Topics

801

Living Room / Softlayer Caves on Wikileaks Mirror

« on: December 23, 2010, 02:37 AM »

I know I'm not the only one that has servers with Softlayer.

mouser, is DC still at Softlayer after the migration?

Anyways, app103 posted this:

https://www.eff.org/...en-upstream-provider

Again, thanks to app103 for the quick info!

If anyone wants to email Softlayer, feel free to cannibalize the email that I sent:

Email to Softlayer

Hello,

I am a long-time customer of The Planet/Softlayer and have 2 servers with you.

It has come to my attention that you have forced a Wikileaks mirror to close:

https://www.eff.org/...en-upstream-provider

This is extremely disconcerting that you would bow to pressure to censor free-speech when nothing illegal has taken place. I believe that “innocent until proven guilty” should be familiar to you. Further, no charges have even been laid. The authorities don’t even know what charges to lay, probably because it’s not illegal in the first place.

The Planet/Softlayer has been a very good host for me, and I have appreciated the good service. This is the first time for me to be disappointed, and I am very deeply disappointed that you would bow to political pressure to silence free-speech.

Please, I urge you to reconsider and allow freedom of speech at the The Planet/Softlayer data centers.

Further, I would like to host a Wikileaks mirror on my servers there at The Planet/Softlayer. I would appreciate it if you would please get back to me with an affirmative answer.

Thank you for your time and attention to this sensitive issue.

Kind regards,

Ryan Smyth
http://renegademinds.com/

802

Living Room / Apple, Champion of Censorship

« on: December 22, 2010, 05:05 PM »

Sigh... These goons never cease to provide me with lots of material to rant about...

http://kewlaid.net/2...ensorship-yet-again/

Apple has come out as a champion of censorship and hero to fascists everywhere yet again as it pulls an independently produced Wikileaks application from its app store.

In a dazzling display of brilliant courage and fortitude, Apple stood up to rebel scum and free-thinkers everywhere, bravely pulling Igor Barinov’s “Wikileaks App” and thwarting villains and terrorists worldwide, letting you sleep easier at night knowing that the iPhone platform is yet again protected from the forces of darkness.

...

803

Living Room / DC Cool Sites List

« on: December 21, 2010, 10:28 AM »

I was just thinking that it would be cool if we could compile a list of sites (or things on the Internet) that are cool, educational, or simply "must sees". (No porn please.)

I think a few categories would be useful:

• Entertainment
• Educational
• Useful
• Political/Environmental/Social/Other

I'd probably rate sites only with a "MUST SEE" rating for exceptional sites.


Hopefully every few posts someone can collate them into 1 list for easy reference.

I'll start with a few I think are really good/great.

Educational
The Code Project
http://www.codeproject.com/

Educational *** MUST SEE
Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.com/

Entertainment
I Can Has Cheezburger
http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Entertainment
The Oatmeal
http://theoatmeal.com/

Entertainment
xkcd
http://xkcd.com/

Educational
Wikileaks
http://www.wikileaks.org/

Educational
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Educational/Entertainment
George Carlin
http://tinyurl.com/27kwdp4

(He's simply too smart and too funny for anyone to miss.)

Educational/Entertainment
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
http://www.venganza.org/

(If you don't love pirates, you're going to Hell.)

Educational/Political/Social
Food Inc.
http://www.foodincmovie.com/




Anyways, that's a short list of a few sites and things that I would recommend to people.

I've obviously missed a lot there, but hopefully some people can help fill in some blanks with more top notch sites.

804

Living Room / Scorecard Research Survey (NSFW) - Ed. Wordpress hacked?

« on: December 20, 2010, 11:16 PM »

<rant>

THOSE FUCKING DOUCHES!

I just ranted about my crappy Mac DVD drive, and then these douches (Scorecard Research) drop a survey on the site (http://kewlaid.net). It's hosted at Wordpress, so I'm pretty pissed with them as well.

Enraged that they'd put their crap on a site that I pay for, I had to use their contact form:

You dropped a survey into my site at http://kewlaid.net.

What the fuck makes you think that it's fucking ok to put your shit on MY FUCKING SITE THAT I FUCKING PAY FOR~!

I expect a fucking response.

Seriously. Isn't this criminal?

This is what they fucking did:



Pissed. Very pissed.

</rant>

EDIT: Changed subject

805

Living Room / Flickr API Niceness

« on: December 20, 2010, 09:53 PM »

Well, I need to upload photos en masse, and Facebook just isn't working right, so I've decided to go with Flickr.

Now I check the API Key page, and see this (source):

First, we need to know whether or not your app is commercial.
Choose Non-Commercial if:

    * Your app doesn't make money.
    * Your app makes money, but you're a family-run, small, or independent business.
    * You're developing a product which is not currently commercial, but might be in the future.
    * You're building a personal website or blog where you are only using your own images.

APPLY FOR A NON-COMMERCIAL KEY
or
Choose Commercial if:

    * You or your agency works for a major brand.

AND one of the following:

    * You want to make a profit.
    * You charge a fee for your product or services.
    * You will bring Flickr content into your product and intend to sell those services.

APPLY FOR A COMMERCIAL KEY

At first I saw the button text, and kind of groaned, but read further.

Non-commercial includes:

* Your app makes money, but you're a family-run, small, or independent business.

Which really makes things a lot easier for a small guy like me. Lord knows that big business licenses can be overwhelming...

Anyways, just wanted to post that as it was something I thought was very nice of them.

806

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Release: Duplicate Photo Finder

« on: December 20, 2010, 07:28 PM »

NANY 2011 Entry Information

Application Name	Duplicate Photo Finder
Version	1.3
Short Description	Find and delete duplicate photos.
Supported OSes	Windows 2000/XP/
Web Page	Duplicate Photo Finder
Download Link	Download Installer - Download Source Code
System Requirements	Windows XP Home or higher / Windows 2003 / Windows Vista / Windows 2008 / Windows 7 .NET 4.0 200 MB of free RAM
Version History	v1.3 - Update - Increased speed in edge case, now impossible to delete 'originals' in edge cases v1.2 - Update - Improved hashing methods v1.1 - Update - Source released v1.0 - Initial release
Author	Renegade

Description
Duplicate Photo Finder is a photo file management tool to find photos by folder and let you delete duplicates. It aims to be minimalistic with no significant learning curve.


Features
Duplicate Photo Finder:

• Lets you choose an "original" and "duplicate" folder to search in
• Finds duplicates by file size, file signature (file hash), or photo signature (pixel data hash)
• Lets you delete individual photos or many photos at once
• Deletes to the Recycle Bin (just in case your brain falls out and you delete the wrong photos)
• Only JPG files are scanned
• Has no complex features to confuse you

Duplicate Photo Finder is for "photos", and not for other graphics or files. As such, it only scans JPG files because digital cameras take JPG photos and not PNG or GIF or XLS or DOC...

It is also aimed at regular people and hobbyists, and not professional photographers. As such, there is no RAW image support and no professional-type features, e.g. no undelete, no database support. Again, this is aimed at being minimalistic and easy to use.


Planned Features
Planned features include speed optimizations, multi-threading for additional speed, and other image comparison methods (exact image comparisons).


Screenshots



Yes. That is me and my wife~!

And yes, that is me sticking my tongue out~! 2x~!


Usage
Installation
Installation is trivial. Run the installer and follow the directions. The application is installed to:

<drive>:\Program Files (x86)\Renegade Minds\Duplicate Photo Finder

Running the application the first time has no surprises and there is no configuration required.  


Using the Application
The installer puts an application shortcut under the Start Menu. i.e. Start > Duplicate Photo Finder. There is no desktop shortcut unless you create one yourself.

1) Browse to 2 folders using the folder browsers.
2) Click the "Compare" button.
3) Decide which photos you want to delete.
4) Click a delete button.
5) Repeat steps 1~4 for other folders that you wish to compare images in.

TIP 1: Use the "Simple" mode first, then do the more thorough "Image Signature" scan afterwards. It will save you time and produce the best results.

TIP 2: Take your time. The program is relatively idiot-proof, and deletes photos to the Recycle Bin, so you can still retrieve deleted photos. However, this is only proof up to "Idiot v5.0"; please do not try to upgrade yourself to "Idiot v6.0" as you will win~!


Uninstallation
Go to the Windows Control Panel applet for uninstalling programs. Click the program's entry, then click "Uninstall".


Known Issues
The application does not make use of threading/multi-threading, and as such requires that the user wait for tasks to complete before starting a new task. Multi-threading is planned.

There is no help file, documentation, or credits yet.

While the program deletes duplicates to the Recycle Bin, and they can be retrieved, there is no substitute for not doing stupid things in the first place. Remember, this is a bulk deleting utility and can delete large swaths of data quickly. Take your time. There's no rush.




Enjoy~!

807

Developer's Corner / A C# EXIF Library

« on: December 19, 2010, 11:37 PM »

This is handy:

http://www.codeproje...hics/exiftagcol.aspx

You'll need to tweak some things in it, but it's quick and easy.

808

Living Room / Need a New Mouse

« on: December 19, 2010, 09:14 PM »

My current one is messing up, so I figure that I should just buy a keyboard and mouse set.

Any recommendations or ones to avoid?

I generally like Logitech mice as they fit well in my hand.

Or recommendations for just mice are probably best as I have a Korean keyboard and doubt I could get one here. But, a really good ergonomic keyboard might be nice too... Undecided...

809

Living Room / Obscene # of Tabs in FF

« on: December 19, 2010, 07:14 AM »

This just happens to me all the time. I end up with an obscene # of tabs. This time around I closed all but this tab (more evidence of my DC addiction), and ended up closing 74.

Anyone else have this problem? :S

810

Living Room / Patently Moronic

« on: December 18, 2010, 06:45 AM »

I just want to throttle someone when I read nonsense like this (Nokia suing Apple over patents):

http://money.ninemsn...=8184666&rf=true

The world's top handset maker says the patents include several which enable compelling user experiences, including "using a wiping gesture on a touch screen to navigate content".

Mouse gestures have been around forever, and they are the same thing, not to mention trackballs do the same thing. There's no innovation and nothing novel about the idea.

While I'd normally love to jump on Apple for something, this isn't one of them. It *IS* possible for Apple to be the victim. (Don't ask me to repeat that. )

811

Living Room / Need Help Finding a Domain Name

« on: December 11, 2010, 04:57 AM »

Well, I really want a new domain for just blathering. I don't have one that I can really use. I have some like ryansmyth.net and other ones with my name, but what I really want is already taken:

whatireallythink.com

Anyone have any ideas about what a good domain would be? Take the .info? Use .me?

It will be mostly rants, and largely political on topics like free speech and the like. I'll of course have raves for things I like as well.

812

Living Room / DDOS Ethics

« on: December 09, 2010, 03:55 AM »

http://www.abc.net.a...14.htm?section=world

Agree? Disagree? Comments?

813

Living Room / Privacy & Data Sharing - US-DE

« on: November 29, 2010, 09:47 AM »

Found an interesting tidbit if anyone is interested:

http://cablegate.wik...09/09BERLIN1167.html

It goes on about the US view of some German political parties that are pro-privacy and against data sharing/collection.

¶1. (C) Summary: Current polling data suggest that the
Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democratic Party
(FDP) could receive sufficient votes in the September 27
national elections to form a governing coalition.  The FDP
are strong defenders of citizens' privacy rights and these
views have led the FDP to oppose all of Germany's recent
counterterrorism legislative proposals, as well as voice
concerns about U.S.-German and U.S.-EU information sharing
initiatives.  Throughout these debates, the FDP has favored
data protection measures over the need for governments to
strengthen security-related information sharing for
counterterrorism purposes.  The FDP's strong views on
individual liberties and personal privacy could lead to
complications concerning law enforcement security cooperation
and data sharing.  Were the FDP to join the government, we
expect they would closely scrutinize any proposals for
security officials to access and/or share information
concerning private persons with international partners,
including the USG.  End Summary.

It's dry, so really only for those that have an interest in privacy and data protection. There's one section in there where they talk about gathering more information that is necessary 'just in case' and that it would only be used in "rare" circumstances.

814

Living Room / Regular Expressions (Regex) - Your Thoughts?

« on: November 27, 2010, 11:30 PM »

Perhaps freakishly, I love regular expressions. I use them all the time. They literally give me godlike power over text. I find it hard to believe that there are developers out there that don't know what they are, much less that there are developers that can't use them.

They are so useful for more than development though. Anyone that needs to deal with large amounts of text could benefit so much from them. I've helped myself and other people to do hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and even millenia worth of work through regular expressions. (Imagine a human can process/organize 1 line of text in 10 seconds, and then imagine 100 GB of data. 1 line is about 80 characters and you get a bit over 2,000 years worth of work.)

Now, I'm sure a lot of people here have never heard of them, and some use them daily. I'm sure that some people would never have a use, while others that have never heard of them could easily find numerous uses for them to help save time.

My wife doesn't know regular expressions, but I recently helped her out with some work where I used them. It all took me a couple hours, but would have taken her days or more to do.

The uses for Excel jockeys are endless.

Anyways, just looking to see what people think about them.

Now, depending on a few factors...

^(good)?bye$

815

Living Room / KewlAid.net - Posted

« on: November 24, 2010, 12:37 PM »

Keep in mind... NSFW.

http://kewlaid.net/2...c-and-no-time-count/

Burning CDs... Grrr...

Formatting is hosed, but I have to run.

816

Living Room / Desktop vs. Web Debate

« on: November 22, 2010, 09:03 PM »

Hey, let's start a fight and open some wounds~!

     

In the past I've been averse to moving things to the web, but I think I'm softening quite a bit.

While the desktop is still king over a lot of things, I feel like it is slowly losing ground.

The entire "boot from the web" stuff is still nonsense at the moment, and I think it will remain nonsense for a long time to come. Mostly because of Internet infrastructure requirements just aren't there.

But I keep seeing things that really make sense on the web.

While Flash is still the defacto video method, Silverlight video is far better, and we have yet to see what HTML5 will afford us.

It just seems like there is a lot more that's viable on the web than there was 5 years ago.

Ok, I suppose them's not really fightin' words, but I tried.

817

Developer's Corner / Goofy Google Search Results

« on: November 22, 2010, 07:07 AM »

Ok, this I MUST share...

Check this results page:

http://www.google.co...r+403.14+-+Forbidden

Read the search terms.

Click the second result (http://hybridoptix.net/).

Search results... You're doing it wrong...

818

General Software Discussion / Email Server Frustration -- Looking for Advice

« on: November 21, 2010, 12:47 PM »

This post is basically for administrators and not end users.

Well, I'm fed up with my current email server software and looking for some new email server software.

I've been trying to find a good combination of:

* Email server software
* Antivirus software
* Antispam software

But, I'm running a Windows machine, and there's just crap out there unless I want to spend a fortune, which I don't. I'd like to get some decent software for a reasonable price or free. I'm not interested in Johnny's garage software though. I'm only interested in well established software with a track record that I can rely on.

I will be installing VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) in order to have a Linux server running on the same machine.

Can anyone recommend a combination of:

* Linux distribution (Preferably one that's already in the VMware catalog if possible, or maybe ThoughtPolice.)
* Email server software (Postfix, Zimba, etc.)
* Antivirus software
* Antispam software (hopefully not a "per user" license. Spamassassin?)
* Webmail interface for email server (e.g. Zimba, SquirrelMail, etc.)

At the end of the day, I want to get things running properly

I will also likely end up running a limited set of websites on it, so lighttpd and Apache will also be important later on, but not crucial now.

If you have personal experience, please say so. Also, if you've done virtualization before in production environments (not desktop), please say so.

I had a look at Spamassassin, and it's simply not worth the trouble on Windows. The installation and configuration for it is nothing short of Black Magic. I'm open to a Linux version if I can get it to work without sacrificing virgins and children to the devil.



Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

819

Living Room / Boxee??

« on: November 20, 2010, 11:53 PM »

Has anyone heard of or tried this? The "Boxee"?

http://www.dlink.com.au/Boxee/

Sounds good...

Particularly, if anyone in Australia knows about it, please chime in.

820

Living Room / Fake Coffee Shop in China (NSFW) (Can you guess?)

« on: November 19, 2010, 12:00 AM »

A Chinese friend of mine forwarded this to me:



LOL~!

I just couldn't help myself:





I had to pass it on~!

821

Living Room / Why Teachers Drink

« on: November 18, 2010, 03:34 PM »

This is really good:

http://theforexmom.c.../why-teachers-drink/

Here's a taste:

822

Living Room / New Toys :D

« on: November 17, 2010, 12:43 AM »

Sigh... I love new toys, but hate constantly shelling out a small fortune for them...

I just got a new phone, the HTC Desire HD, and it's a nice toy, but can I stop there? No...

Actually, it really wasn't a matter of choice for this one -- I've needed a new server badly for a while and finally got around to it.

Anyways, for the juicy stuff...

Dual Xeon 5430 procs with 4 GB RAM and 2 x  250 GB SATA II drives. Lots enough for what I'll need it for.

That server lists for about $563 a month, but I managed to steal one for just over $300 a month at Soft Layer through one of their promotions. Yay~!

I've been with The Planet for years now, and they've always been excellent. If I were to move, I'd move to Rackspace, but that's simply too expensive for me at the moment.

But, Soft Layer & The Planet have merged, so while I haven't moved, it looks like I'll have 2 control panels. Oh well. I'll end up ditching the old server shortly I think. Then buy it back when it hits the bargain bin for a third what I'm paying now. Just kidding.

I'm confident that Soft Layer will live up to the same quality as The Planet. We'll see though. So far everything is pretty smooth. A hiccup with my new user name and password, but nothing serious, and they're on top of fixing it now.

Oh, I should mention that the server was ready in less than 2 hours! Sweet! It used to take days to get a server up and running.

Now... I just pray that I don't need any more toys...

Next it's just a matter of migrating everything over seamlessly with zero down time. Which ironically, is time consuming in itself.

Just had to tell someone -- it's always exciting starting up a new production server!

823

Living Room / Xtranormal

« on: November 15, 2010, 10:35 PM »

This is just a very cool site where you can create movies with just text.

Basically, you just type and drag and drop actions into the script, and it renders everything for you. It's all cartoons.

This is totally NSFW, but shows it: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7686161/

It takes only a few minutes to do as well. VERY fast and easy.

824

Living Room / 101 Great Computer Programming Quotes

« on: November 14, 2010, 09:23 PM »

http://www.devtopics...-programming-quotes/

#38
“Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots.  So far the Universe is winning.”
(Rich Cook)

I just had to share this.

But be warned, if you're prone to peeing your pants laughing, get out the adult diapers now.

#15
“There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.  We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.”
(Jeremy S. Anderson)

I LOVE this one:

#58
“PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.”
(Jon Ribbens)

If you know Perl, it's SOOOO true.

#69
“Java is, in many ways, C++–.”
(Michael Feldman)

#70 (NSFW)

“Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.”
(Alanna)

#73 (NSFW - Linus Torvalds)

“Software is like sex: It’s better when it’s free.”
(Linus Torvalds)

#86 (NSFW)

“Programming is like sex: one mistake and you’re providing support for a lifetime.”
(Michael Sinz)

This one is excellent:

#95
“It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.”
(John Von Neumann, circa 1949)

825

Developer's Corner / Are You Doing Mobile Development?

« on: November 14, 2010, 08:58 PM »

Is anyone doing any mobile development?

I'm getting into iOS and Android development now. I think I'd like to pump out a bunch of tiny little things to start just to become familiar with things. I've always loved developing utilities, and it really is a passion for me. I've developed more custom utilities than I could possibly count over the years. File manipulation, database stuff, text processing, data cleaning... all sorts of things.

Anyways, just looking to see if anyone else is jumping off the "web" or desktop and onto their phones.