Recent Posts

1026

General Software Discussion / Re: Massive malvertising campaign on Yahoo, AOL and other sites delivers ransomware

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 28, 2014, 10:30 AM »

And people call me a douche or cheap ass for using ad blocking software. Pfft. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I run it and never click on ads. Sorry, but if you're not vetting your advertisers, I ain't clicking. There's a long road ahead before a decent solution to this problem is created. Actually solving the problem isn't that hard... rolling it out is near impossible.

-Renegade (October 24, 2014, 08:17 AM)

Naw Ren, I want to chime in with a different sentiment.

Ignoring actual malware "injections", unless you're really savvy it can be tricky to find the actual download link to the legit software that even adblock won't catch because it's local to CNet and so on. There's this big green "download here" button, and way in the corner in grey font is "actual download site" or something.

1027

Living Room / Re: Interesting study comparing reading on paper vs tablets

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 28, 2014, 10:20 AM »

Back to paper vs tablets:
I'll read certain stuff like "papers" as PDFs as they show up in web links, but if I really want to dig hard into a book I feel is of major importance to me, paper is the way to go. Kindles sound seductive for "yay, I have 5,000 books on my kindle", but of course you're not going to read 5,000 books. It's about the selection on a whim. If I identify a book I feel is really important to me, paper it is. I picked up from somewhere a double system of underlining. If a whole paragraph looks useful, I draw a slightly curved line down the whole left hand side of it. (If the whole page is incredible, just fold down the page corner!). Then later if some three sentences are the key, underline them. Write notes in the margins.

Use a large nibbed blue ball point pen for "Bold" to underline certain section titles. Then stick bookmarks in various sections so you can flip back and forth at high speed comparing the "five fundamental points".

(Borrowing the marine motto) "There are 4999 other books on my Kindle, but this one is mine."

On another angle, if you're doing elusive instinct level research, I haven't seen an analogue for 7 tomes all spread out over a desk at once.

1028

Living Room / Re: The Eagle has landed: Nasa launches free sound library

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 27, 2014, 04:10 PM »

Cool. It might be fun to use these in a video game. (c:

-Deozaan (October 27, 2014, 02:14 PM)

Do I smell a Ludum Dare?
"It came from NASA!"

 

1029

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 22, 2014, 05:37 PM »

Ow Stephen!

That's one for the adblock cannon!

1030

Living Room / Re: driveless cars

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 20, 2014, 06:27 AM »

It's fiction, but it feels like it fits:

From an Episode of House MD (S07 Ep13)

"Check your surroundings for safety"!?

Granted, it was from a very strange episode that had multiple layers of lies as the plot, but I can see it eventually happening...

1031

General Software Discussion / Re: The most stupid Windows error?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 19, 2014, 04:42 PM »

I run Vista Home Premium, ...

-rjbull (October 19, 2014, 04:31 PM)

Every second version of Windows... Darn that meme just keeps on giving!

: )

1032

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 19, 2014, 01:47 PM »

I may have found my spirit animal. This raven doesn't say 'Nevermore'.  

-app103 (October 19, 2014, 12:46 PM)

That's actually an awesome take on the whole old myths meme - they always show those in subdued polite language. But what if your spirit bird is from New York City?

1033

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: You Can Relax Now v1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 19, 2014, 05:59 AM »

Actually, this made me look - and I think my system clock was off by a day! I've had my sys clock hidden for months or more. I have no idea how it got off by a day. So I fixed that.

So I should have had it yesterday in the chat room!

But there, is the golden starter pic, a day late!

Per Mouser's suggestion a while back to donate a bit to new members from a few of his membership funds, I just donated a MouserBuck to you dmytron!

1034

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: You Can Relax Now v1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 19, 2014, 05:53 AM »

Funny, because I got the one I wanted! Must be an obscure program feature about timing.



Gentlebeings, start your graphic designs!

1035

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 19, 2014, 12:52 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)
Listen to the 'Star Spangled Banner' with a rifle as the instrument

-Arizona Hot (October 18, 2014, 07:36 PM)

It was a bit hard to search.

Here's an alternate link that worked for at least me.
http://video.plasa.m...with-a-gun/2ym1pckja

Is this the greatest 2nd Amendment exhibit ever?


And I'm kinda interested in the tech behind it.
What can get shot at and makes musical notes instead of getting pulverized?

1036

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 18, 2014, 04:35 PM »

Heh sorry Renny, I had to adblock that image - too much random motion that was going to drive me nuts!

1037

Living Room / Re: driveless cars

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 18, 2014, 04:33 PM »

Put another way, we somehow tolerate bad engineering when it's "just a computer", but the car companies *have* had about 100 years to "sorta" get their basic old style production in line, especially after the Japanese boot to the head in the 70's.

But with our new urge to super-computerize everything, if you have seven seconds not to commit involuntary child-slaughter to a bus full of fifth graders, suddenly these little gaps become less forgiving!!

1038

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: You Can Relax Now v1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 18, 2014, 04:29 PM »

Still on 665 days!?

Am I missing something?

1039

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: You Can Relax Now v1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 17, 2014, 09:39 PM »

Okay gang, because I am too forgetful, I want y'all to keep watch.

We have an epic screenshot moment coming up!

It's late evening as I type this, so depending how the program works, I'll try to do it too. It's 665 days now. Soon to be:
"It is 666 days since the Mayan Apocalypse. You can relax now."

It would rock if it said something extra like "With tender love, Cthulu"

 

1040

General Software Discussion / Re: Ad blocking add-ons in Pale Moon 25

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 17, 2014, 09:30 PM »

What it means is that unless and until the developers of both Adblock Plus and Adblock Edge decide to officially support Pale Moon, you will not be able to use the official versions of those add-ons and will have to rely the one I linked to, instead.

-app103 (October 17, 2014, 08:02 PM)

Well, it's "just" Adblock, not more serious anti-virus software. I already have Adblock 2.1.5 on my copy of Palemoon 24.5, so I guess I will stay here for a while.

Sigh. It used to be "common wisdom" to update early and often. Now it seems like there's way more strange marketing politics going on than the good ol' days of Web 1.0
: (

1041

Living Room / Re: driveless cars

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 16, 2014, 10:13 PM »

That might be an important post Seraphim.

Skipping the word "phobia", maybe subconsciously in shows like Star Trek we told ourselves that when the "Big Tech" fails, (transporter, main computer, etc), we have to hope we have at least one lateral outside-the-box thinker around to desperately rig something together so we don't die in 28 minutes.

Not counting actual budget and era issues, their tech was supposed to be a bunch of times better than ours. But are we getting seduced by how clean computer-generated-everything is becoming? Trek TOS is def becoming dated to my cynical eyes, but some of the newer episodes are still watchable. But are we losing a deep message about technology?

1042

General Software Discussion / Re: Mind Mapping Software - What are the current top players now?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 16, 2014, 09:58 PM »

Thank you for mentioning this!

-ewemoa (October 16, 2014, 04:53 PM)

A guy by the name of Dave Straker did a whole book about PostIts and problem solving. When I was working at a certain mega-corp's HQ, they were using this combination. Straker's book came out in 1997. I was working with people who routinely used the whiteboard/PostIt combo as early as 1988 - so who knows where it first originated.

And who cares, really?

-40hz (October 16, 2014, 05:24 PM)

Well, it's kinda intuitive. White/Black boards, Paper - call them cousins. (On paper, years ago I made a system of pencil and blue pen - pencil can be erased with some effort; the blue pen is "bold" if you really know what you are doing, but it becomes a bad mess if you mess it up too many times!)

If you have a genius layout and do it right, you get a beautiful exhibit, paper lasting longer than the boards. But if you are still thrashing about, and you start getting the layout wrong, it might look cool all "mad scientist", but also definitely crowded and alpha/beta and not ready for production. (Mad scientists always put beta stuff into production! Hehe!)

So if you half draw stuff on a board, and half on stickies that you move around, it makes just fine sense.

1043

General Software Discussion / Re: Ad blocking add-ons in Pale Moon 25

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 16, 2014, 09:53 PM »

Looks like good info.

But it's complicated. What does that mean in bigger terms?

1044

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: You Can Relax Now v1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 16, 2014, 12:13 PM »

Then there's Randall Munroe at xkcd on the subject!
http://xkcd.com/998/

1045

N.A.N.Y. 2015 / Re: Idea: grid-based project planner

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 15, 2014, 07:23 PM »

Devil's Advocate / Clarification :

What does this app do that can't be done on a generic spreadsheet?

In my once and future lives when I had/will have money, I commission little apps to do strange things I hadn't seen before. But this one sounds like a whole lot of work re-doing what spreadsheets do. If there's three things missing, why not just write a plugin to something like Libre-Office Calc?

A lot of the functions just sound like flipping status columns and re-sorting the data by stuff like "graveyard" and so on.

1046

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 15, 2014, 07:07 PM »

Do you think I would get more traffic through here if I put a link to here in Silly Humor or are all the people interested in these things already here?

-Arizona Hot (October 15, 2014, 04:11 PM)

I think there's value in at least trying to separate "interesting stuff" and "silly humor". I for one am prone to silliness attacks! So I'd want the "interesting stuff" to be more straight-man educational, and then "silly humor" is our brilliant take on the various "longest threads" that a few forums do. I am also known for taking a few legit thread posts and re-posting silly one-off spins on them in silly-humor, just to get them out of my head. But I think I value "interesting stuff" more, when I want to actually want to think and explore.

1047

Living Room / Re: SSL broken, again, in POODLE attack

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 15, 2014, 06:59 PM »

To fix your browser:

• Safari users on OSX & iOS: You are pretty much screwed till Apple fixes it for you. Use a different browser.

-app103 (October 15, 2014, 05:39 PM)

How do people use different browsers in iOS effectively?

The huge reason I never considered my phone (iPhone) to be a real comp is that while it can do a few fun useful things, it just doesn't do anything that I consider really useful / work.

So I am only a novice at phones, but I've tried to barely keep up on the news. So Apple has made it rather hard to use other browsers than Safari on an iPhone. And despite how ugly Flash is, it does run a few things. So I squeaked by, and got a copy of Photon on my iPhone, that does some sort of "process and pass on" version of Flash.

So, there. That's a different browser. But is it susceptible to this new attack? I have no idea and no idea how to find out. I'm a great test case because I'm sorta smart, and I have first level questions, but these new stories are coming too fast and thick for me to make out.

1048

General Software Discussion / Re: Fake for Windows

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 14, 2014, 06:02 PM »

Just that provocative names like that annoy me. They could have picked anything to call it, and they had to call it ... fake?!

So are we sure it's not a joke? And if it is, of which kind?

1049

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Program to show total character count in path for filename in a directory list

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 14, 2014, 06:00 PM »

Duh.  cnt believe i found it so fast.  In case anyone else needs this.  Download from HERE

Thanks.  If I had not I asked I would not have found.  Murphy's Law 

-questorfla (October 14, 2014, 05:56 PM)

In the words of my House MD marathon, "your bad question led to your good answer"!

1050

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Program to show total character count in path for filename in a directory list

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 14, 2014, 05:59 PM »

I can believe it - Wikipedia is up there. If you just save a wiki page, you get something like "Coconuts and the calorie count of their juice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". If you have a file system that already has a lot of characters going, I can see how it bumps over 255. I save my flash-notes in batches, and I've run into it a few times that "X is too long to process".