentioned error, and the fans keep going on full.  I realize the server isn't "broken" per se, just the thing that controls the fans, but I'm wondering if there's any way to fix this?  I've done the power down-unplug-push power button-repower cycle, but the same error came up.  There are a few posts marked Solved on Experts-Exchange, but the answers are held ransom (no more simply scrolling down).  Anybody have experience with this, and is there a way to fix it, or is the hardware simply toast?

95
Living Room / A 360TB disc that holds data for more than 1 million years?
« on: July 13, 2013, 04:00 PM »
Say it's so, c|net, please say it is...

In the future, we might be able to save our history to a glass storage medium that could potentially outlive humankind. The new type of memory also touts mind-blowing specifications, such as 360TB per disc data capacity and the ability to withstand extreme temperatures up to 1,832 Fahrenheit.

They're calling it the "real-world version of Superman's 'Memory Crystals'".


The geek porn (PDF whitepaper) here:
http://www.orc.soton...cturing_in_Glass.pdf

... and more from the website here:
http://www.orc.soton.../5dopticalstore.html

Or search for "Superman Memory Crystals"; it's all over the web this week.  :Thmbsup:




96
Living Room / Your thoughts wanted: The right way to honor the passing of a DC forum member
« on: July 07, 2013, 11:53 PM »
Tonight I just learned of the passing of longtime DC member Thunder7.  I had been thinking of his huge posts of interesting links that just kind of stopped one day, and wondered what had begotten of him.  I found his Deviantart page (http://thunder7.deviantart.com/) and discovered a post from one of his friends anouncing that he had passed away a year and a half ago:
~Priori-Incantartem Mar 30, 2013  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Just wanted to let everyone on here Know that Paul "Thunder 7" has passed away. I believe he passed on Dec. 25 2011. I hadn't been on here in so long I didn't realize no one knew.
 There was also a link to his obituary here: http://lacrossetribu...2f-0019bb2963f4.html but it seemed to say so little about the man who was (as we all are in our own way) a unique and interesting individual.

After speaking with Mouser on IRC about it, the question came up about how to best honor our fallen comrade, the best way to approach the subject on the forum, and whether it might be a good idea to make a special place to announce such things in the future.  
Your thoughts and opinions on this matter are hereby humbly requested.


Rest In Peace, Thunder7.



(1964-2011)

97
Living Room / Raspberry Pi portable game console
« on: June 29, 2013, 03:29 AM »
From the fun-with-fruit department:

RASPBERRY PI TURNED INTO A PORTABLE GAMING CONSOLE BY THE BEN HECK SHOW
 
We usually only find out about cool Raspberry Pi projects after they’ve already been built. This time, we get to watch hacker extraordinaire Ben Heckendorn of The Ben Heck Show take us through the trials and tribulations of building a portable gaming console powered by the mini-computer.


from umm... the internet?

98
Living Room / Prism Break
« on: June 29, 2013, 03:18 AM »
Quite the hullabaloo over this PRISM stuff, eh?

In case you're interested (and those who are probably already know much of this), a new website has started up which lists alternatives to your favorite browsers, social media, etc.  Most I knew about already, many I didn't.  A bit biased towards the GNU/Linux/BSD crowd, but then again, ain't it always?

Opt out of PRISM, the NSA’s global data surveillance program. Stop reporting your online activities to the American government with these free alternatives to proprietary software.


from somewhere interesting...

99
Living Room / Cool visualization of dial-up modem sounds and what they mean
« on: May 25, 2013, 09:14 PM »
Very cool and just a little bit nostalgic.
More info at the link

If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sounds mean?

http://windytan.blog...dialup-pictured.html

dialup-final.png

from random perusings of the web

100
Living Room / Google forbids resale or lending of Glass
« on: April 22, 2013, 02:06 AM »
If they weren't already, I believe Google is now evil.  :'(

Essentially, no one but the intended recipient is allowed to use Glass or Google will shut it down remotely. Ownership is tracked based on each Explorer’s Google account, so it may still be possible for a quick demo with your friends, as long as they don’t sign in. It may seem absurd, but this was bound to happen. Companies can now retain control of hardware after its sold.


from random web meandering

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