topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Friday April 26, 2024, 2:39 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Edvard [ switch to compact view ]

Pages: prev1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 ... 121next
201
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« on: February 21, 2016, 01:18 AM »
And now for something that goes to elev... er... 13 and a half. :P

Adele's "Hello" given the Metal treatment by a very talented one-man band.


His schtick is doing metal covers of horrible pop songs (not saying that Adele is horrible...).  Now I can listen to what my co-workers like and not have to suppress my gag reflex :P  Check out the playlist:
https://www.youtube....61U11HpoWt5JP18NHeve

Also, he actually had some help on that one from insane guitarist Pete Cottrell.
I dig artists that can rip on odd time signatures and not sound pretentious.

Well... that last part is outright silly.

202
Copy had the best Linux client besides DropBox, and a pretty generous initial space offering.  Shoulda seen this coming.  DropBox is pretty darn good, I just wish they offered more free space. 

As far as alternatives go, Box gave the most free space, but it doesn't have a Linux client, and though I can mount my Box account via webdav, it's just not the same as a nice app that can easily generate share links.  SpiderOak is nice for the encryption it offers, but good grief is it ever slow... Owncloud and Seafile are nice and certainly have their place (I have both on a spare box I also use for serving Minecraft and Teeworlds), but I don't keep my server on 24/7, so a personal cloud is not really a viable alternative.

Sigh.  One more down...

203
Aha, the picture is clearer now.  Still, not good news for Outpost users.  :(

I have used the Yandex browser and found it to be not much different from the Chromium it's based on, but maybe things like this will make a difference.  Also, YES, they have a stake in Kaspersky.  From the Wikipedia page:
The browser checks webpage security with the Yandex security system and checks downloaded files with Kaspersky anti-virus.
So Kaspersky is integrated?  :huh:
Either way, I've used the Yandex search engine before, and have been pleased with the results.  Maybe I'll give the browser a second try...

204
OMIGOSH!!! ROBOT ODYSSEY!!  :-* :-* :-*
https://archive.org/...s_Robot_Odyssey_1985
Robot Odyssey is an adventure game, published by The Learning Company in 1984. Released for the Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, and DOS, it has been referred to as the hardest computer game of all time.[1]

205
I fundamentally don't understand why people do this: buy up a tech company with a large customer base only to shut down the business without incorporating any of the technology/code into new or existing products or retaining staff.  I mean... why?   :huh:

206
Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?
« on: January 18, 2016, 03:24 PM »
OK, so what I get from this is that he's a goon either way, and really shouldn't be spouting off without being prepared to answer the questions arising from his claims, but he raises some himself that I'm not finding good answers for:
1- Is it true that raising the blocksize limit is bad, and more specifically, in the way that Maxwell says it is? [EDIT] Partially answered, see below.
1a - By the way, why the holy-ever-lovin is Maxwell even deving for BTC if he "proved bitcoin impossible"?
2- Are dissenting opinions really being wholesale censored by those who side with Bitcoin Core over those who disagree? Ignoring that which you don't feel like answering is one thing, attempting to answer regardless if the questioner takes it is better, actively killing the conversation with censorship is just... really bad.
3- Any clue as to who systematically DDOS'd XT nodes? If it were banks or governments, I'd think they would go after Core as well. Excuse me for reading things plainly, but it seems like a clear-cut case of killing the competition.  Please prove me wrong.

Also, this should improve the temperature of the conversation around scaling and relevant to question #1. 
https://medium.com/@...790f755df#.inxhnxuig
To Maxwell's (and other devs) credit, there IS a commitment to incremental capacity increases that has been in place since Dec 7, 2015:
https://bitcoin.org/...e/capacity-increases
FWIW, I have read through a few of the commit logs on Bitcoin Core's Github, and for all the criticism that Mike Hearn heaps on Greg Maxwell, he doesn't seem to be JUST an engineer/coder; he actively thinks about how people and developers are going to actually use/abuse the systems as they get implemented. Such as:
https://github.com/b...in/bitcoin/pull/2738

Also, the discussion here is better than the actual post:
https://www.reddit.c..._this_point_in_time/
IMO, commenters are right in saying that the prime directive of Bitcoin is not as a drop-in replacement for the economic exchange as we know it today (though it may become a large part of it in the foreseeable future), but a system outside/alongside of it, with the primary aims being anonymity and security in financial transactions between people. I agree with Mike Hearn on one point:
When misinformed investors lose money, government attention frequently follows.
if only to say that in that context, people who use Bitcoin as an investment probably shouldn't be.  Yes, I understand the ups and downs of Bitcoin value can be played just like the stock market or other investment venture, and many people have.  Some have done well and others have lost their shirts.  So far, it seems most of the players involved understand the risks of doing such business with a new system outside of authoritative oversight, but I sincerely believe that doing such should be actively discouraged, as it only takes one idiot with less sense than the amount of money they lost for Bitcoin to come under very unwanted scrutiny.  So far it's been fortunate; most of those buying in seem to be in it for the technical and socio-economic merits (even 'investors'), not for any notion of convenience or stability. But I wonder if a "tipping point" may come before it is fully mature; where enough clueless users join up expecting it to be some magically 'better' transaction system with no notion of how the thing actually works, then complain when the value dips.

Of course, IMHO, YMMV, 2c, etc...

207
General Software Discussion / Re: license key
« on: January 16, 2016, 11:20 AM »
Follow the instructions in this post:
https://malwaretips....wser-redirect-virus/
The title says it's targeted at browser redirects, but it's effective against the root cause, not just the symptoms.
All the tools are free, and you will remove 99% of whatever may be infecting your computer.  I used this guide to completely clean a neighbor's laptop (never again!!) which took about two days, but your experience may be different.

Other tools I would recommend:

The article didn't mention Malwarebytes, or Spybot Search & Destroy, so I will:
https://www.malwarebytes.org/
https://www.safer-networking.org/
The free versions of these tools work as intended, the extra pay-for features aren't needed for a one-time cleaning.

Wise Registry Cleaner
Debate is still going on about the effectiveness of registry cleaners, and this one is at least effective, easy to use, and portable.
http://portableapps....try-cleaner-portable
Wise Registry Cleaner Portable is a registry cleaner and optimizer packaged as a portable app, so you can work on PCs on the go. It's freeware for personal and education use. Like many system utilities, this requires admin privileges to run.

Should I Remove It?
http://www.shouldire...oveit.com/index.aspx
Should I Remove It? is a very simple but extremely powerful Windows application that helps users, both technical and non technical, decide what programs they should remove from their PC.
...
Should I Remove It? simply scans your computer for all its' installed programs and then ranks what should be removed by leveraging the wisdom of the crowd (and of course our technical experts) to determine what should not be installed.

Remember to uninstall any of these tools after using them to do the job, because some of them are designed to run in the background to "protect" your system, but usually they just slow things down.  The only thing of that nature that should be left running should be a good antivirus of your choice. 

209
Non-Windows Software / Re: Post your Linux/FOSS humor here.
« on: January 11, 2016, 08:54 PM »
I want this in a patch!

PipegrepeersUnion.png

Join today!
http://pipegrep.sh/#

210
Who would want to  be a solipsist? You would be a supremely religious atheist, a totalitarian anarchist, a serial-killing war-mongering suicidal pacifist, a criminal kingpin who is also the police, an institutionalized maniac who is also a psychiatrist. Who would want to be such a conflicted manic-depressive? Being a serial killer with immortal victims would add to your insanity if that is possible.
Hm-m-m-m ... those descriptives seem applicable to a few of the politicians I have known  :P.  Particularly when it comes to their understandings of the internet :o :-\.

I looked up Solipsism earlier, and this is the first thing that came to mind:
foreveralone.jpg

211
Non-Windows Software / Re: Dan Gilmor on moving to Linux
« on: January 09, 2016, 07:55 PM »
Started reading it, before I finish I want to say that I hope the article doesn't say 'GIMP is as good as photoshop' or 'Libre Office is as good as Office', I know almost 100% of Linux users will always object or flame such a statement but those two are not as good (just generally, not about missing thing here or there), sorry they are just not.
I have been ~90% on Linux the last two years and believe me they are not. If the article includes those two statements I will be forced to dismiss it  :P

I can say two things about that:
While I agree Gimp is overall less powerful in some categories, I also find it doesn't fight against me like Photoshop does.  I can do amazing things (to me, at least) in Gimp, while I can barely use Photoshop as a glorified MSPaint.  I suppose if I found a good book or reference on Photoshop, things might turn around.  On another note I also have a BIG problem with people who say you can't use Gimp to do professional work.  >:(
Regarding Libre/OpenOffice, I must say I fully agree.  I use MS Office at work; I loathe Word, love Publisher, on the fence about PowerPoint, awed by all the things I don't know but probably can do in Excel, and at least in our facility, if you're not using Outlook for email, the rest of the office will think you're some reptile alien from another dimension.  I almost never use LibreOffice, unless it's to import a PDF into Writer (which it's surprisingly good at most days), but otherwise, LibreOffice's programs are just downright generic compared to MS Office.  And there's no application to compare to Publisher. Period.  Well, maybe Scribus, but until it has automatic N-up layout functions, I will still prefer Publisher.

212
Living Room / Re: "Open" is really gaining traction
« on: January 09, 2016, 07:03 PM »
^Um...I do remember...

Aw man, the grumpy really must have gotten to my brain :( Again, my apologies.
Yes, I was aware of all those things, and yes, "Tillman" rolls off the tongue better (like "Thermos" instead of "insulated beverage container"?), but I wonder why his design went viral and not all the ones that came before it?  A strange beast, this internet...

EDIT: Nevermind, I just read his website again and caught that he'd posted it on Usenet circa 1995.  So I guess the props really do go to him for popularizing it, and I was just late to the party thinking it was somebody else's birthday >_<

213
Living Room / Re: "Open" is really gaining traction
« on: January 09, 2016, 12:30 AM »
^Bad day huh? ;)

Meh, working overtime lately.  I like the paychecks, but losing time for home and family just doesn't sit right after about 3-4 days of it.
re: Tillman.

Wire one up and give it a listen if you haven't already. Tweak it a little just for kicks while you're at it. Compare the sound and roughly 300 hrs of battery life to some of the more "improved" circuits out there.

That's just the point; I have.  I've designed my own effects, remember?  I always knew it from the circuit 'cookbooks' and data sheets as a part-for-part analogue of a standard common-cathode tube pre-amp (with different part values, of course), I just never knew it as a "Tillman" until I stumbled across the webpage.  By that time, it was old hat to me and it just seemed strange that some guy putting his name on it somehow made it so magical that all the stompbox and audio forums started calling it that.  Hence the grumpy, my apologies.

Speaking of Open Hardware, I remember some guy who was designing an open-source video card, and even had a few prototypes made, I wonder what ever became of that?
*edvard searches internets...
Aha! -> https://en.wikipedia...pen_Graphics_Project

214
Living Room / Re: "Open" is really gaining traction
« on: January 08, 2016, 12:53 AM »
*Grumpy mode engaged* 
I never understood how the Tillman was all that different from any of the other "cookbook" FET circuits out there.  In fact, the Tillman was designed for the J201 and won't work as well with many of the more common, but lower gain/higher current FETs like the MPF102, 2N3819, 2N5458, etc.  ...AND if you've worked with FETs at all, you'll know that each one is slightly but appreciably different, and stock resistor values must be tweaked for maximum performance (though the ones given may get you in the ballpark).  Add to that the concepts of diode biasing, CC loading, "cascode" chaining, ad nauseum, you could be tweaking for days... or maybe it's just that way for a hopeless circuit tweaker like yours truly. *Grumpy mode abated*

Also, the LM386 just doesn't do it for me as a guitar amp power section.  1 watt in a convenient DIP-8 package is novel, but give me 5-20 watts minimum.  Here's a trick: look in your old computer parts junk box and find an old ISA soundcard with a TEA2025 (2x2.5W) or a SoundBlaster16 with a TDA1517 (2x6W).  De-solder the chip off the board, wire the Tillman/Muff output to both inputs, and put a speaker on each output (paying attention to the official Data Sheets, of course) for a low-power 'twin' with MUCH better sound specs and power handling and no additional cost.  The TEA2025 can even be bridged.  Yeah, yeah, I know, the LM386 costs pennies, but hey, mo' powah, mo' fun!...  :Thmbsup:

As far as the 'Open Hardware' concept, it's so far worked for the Arduino, and a whole list of others.  Read up on Open Hardware at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia...Open-source_hardware

215
N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer
« on: January 03, 2016, 07:53 PM »
Well, brainwave visualizations have been recorded:


And there's always those brainwave generation devices and apps:
https://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Binaural_beats

So, if you can stand to fall asleep wearing earbuds, switch on a brain pattern and voilà!
http://binauralbrain...ming-binaural-beats/

216
Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"
« on: January 03, 2016, 07:39 PM »
Bubble-Level-Google-Search.png

Bubble/Spirit Level easter egg on your phone - no app required

Now I can tell if my selfies are straight!

217
N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer
« on: January 02, 2016, 08:08 PM »
I remember a lucid-dreaming "guru" who recommended repeating the phrase "Am I awake, or am I dreaming?" to yourself throughout the day, and even sold tshirts with the phrase on it, so you would be reminded.  Then, the habit would continue into your sleeping life and you might find yourself saying "Am I awake, or am I dreaming?" while dreaming and *ding*... you're lucid dreaming. 

Perhaps that could be the 'trigger phrase'...

As for doing it on a mobile device, simply recording a chime and phrase and setting as the alarm tone on your clock should do the trick.

218
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« on: January 01, 2016, 10:07 PM »
I'm not into country music, psychedelics, or philosphy, but it's about damn time we got some acid existentialist country.


219
Non-Windows Software / Re: Post your Linux/FOSS humor here.
« on: January 01, 2016, 03:54 PM »
From https://www.gnu.org/...users-lightbulb.html

How many GNU/Linux users are needed to change a light bulb?

  • 1 to post a thread in a mailing list telling the bulb has burnt.
  • 1 to suggest to try to turn the lamp on through command lines.
  • 1 to complain that the user broke the thread.
  • 1 to ask what new bulb will he install.
  • 1 to advice that we shouldn't use the word burn for meaning a broken lightbulb, because it would mean that the bulb was set on fire and that it would be right to say that the bulb broke due to an excess of electrical current.
  • 25 to suggest to install all the kinds of existing and imaginable lightbulbs.
  • 5 who say that the burnt bulb is an upstream issue that doesn't belong to the distro. There's an open bug on the bulb's developer mail list.
  • 1 noob to suggest to install a Microsoft lightbulb.
  • 250 to flood the noob's mail address.
  • 300 to say that a Microsoft lightbulb would turn blue and that you'd had to reboot continuously to get back to normal.
  • 1 former GNU/Linux user who still frequents the forum, to suggest to install an Apple iBulb, which has a fresh and innovating design and it costs $250.
  • 20 to say that iBulbs aren't free, and that they have less functions than a 20 times cheaper standard lightbulb.
  • 15 to suggest to install a national lightbulb.
  • 30 to say that national lightbulbs are crippled remasters of foreign lightbulbs and that they don't bring anything new.
  • 23 to argue if it must be a white or a transparent bulb.
  • 1 to remind everyone that the right name is GNU/Lightbulb.
  • 1 to say that lightbulbs are a Winbugs users thing and that real GNU/Linux users aren't afraid of the dark.
  • 1 to announce finally which will be the model of the installed bulb.
  • 217 to discard the chosen model and suggest another.
  • 6 to complain that the chosen lightbulb has propietary elements, and that another should be used.
  • 20 to say that a 100% free bulb, isn't compatible with the lamp switch.
  • The same previous 6, to suggest to change the switch for a compatible one.
  • 1 to yell out: “STOP ARGUING AND CHANGE THAT LIGHTBULB FOR GOD'S SAKE!”
  • 350 to ask the previous user what God is he talking about, and that if he has scientific proofs of His existence.
  • 1 to explain how electricity works and why a light bulb is inefficient.
  • 1 to say that we can't trust in corporation-made bulbs and that we should trust in community-made bulbs.
  • 1 to post a link to an ODF file explaining how to build a lightbulb from scratch.
  • 14 to complain about the format of the previous file and asking to send it in txt or LaTeX.
  • 5 to say that they didn't like the taken decission and that they'll fork the house's electric installation and install a better lamp.
  • 1 to post a series of commands to put to change the lightbulb.
  • 1 to comment that he executed the commands and had an error message.
  • 1 to advice that the commands must be executed as root.

And finally:

  • The father of the first user, who while everyone was discussing, went to the shop and bought the cheapest lightbulb.

221
I thought of that, but its not exactly intuitive, and he would need to be able to clearly lay out all the steps.

if it was laid out in a text file I suppose you could read that into a batch...hmmm...

Lots of folks have made GUIs for PDFTK, more or less useful.  PDFLabs has one bundled with the download, but others are:
- GUIPDFTK
http://www.paehl.de/pdf/gui_pdftk.html
- PDFTK4All
http://pdftk4all.sourceforge.net/
- PDFTKBuilder
http://www.angusj.co...pdftkb/#pdftkbuilder

IIRC, I even came up with a GUI for it written in AHK that did a few trivial operations; it's really not too difficult once you get the hang of what you want done and how to interact between the GUI interface and the command line options. I also have a small batch script I wrote for my wife for bundling numbered PDFs in a folder to a single multi-page PDF.  In other words, I found PDFTK's learning curve challenging but not insurmountable.

222
One word: PDFTK
https://www.pdflabs....ftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
Screenshot_2015-12-29_18-44-37.png

Seriously, don't let the lackluster description fool you.  PDFTK is a powerful program with lots of options for splitting and combining, plus a ton of other functions.  If you can't swing the price of Adobe Acrobat XI  :-* , then PDFTK is your best bet.


P.S. - I hate MS Word.  As in, passionately.  At least, in the context of working in a print shop.  If a customer gives me a Word file, I hand it right back and tell him to make me a PDF.
Just sayin'...

Also, about the XI love...
I've also always felt PDFs to be a pain in the rear end to deal with after creating, and they still are, but I can personally attest that Acrobat XI is one sweet piece of gear for dealing with that.  I work in printing also, so I have it because where I work has a contract/subscription/whatever and I use it every day.  If only it wasn't prohibitively expensive for home users, I'd straight up have a copy even though I don't use Windows anymore.  Everything up to Acrobat X was useful, but not amazing.  XI is.


223
Hilarious read, instructive in the ways of software testing, and a great thought experiment along the lines of shooting yourself in the foot using programming languages.
This is 'edge case' testing; posting values to a system that really don't belong there.
[hilarity ensues]
And that's kind of the crux of it. Making your testing as real world as possible is an important part of QA. Don't let those tell you otherwise. Be it unit testing, integration, QA or pentesting, assuring that all tests push the edges of what happens in the real world will make your software better.



from an IRC discussion

224
Developer's Corner / Re: Why Does Programming Suck?
« on: December 22, 2015, 02:05 PM »
I am still trying to figure out why Pascal had nested procedure/function definitions.  It was pretty weird to define a function only visible inside the current function/procedure, that you are only going to call one time, in most cases, during the run of the outer procedure/function.  Some kind of Lambda expression would probably have made more sense.
...

Not a problem here, though I consider myself a Pascal tinkerer.  Pascal isn't the only culprit either; Lisp, Javascript, Actionscript, Wolfram, D, MATLAB... even the 'Big Four' scripting languages (Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl) more or less. Yes, things like this can be abused, like nesting to ridiculous levels (which is almost never done unless you're masochistic), or the Funarg problemw, which isn't the end of the world.  There are advantages of nesting as well, like avoiding global variables or namespace pollution.  See Nested_functionw, and this post: Re: Nesting functions- Why?
Either way, nested functions in an object-oriented language aren't really needed, and most modern dialects of Pascal (Delphi, Freepascal, GNUPascal) have object capabilities built-in, so the point is a little more moot now. 

225
Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately
« on: December 20, 2015, 06:49 PM »
...

"In charge" and "shock" ???  I have to cast my volt against that.  :)

Meh. To each their own. Some people get really amped up about it.

But we all know resistance is futile.  :)


But capacitance has potential!

Pages: prev1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 ... 121next