Messages

226

Developer's Corner / Why Does Programming Suck?

« on: December 20, 2015, 02:48 PM »

Not quite sure I agree with everything this guy wrote but it's a very interesting read nonetheless.

I’m a software developer and since the very beginning I’ve always had mixed feelings about programming. On one hand, you can accomplish so much with it. On the other, it’s a completely frustrating tool to use––not only is the experience horrible, the worst part is feeling that much more could be accomplished if programming didn’t suck.
...
And so, misusing a machine built to do math, that was prematurely optimized, built without simplicity in mind, inspired by the textile industry, backed by no underlying fundamental laws, with no way for us to understand it, that could generate more complexity than we could possibly embrace and armed with zero experience and a completely backwards approach towards problem-solving, we started the business of dealing with accidental complexity in the name of shipping features––known today as programming…

…and a shit-ton of wonderful things popped from the other end. Damn it.

https://medium.com/@...ng-suck-6b253ebfc607

from CodeProject News

227

Found Deals and Discounts / Sourceforge's "Pay What You Want" White-Hat Hacker deal

« on: December 17, 2015, 01:45 AM »

Whether you're cool with Sourceforge or not these days, this looks interesting at the very least...

Pay What You Want: White Hat Hacker Bundle
Master Penetration Testing with 7 Courses (60+ Hours) on Hacking Node.js Apps, Windows OS, Wi-Fi Devices & More

A whole bundle of penetration testing and general hacker stuff aimed at self-training for white hat hacking.
Looks like 'Pay what you want' only gets you two: Node.js Security and Cross-site Scripting.  But beat the average price (currently $12.32) and you get all 7 books on offer ($765 worth).



https://deals.source...te-hat-hacker-bundle

228

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: November 21, 2015, 10:12 PM »

More info: Gow is a shell, not a package manager.  It's an alternative for windows to Cygwin.  But it was a welcome find for other reasons, even so.  I'd stopped using Cygwin because it was so huge.  Gow is apparently small.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 01:35 PM)

Looking at Gow now.  Looks nice, glad to hear of it. 
Also, if all you need are the tools, not the environment, look at GNUWin32:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

229

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« on: November 21, 2015, 01:40 AM »

Aaaaaand it crashes.  This time it doesn't even get past signing in.   

I've put in my bug reports, but I'm beginning to think Unity just isn't going to work for me, at least in this iteration.
Maybe next time :shrug:

230

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

« on: November 19, 2015, 09:15 PM »

Interesting Israeli band by the name of Project RnL.
...

-40hz (November 19, 2015, 03:28 PM)

Very nice.  I'm not big on prog-rock (Rush, Yes, and ELO just about encompass all I care about the genre, to be honest) but this was enjoyable.  The keyboard guy obviously enjoys his role very much, and has the chops to back it up.  The only thing that bugged me was though the vocalist was very good, I kept getting the feeling that he was 'holding back'... that there's much more power to his voice than he lets through, as though he doesn't want to overpower the other musicians, when in fact a little more chutzpah with the pipes would have fit right in.  Just my 0.02, bravos all 'round otherwise.

Speaking of keyboards, it seems that most groups in my chosen favorite genre (metal) have relegated the keyboard to special effects, washy intros, or gated into offshoot genres like 'Prog-metal' or 'Industrial'.  It would be refreshing to see a rippin' ivory tickler up there with the buzz and rumble.
So far, I haven't seen much of that, so here's my favorite blast from the past:

I hated it when my friends would say they sounded like Deep Purple, though I admit it's kinda inevitable given the sound they were after (and they even riffed the theme on the slipcover of one of their albums, reprinting magazine article headlines comparing the two).  I've always preferred the Heep for some reason, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly why; I just liked 'em. 
Their first five albums are classics in my mind, the rest going from 'slow clap while rocking out' to 'escuse me, wut r u doin?' territory, so I can't recommend much beyond that.

231

Living Room / Re: Switzerland-based ProtonMail, yet another secure email service

« on: November 17, 2015, 09:19 PM »

Well... damn. 

232

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

« on: November 14, 2015, 08:49 PM »

233

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

« on: November 07, 2015, 12:28 PM »

...
Solipcism is actually more common than most people realise.

Most people today believe in portions of it.

But... can't talk about that because it gets into religion.

-Renegade (November 07, 2015, 03:21 AM)

The best example I can think of solipcism is the book "One" by Richard Bach (he of 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' fame).  The plot involves the author and his wife running into some sort of quantum rift while flying their little recreational plane, and ending up coming to a startling realization that pretty much the entire human race throughout history is just quantum manifestations of one of them throughout space-time. 

So, not quite straight-up solipcist, but heady stuff for 17-year-old me to happen upon...
Which lasted until whatever high I was on wore off.   

234

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

« on: November 05, 2015, 09:48 PM »

 

235

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

« on: November 03, 2015, 07:25 PM »

@Deozaan: I've found that in many cases, Wine runs Windows games better than Virtualbox.  With Wine, at least you have access to the GPU (not perfect all the time, but it's mostly there).  I can run Trackmania Nations Forever at good-to-acceptable frame rates, where doing the same on a VirtualBox instance of XP was just short of painful.  If that's all you're looking for, give it a go, but for most mundane 'This-is-a-job-for-Windows' tasks, VirtualBox has served me just fine.  I've also tried Qemu, and it works quite well, but you really have to be a bit of a wizard with the command-line options to get the best performance out of it.

236

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: October 28, 2015, 10:00 PM »

[ Invalid Attachment ]

A newly discovered router virus actually fights off malware  The Verge

-Arizona Hot (October 01, 2015, 09:43 PM)

Pity it's not up on GitHub for download, I'd hit that...

EDIT: Oh wait, they did:

Creators of the Benevolent Linux.Wifatch Malware Reveal Themselves
http://news.softpedi...mselves-493938.shtml

Two days ago, the hackers behind Linux.Wifatch open sourced the malware's source code on GitLab, and posted some clarifications about their intentions inside the project's README file.

*Ahem*: https://gitlab.com/r...v7teif/linux.wifatch

237

Living Room / Re: How to make a sandwich from scratch

« on: September 27, 2015, 10:33 PM »

Jimmy John's is actually pretty good.  I'd take them over Subway any day, and I used to really like Subway.  Depending on your opinion of Subway, that may not be saying a whole lot. YMMV.

238

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: September 22, 2015, 08:55 PM »

A Color You Can't See - YouTube

-Arizona Hot (September 21, 2015, 09:36 PM)

Also, this:
Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See

https://en.wikipedia...iki/Impossible_color

239

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« on: September 20, 2015, 06:22 PM »

OK, so I've been able to install and play with this, and I can say it works very well.  However, there's a few bugs that I'm not sure are just me or Unity, because other folks haven't reported the same errors.  I'll wait for the next release to try again...

240

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

« on: September 14, 2015, 09:17 PM »

High heels suck.
...

-app103 (September 13, 2015, 03:29 PM)

I agree that those ridiculous "hooker hooves" (as a female acquaintance affectionately christened them) do suck.  Can't you just hear tendons snapping?  Sensible heels and a little practice works wonders, if you go for heels at all.  And for pete's sake, the substrate they're walking on are NOT where you wear heels.  Red carpets, catwalks, and smooth club floors, sure.  Boardwalks on the beach?  Not so much.  You're just asking for dual ankle braces to go with those platforms, kid. 
 

241

Living Room / Re: In a world free from ads, one font reigns supreme. COMIC SANS!

« on: September 14, 2015, 08:40 PM »

P.S. I'm still looking for a monospace Comic Sans-like in bitmap font format.  To code in.   

-Edvard (September 02, 2015, 10:12 PM)

http://www.comicbook...Constant-p/cl343.htm -- I'm sure it could be bitmap-ified!

-x16wda (September 06, 2015, 08:26 PM)

Ulp!... Not for 39 bucks!! 
Nice lookin' font though...

I did find one good candidate amongst some other very nice free programming fonts: PointFree
https://code.google....i3project/wiki/Fonts



 

242

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: September 12, 2015, 02:05 PM »

Wizards, part 3

243

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« on: September 07, 2015, 04:02 PM »

Well, if my new PC hadn't croaked before I could really play with this, I would have posted a report.  I can say it did install successfully, and started right up on first run.  I don't run the proprietary video drivers, but it didn't complain.  At that point, I apparently offended my hard drive or SATA controller or something, because it immediately locked up the interface, and I couldn't Ctrl-Alt-Fn to a terminal.  After a hard reboot, a bunch of disk errors and all the system utilities throwing segfaults, I knew something deeper was happening, so I had to return the thing and order a new one.
 
As soon as I get the new one in and settled and Unity installed, I'll post more.   

244

Living Room / Re: How do you resist buying ever more powerful PCs?

« on: September 07, 2015, 03:55 PM »

I finally splurged on a new PC.  A brand spankin-refurbished Intel Core 2 Duo machine with 4 gigs RAM, 1TB hard drive and a Radeon HD6450 video card; all from Walmart.com for under 200 bucks! (well, it was an overtime paycheck, so we bought 3 of them) 
Oh, she was a beaut... I say "was" because out of the 3 machines we got, mine was the one that went toes-up (I returned it and ordered a replacement as soon as I figured out it was actually broken, and not a fault of the OS).  To be expected, it being a refurb and all, but it IS an upgrade from what I had.  So... NO I didn't resist the temptation, but I DID upgrade to what I could afford.
 

245

Living Room / Re: More good web comics you've discovered

« on: September 06, 2015, 10:04 PM »

Found a new good one:

The Abstruse Goose
http://abstrusegoose.com

The Happy Programmer


Far From Home


Bonus: Solve this puzzle -> http://abstrusegoose.com/475
(No peeking!)

246

Developer's Corner / Re: AWS security woes

« on: September 03, 2015, 06:57 PM »

Aw smokes, I did a search, why did I not see this before I posted?
Sorry for the dupe.  Mouser, you can erase mine, it doesn't add anything but the misleading tagline, and I totally missed the fact that it was the extension that had the bug, not VS.

Still, it seem somebody at MS or GitHub should have caught this bug long ago.  Is it that uncommon to make private repos on GitHub?

247

Living Room / Re: In a world free from ads, one font reigns supreme. COMIC SANS!

« on: September 02, 2015, 10:12 PM »

Comic Sans all the way.  Bring it.

https://www.donation...opic=30703.msg285720

I'm Comic Sans, A**hole
...
You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes f***ing Gutenberg.

P.S. I'm still looking for a monospace Comic Sans-like in bitmap font format.  To code in.   

248

Living Room / Re: More good web comics you've discovered

« on: September 02, 2015, 09:44 PM »

I've posted about CommitStrip here before, but I'll give a couple of my favorites a home here:

"Betting On the Right Horse"


"What's Wrong With IDEs"

249

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« on: August 17, 2015, 12:33 AM »

Kinda sad, but I can't help but see this guy as terribly cute either way:

Ozzy the cross-eyed cat

250

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: August 16, 2015, 11:50 PM »

Laser printers have their own caveats, namely that the toner cartridges can be quite spendy, and you have to worry about the photoreceptor drum as well. but just like inkjets, you can get remanufactured and replacement brands much cheaper.
Pro Tip: Do not buy laser printer cartridges from your local office supply unless you are in a REAL bind.  They can cost you MUCH more than ordering online.

Case in point:  I have a Brother HL-1440 that has served me well for about 8 years now.  It uses the "TN-460" High-yield toner cartridge that gets me about 6,000 pages, and the "DR-400" photoreceptor drum unit that is good for 20,000 pages (YMMV).  Last time I checked all the major office supply stores in my area (there are 4) had at least one toner in stock and only one store had a drum unit.  The toner unit was $103.00
 
Their online price these days is about $90 for toner, and almost $200 for the drum if you buy Brother brand stuff, but the R&R brands can be had for almost 20-30% lower.  Amazon and eBay have even lower prices, with OEM Brother stuff remaining about the same, but R&R brands down to $10 for toner and $25 for drums.  

I would definitely recommend laser printers if you do mostly black and white printing, but do your research and choose your poison...