Messages

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Skin Your Shutdown...

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:39 PM »

1)  What does the '01' do?  Timing?

Yep.  01 = 1 second.  If you want 3 minutes, that'd be shutdown -s -t 180

2)  Do you call up the command prompt for that from the Start menu?

CMD prompt.  You can put it in a .bat file if you like then drag a shortcut onto your desktop too, or just place the .bat directly on the desktop.

227

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:25 PM »

Guess who just made the 700 club?

228

General Software Discussion / Re: Skin Your Shutdown...

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:23 PM »

My favorite shutdown method:

shutdown -s -t 01

:-)

229

Living Room / Re: Strange maps... of Europe

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:06 PM »

My wife's a viking chick (pure bred Norwegian) and she's got brown hair, so it's not automatic. 

She's got Sami blood in her.

230

Living Room / Re: If you build a new PC, make sure you get 2 HDs: One fast and one big

« on: December 05, 2007, 12:02 PM »

Of course, another story is when we talk about spinning up the drives when the computer starts...

-Lashiec (December 05, 2007, 11:37 AM)

I suspect that's what was going on, because if the machine made it past the first couple of seconds things were fine.  Most BSOD's occured before Windows started booting.

Note that the only components I removed/changed were the drives; even the RAID controller remained plugged in.  When the BSODs stopped, I assumed it was the additional power drain from a pair of 10K drives spinning up. 

Angular momentum can be a bitch...

231

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

« on: December 05, 2007, 11:59 AM »

It's time for Agile UML: Write the use cases while you code!

232

Living Room / Your Power Suit is (Almost) Ready

« on: December 05, 2007, 10:43 AM »

Finally, my dreams are but a few hundred million bucks and a coupla years away.



Here is streaming video of a fully articulated powered exoskeleton, now under development by Ratheon:
http://www.liveleak....iew?i=109_1195663753

Sure, it's tethered.  Sure, it has an external power supply.  But my god: look at the ease with which the wearer does impossible tasks!  Lifting 200 pounds repeatedly with full, natural motion.  Running, walking, tip-toeing.  Dancing.

It looks cleverly designed, "getting out of the way" when the user wants to manipulate something bare-handed.  (One might imagine the dangerous hilarity of trying to, say, brush your teeth while wearing the thing.)

It navigates stairs, ramps, and the design suggests sitting or reclining is possible.

The makers even go so far as to say the skeleton can operate autonomously, while its human wanders off to do biological things.  Even if it's something as simple as coming when it's called ("here, boy!") that alone would be our first real application of humanoid robotics.  Truly, we are living in the future.

Once they get the power-pack integrated I can easily see applications for these everywhere.

And if anyone disagrees with that, we can settle this the old fashioned way: power-suit to power-suit.

233

Living Room / Destroying the World, One Server at a Time

« on: December 05, 2007, 10:00 AM »

BLDGBLOG links to these New Scientist and Money articles about the impact of our world IT infrastructure on the environment.  And let's just say, the environment is Not Happy.



http://bldgblog.blog...ure-of-humanism.html

One server alone, we read, has the "same carbon footprint as your average SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. Yet, whereas the SUV is seen as a villain from the environmental perspective, the server is not."

By "server" I'm sure they mean the enterprise-class brutes your ISP is running 24/7 at the other end of your cable.

But still, an SUV?

As Money explained last summer, these "server farms" and "data centers" can each use up to "a small city's worth of electricity" – and most of that electricity goes toward "cranking up the air conditioning to make sure the computers don't literally melt themselves into slag."

The electricity of a small city?  Holy hydroelectric, Batman!  That's crazy bad.  I had no idea my innocent surfing and DonationCoder addition was sucking down that kind of juice.  Maybe I'll cut back on the pr0n.

What's really interesting is the tangent BLDG zips off on next: where does it make sense to build these humming shrines to Amazon and Google?  The answers are surprising and innovative, and give me hope for the future.  At least people are thinking about this now, and not when the Mad Max mutants are fighting over the last can of petrol.

Oh, and extra bonus points for teaching me a new phrase: "mouse potato".

234

Living Room / TOP 10 Signs of a Failing Presentation

« on: December 05, 2007, 08:56 AM »

10. PowerPoint spontaneously replaces your slides with images from its vacation to Peru.

9. The only question posed during the Q/A segment is, "Are you done yet?"

8. Audience begins laughing before you tell your opening joke.

7. More drool stains on conference table than usual.

6. You learn six new ways to say "you suck".

5. The guy with the giant hook edges ever closer from stage left.

4. Your projector breaks down halfway through and nobody notices.

3. You made the motivational speaker cry.

2. One emergency conference call, two fire drills, and a three-hour lunch break.

1. When you close with, "Thanks, and see you tomorrow!" your manager just laughs and shakes her head sadly.

(This one goes out to you, cranioscopical.  Mmmmwah!)

235

General Software Discussion / Re: Found: The Perhect word processor.

« on: December 05, 2007, 08:43 AM »

Tomos... you don't suppose... it's a silly joke about "minding your Ps and Qs"?

236

Living Room / Re: Strange maps... of Europe

« on: December 05, 2007, 08:40 AM »

Zaine, I think you accidentally posted the image from "Percentage of Europe that is Tan".

237

Living Room / Re: Search archives

« on: December 05, 2007, 08:39 AM »

Archivarius searches within every known archive format, and many I've never heard of. 

Search the forums here for a number of posts related to Archivarius.

238

Living Room / Re: If you build a new PC, make sure you get 2 HDs: One fast and one big

« on: December 05, 2007, 08:36 AM »

Be careful which one you get - you'll want one that keeps the drive cool. The fans in the (non-enterprise class ) hotswap bays I've seen have been very tiny and high-pitched and annoying.

-f0dder (December 05, 2007, 08:17 AM)

Instead of an internal bay, you might consider one of the many external 2-drive enclosures.  I think I paid $199 USD for mine, and its fans are utterly silent.  SATA cables slip right into the PC and plug in as if the drives are mounted internally.

Takes a load off the main power supply too: some of those 10K RPM drives suck up a lot of power.  If you've got a kick-ass video card, you may already be pushing the limits of your power supply.  That's what happened to me.  I experienced random BSOD crashes until I moved the Raptors outside the main case.  Ever since: rock solid.

Plus, when the time comes that you upgrade your main PC, moving the external array is simple.  Literally plug it into the new computer and let Windows see them.  All done!

239

Living Room / Re: Gamespot Editor Fired for Writing an Honest Review

« on: December 04, 2007, 09:17 PM »

If indeed Gamespot wanted a guaranteed ass-kisser of a review, they would have given the job to somebody who takes orders well.  K&L would've been declared "best game evar!" and all would be smiles.

That's not what happened.  Instead, they got an honest (and professional, IMHO) readout on the game's flaws, as well as a few thumbs-up for game features that worked.  It was not a hate-fest; the game just scored low.

And very soon after, the reviewer got fired.

Cause/effect?  Or, as Lashiec's link suggests, perhaps this "bad review" was the final event in a long series of disputes with management.  Reportedly difficult to work with, he could have disobeyed suggestions to file a glowing review and when he didn't, down came the axe.  It wasn't the review per se that did it, just the perceived disobedience.

And if that's what happened, boy was that a mistake on management's part.  Even if the motives were pure, even if the guy was the Gamespot Strangler, they should have waited awhile before pulling the trigger.

240

General Software Discussion / Re: Found: The Perhect word processor.

« on: December 04, 2007, 02:45 PM »

241

General Software Discussion / Re: Physical Memory Dump while XP installation - urgent help needed

« on: December 04, 2007, 08:13 AM »

My laptop is heating up and shuts off.

Huh?  That doesn't sound like a software problem.

242

Living Room / Re: When Acronyms Collide

« on: December 04, 2007, 08:09 AM »

If successful, this might attract copycats.  Then we'd have a race amongst all the advertising agencies to appropriate the most heinous memes and repurpose them for every day products.

"No Billy, I am *not* buying you a Goatsex action figure!"

243

Coding Snacks / Re: structured plaintextfile based note taker

« on: December 04, 2007, 08:06 AM »

Wiki!

UPDATE: Re-reading your request, the "using your own notes" requirement wouldn't fit in with a personal Wiki, or at least the ones I've played with.  You could cut-n-paste though.  The advantages would be the ability to hyperlink on-the-fly to other related ideas within your project.

Still might have merit, but doesn't meet your exact needs.  Sorry.

244

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« on: December 04, 2007, 08:05 AM »

How easy would a straight port of WINE be?

245

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« on: December 03, 2007, 10:16 PM »

Very cool.  I'm feeling something weird right now.  It's... optimism.

I can't *wait* for SP3 now!

246

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« on: December 03, 2007, 07:59 PM »

And if we don't hear from them soon, should we be worried?

:-)

247

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« on: December 03, 2007, 07:58 PM »

Well now, that *is* interesting.

All sorts of ramifications.  For instance, what would happen to the Mac Office division at Microsoft? 

248

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

« on: December 03, 2007, 07:55 PM »

"I poop on your restrictions!"

[/nuthin]

249

Living Room / Re: Any old Amiga users among us?

« on: December 03, 2007, 04:38 PM »

In those days I was running a BBS on my C64.  I was so thrilled to *now* be able to run the BBS in the background while I continued to play video games.  It was like being alive, but still going to heaven...roflmao!

-Daleus (December 03, 2007, 02:16 PM)

Hehehehe, yes indeed!

One of the most impressive demos we did at the computer store was to format a disk on the Amiga and then open the bouncing-ball animation in a foreground window.  People were just floored. 

One IBM PC guy who bought stuff at our store saw the demo one day and asked, "why on earth would somebody need a disk formatting program that bounced a ball around the screen?" 

When told what was really happening, he didn't believe it, and wouldn't look at the Amiga again at the risk of having his reality shattered.

Another guy (whom I knew was perpetually broke, so I kind of sympathized) said, "if I need to do TWO things at once, I'll just get another Commodore 64."  I just nodded in agreement.

250

Living Room / When Acronyms Collide

« on: December 03, 2007, 12:54 PM »

From WSB-TV Atlanta comes this unfortunate(?) story of poor acronym selection by an airline.



http://www.wsbtv.com...14748793/detail.html

The acronym in question: MILF.  Obviously, that means "Many Islands, Low Fares".  Or so the airline in question insists.  However, there is conjecture that the marketeers who dreamed up the promotion knew exactly what they were doing, and some of the imagery in the ad campaign supports the theory.

So is it clever marketing?  Or did one hand not know what the other was doing over at Spirit Airlines?

And if you're not sure what a MILF is, Google is your friend.  After the room has been cleared of children and grandparents.