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Topics - Renegade [ switch to compact view ]

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751
Living Room / Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?
« on: February 12, 2011, 12:03 AM »
http://online.wsj.co..._hpp_LEFTTopWhatNews

Borders Group Inc. is in the final stages of preparing a bankruptcy filing, clinching a long fall for a company with humble beginnings that helped change the way Americans buy books but failed to keep pace with the digital transformation rocking every corner of the media landscape.

I'm kind of ambivalent. On one hand, I feel sorry for them, and on the other, I feel that it's their own fault for not embracing ebooks earlier.


752
Developer's Corner / Software Licensing
« on: February 11, 2011, 09:04 AM »
I'm doing a fair bit of web work right now, and ended back up at the CKEditor site, where I checked the license:

CKEditor is distributed under the GPL, LGPL and MPL open source licenses. This triple copyleft licensing model avoids incompatibility with other open source licenses. These Open Source licenses are specially indicated for:

    * Integrating CKEditor into Open Source software;
    * Personal and educational use of CKEditor;
    * Integrating CKEditor in commercial software, taking care of satisfying the Open Source licenses terms, while not able or interested on supporting CKEditor and its development.

Hahahaha~! I like how they put that there. Very nice.

jab jab

In any event, it's a kick ass RTE.

753
Living Room / My New DVD is ALL Regions =D YAY~!
« on: February 10, 2011, 10:31 PM »
I just got my DVD of "The Corporation" in the mail. I quickly opened the package, then checked the back for the region... ALL. Hahah~! They get it. They make the DVD playable for any DVD player. They're not the total douches that the rest of the industry seems to be.

It was just nice to see. I'm sick of spending money on products that are designed to be broken. :( (Very not happy at my Star Wars DVDs not being playable...)


754
Developer's Corner / Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?
« on: February 07, 2011, 08:17 AM »
Can anyone recommend a script or utility to make header slideshows?

I want a slide show about 800x200 pixels or so that slides DIVs across the top header. I also want to put both HTML and images in the DIV.

I don't care if it works with IE4 or Opera 3 or whatever. I only care about hitting the top 95% or so of the browser market, so it needs to be relatively robust, but I'm willing to sacrifice a few visitors for some slick style.

This is entirely about style, so the slicker, the better.

If you know anything that's drop-dead sexy, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

755
Living Room / Porn for Geeks (Kind of SFW)
« on: February 07, 2011, 07:36 AM »
Screenshot - 2011-02-08 , 12_12_40 AM.png

Oh, yeah... Look at those big juicy fonts... Yeah baby! Gimme 10 MB/s~! Yeah! That's right! Now 11 MB/s... Oooo... 12 MB/s... Yeah... That's HOT~!

:D

This Australian Internet is killing me... Dirt slow... I was transferring some files between servers, and just thought I'd share a laugh. :D

756
Living Room / Deceptive Online Advertising
« on: February 07, 2011, 02:56 AM »
Believe it or not, this is an ad:

Screenshot - 2011-02-07 , 4_07_12 PM.png

I saw it at some site. I forget where now. Just snapped the screenshot as I was busy.

It's nothing more than an image.

And no... I forgot to click through and ended up closing the window. :(

757
Living Room / Death Threats in an Odd Turnabout
« on: February 07, 2011, 12:21 AM »
http://m.smh.com.au/...-20110207-1ajb6.html

A controversial London-based law firm that sent tens of thousands of letters demanding payment from people it accused of illegal file sharing has dramatically quit its copyright litigations, claiming death threats are causing "immense hassle" to the lead solicitor's family.

The founder and lead solicitor at ACS:Law, Andrew Crossley, announced in a statement to the Patents County Court in London that his firm would no longer be chasing alleged copyright infringers.

"I have ceased my work. I have been subject to criminal attack. My emails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats," Mr Crossley said in the statement read to the court by barrister Tim Ludbrook, who is acting on behalf of copyright licensee MediaCAT. "It has caused immense hassle to me and my family."

I can't help but laugh at litigation like that being withdrawn, but the cause of it... well... not very funny.

758
General Software Discussion / 3-Day Money Back Guarantee~! WOW~!
« on: February 05, 2011, 05:29 AM »
Hahahaha~! I couldn't help but laugh at this on a website I was checking out, and quickly leaving...

Screenshot - 2011-02-05 , 10_24_28 PM.png

Wow? Really? An entire 3 days~! Golly gee! We gotta hop right on that, eh Beaver?

And the graphic is just sad... Very sad...


759
General Software Discussion / Free Social Media Icons with Vector Art
« on: February 04, 2011, 07:16 PM »
This will likely be more of interest to developers, but...

They include vector art!

http://icondock.com/...r-social-media-icons



There are more there as well. That's the part of the set.

And they're FREE!

The free icons stuff that I usually find isn't that kind of quality. Much lower usually.

760
Living Room / A Funnier IE6 Story
« on: February 02, 2011, 01:50 AM »
FAIR WARNING:

If you are prone to wetting your pant laughing, don't read on... Unless you're browsing on your mobile phone in the toilet, in which case you should be safe.

http://www.independe...-the-uk-2200172.html

Anonymous, the mercurial “hactivist” collective behind a series of pro-WikiLeaks cyber protests, has declared war on the British Government following the arrest of five people in the UK.

Blah blah blah...

The threat has been judged serious enough for GovCertUK, the information security agency, to issue an advisory urging government websites to take precautions against DDoS attacks. “In light of this threat we would advise you to be vigilant against any new signs of DDoS activity you may encounter, and to notify us if such activity occurs,” the advisory warns.

In recent months the Government’s cyber security has been criticised in some quarters for being ill-prepared to deal with both hacking and mass cyber protests like DDoS.

In November a lone hacker from Romania successfully broke into the Royal Navy’s recruitment website and published details of current and former defence staff, including a former Royal Navy head.

Last year the Coalition also declined requests to upgrade government computers from using Internet Explorer 6, a decade old internet browser that has been abandoned by the French and German governments because of concerns over patches in its security.


BWAHAHAHAHAHA~!


Sorry... But if the UK government is that stupid, they deserve to get hacked~! :D

761
Living Room / IE6 Effects
« on: February 01, 2011, 07:35 PM »
Somebody posted a screenshot of this (and I can't find where), but here's the original:

http://mrdoob.com/la...ascript/effects/ie6/

Just move your mouse around the page. :)

FUN FUN FUN~!

762
Living Room / Telegraph Slights Wikileaks
« on: February 01, 2011, 12:55 AM »
This is just funny:

http://www.telegraph...TION-WITH-LIBYA.html

KOREA SEEKS U.S. VIEWS ON CIVIL NUCLEAR COOPERATION WITH LIBYA
Passed to the Telegraph by WikiLeaks 9:30PM GMT 31 Jan 2011

Ref ID: 10TRIPOLI8

Date: 1/7/2010 15:16

Origin: Embassy Tripoli

Classification: SECRET//NOFORN

Destination:

Header: VZCZCXRO2584PP RUEHTRODE RUEHTRO #0008 0071516ZNY SSSSS ZZHP 071516Z JAN 10FM AMEMBASSY TRIPOLITO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5651INFO RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW PRIORITY 0111RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL PRIORITY 0015RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES PRIORITY 0003RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 0874RUEHOT/AMEMBASSY OTTAWA PRIORITY 0047RUEHKV/AMEMBASSY KYIV PRIORITY 0020RUEHUNV/USMISSION UNVIE VIENNA PRIORITY 0100RUEHTRO/AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI 6202

etc. etc.

"Passed to" -- They're just posting raw cables now, and not even "reporting". Ouch! Looks like the media is turning on WL like a rabid dog.

763
Living Room / I'm Confused
« on: January 30, 2011, 01:56 PM »
Future cars detect drunks to stop driving:

http://www.newsy.com...etect-drunk-drivers/

Blind man drives Daytona:

http://www.nydailyne...ational_speedwa.html

I'm not sure which is worse. Driving blind or drunk.

Do they cancel out?

Can we safely automatically drive cars if we're blind drunk?

:D

764
Living Room / Online Dating is Super Safe
« on: January 29, 2011, 04:59 PM »
This illustrates just how wonderfully safe online dating sites are:



:D

765
Living Room / I Predict You Are A MURDERER~!
« on: January 29, 2011, 03:52 AM »
Because of all the time you're going to kill...

http://controversy.wearscience.com/




So, which shirt would you wear? :P



Or perhaps you're more politically oriented?






Or perhaps that's not classy enough for you:






:D

Not sure which would look better on me:

http://imvotingteapa...design/hunthomeless/

http://controversy.w...m/design/illuminati/

:P

766
Living Room / MOBILE VS. PC -- Please Chime In!
« on: January 28, 2011, 09:10 AM »
I want to provoke a discussion on the mobile environment. I also want people to chime in as either DEVELOPERS or USERS.

USERS can chime in and tell us DEVELOPERS about how you use your mobile device, and what needs aren't met.

Those DEVELOPERS of us can then think and plan to come up with solutions to problems for people.


I think that this could be a good exercise 

http://www.startupsm...ace-pcs-in-2011.html

Mobile devices to outpace PCs in 2011

A new report reveals mobile internet devices will outsell desktop personal computers this year, prompting a shift in the way businesses operate and advertise.

According to the Technology Predictions 2011 report, released by consulting firm Deloitte, non-PC computing devices such as smartphones, tablets and netbooks will prove more popular than PCs.

Deloitte’s findings form part of a list of annual predictions for the technology, media and telecommunications industry.

Damien Tampling, Deloitte’s head of technology, media and telecommunications in Australia, says 2011 will be a “watershed” year for how people use computers and information.

“Non-PC devices put a world of information and computing power at your fingertips – anytime and anywhere,” Tampling says.


What are things that can enrich our lives in this new paradigm?

767
Living Room / Egypt Blacks Out Internet!
« on: January 28, 2011, 05:01 AM »
Ok, I know this is political, but it's relevant for us:

http://www.bbc.co.uk.../technology-12306041

Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest

Protester tearing a picture of President Mubarak Egyptian activists are protesting against a lack of freedom

Internet connections across Egypt appear to have been cut, as authorities gear up for a day of mass protest.

Net analysis firms and web watchers have reported that the vast majority of the country's internet has become unreachable.

The unprecedented crack down will leave millions of Egyptians without internet access.

There have been unprecedented protest in the country over the past few days - much of it co-ordinated via the web.

If I were there, and wasn't protesting, THAT would make me protest~! :P

768
Developer's Corner / Choosing an Installer
« on: January 28, 2011, 02:13 AM »
And again looking to hear about YOUR experiences...

I'm trying out different installers to see if I can come up with a replacement for the normal Visual Studio installer. 

Just tried InstallShield...

ARGH~!

I want to stab myself in the eyes and scrub myself with a wire brush in an acid shower...

Did I mention that I found InstallShield to be, ummm, not fun?

Also trying out InnoSetup. Liking that so far.

I need to check for the .NET 4.0 framework, so that's a must.

But, if anyone has anything to chime in with about any installer software, please do.






769
Developer's Corner / Choosing a CMS
« on: January 28, 2011, 01:48 AM »
Well, I'm starting a new website and I am debating changing the CMS I usually use, DotNetNuke.

I've not looked at Joomla in a while, so I'm wondering if it has finally achieved of sane degree of usability. Last I tried, it was about the most obtuse thing I'd ever seen.

Has anyone been using it lately?

Also, WordPress... I've been using it for blogs, but nothing more. How does it stack up for a real website? Has anyone been using it like that? It's been great for blogging... Not sure about making a website from it though.

I'll be using whatever I end up choosing on Windows 2008 R2, with SQL Server 2008 and IIS. Not a LAMP server. Emphasis on not A as in not Apache.

My priorities are:

1. Reliability
2. Ease
3. Extensibility

I'm also concerned about third party modules/plugins/addins and that there's a decent selection of quality stuff. e.g. I'm not interested in "Bob's Joomla NewPort CMS Uber-Awesomeness that's 10000x better than Joomla and has over 3 exciting modules available!"

i.e. I want the site to work for me, and not me to work for the site.


Oh... And I'll need to get a skin too... Something that's super simple.


770
Living Room / Reptile Porn
« on: January 25, 2011, 07:14 AM »
Yes. You read it right. Pornography with reptiles...

http://www.flickr.co.../reptilepornography/













I could NOT get this out of my head:



:D

Ok, not really porn, but whatever. It was a chuckle. :)

771
Living Room / Microsoft Formats Causing Issues Again...
« on: January 24, 2011, 04:58 PM »
http://www.theaustra...frgakx-1225993876379

THE Australian Government Information Management Office has taken to Twitter and the blogosphere after being criticised for an IT policy seemingly biased in favour of Microsoft.

AGIMO last Wednesday finalised its Common Operating Environment policy for desktops and laptops.

According to AGIMO, the policy "defines the principles and standards that will apply to agency desktop operating environments" and ensure desktop standardisation across agencies.

The policy covers a range of areas, but what riled the software community was that document formats seemed to mandate a Microsoft-only environment.

Open source software advocate Jeff Waugh described it as an "arse-covering" exercise, an attempt by AGIMO to avoid using the word "Microsoft" in the policy. "I suspect that use of the term 'ECMA-376' (document standard) is almost entirely an arse-covering exercise, when what they really mean is docx and friends (including .doc) created with Microsoft Office 2007," he wrote on the Linux Australia list, comments that were repeated to the The Australian.

Here we go again...

772
My wife came to me and wanted to resize a photo. Well, we've been through this before... She's got software to do it, but it's not easy enough. I showed her again, but she doesn't like IrfanView because it's simply too complicated. So...

The all new Renegade Photo Resizer! ed. Super Simple Photo Resizer

Photo-Resizer.png

Is it easy enough to use? I'm looking to make it stupidly simple. So simple that a politician could use it~!

I had options and stuff in there... but I figured that it was just crap that isn't needed. Who cares about JPG ratios? 80% is good enough. Exact sizes? BAH! Slider. Close enough. How many people actually know that you must have your photo dimensions as multiples of 16 in order to minimize quality loss? Not many... I take care of the little stuff and leave only the MAJOR decisions to the user.

It requires .NET v4 though. There's no installer. Just the EXE.

(It's not final quality yet -- a few tiny things to tweak.)

UPDATE 2011-03-25:

I've posted follow up in this thread.

773
Ahem...

http://googleblog.bl...rch-engine-spam.html

January brought a spate of stories about Google’s search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness. Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English. However, we have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we’ve already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality.

,,,

One misconception that we’ve seen in the last few weeks is the idea that Google doesn’t take as strong action on spammy content in our index if those sites are serving Google ads. To be crystal clear:

    * Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;
    * Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and
    * Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

These principles have always applied, but it’s important to affirm they still hold true.

WHAT? Ahem... B^!!$#!+~!

I cannot count the spam I get from Google. They regularly rank sites in the top 10 that are nothing more than ripping content from other sites. This is particularly bad for tech topics in programming where there are TONS of sites that do exactly that.

They all serve Google Ads as well. What is anyone supposed to think?

If they are being genuine, they're not doing what they say they do very well then. Spam is worse than ever.

But it's not "low-quality" content. It's STOLEN content. To me, that seems like spam.

774
Well, I'm still working on some requests for Duplicate Photo Finder, but I'm encountering some odd memory problems.

I'm getting "Out of memory" exceptions, and in particular, "A generic error occurred in GDI+".

If the above sounds interesting, read on, otherwise don't because it gets ugly.

I'm running through photos and processing them in threads in a threadpool. I basically queue up several hundred, then let it go.

What happens is that it very happily rips through the photos, then all of a sudden, memory usage spikes real quickly (over say 1~5 seconds), and then I get the GDI+ error. What's happening there is that I run out of memory. The application sucks up 200~500 MB while running (I have 8 GB of RAM), but when it spikes, it dies at 1 GB to 1.4 GB of RAM (from Task Manager).

During those few seconds when the program begins to blow up, the number of threads that it's working on triples out of the blue. It goes from 6~8 threads to BOOM! 24, 26, 28, 30, 31 CRASH~! It hits the GDI+ error.

I've run "memprofiler" and cannot locate any memory leaks. It tells me:

Disposed instance (Ignore...)
5 types have instances that have been disposed but not GCed.
Investigate the types below for more information.
System.Drawing.Bitmap, System.Drawing.Graphics, System.Drawing.Region, DeviceContext, WindowsFont

Instance queued for finalization (Ignore...)
One type has instances that are queued for finalization. This can indicate that a Finalizer method is stuck, which will prevent instances from being finalized and cause memory leaks.
Investigate the type below for more information.
DeviceContext

Pinned instance (Ignore...)
3 types have instances that are pinned in memory.
Investigate the types below for more information.
System.Object, System.Object[], System.String

Instance indirectly rooted by finalizer queue (Ignore...)
2 types have instances that are indirectly rooted by the finalizer queue. This can indicate that a Finalizer method is stuck, which will prevent instances from being finalized and cause memory leaks.
Investigate the types below for more information.
System.Collections.Stack, System.Object[]

Large instance (Ignore...)
2 types have instances that are located in the large object heap.
Investigate the types below for more information.
System.Byte[], System.Object[]

Undisposed instances (unclassified) (Ignore...)
16 types have instances that have been garbage collected without being properly disposed.
Investigate the types below for more information.
SafeTokenHandle, SafeWaitHandle, System.Drawing.Bitmap, System.Drawing.Font, System.IO.BinaryReader, System.IO.MemoryStream, UnmanagedMemoryStream, ResourceReader, RuntimeResourceSet, ExecutionContext, (...)


Here's enough code to see what's going on. I've edited it somewhat to make it shorter (e.g. remove Console.WriteLine & debugging stuff.)

Code: C# [Select]
  1. private void QueueHashWorkItem(DirectoryInfo di, bool isOriginal, int count, bool exactImageDataComparison)
  2. {
  3.         int indexer = -1;
  4.         foreach (FileInfo fi in di.GetFiles())
  5.         {
  6.                 if (fi.Extension.ToLower() == ".jpg")
  7.                 {
  8.                         indexer++;
  9.                         // HashWorkItem is a struct to hold info
  10.                         HashWorkItem hwi = new HashWorkItem(di.FullName, fi.FullName, isOriginal, count, exactImageDataComparison);
  11.                         hwi.DirectoryName = di.FullName;
  12.                         hwi.FileName = fi.FullName;
  13.                         hwi.Index = indexer;
  14.                         hwi.IsOriginal = isOriginal;
  15.  
  16.                         // get hashes in threads
  17.                         ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(GetHashForItem), hwi); // see below
  18.                 }
  19.         }
  20. }
  21.  
  22. private void GetHashForItem(object state)
  23. {
  24.         // do the work
  25.         HashWorkItem hwi = (HashWorkItem)state; // This is a struct to hold information.
  26.         ImageConverter converter = new ImageConverter();
  27.         long pressure = new FileInfo(hwi.FileName).Length;
  28.         GC.AddMemoryPressure(pressure);
  29.         Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(1, 1); // I actually release the bmp below with bmp.Dispose(), so init here
  30.  
  31.         #region TRY block
  32.         try
  33.         {
  34.                 bmp = (Bitmap)Bitmap.FromFile(hwi.FileName); // zero problems here
  35.                 byte[] bytes = new byte[1];
  36.  
  37.                 if (!hwi.CompareExactImageData)
  38.                 {
  39.                         // ****************************************************************
  40.                         bytes = (byte[])converter.ConvertTo(bmp, bytes.GetType()); // #0 THIS IS WHERE I GET THE GDI+ ERROR
  41.                         // ****************************************************************
  42.                 }
  43.                 else if (hwi.CompareExactImageData)
  44.                 {
  45.                         // ****************************************************************
  46.                         bytes = GetBytesFromBitmap(bmp); // #1 THIS IS WHERE I GET THE GDI+ ERROR -- See method below
  47.                         // ****************************************************************
  48.  
  49.                 }
  50.  
  51.                 SuperFastHashUnsafe sfh = new SuperFastHashUnsafe();
  52.                 hwi.ItemHash = sfh.Hash(bytes);
  53.  
  54.                 try
  55.                 {
  56.                         // invoke the delegate to store the results
  57.                         this.Invoke(new StoreHashResultsDelegate(StoreHashResults), hwi);
  58.                 }
  59.                 catch
  60.                 {
  61.                         // NEVER happens
  62.                 }
  63.         }
  64.         catch (OutOfMemoryException memEx)
  65.         {
  66.                 Console.Write("***** Out of memory: " + hwi.FileName + " *** " + memEx.Message);
  67.                 Thread.Sleep(2000);
  68.                 // queue the item again...
  69.                 ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(GetHashForItem), hwi);
  70.         }
  71.         finally
  72.         {
  73.                 if (bmp != null)
  74.                 {
  75.                         bmp.Dispose();
  76.                         bmp = null;
  77.                         GC.Collect(); // this makes no difference it seems
  78.                 }
  79.         }
  80.         #endregion
  81.  
  82.         GC.RemoveMemoryPressure(pressure);
  83. }
  84.  
  85.  
  86. public delegate void StoreHashResultsDelegate(HashWorkItem hwi);
  87.  
  88. public void StoreHashResults(HashWorkItem hwi)
  89. {
  90.         // blah - here for reference - zero problems here
  91. }
  92.  
  93. /// <summary>
  94. /// Get a byte array of pixel data from a Bitmap.
  95. /// </summary>
  96. /// <param name="bmp">The bitmap to get the pixel data from.</param>
  97. /// <returns>A byte array of pixel data from a bitmap.</returns>
  98. private static byte[] GetBytesFromBitmap(Bitmap bmp)
  99. {
  100.         byte[] result = null;
  101.         if (bmp == null)
  102.                 return result;
  103.         // Create a memory stream to hold the bitmap.
  104.         MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
  105.         // ****************************************************************
  106.         bmp.Save(ms, ImageFormat.Bmp);  // #2 THIS IS WHERE I GET THE GDI+ ERROR
  107.         // ****************************************************************
  108.         result = ms.ToArray();
  109.  
  110.         return result;
  111. }

Does anyone have any ideas how to troubleshoot that?

I've spent about 2 days on this and I'm not getting anywhere.

I've run around looking into everything I can, including LHO (Large Heap Objects), but so far no joy.

BTW - I'm running through directories of photos that are around 4~7 MB each (10 MP camera JPGs) with around 500 photos per directory. The program craps out randomly, sometimes ripping through 200, or 300 or 400 or 500 before dying. Directories are around 3 GB.

Any ideas, pointers or whatever would be appreciated.

Hey, and just for fun, I'll put a $10.00 donation bounty on it for the first person to point me to a solution~! :D


775
Living Room / AVG Infecting in the Wild!
« on: January 18, 2011, 05:58 AM »
Yes. It's true. AVG infections have been found in the wild...

AVG Infections in the Wild

:D

Read at your own risk!
A virus which shut down production at a Tasmanian abalone farm has been detected in the wild, the state government says.

Production at an abalone farm at Bicheno, on the state's east coast, and a processing plant at Margate, south of Hobart, when cases of abalone viral ganglioneuritis (AVG) were found last Friday.


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