Topics

726

Living Room / Hilarious Jersey Shore Review

« on: March 13, 2011, 08:17 PM »

A friend had this posted on Facebook:

727

Developer's Corner / Named Pipes for Inter Process Communication

« on: March 12, 2011, 06:10 AM »

This is wicked cool:

http://wyday.com/blo...e-using-named-pipes/

728

Developer's Corner / Search Engines

« on: March 11, 2011, 05:45 AM »

Has anyone implemented a custom search engine? Like Lucene (I think that's what it's called) or something.

I was just "trying" to search in a phpBB powered forum, and yet again, hit in the face with just how horrible some search engines are.

Is there anything you'd recommend?

Preferably in the .NET/Mono world, though something that just worked would be ok too.

729

General Software Discussion / A LOUDER Internet

« on: March 10, 2011, 10:14 PM »

While I love music, and write audio software, I really think that default on/play for audio on the web is a colossally gargantuan mistake. I hate it.

Lately, I've been finding a few sites are blasting away. I never found that a few years ago.

Has anyone else been finding any sites that start audio without a user action?

e.g. http://www.dominos.com.au/

730

Developer's Corner / Automatic Updater

« on: March 10, 2011, 12:30 AM »

I was looking for an automatic updater, and found this:

http://wyday.com/wyupdate/

It seems pretty good. I've tested it out some and it was good enough that I bought a license. ($70 vs. $250) Nice to save a few bucks there as I already spend WAAAAYYY too much on software as it is.

Anyways, thought that might be interesting for some people.

Oh, and there's a free version with BSD licensed source code as well.

731

Living Room / A Fun Video About Apple

« on: March 08, 2011, 05:23 AM »

Just for fun:

732

Living Room / Technical Excuses for Porn (Safe For Work)

« on: March 08, 2011, 04:40 AM »

If you work with images, a standard photo used in imaging is from the November 1972 edition of Playboy.

http://www.ecogito.n...t/articles/lena.html (SFW)

Anyone familiar with digital image processing will surely recognize the image of Lena. While going through some old usenet discussions, I got to know that Lena has a history worth all the attention that has been paid to her over the years by countless image processing researchers.

lenaLena Sjööblom, (also spelled Lenna by many publications) was the Playboy playmate in November 1972 and rose to fame in the computer world when researchers at the University of Southern California scanned and digitized her image in June 1973. (Lena herself never know of her fame until she was interviewed by a computer magazine in Sweden where she lives with her husband and children).

According to the IEEE PCS Newsletter of May/June 2001, they were hurriedly searching for a glossy image which they could scan and use for a conference paper when someone walked in with a copy of Playboy. The engineers tore off the top third of the centerfold and scanned it with a Muirhead wire photo scanner (a distant cry from the flatbed scanners of today) by wrapping it around the drum of the scanner. (Now you know why the image shows only a small part of the entire picture.. discounting of course, the fact that the complete picture would raise quite a few eyebrows. Follow the link at the bottom of this article to see the complete picture.)

But I really don't think you needed an excuse...

733

Developer's Corner / Thank You For Treating Everyone Like a Criminal, Apple

« on: March 08, 2011, 02:48 AM »

From an Apple developer email right at the top, first thing:

Pre-release software is Apple Confidential information. Unauthorized distribution of pre-release software or disclosure of information relating to pre-release software (including the distribution of screen shots) may result in immediate termination of your Apple Developer Program membership, and may subject you to both civil and criminal liability.

I love being treated like a criminal. It's so much fun~! I feel like all "Reservoir Dogs" bad-boy and stuff...

Sigh...

734

Living Room / $1,000,000 Bet That Apple Pulls from Retail

« on: March 07, 2011, 02:26 PM »

Would you bet $1 million that Apple will pull out from third party retailers?

http://www.kogan.com...-hi-fi-hidden-truth/

I challenge the current CEO of JB Hi-Fi, Terry Smart, to a $1,000,000 bet that on March 14th 2014 there will not be any Apple hardware products for sale at JB Hi-Fi stores.

That guy will.

The contract for the bet has already been drawn up by my lawyers and can be found here (PDF).

735

General Software Discussion / Popping Downloads - iframe or meta refresh?

« on: March 03, 2011, 07:28 PM »

Which do you find a better way to pop a download? In an iframe? Or in a meta refresh?

736

General Software Discussion / Solving Issues - Pain and More Pain

« on: March 03, 2011, 07:25 PM »

Well, I finally solved a stupid problem. The solution was to remove a single attribute from an XML node. I'd been through a trillion different routes, and finally found it.

The problem came from an upgraded web.config file going from IIS6 to IIS7, in which the attribute got added. Sigh...

Anyways... Just one of those things. Lost more time over it than I care to admit, but eventually got it working. YAY~!

Lesson learned: Sometimes things just aren't that complicated, and going back to basics can save a lot of time.

737

Living Room / A Stupid Reason to Hate Google Ads...

« on: March 02, 2011, 06:34 AM »

I'm building a site, and have Google ads there. Visiting other sites, I've clicked on a few ads, and now the ads on the site I'm working on are REALLY tempting to click on, but that's against the rules.

With some of them being only graphical ads (images), I can't tell the URL, so I can't visit them. And they're so tempting. Sigh...

Yep. A stupid reason.

738

Living Room / Soundwave 2011 in Melbourne

« on: March 01, 2011, 09:51 PM »

Is anyone here going to Soundwave here in Melbourne?

739

Living Room / A Point About Grammar

« on: March 01, 2011, 08:43 PM »

Am I the only one that's annoyed by the seemingly decreasing quality of language in "professional" news, articles and general writing?

I really don't care about people making mistakes in forums or informal writing. A lot of people don't speak English as their first language, and that's not a problem. What I find annoying is "professional" media that simply don't know how to use English properly.

e.g.
* Statistical "outlyers". It's "outliers". Sigh...
* "mass nouns" -- They're called "countable" and "uncountable", not "mass".
* Verb agreement

The list goes on and on.

It's just jarring to get "hit" by grammar, spelling, and word choice mistakes that there really is no excuse for.

It's one thing for it to be "the odd time", but it's not. It's all the time.

Am I just super-anal? Is poor grammar really acceptable in professional media?

740

Living Room / Unsubscribe to 404

« on: March 01, 2011, 06:46 PM »

Why is it that most email lists that I try to unsubscribe from have an unsubscribe link in their emails that go to some sort of a 404 page? Sigh... 

741

General Software Discussion / Instantly Increasing Password Strength

« on: February 23, 2011, 09:05 AM »

I was reading on how HBGary got raped, and about their passwords, etc.

It occurred to me that a VERY simple way to increase security for those that like to use the same password or use pass-phrases would be to simply double them. e.g.:

Password: mypassword

New doubled:
* mypasswordmypassword
* mmyyppaasswwoorrdd

It's pretty much trivial, and adds virtually nothing in terms of complexity for remembering.

Personally, I like pass-phrases as they are easy to remember. e.g.

inthebeginningtherewasme

23 characters and pretty easy to remember. Sprinkle with caps or numbers, e.g.:

Ilike2moveitmoveit

Not bad, but doubling up really takes it to a new level.

In related news, since broadband speed is related to the effectiveness of brute force attacks, Korea is going to have 1 Gbps Internet connections in 2012.

1 Gbps. Residential. At home.

Goodbye to network speeds being a limiting factor in security!

742

General Software Discussion / Why is Software for Hardware Always Sucky?

« on: February 22, 2011, 07:09 AM »

GPS units. Phone connectivity software. etc. etc. Why is it always sucky? And why do companies make brand new crappy interfaces that are always confusing, and rarely let you get things done easily, if at all.

Once in a while, things work ok. But generally they use crummy wizard UIs and are horribly limited.

I'm in the process of updating my GPS units, and it's just a complete disaster with a trillion pieces of software to do different tasks. Why not have 1 good piece of software?

Am I alone in this? Does anyone else find the same?

743

Living Room / A Digital Rights "Annoyance"

« on: February 21, 2011, 09:36 AM »

Not going to rant on DRM. Not going to rant on DR.

I go to this web site with something I'm very interested in. Oh. I can see the video. For free! Ok. Click. Advertisement. 30 seconds. Ok. No biggie. Almost done... I can deal with ads. It's ok. They pay for the show... Almost done... kk -- sure your ad is great. Love it. Almost done... and... OK SHOW~! "This video cannot be shown due to..." F*** off. Click Close.

Bait & switch is one thing, but bait & screw? This is new.

If you're going to show ads... jeez... At least be decent about it. I'm ok with ads. I'm not ok with suckering me in.

I am sick of blatant deception on the web.

744

Developer's Corner / Oh God... I've Forgotten ASP.NET Entirely...

« on: February 21, 2011, 01:26 AM »

Really. I just don't remember jack about it. A few tiny things are coming back, but I need seriously remedial help.

Can anyone recommend some good tutorials for getting up to speed? Like basic stuff. Needs to be for IIS 7 or 7.5 and .NET 3.5 or 4.0, though things that haven't changed from 2.0 are fine too.

It's been many years since I did anything useful, and I'm just drawing a total blank. I don't even know what sites to look at anymore.

745

General Software Discussion / Freeware Telephone Support Number

« on: February 19, 2011, 04:11 PM »

How would people react to being Rickrolled by a freeware telephone support phone number? i.e. 985-655-2500

Good? Bad?

I'm thinking of doing that... But just asking to find out opinions.

746

General Software Discussion / Bulk Creating Folders

« on: February 16, 2011, 09:07 AM »

Got a question...

I had to create a bunch of folders. (64 actually) And I looked for something to help me do it, but didn't turn up anything useful. (I found some OSS, but it required compiling.)

Does anyone ever need to create a bunch of folders besides me?

(I've already written the software --- just checking if I should polish it for others.)

It's just such a simple little thing, but who in their right mind wants to manually create 50 folders or whatever. I sure as heck don't.

747

Living Room / Mac Games

« on: February 16, 2011, 08:09 AM »

This was too good not to share.

748

Living Room / [FOR FUN] Stupid Questions

« on: February 15, 2011, 07:38 AM »

I thought it might be fun to have a thread for people to post stupid questions/statements. (Try to limit to a max of 2 sentences.) I'll start:


I've been thinking about getting an iPad for an ebook reader because it can hold thousands of books. How heavy would that be?

749

Living Room / Odd Google Behavior

« on: February 15, 2011, 06:37 AM »

Well, I've been trying to find things that I've found in Google before. Results were more relevant a few months ago than I'm finding now, and I can't find what I wanted.

Is this something that anyone else has noticed? Maybe it's just an isolated thing... Not sure.

750

Living Room / An Optical Illusion

« on: February 15, 2011, 04:43 AM »

I was working on a kind of tiling problem, I wanted to visually compare some sizes, and mocked up 4 bars in Photoshop:



In the top corner you can see 4 vertical bars, and 4 bars behind them.

Anyways, just a stupid little thing that I though might amuse someone.