Recent Posts

10076

Living Room / Re: [SORTED] how big is a webpage :) broadband - 1 or 10GB?

« Last post by Renegade on March 22, 2008, 06:25 AM »

Amazon S2 pricing here.

It's $0.18 / GB data transfer out for the first 10TB.

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in

$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Gee... Kind of puts things in perspective again...

As for some of those web page estimates, remember that servers will have HTTP compression turned on. Your 200KB page can be 50KB then (or lower even  -- all depends). Images still won't compress much though, and admins won't turn it on for images.

If you've ever been to a web site and downloaded a ZIP file or EXE but couldn't tell how big it was, that's because HTTP compression is turned on. I wrote a bit about problems with HTTP compression here. It's IIS specific though.

In any event the real bandwidth cost will be in images, Flash, and multimedia. To really minimize things, use Opera and click the "images off" toolbar button.

10077

Living Room / Re: I hate this game...

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2008, 11:35 PM »

The answers are attached.

Really, you can't get through it without wasting immense amounts of time without them. Some are truly impossible unless you know the answer.

10078

Living Room / Re: I hate this game...

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2008, 09:54 PM »

Ok, while searching to see if some cities existed, I found this. It's all the answers. But really, even knowing them won't help for some things. You'll still die and need to start over. I'm giving up at 75. It's fun, but time consuming.

10079

Living Room / Re: [SORTED] how big is a webpage :) broadband - 1 or 10GB?

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2008, 09:14 PM »

An extra gig is €20? That's insane

-f0dder (March 21, 2008, 06:02 PM)

Especially considering that bandwidth @ $2.00/GB is expensive... (You can buy it for $0.18/GB through Amazon S3, but that's servers, not home use.)

Makes me glad that I live in South Korea. Bandwidth is like water here. I'm pretty sure that I chew up more than 10GB per month, as I can chew 1GB in a day fairly often. I kind of feel sorry for everyone that can only get metered accounts. 

10080

Living Room / Re: I hate this game...

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2008, 11:17 AM »

Made it to 49:



Some are just bizarre:



I skipped for that one. Everything I clicked got me killed.

I really hate going all the way up from the start, so I'm abandoning it. Fun for a while, but really a time killer.

10081

Living Room / Re: I hate this game...

« Last post by Renegade on March 20, 2008, 10:39 PM »

Very fun, and very insane!

10082

Living Room / Re: HA! There ARE People in the Film Industry that are NOT Idiots!!!

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2008, 07:57 AM »

episodes 1~4 can be seen for free according to their FAQ

-Gothi[c] (March 19, 2008, 07:46 AM)

Oh well. As long as this actually making things available thing turns into a trend, I'll not complain.

10083

Living Room / HA! There ARE People in the Film Industry that are NOT Idiots!!!

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2008, 07:30 AM »

Sanctuary

While I hate to admit it, my main movie & TV connection (other than the theater), is a collection of video sites.

I simply CANNOT buy anything because I don't live in the US, and some people *cough*studios*cough* are too stupid to take my money when I want to give it to them.

Well, Sanctuary is available for $8.75 in HD! ($6.99 in SD) (That's for a 4 episode bundle. $2.49 and $1.99 each otherwise, HD/SD respectively.)

And... Get this...

You ready???


I'm gonna blow your mind...


This is INCREDIBLE!!!


You sure you want to find out?




I can't be held responsible for possible brain damage or trauma!!!




This is your last warning!!!

THEY TOOK MY MONEY!!!

Miracle of miracles! Somebody out there understands that actually selling their product is a good thing and can help them make money!!!


WOW!


I'm totally beyond belief shocked! I was fully expecting to NOT be able to buy!

I was about to download an episode here, when I saw this:

Sanctuary is an independant webseries.
Please, support them and buy some webisodes on the official website: http://sanctuaryforall.com/.

The "independant" part there peaked my interest, and I figured that if the major studios aren't involved, there would be a slim chance that it wasn't run by complete morons! Imagine my surprise!!! They're NOT morons!

I am SOOOOO hoping that this catches on, because it's a much better way to get stuff.

Ok... Maybe I got a little over-excited there, but this is really a great thing! (Being able to buy without geographic restrictions.)

Anyways, just bought eps 1~4. I'll get 5~8 next!

10084

Living Room / Poo time?

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 10:47 PM »

2 years on the can...

US authorities are trying to work out why a Kansas woman spent two years on her boyfriend's toilet - so long that by the time he called emergency services her skin had grown around the lav's seat.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huh? What?

The Register just rocks. They get all the important stories!

10085

Living Room / Re: TV Characters -- Love / Hate -- By Show

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 10:42 PM »

Any Reality TV Shows:

Love: None

Hate: All

-Deozaan (March 18, 2008, 06:56 PM)

Hahahaha!

AGREED! 110%

I can't bring myself to watch them at all, and would have trouble naming any shows let alone people on them.

10086

Living Room / TV Characters -- Love / Hate -- By Show

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 09:12 AM »

Ok, time for another, "Let's poll the DC people to find out (almost) meaningless stuff!"

So -- By TV show, name characters that you LOVE and that you HATE!

I'll start with a few shows:

Stargate Atlantis:
LOVE: Rodney McKay

1) He's Canadian
2) He's just brilliant!
3) He knows he's brilliant!

HATE: Teyla Emmagan

1) God! She's just annoying! When will they finally kill her off!
2) She makes me want to vomit (see Deanna Troy below)


Reaper:

LOVE: The Devil

1) He's the Devil!
2) He cracks me up!

HATE: None really, but Andi comes close.


And now for the geek-fest-silliness!

Star Trek (TNG):

LOVE: Data

1) He just rocks!
2) He was hilarious in Night Court!
3) Brent Spiner just rules in anything he does --- he really makes the role work!

HATE: Most of the rest of the characters...

1) Worf was a pussy (bad writers for him - he could have been very cool)
2) Deanna was a freak and regularly made me want to vomit
3) Wesley was a weannie
4) Riker was the male freak counterpart of Deanna


Picard was salvation for the rest. He picked up so much slack for so many weak characters. Without Picard, the show would have sucked.


Farscape:

LOVE: All

HATE: None

Just wicked writing for some amazing actors! Ka D'Argo is what Worf should have been.



I tried to pick just 1 for each there. Didn't make it for all of them, but close.

So, what kind of tastes does everyone else have?

10087

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 07:27 AM »

Renegade: is it ReCaptcha?

-Perry Mowbray (March 18, 2008, 07:22 AM)

YES! THAT'S IT!

Check the credits at the bottom of the page:
Carnegie Mellon University

10088

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 07:23 AM »

Today I am going to spend time going through the iPython docs and learning some new tricks.

-tinjaw (March 18, 2008, 07:12 AM)

I don't do any Python stuff, so for a while there I thought you were talking about Iron Python!

10089

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 07:21 AM »

30k+ lines to process files and insert to database? Do you have really complex input files and an overcomplex database transport, or is it's some shiiiiiitty code?

-f0dder (March 18, 2008, 06:50 AM)

Hahahaha!

It's generated code, and there are a lot of things that likely will never be used. I think the stored procs are somewhere north of 10k LOC.

However, if I need to make a database change, or tweak something, I can do it real fast without breaking anything -- I can be done in less than 10 minutes if I'm slow and take my time to be careful. And with all the extra stuff, if it's ever needed, it's there.

Thing is it just doesn't matter. The code is tight and works really fast. I've actually been surprised at just how fast it is considering some of the (bad) things I've been doing.

Optimization can come later. But the generated code itself is lightning fast.

10090

Developer's Corner / Re: How Do You Like to Approach Database Design?

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 06:32 AM »

Thanks Renegade for your blog post.
I checked the prices (195-595 eur!). That's really expensive, and other than the colorting, I didn't see anything that I couldn't do with fabForce dbdesigner (OSS). Of course this is just a first impression, I may be missing the main features of DeZign. Have you used fabForce? What's different?

-urlwolf (March 02, 2008, 09:17 AM)

I will get back to this...

The short answer is that the fabForce was just too difficult to use -- It wouldn't let me select MS SQL Server as the target database, so I immediately ruled it out as a possible free replacement for DeZign.

I look at it this way, if the problem can be solved quickly for cash, then figure out if the time you save is worth it. And really, even for the Enterprise version at 600, it's a massive time saver. Albeit, if a free one will do the job as well, then sure, that's sometimes a better solution.

I'll have another look at it though. I'll need a week or 2 though. Got a lot on my plate for the moment...

10091

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 06:15 AM »

Ok, so today I was using some of those 30,000+ lines of generated plumbing code to process a file and prep it for insertion into the database. The database is pretty complex and the data needs to be massauged, so it's not trivial, but with all that plumbing code, it's super easy.

I think I really pity people that "work hard" instead of "work smart".

The point for me is to get things done, and working smart is just soooooooo much easier!

Really - inserting a record is 1 line of code with not a hint of SQL in sight!

10092

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 06:03 AM »

Renegade: would that be Project Gutenberg? Can't find any reference to captcha on their site with a "I'm mega lazy" search, though...

-f0dder (March 17, 2008, 09:15 AM)

I think it's a university thing, or a Google thing, or... I just don't remember. But if it was PG, I think I would have remembered it.

10093

Living Room / Re: Is This Site Really Down?

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 06:01 AM »

Down For Everyone Or Just Me service worth bookmarking (via Cybernetnews).

-PhilB66 (March 17, 2008, 07:37 PM)

Hmmm... I'm having a hard time connecting to DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com... Is it just me?



(1.5 minutes or so later...)

Nah... It was just me...

10094

Living Room / Re: Comic Strip Generator (and March Caption Contest Announcement!)

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 05:51 AM »

Cody:
So I join the DC Coder's Breakfast Club and figure the best way to start is with a cup of Java...

Mouser:
Oh brother... Bird brain seems more "F" than "C", "+" or "#" today...

10095

Living Room / Re: Comic Strip Generator (and March Caption Contest Announcement!)

« Last post by Renegade on March 18, 2008, 05:40 AM »

karate, kung-fu, tae kwon do

-Deozaan (March 07, 2008, 02:29 PM)

Actually, they're Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

10096

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for: ToDo List plus Calendar plus Countdown Timer

« Last post by Renegade on March 17, 2008, 04:38 PM »

ToDoList 5.4 is free and the source is available as well. I think it has most of what you want in there. It works with multiple users too.

10097

Living Room / Re: The MacBook Air is So Thin…

« Last post by Renegade on March 17, 2008, 08:43 AM »

How does Steve Jobs do it time and again?

-icekin (March 17, 2008, 08:15 AM)

Come to MacWorld! Free Kool-Aid for everyone!

10098

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Renegade on March 17, 2008, 08:08 AM »

After reading Renegade's Post I felt a little depressed, but thankfully that level of sophistication is not everywhere (Captcha still works for me).

I wondered about OpenID too, but is that moving toward everyone having a verified on-line identity?

-Perry Mowbray (March 17, 2008, 06:10 AM)

The level of sophistication only gets worse...

OCR works quite well, but for a lot of old writings/books, it gets more difficult. There is a project (I forget the name at the moment) that is continually scanning and putting books into the public domain or at least making them available. They have a CAPTCHA API where you can use things that don't OCR well (i.e. They are OCR/CAPTCHA crack resistant) on your own site. The benefit is obvious. Put humans to work solving REAL problems that machines can't.

This same general technique is used by spammers though...

OpenID isn't a real solution to this problem. The spammers would simply attack OpenID providers in the same way they attack everything else.

10099

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Renegade on March 16, 2008, 09:20 PM »

CAPTCHAS are no longer effective. The technology for cracking them is well known and widely available.

The "low-tech" version of cracking them uses low-paid people in 3rd world countries to do it.

Audio versions are no better. The technology for cracking them is out there.

The largest problem is that the technology for cracking these is often BETTER than actual humans. In order to make it harder for spammers to crack things, CAPTCHAS need to be almost IMPOSSIBLE for YOU to solve.

This has been, and always will be, a game of cat & mouse. Unfortunately, the spammers are the cats.

Sick of it? That's an understatement...

10100

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by Renegade on March 16, 2008, 07:56 AM »

That's enough to put a damper on your day - I guess I don't need to ask if you're backed up...

-CleverCat (March 16, 2008, 01:35 AM)

Backups only matter so much for home computers. (Servers are a different matter.)

I'm in a situation similar to app103 at the moment. However, I'm far too lazy to bother with the computer at all. So... I took it in to have it repaired. (Hardware problems and all.)

New video card. New CPU fan. $100 later at the shop and it works.

Get home. Power on. Nothing. Not fun.

Backups won't help as I don't need the backup data per se. I need the machine with its configuration and installed software (that I can't install elsewhere). Again, not fun.

Hardware problems are simply evil. You cannot fix them with a bit of knowhow and elbow grease. You need parts. There's no substitute for that.



And app103, don't feel bad about not finding the model number. Hardware vendors have mystical and magical powers. In particular, they have 2 powerful spells that they use on a regular basis:

1) "Find most obtuse place to stamp model and serial" (a most sinister spell indeed...)
2) "Shrink model and serial stamp for electron microscope use only" (again, a most sinister spell...)

Dark arts indeed! These hardware people are either in league with Satan or the Chinese. I haven't figured out exactly which yet... Though I do have my suspicions!