Messages

8701

General Software Discussion / Re: In need of software access point

« on: December 05, 2007, 05:46 PM »

I just went to wal-mart last night and I saw a few Nintendo branded USB WiFi Adapters. They're no longer being produced, but like I thought, you can still find them in stores.

8702

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: on sale: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:31 PM »

Calvin and Hobbes has got to be the best comic in the universe! Too bad it's so expensive.

When I was young, I had a few people tell me that I reminded them of Calvin.

8703

Living Room / Re: Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:27 PM »

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU'RE A CRAPPY PROGRAMMER
1. Your version of "Hello World" crashes.

-Ralf Maximus (December 01, 2007, 09:04 PM)

 

8704

Living Room / Re: Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:26 PM »

I'm now wondering who would be correct. My professors which keep evangelizing a few of the bullets on that list, or that guy.
I am in disagreement with both the "You model all your code in UML before you write it." and the "OMG! PATTERNS!" lines.
I mean, i don't think modelling ALL the code in UML is important (i hate UML!) but it definitelly is useful, and my professors keep evangelizing it.
As for patterns... I'm not sure what he means. Does he mean that patterns are a bad thing?

-jgpaiva (December 04, 2007, 06:31 PM)

The comments say clearly that UML is useful, but trying to map ALL your code in UML is overkill.

As for patterns, it isn't clear to me if you understood this, but he's talking about Design Patterns, and as f0dder said, trying to apply them to EVERY problem. Design patterns, like UML, are quite useful when used appropriately.

8705

Living Room / Re: When Acronyms Collide

« on: December 03, 2007, 11:07 PM »

It seems fairly obvious that at least where the airlines are concerned, they knew exactly what they were doing.

MILF is just a stupid acronym to use anyway. It doesn't sound cool or mean anything else. No reason to choose it except to bring to mind the slang meaning.

8706

Living Room / Re: Another cody spotting? CAPTION THIS PICTURE CONTEST

« on: December 03, 2007, 09:27 PM »

Birdo Fett delivers Han Seagull in carbonite to Jabba the Hawk.

8707

General Software Discussion / Re: Adobe Reader has a trojan?

« on: December 03, 2007, 09:06 PM »

I found a few mentions of this particular problem from a google search:

http://www.adobeforu...om/webx/.3bc43ab9?14
http://forums.mcafee...wthread.php?t=209334
http://tech-uno.com/...ry=20071107034830579

And all I see is people saying it's a false positive, but no official explanations of what SGC is or what it does. Interesting.

8708

General Software Discussion / Adobe Reader has a trojan?

« on: December 03, 2007, 08:55 PM »

I just turned on my wife's (Dell) laptop and the Dell Support center told me it didn't have the latest Adobe Reader plug-in for IE. So I had it take me to Adobe's website and clicked the install button and it began downloading.

As it was downloading the McAfee Security popped up saying there was a trojan in SGC (SGC15.exe), which was in the temporary files being downloaded by Adobe.

Does anyone else have information on this? Or even what SGC is?

8709

General Software Discussion / Re: Gmail chat gets group chat

« on: November 28, 2007, 09:33 PM »

Gmail has group chat but GoogleTalk doesn't? Lame!

8710

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 28, 2007, 04:04 PM »

Deozaan: unfortunately it's possible to remove critical stuff with nLite so you get boottime BSODs, but if you only integrate drivers/hotfixes and don't mess with anything else, then that shouldn't happen.

Once you get into component removing, be careful, and test in vmware before installing

-f0dder (November 28, 2007, 04:01 PM)

Problem with VMWare to test is that it uses virtual hardware, so there was no way to test if my SATA drivers would work. At least not to my knowledge. But now that you mention it, maybe I did get the SATA drivers working and I caused BSODs from removing stuff.

8711

General Software Discussion / Re: AutoPatcher's Back!

« on: November 28, 2007, 04:01 PM »

Crap, I even did a search for it.  Maybe I spelt it "autopaytcher" or something...

-Ralf Maximus (November 28, 2007, 08:13 AM)

Autopaycheck would be handy!

8712

Living Room / Re: IT Pornography: Is Getting It All Obscene?

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:59 PM »

Then there's lust: Tell me you don't long in a completely unwholesome way for a Mac Pro with two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 16 gigabytes of RAM with 3TB of disk storage and an Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 graphics card with two 30-inch Apple Cinema displays (all yours for just over $15,500).

I don't long in a completely unwholesome way for a Mac Pro. I don't long in any way for a Mac Pro. Besides the totally ridiculousness of the article in the first place, he just lost all credibility with that sentence.

 

8713

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Productivity or Programming Supplement?

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:49 PM »

Crap I don't do any of those!

Music should be on the list though

8714

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:27 PM »

I think you mean RAID. XP supports SATA interfaces.

You can integrate drivers into your XP install disc. Then they are automatically installed when you load Windows, no floppy drive or interaction needed.

-Nighted (November 27, 2007, 04:16 PM)

There's always the chance that I could be wrong, but my hard drives are not set up in a RAID. I just tried to install XP SP2 on my SATA drive and windows didn't recognize the drive.

I tried using nLite to make an install CD with the drivers but I kept getting BSODs during the install or upon booting up.

8715

Living Room / Re: Hey, Zaine...your Holodeck is almost ready!

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:21 PM »

Wow, thanks App! But seriously, the last thing I'm going to be doing in my Holodeck is driving a truck. Man, I want to program it so that I'm more powerful than god!! (Okay, well that's one program; I have over 820 and counting.) As I say every time: once I go in, I ain't coming out.

-zridling (November 28, 2007, 03:18 AM)

So if you go in a holodeck, can you pretend like you're being productive? That is, could I holodeck that I've just coded the best program in the world and everyone loves it and all that? Hmm... What if it was a very rudimentary holograph that didn't let you program it so that you were more powerful than God, but it let you holodeck that you have programmed it to do that. So in your holodeck you have programmed it to do all your 820 things, but in reality you haven't done that because it's impossible. Like a dream in which you're dreaming.

 

Yeah, I'm using holodeck as a verb.

8716

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:06 PM »

Sorry for temporarily hijacking the thread. I was just curious as to the scientific definition and classifications.

Sixth - Back to the validity of homeopathy as a medical treatment… Why would one pay for a tasteless and “nutritionless” placebo ?

I’d rather have vegetables instead… Or fine chocolate… While imagining it’s a miracle cure for my chronic disease.

BTW : some stuff is identified as being homeopathic when it’s not even that. Here, some highly concentrated herbs or vegetable extracts (like Echinacea) are sold under the homeopathic “tag” — No wonder “homeopathy” works!

-Armando (November 27, 2007, 06:55 PM)

The reason is because people already know that vegetables aren't miracle healers, nor chocolate. If you consider the placebo effect a psychological trick (the mind thinks the "medicine" will make you better, so your body does what it needs to get better) then the ways to further convince yourself it's real is to make big commitments, like spending outlandish amounts of money on "special" water.

I've only taken Psychology 101 in college, but even at that basic level I learned about studies involving people justifying their commitments. They really have to convince themselves that what they spent their money on was worth it. One specific example is where people were taken in to do some "tests" which involved pulling pegs out of holes, flipping them over (the two sides were different colors) and putting them back in the holes. They did this for long periods of time, over and over and over. Afterward, they were asked to talk to the person who would be doing the test next, and tell them it was really fun. Some people were offered $1 to lie, some were offered $20. After they talked to the other person, they had an exit interview and the researchers asked them if they enjoyed the experience. I can't remember exactly the outcome, but most (if not all) of the people who were paid $1 to lie said they really enjoyed it, but most who were paid $20 said it was boring.

They had to justify lying to someone else for such a small sum of money that they actually had convinced themselves that it was fun. The people who were paid $20 did it just for the money and had no problem saying so.

To come back to topic: If someone hands me a cucumber and says it is a special cucumber that will heal my illness, there's no way I'll believe them. But if someone spews out pseudo-scientific terms, detailing a complex method of certain ingredients mixed and matched etc. to come to a treatment, which is more believable? Also, which is more believable, the one that costs a couple dollars or the one that is really expensive?

For the placebo effect, it's just a matter of psychological manipulation.

Tangent

Interestingly enough, Lie Detector machines also work largely on the placebo effect (kind of). If you believe they are flawless at detecting lies, you might fail even if you're telling the truth. If you believe they are flawed and aren't accurate, you can lie all you want.

8717

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 27, 2007, 06:04 PM »

So if there's a chance it could be proved wrong (it's falsifiable), it's a theory. But if there's no chance it could be proved wrong (creationism/intelligent design), it's not able to be a theory?

Yup, it becomes a belief, or a dogma.

-nontroppo (November 27, 2007, 05:36 PM)

But what if there's a chance it could be proven right? Hypothetically, if Christians are right about their beliefs, eventually Christ will return and everyone would know there is a God, He created the world/universe (disproving the Big Bang theory), He created mankind (disproving the theory of Evolution), etc. I'm not trying to get into a religious debate. I'm honestly just curious about this from a scientific standpoint.

It's an odd situation because it can't ever be disproved, but it could potentially be proved.

8718

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 27, 2007, 05:55 PM »

Wow. While I typed this the thread has moved on! As nontroppo correctly notes, individuals come up with hypotheses while theories are the result of many individuals working independently on the same problem. Deozaan - you are right: if a statement or series of statements cannot be falsified (ie there is no conceivable event/observation/outcome that would lead to it being rejected) then it is not a theory.

-Darwin (November 27, 2007, 05:14 PM)

Thanks for the great explanation. But I'm still a little confused. I think a lot of it probably has to do with the way the layman has mixed up those words, for instance, many times people will say "My theory is because [blah]..." to describe a situation. So perhaps there's room for the distinction between a scientific theory, which follows the scientific method and meets the aforementioned definition, and just a regular old theory, which is more like the basic definition of a hypothesis.

But right now, as I'm trying to adjust my own personal definition of these words, and re-categorize things (if necessary) based on these definitions, I'm left wondering how there can be any observed and verified conclusions to theories such as big-bang, darwinism.

Some of the articles I've just read from this thread said that evolution has tons of undebatable evidence, but I don't see where. Sure, we have fossils and bones, and in some cases preserved corpses of old creatures, but how does that prove that these creatures are pre-evolutions of any other creatures? I know it can't be proven, but why is it accepted as as factual as it can be when perhaps maybe they were just different creatures that are now extinct? How can it be accepted as true when it's just as likely that evolution doesn't exist and there have just been a bunch of creatures over the eons that have similar features?

I'm not trying to get into an argument against darwinism. I'm just trying to figure out how it has been verified, since evolution is a scientific theory, and the definition of a scientific theory is something that has repeatedly been verified. I guess what I'm asking is, what are the If...Then tests that have passed?

I'm also curious about the Big Bang theory. How can we verify something that happened zillions of years ago when no one was around to witness? How did that change from an educated guess to a scientific theory that has been verified repeatedly and become "accepted as true by the scientific community as a whole"? What tests did that hypothesis pass to become a theory?

8719

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 27, 2007, 05:01 PM »

Theory: A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis. ...both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.

http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

-nontroppo (November 27, 2007, 04:51 PM)

Thanks. That's helpful. But I'm a little confused about this part:

Development of a Simple Theory by the Scientific Method:

    * Observation: Every swan I've ever seen is white.
    * Hypothesis: All swans must be white.
    * Test: A random sampling of swans from each continent where swans are indigenous produces only white swans.
    * Publication: "My global research has indicated that swans are always white, wherever they are observed."
    * Verification: Every swan any other scientist has ever observed in any country has always been white.
    * Theory: All swans are white.

Prediction: The next swan I see will be white.

Note, however, that although the prediction is useful, the theory does not absolutely prove that the next swan I see will be white. Thus it is said to be falsifiable. If anyone ever saw a black swan, the theory would have to be tweaked or thrown out. Real scientific theories must be falsifiable. So-called "theories" based on religion, such as creationism or intelligent design are, therefore, not scientific theories. They are not falsifiable and they do not follow the scientific method.

So if there's a chance it could be proved wrong (it's falsifiable), it's a theory. But if there's no chance it could be proved wrong (creationism/intelligent design), it's not able to be a theory?

8720

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 27, 2007, 04:17 PM »

Lashiec - don't even get me started on the scientific method. One of the great trials of daily life is dealing with people who absolutely refuse to accept the differences between an hypothesis, a theory, and a law. How many times have you heard something dismissed as being "just" a theory?

-Darwin (November 27, 2007, 03:27 PM)

I dismiss stuff as being "just" a theory all the time. For instance, speaking of Darwin, the theory of evolution. But I'm one of those people who don't like to use words incorrectly, so I'd be happy for you to point out the error of my ways and I'll live a better life using words properly.

8721

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 27, 2007, 04:12 PM »

XP SP2 supports SATA disks without any magic tricks

-Lashiec (November 27, 2007, 02:08 PM)

Not true. I downgraded from Vista to XP SP2 earlier this year because someone told me SP2 supports SATA no problem, but I still had to install the drivers manually. Which was impossible because I don't have a floppy drive in this machine. This machine was useless for about a month until I took it for about a 2-hour drive to my parents and borrowed a floppy from one of their machines.

8722

Living Room / Re: Feedback on New Fun Software Please

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:59 PM »

Now I said I was going to do something good with this, and I kept my promise...

I have uncovered proof that the Anti-Christ is trying to take over the U.S. by running for President in the next election....and yes, he is a Rebublican. 

If you like the page, Digg it!

-app103 (November 17, 2007, 12:41 AM)

I didn't know Jesus was a Presidential hopeful: Jesus Bilal Islam Allah Muhammed (1656)

Wait a sec, Jesus and Allah? As well as Muhammed and Islam? What a gaudy name. 

8723

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Signs You May Have Overclocked Your PC Too Much

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:26 PM »

These lists are funny Ralf. You should put them all together on a web page somewhere so more people can enjoy them.

-tinjaw (November 26, 2007, 10:11 AM)

Sorry if this is insulting in anyway, as I don't mean to accuse you of plagiarizing, but are you coming up with these Ralf? I figured you found them on a site somewhere or in forwarded e-mail jokes or something. But now that I think about it, you don't list any source.

8724

Living Room / Re: Breaking News: Multiple Universes Exist!

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:22 PM »

By the way, app, and any others interested:

The new Futurama Movie heavily involves time travel and presents a few theories on how this is possible. It's a comedy of course, so it isn't trying to be the most scientifically accurate, but there's not really any scientific accuracy for things science has no real way of proving or disproving.

8725

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:11 PM »

I agree wholeheartedly with nontroppo's statements in this post. Though I'm only quoting his summary, the entire post is a good explanation of my opinion on the article's tone.

To reiterate: IMO the vast majority of the article is constructive, and not some emotional tirade aimed at hurting people. His first paragraph is specifically dismissive of Wintertons article (not all homeopaths), and his last paragraphs is clearly framed as an emotional response to those homeopaths who have exhibited despicable behaviour.

-nontroppo (November 27, 2007, 12:38 PM)