Topics

126

Living Room / I want a Sony Xperia SX, but I think it's stupid to buy one.

« on: August 20, 2012, 09:43 AM »

This is the first time I've ever wanted a phone.  This is the phone I want, the Sony Xperia SX:


It came out last week.  Why do I want it?  It's the only LTE, up-to-date Android phone that is relatively small.  Every other phone is trying to get bigger and bigger screens.  I thought the Blackberry Pearl was the perfect size for a phone and I've been waiting for one to come out.  I can't believe so few people want a smaller phone.  I hate all the 4.whatever screens, they're too big for something to have in your pocket all the time.

Problem is this phone will not be sold in the US.  So it'll cost me $600-700 to get it.  Which is really not worth it, I know that.  But man, it's the perfect size.

127

Living Room / waiting list at library...for an e-book?

« on: August 16, 2012, 09:02 AM »

An e-book is digital.
A public library offers books for free to users.
Why is there a waiting list?  If 10 people want the e-book and the library has it, all ten can get it!  No need for restrictions, it's digital!
http://www.journalga...308059942/1002/local

Since the library can lend out only one copy of an e-book at a time, it would be cost-prohibitive to order multiple copies, Witwer said. That’s why many who go online to borrow an e-book discover there’s a waiting list.

“It’s not the same as with physical books,” she said.

Not to turn it into a debate, it's just silly sounding.  It's like, because before we had the physical limitation that restricted the number of users, for some reason that limitation is actually a desirable feature that needs to be retained throughout all time?  Why don't we use a telegraph while we're at it?  This is stupid, stupid stuff people.  What do I expect...same ol story.

128

Living Room / Getting a video capture card: any comments?

« on: August 06, 2012, 12:09 PM »

I want to get a video capture card to transfer all sorts of stuff to my computer.  For example, all the old VHS family recordings we have, i'd like to convert to digital.  Also would like to connect video feeds from my camcorder into it direct (live stream).  Etc.  I don't want a usb connection because usb sucks.  For video stuff, I want maximum no-throttle speed, which means a pcie device connected to the motherboard.

So I'm looking for a pcie video capture card.  I have no idea what to look for.  Something like this I'm guessing:
http://www.amazon.co...T8QCYA/ref=pd_cp_e_1

If anyone has suggestions please let me know.  Also, if there are things I should be concerned about please let me know also.  Am I going to have issues adding a video capture card to my system?  I don't know, anything like that.  Thanks.

129

Living Room / Olympic coverage this year SUCKS!

« on: August 05, 2012, 05:03 PM »

What are the games about?  The competition.  How do we experience this?  With video.  Is there any video available?  Not much, maybe like 10%.  What's one of the most anticipated events?  Usain Bolt's 100m.  Did they show it live?  No.  What the hell??

Do highlights show up on NBC.com in a reasonable amount of time (less than a day)?  Nope.  Is it because they don't have the technology or employees, or money?  hardly.  Have corporations sucked the fun out of everything?  Seems like it.  Are politicians concerned?  Not really.

Olympics suck.  We can't see shit, it's too hard to find what we want to see.  This is stupid.  I'm done.  Enjoy your Olympics.  I don't need to turn watching the Olympics into a volunteer job of detective work.

Let me ask you this: Of the events that you are aware of (you know who won, interesting things that happened)...do you know this because you SAW it live?  Or on video at least?  Or from reading articles?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  And I don't mean 15 second highlights, that's basically seeing the last half lap and someone celebrating.  i wouldn't call that an experience.

130

Living Room / Maximizing problems when docking toolbar on left in Windows 7

« on: August 03, 2012, 07:53 PM »

So I've been docking my toolbar on the left side of the monitor in Windows 7 lately.  But programs don't respect it when maximizing the windows.  The windows maximize all the way to the left, essentially underneath the toolbar.  But when the toolbar was on the default bottom position, it's not like the maximized windows go under the bottom part.  How do I get the maximized windows to stop at the edge of the toolbar?

131

Living Room / What do you desire from your job?

« on: August 02, 2012, 05:55 PM »

I was reading a very interesting survey result.  This particular survey is limited to white people:

What Whites Said About Work

Beginning in 1973, the GSS showed a card to the person being interviewed and asked, “Would you please look at this card and tell me which one thing on this list you would most prefer in a job?” The card had these choices:

• High income
• No danger of being fired
• Chances for advancement
• Working hours are short; lots of free time
• Work important and gives a feeling of accomplishment

After the subject gave his first priority, the interviewer ascertained which were his second, third, fourth, and last priorities. The item was given in almost every survey from 1973 through 1994. Then the GSS dropped it for the next twelve years, perhaps because the answers had been so consistent. Among prime-age whites, the most popular first choice was always work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment,” getting an average of 58 percent of the votes in each decade. The two least-chosen first choices were always short work hours (averaging 4 percent) and no danger of being fired (6 percent). In 2006, the GSS resurrected the question, and the results were startling. The 58 percent that had always voted first place to work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment” was down to 43 percent. First-place votes for short working hours more than doubled to 9 percent. “No danger of being fired” doubled to 12 percent, with another 13 percent ranking it in second place.

There is no reason to think that the 2006 results were a fluke. Unusual economic troubles don’t explain them—the national unemployment rate stood at a low 4.6 percent and GDP growth was a healthy 6.1 percent. The results are not a function of something peculiar about the 30–49 age group; they persisted when I looked at older and younger respondents. Still, it’s just one survey, and I wish we had corroborating evidence of such large changes in other recent GSS surveys. So I will leave it at this: We can’t be sure, but it looks as if during the last half of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, whites by their own testimony became less interested in meaningful work and more interested in secure jobs with short working hours. Furthermore, these trends applied to both Belmont and Fishtown. This is not the way Tocqueville or Grund described the American attitude toward work. In fact, the responses in 2006 looked downright European.

132

Living Room / 1080p playback: hardware discussion

« on: July 23, 2012, 12:13 PM »

I'm about to purchase my new HTPC.  I was going to build it, but since it's only going to be used for watching media I don't really want to bother.  I've had a question about 1080p playback for a while that I'd like to discuss: which hardware components are most important for 1080p playback?  For example, if you had to give a percentage for each of the following items as far as how important it is to playing very large video files, what would it be?
--graphics card
--RAM
--CPU

I think those are the three guys to look at, right?  I don't know which is more important though.  Sometimes a new computer will choke on a 1080p mkv or mp4 file because it turns out that it has a cheapo graphics card.  i was thinking of using this ~$600 desktop as my new htpc:
http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16883229285

I know it's probably overkill, but with 1080p playback, I want it fast and smooth.  No struggling with it.  I want to throw a 50GB bluray rip mkv file at it and not have any problems.  I will build it with parts if necessary.  I don't want to buy a prefab htpc little box and have it be underpowered in any way.

133

Living Room / esata vs. USB...fight!

« on: July 22, 2012, 06:44 PM »

Now that USB 3.0 has arrived, I need to rekindle this battle of mine.  I want this discussion to be about the actual merits of each protocol, not the technical specs.  meaning, I don't care if usb 3.0 is technically capable of transferring 12 megabits per second, that's not what I'm after here.  I'm looking for people's actual experiences with these devices, in a practical way.  I think most of us are familiar with the technical merits of each device, that's not very interesting.  I mean, just to summarize: esata is not very common, but is the same technology used on hard drives.  usb is extremely common, usb 3.0 is backwards compatible, it's still new, not all motherboards support it, blah blah...

Now, I've been fortunate enough to get one of those new Sony Vaio Z laptops which does have a legit usb 3.0 connection.  The same USB 3.0 port also has a very clever customized by Sony Light Peak built into it, that is used with it's special docking system.  It's probably the only light peak/USB connector currently available on a commercial product right now.  I also got that really great HD enclosure by Dat Optics, that has esata and usb 3.0 connectors on it.  So I'm all set up to run all sorts of experiements.

eSATA:
I am personally a big fan of esata.  Why?  Reliability.  Unlike USB, normal use of esata gets really top notch speeds.  i don't know the numbers exactly, but it's faster than any other connection I've ever used.  And it's not flaky.  It works if other things are attached to the computer.  I like the physical connector also compared to usb.  It seems to be far more reliable than USB.  By reliable, I mean it's always going fast and during long transfers it doesn't dip down and up in speed.

USB 3.0:
I've now used usb 3.0 on the laptop and also with the HD enclosure.  Very flaky.  USB has always been a flaky experience for me, ever since the beginning.  I don't know why...perhaps drivers, hardware compatibilities, whatever.  No version of USB was even close to as fast as the speeds that they advertise on the boxes and specs.  We're now at usb 3.0, and it's actual experienced output could now possibly be as fast as what usb 2.0 promised in the specs?  So silly.  And again, I don't care what the reason is, that's what it is.  I'm just trying to cut through all the usb BS specs.

Also, can we talk about mega-BYTES, and not mega-bits?  megabits is some BS the hardware manufacturers picked up on long ago to inflate the numbers they get to plaster on all their boxes and ads.  Nobody thinks in terms of bits unless they are a modem engineer.  It's bytes folks.  But then they wouldn't be able to confuse people.

Anyway, so at one point I was getting 70-90 MBps on the laptop's usb 3.0 connection.  But when I used it on the light peak dock's usb 3.0 port, it went down to usb 2 speeds, like 30MBps.  So last week I spent 3 hours on the phone with Sony trying all sorts of stuff (I got elevated to level 5!  that's like calling in the general!).  We're going to continue next week, it's still not solved.  But as usual, the usb connection is as flaky as ever.

It's fine for non-essential activities, like transferring things to a thumbdrive, or using an external drive here and there, or the other peripheral devices.  It's a remarkable innovation for that stuff.  But for sustained file transfer operations and long term reliability and usage, I don't like it.  I use esata for that or anything else for that matter: IDE, pcie, sas, etc.  For some reason, all those are more reliable than usb.

That's it, rant over.  That's how I feel about esata and usb.  If anyone wants me to try out some stuff regarding usb 3.0, esata, or light peak, I'd be more than happy.

134

Living Room / What's a good discussion forum for movie buffs?

« on: July 16, 2012, 11:07 AM »

Do any of you know a popular and large movie buff forum?  Somewhere where I can ask:
"What are some of the best swordfighting scenes you've seen?"

and I'll get dozens of responses from all sorts of films?

Thanks.  I did a google seach, but didn't easily find forums that were very active.  Thanks.'

I was thinking of a screenwriter's forum, but I think I prefer a regular movie buff forum.  Screenwriters tend to be a little too contrariany for me.  But I'm interested in good screenwriter forums also.

135

Living Room / "You may lose your internet service Monday" ?

« on: July 05, 2012, 09:35 AM »

http://www.cbs12.com...ories/vid_1128.shtml

Stuff like this worries me.  Is this true?

136

Web Link Captor / request: limit searches to specified domains only

« on: July 03, 2012, 10:28 AM »

mouser, it would be a great research tool if the program could limit the search to just a specified list of domains.  Just like step #1 where search terms are entered per line, it would be nice to be able to enter somewhere else some domains per line, maybe with wildcards.  What do you think?

137

General Software Discussion / Software to ONLY search bookmarked/favorited pages?

« on: July 02, 2012, 03:25 PM »

Can anyone recommend a software that will only search the pages that are bookmarked or favorited?  That is, not the entire web, but just a specified set of pages?

Like ClickHint, except a standalone software or works outside of a browser?

I was wondering if DTsearch can do it, but I'm not sure.

138

General Software Discussion / corrupt index (I think): how to fix?

« on: June 20, 2012, 07:05 PM »

Windows 7 x64

So I just reinstalled Windows a couple of weeks ago.  One of my huge (3TB) external drives (connected esata) had some issues where I think the index got corrupted.  All the files are still there and I can move/copy them and do whatever I need to do.  But for some files, like a video file, I'll open it in the video player, but another file (an audio file) will start playing instead.  So instead of expecting to watch a astronomy documentary, I'll be listening to Wynonna Judd.  But the file is the video file in all the properties and everything, I don't get it.

So I figured I had a corrupt index.  I did a chkdsk twice, it found some stuff (not too sure what exactly), but the problem still remains.  Any clue how to deal with this?  Should I be worried and get rid of the drive?

139

Developer's Corner / Can't get MediaElement.js working on my webpage

« on: March 27, 2012, 04:08 PM »

See here:
http://tbgentertainment.com/index2.html

I've been able to get everything I want working without a hitch with jquery.  I can't seem to get this MediaElement.js video/audio player working.  i did everything according to the installation instructions, but the video doesn't show up.  It should show something above that bright blue bar.

Any advice?  I'm sure it's some stupid little thing I'm missing.  One thing the instructions say is:

### 3. Run startup script

Make sure this is not in the `<head>` tag or iOS 3 will fail.

   <script>
   // jQuery method
   $('video').mediaelementplayer();
   </script>
   
   <script>
   // normal JavaScript
   var player = new MediaElementPlayer('#player');
   </script>   

Now, my html file starts out like this:

Code: Text [Select]

1. <html lang="en">
2.         <head>
3.                 <meta charset="utf-8">
4.                 <title>The Musical Rhythm Section</title>
5.                 <meta name="author" content="AC" >
6.                 <meta name="description" content="The baddest rhythm section on the planet" >
7.                 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/ac2.css">
8.                 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/js/query.fancybox-1.3.4/jquery.fancybox-1.3.4/style.css">
9.                 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/js/mediaelement.js/build/mediaelementplayer.css" />
10.  
11.                 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
12.                 <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery.collapser.js"></script>
13.                 <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery.collapser.min.js"></script>
14.                 <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/mediaelement.js/build/mediaelement-and-player.min.js"></script>
15.                 <script type="text/javascript">$('video,audio').mediaelementplayer(/* Options */);</script>
16.  
17.         </head>

But it doesn't seem like those "video" classes are converting the way the function is supposed to do it.  i don't get it.

140

General Software Discussion / xlsx corrupt file, password protected, can't open...need help

« on: March 23, 2012, 09:20 PM »

I've created a *valuable* xlsx file that I've been storing on my USB drive.  Everything was fine until I copied a multi-gigabyte folder to my USB drive, which seems to have corrupted the xlsx file.  Now, Excel can't open it.  It gives the message "Excel has found unreadable content..." and asks me to continue if i trust it, so i say yes, and then another message pops up saying it's corrupt.  This is all Excel 2010, by the way.

Now, had I not password protected it, I may have been able to recover it (not sure).  i tried all the stuff on the internet about that message, nothing works.  It probably is unrecoverable, but I figured I'd ask the gurus here just in case.

I'm not sure what the lesson to be learned here is, maybe multiple ones.  Don't use xlsx, stick to xls?  Don't put valuable files on a USB drive (although I'm not sure about a better way to keep valuable files portable that you need to work with all the time)?  Don't protect valuable excel files, it's just not worth it?

It will take be many hours to recreate this work, but I can do it I suppose.

141

Developer's Corner / Invoicing & inventory problem for my business.

« on: March 19, 2012, 11:07 PM »

My business has a new problem.  We have a set amount of licenses for taking an online exam.  The license serial numbers and access codes are all set already (they are not going to be generated live).  I need a way to send an email containing the unique license information automatically when a payment is received.  The problem is that once a license is sent, it is "used up", and the next email has to use the next available license.  I don't know how to do this.  We use gmail apps for our business, but I also access it using the Bat.  I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to do, but I can't figure out a way.  It would have to work something like this:
1) Payment is received and my business receives the confirmation email.
2) As soon as that email is received, my business automatically sends the license email.  It'll be a standard template, but the the license fields need to be pulled from an excel sheet, or csv file, or something like that.
3) Once the license email is sent, that license is not available any longer.  The next license will need to be used next time.  So something like a counter needs to be built into this whole system.

How can I do this?  The bat has some interesting features in the quick templates, like the macro options involving cookies or attachments or something.  But it's the Bat so there is no documentation, and I have no idea what it can and can't do.

How do you programmers manage your software licenses?  Is there anything in what you do that I can steal?  Are there software license management tools for developers that I can shoehorn into this thing?

Thanks.
I'll pay for it also, but I'd rather buy an existing system because I figure I'll spend hours fiddling around with it, and if I have to pay someone per hour, it would be expensive.  We threw the idea at someone and were quoted $1500 with a delivery time of a few months.  I'd like this by early April  .  Any ideas are appreciated.  i googled around, but the keywords make it near impossible to find anything (license, software, inventory management).

142

Living Room / Mobile hotspots: your experiences. (mine included)

« on: March 19, 2012, 10:06 AM »

I know relatively few people have tried hotspots, so I'm curious what any of your experiences are.  I've been reading about them on web articles, and most of them are completely useless.

So, I've been using one for a month now.  It's the AT&T Mifi 2372:


Firstly, it's built as cheaply as possible.  The plastic feels about as sturdy as a Pez dispenser.  It takes up to two minutes from when you turn it on until it's actually usable (like the wifi is active and ready to go).  The speed is 3G, and I don't really know what I'm supposed to expect, but it's slow as shit.  Loading the Android market on my tablet takes as long as 5 minutes, usually with a couple of refreshes necessary.  The connection is so slow that it becomes unstable.  Maybe they're two different issues...but when a browser takes so long to load a webpage because the connection is so slow, it usually breaks the connection...so from an end user's standpoint, it makes for an unreliable connection most of the time.

GPS.  I love GPS applications on my mobile devices.  This device supposedly has GPS.  Does it work?  Not really.  It's worked maybe 1 time out of 10 or 20 times I've tried it.  If I open google maps and get in my car and drive...it may take 30 minutes until it's connected and figured everything out.

And remember, these companies offering these are charging $50-$100 a month for this shit.  That is a lot of hours of labor for most people.  I mean, the thing simply doesn't give you close to the service that it is made for and marketed as.  What does this say about these companies?

Furthermore, like cell phones, you can't buy a good device and use it with your carrier.  You can ONLY use the two or three devices your carrier offers, because they're the only people who can buy the hardware.

Anyway, these hotspots are a joke.  Until they can make them connect in under a minute with all the features working, and with a little bit more build quality, I don't see how they are worth more than $20 a month, if that even...if you can't use it, what are you paying for??

143

Living Room / Which decade was the most fun for you personally?

« on: March 19, 2012, 09:49 AM »

I'd love to hear from those that were around from the 70s or before.  For me, the most fun and comfortable decade was the 80s, when I was in elementary school.  I don't know if that's because of my age or if things were different.  But I seem to remember the adults having more fun back then also.  I can't put my finger on it but it seems like we are much more private and secluded now than those days.

I've heard from some of my older friends about the 60s and 70s, and boy, they sound fun.  It sounds like that sex drugs rock and roll were not an exaggeration, but I may have a weird group of friends.

144

General Software Discussion / Excel and third-party clipboard managers

« on: March 08, 2012, 01:10 PM »

I use several clipboard managers:
--CHS
--NoteFrog
--Ethervane Echo
--AceText

Excel always has issues with these.  Whenever I start copying/pasting cells around in excel and I have the clipboard managers running, I get some kind of error about clipboard chains and what not coming up with every copy paste keystroke.  It's annoying as hell.  I've scoured the net and can't figure out a way to get excel to play nice with them.  I don't want to disable them because I use each for particular things.  What is Excel's problem?  It's very sensitive about clipboard management...it's like a prissy little kid, "my way or else I'll cry".  Frankly, I can do without excel's clipboard features.  Thoughts?

145

General Software Discussion / Flash not working in firefox. Some web addresses are inaccessible. Why?

« on: March 02, 2012, 09:43 PM »

So i've been having a weird problem lately, and I have no idea what's going on.  First, Flash is not really working in firefox anymore for me.  I've tried installing and reinstalling it dozens of times.  Youtube still works occasionally, but it's flaky.  Things like menu popouts don't work anymore (like on ESPN).

I keep getting the message from firefox to install the flash plugin.  but it doesn't work, i get the following screen:


I really don't get it at all.  I remember a couple of other websites don't work anymore either, with the same message.  But the same websites work fine in my virtual machine on the SAME computer.  So something about my desktop system is screwed up.  I checked my hosts file to see if anything was hijacked, but everything is fine there.  I went into my device manager and checked out the network adapters, and they were fine (except for the fact that I had 20 devices in the network adapters  ??).

So I've reached the end of my knowledge base.  i need help.  It's annoying enough where I may consider reinstalling windows.  but i hope not.

146

General Software Discussion / Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« on: February 28, 2012, 03:21 PM »

Well, I've managed to sidestep Linux over the years, but now it's time.  I'm doing it...I'm going to start transitioning to Linux.

I'm tired of feeling guilty by trying to get my Windows system to do exactly the things I want.  I've noticed most of the interesting developments have been stifled in recent years because of all the copyright issues.  The Linux guys really are my crowd.  All open, all free...it's what I believe in.

I don't know how long it will take, it took me a year to transition from XP to Win7, so I imagine this may take me a couple of years.  But i don't want to pay money anymore to faceless companies.  I want to be part of a community that helps each other out regardless of how much they get paid, and that's the Linux community.  And I'll gladly give them my money before the other guys.

I've been pushing the limits of Windows for a while now.  I keep running into obstacles, not because I'm pushing the technology, but because copyright concerns are preventing the technologies from developing.  My ideas of what I want to do with my computer should NOT feel like I'm the first person to ask for something like this.  I'm really not that clairvoyant.  I've struggled with the cloud for a couple of years now, and there's no need for it.  Let the masses deal with the proprietary stuff and all the headaches that come along with it.  I want to be with the guys that are freely exploring their ideas.

Where's Zaine?  Z...I'm joining the club, I'm going underground.  I held off as long as I could.

147

General Software Discussion / Automatic batch torrent maker/manager?

« on: February 27, 2012, 12:03 PM »

So in my constant search for the ideal way to share your own personal files privately, I'm now exploring the torrent options.  If you guys here have followed my threads in the past, you'll have seen me struggle with VPN, ftp, ftps, sftp, http, https, basically any protocol that can be used to share files.  The goal is essentially this:
--Share my desktop files so I can download them from any remote computer
--No storage limitations (this bars any cloud services...I want no storage restrictions.  If I have 5 TB that shouldn't be a problem at all.)
--No cloud services...no middle men.

Torrent seems to be the best way to share files right now, despite the controversial nature of it.  What's good about it is that it's very scalable, reliable, and efficient.  it can handle unstable connections very easily, which most of the other protocols suck at.  Plus, it's popular and mature.

Now, torrents are primarily used as a group sharing tool.  But can it be used as a personal, private file-access tool?  For it to work well, I would need some kind of software that can "manage" my files and torrents.  It would need to be able to automatically create a bunch of torrents and deal with file modifications and changes, etc.

I don't think something like this exists, but I think it would be a really cool tool for the community here to work on.  Here are some features that I think would make it badass:
--Automatic torrent creation.  It would be cool if the torrent manager can select a folder (and subfolders) and automatically create a torrent for each of the files there.  Also, if it could register the trackers and all that to get the torrent up and running with as much automation as possible.  Then, with the click of a button, all your files could be shared.
--These files and folders are going to change.  So it would be cool if the manager can kind of keep track of all that: delete torrents that no longer exists, modify ones with changed file contents, etc.
--Being torrents, the more seeders the better.  But since these are your personal files, having a lot of seeders is scary.  But we normally have more than one location where we work or hang out.  You can setup a NAS or standalone PC at a few locations and keep copies of your files there, and the torrent speeds would go up with each additional location, since that bandwidth can be used.  It's a very cool feature of torrents that the bandwidth can be increased in this way.

So this is something i keep thinking about.  I'd like to get to a point where we can easily access all our files from anywhere without using any cloud services or old, unstable connections like VPN or ftp. 

148

Living Room / Big corps and how difficult they make it to help their customers

« on: February 21, 2012, 12:35 PM »

So I'm at work, and we have one of those very expensive Cisco/Tandberg video conferencing systems.  I have some configuration questions, so I went on the website to find a number to call.  Nothing.  Not a single fucking number anywhere to be found.  You think that's just an innocent oversight?  Think again.
So they have contact form, where you have to fill out all your personal information just to have the privilege of making contact with the honorable Cisco employees.  So I fill it out and get all sorts of big red errors....the country wasn't filled out, excuse me!  Then I fixed everything and it said I didn't have the State filled out.  I looked, and there's no box for State!!  I'm telling you, these companies are doing all they can to take as much as they can without doing ANY work.  Customer service?  Gone as soon as you buy something.  This is wrong, guys.  This is just making everyone feel shitty.  It's no way to do business.

And these are all the people that are making the world feel guilty about the copyright stuff and all these other privacy/content issues currently being battled out.  That's always their MO: make people feel guilty, wield some authoritative power, manipulate all the information available until it becomes impossible to find the truth, steal as much money as possible while providing as little service as possible.  And the whole time, they are making YOU feel guilty, and they are acting like they are the ones fighting the good fight of justice, freedom, liberty, and moral goodness.

And these assholes won't even let you call them after you've given them thousands of dollars for a fucking camera.

149

General Software Discussion / Anyone have a Google Earth Pro subscription? I need to make an animation.

« on: February 19, 2012, 05:19 PM »

If anyone is willing to help me make an animation of 3 points on Google Earth Pro and export it to a video file, I'd really appreciate it.

150

General Software Discussion / Tagging audio files in itunes+ipod is an absolute NIGHTMARE!!

« on: February 14, 2012, 10:33 PM »

So my mom really wants to be able to play our childhood music to her grandkids.  But most of the stuff is on records, and so I volunteered to get everything on an ipod and just connect it to their audio system.  Now, I am a stickler when it comes to tagging my music and organizing them into folders with proper filenames.  So I expected not to have any problems as far as tags go since I've been so diligent about it.

WRONG!!  itunes and these i-devices are a tagging nightmare.  If you don't know, the only two tags that really matter (as far as organization) on the ipod is artist and album.  But it will fuck up that artist tag a LOT.  In these tagging protocols, the artist name is stored in multiple places: artist, album artist, etc.  Well, the ipod decides to read it from the Album Artist tag, which is the less common one in most tagging programs.  Now, that's fine, ok.  But what's the worst part is if you try to fix all this in itunes, it will show all the fixed tags in the itunes application, but it doesn't change on the ipod itself.  So you have to remove all the music and upload it again.  Man, this has taken me hours!

Normally, I wouldn't care.  But the BIG problem is that on the ipod, if the album artist isn't done right, a single album can be split up into multiple artists (like eagles, various artists, various) and before you know it, the ipod screen is filled with all these artists that you have no idea where it came from.  Bach may be Back or Johann Sebastain Bach or the conductor of the album...and it's all invisible.  It's been a nightmare.

Once again, this is the kind of thing that makes Apple evil.  The problem for us is this: even after years of these ipods and audio players and tablets, the i-devices touch response (swiping smoothness) and overall interface is still better BY FAR than all the other devices out there.  That's it.  These competitors (Android, Windows, webOS) better make darn sure their interface can equal that kind of smoothness and responsiveness or else they will NEVER catch up to Apple.  Every time I pick up the new Android device I can immediately tell how awful the touch-features are compared to Apple's.  Immediately.

I don't know what these other companies are doing with their time.  They need to stop everything and just get the dam touch response right.  But maybe it's just, who am I to tell them how to do it.  But don't listen, fine.  Keep coming out with model after model after model with that awful touch response.  Keep doing it, it's fine.  

Anyway, I hate buying this Apple stuff, but it's a hell of a lot easier than teaching my mom how to use the shitty Android interface.

The good news is I gave my mom a little sneak preview of what this new fangled technology can do, and she was more excited than I've seen in a long time once she heard her favorite records playing again.  Now it sounds like I need to do the same for my sisters and their kids!  Glad to!