Recent Posts

10326

General Software Discussion / Re: CintaNotes

« Last post by 40hz on April 23, 2009, 08:30 PM »

@Gwen7

Thanks for the input. You are correct that I'm running an Athlon64 chip, but it isn't overclocked. And Shedko Badges is not installed on my machine.

But you were onto something with the RAM.

I use Crucial brand memory almost exclusively. On this particular machine, I'm running  3x512 DIMMs. When I opened the case, I was surprised to discover that one of them was made by PNY. Apparently, we swapped out the third Crucial brand DIMM for one reason or another - probably to diagnose a client's machine - and never swapped it back.

This morning, I pulled the PNY brand DIMM and replaced it with one made by Crucial that is an exact match for the other two. Great  move!

Two niggling issues on this machine have since disappeared completely, and the overall performance is noticeably better. Excellent call on your part. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue I had with CintaNotes would also be fixed by this.

Next time I have an oddball problem I'll have to remember to look at the hardware as well as the software.

Once again, thanks for your suggestions.

10327

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

« Last post by 40hz on April 22, 2009, 06:19 PM »

Check out this slightly warped but very funny animation entitled: Animator vs Animation over at YouTube:

Link: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=cgwxXKsZhAo



I think the inspiration may have come from this old 1951 Warner Brothers Duck Amuck cartoon where Daffy Duck took on his animator:

Link: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=WEihY6wSbwI



 

10328

Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« Last post by 40hz on April 22, 2009, 05:54 PM »

Deadman's Switch reborn as a web service? Here's an article addressing a few of the things that cropped up here:

http://www.linuxinsi...com/story/66554.html

Wrapping Up an Online Life When Real Life Ends

By Peter Svensson
AP
03/22/09 4:00 AM PT

When someone dies unexpectedly, a loved one may naturally want to inform the departed's friends and acquaintances that they've passed away. That's not always easy when that person had a widespread network of online relationships. New sites are popping up to organize and ease the task.

10329

Living Room / Re: How many furries here at DC?

« Last post by 40hz on April 22, 2009, 01:50 PM »

Is Mickey Mouse a furry then?

-PhilB66 (April 22, 2009, 01:20 PM)

No. Mickey Mouse is The Mouse!

10330

General Software Discussion / Re: CintaNotes

« Last post by 40hz on April 22, 2009, 07:09 AM »

Actually I'm writing here mostly because of the disturbing post of 40hz. I haven't received any reports about any lock-ups up to this point.
@40hz:
Could you please tell how exactly does the program "lock up"? I care a lot for the quality of the program and bugs such as this, in case they are confirmed, are treated with top priority. Thanks a lot!

-Alex.Jenter (April 21, 2009, 10:27 PM)

Hi Alex! Welcome to DoCo.


Thanks for the interest!

I was using whatever release you were on back in December of last year.

I encountered sporadic lockups when scrolling through a long (70+ item) note list. My mouse would freeze and I'd need to kill CintaNotes in TaskManager to get it back. There was no particular pattern to it happening. It would work fine for a while, and then the problem would recur.

Unfortunately, I didn't do a lot of troubleshooting at the time. I could load it up again if it would help you. But since nobody else has reported this problem you may not want to bother. I've had a few other apps that perform clipboard-like functions exhibit similar (but not identical) behaviors.

FYI: I have some fairly odd things (multi-desktop and remote client network monitoring mostly) running in the background on the machine in question. These apps can - and do - cause occasional problems with explorer. So in the absence of any other reports, I'm sure it's an interaction with one of those rather than your app that's causing the problem. Otherwise you'd be hearing about it, right?


 

10331

General Software Discussion / Re: Website design recommendations for a small business site?

« Last post by 40hz on April 21, 2009, 10:24 AM »

Joomla can take a little getting used to but I found some excellent videos to get you started at http://www.buildajoomlawebsite.com/ (they aren't free but only cost $10).

-Carol Haynes (April 21, 2009, 04:13 AM)

There are also some nice (and free!) video tutorials for Joomla at the Joomla for Beginners website.

Main page : http://joomlaforbeginners.com

Direct link: http://joomlaforbegi...video-tutorials.html

 

10332

General Software Discussion / Re: CintaNotes

« Last post by 40hz on April 21, 2009, 10:15 AM »

I wanted to like it.

Nice concept, and rather pretty to look at. Unfortunately, it keeps locking up on my machine.

I currently use Flashnote ( http://softvoile.com/flashnote ) for quick & dirty note taking; and SEO Note ( http://www.seonote.info ) for my more structured note collections.

10333

Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« Last post by 40hz on April 21, 2009, 10:00 AM »

What's wrong with letting someone you trust know what your password is and where your backup data is stored?

-DDRAMbo (April 21, 2009, 01:40 AM)

Nothing wrong at all. That's exactly what I've done.

10334

Living Room / Re: ZDNET: Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?

« Last post by 40hz on April 21, 2009, 09:50 AM »

I truly don't know why it gets such bad press.  I've had my moments, but most of those have been a result of wanting to do things myself, and vista 'protecting' me from messing things up, because it wanted to fix it (and admittedly did- if not as fast as I wanted).  But overall, it hasn't been a bad experience.

-wraith808 (April 21, 2009, 09:22 AM)

Good point. But then the question becomes whether or not your "not bad" experience is worth $150-300 when you can have an equally "not bad" experience for free?

A corporate buyer once told me that (from her perspective) most tech marketing seems to say little more than: "Don't use their crap - use our crap!" -or- "Don't hire those jerks - hire our jerks"

Sometimes I think she's right.

10335

Living Room / Re: Oracle Buys Sun - Your Thoughts?

« Last post by 40hz on April 21, 2009, 09:36 AM »

I find the whole thing vaguely reminiscent of two aging (but still attractive) movie stars hooking up in their late 60's for one last "film & fling" before they become fond memories.

C'mon Sophia, let's show them damn young uns' we both still have what it takes!

My predictions:

• Prepare to see OracleDB make its debut as an Oracle-branded server appliance.
  
  
• Prepare to see MySQL development either spun off to a new company, sold back to the original authors, or 'given back' to the general public (i.e. abandoned).
  
  
• Strong chance of future MySQL development forking (depending on how the above gets handled)
  
  

BTW: IMHO Sophia Loren does still 'have what it takes.'

10336

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 09:09 PM »

There's a video over on blip.tv of a speech given by Cory Doctoro (yes THAT Cory Doctoro) at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference that's an absolute must see for anyone interested in the whole DRM debate.

In this presentation, Cory points out how DRM not only doesn't prevent piracy, but also gives distributors such as Amazon and Apple unprecedented control and leverage over the actual rights-holders of creative works. In the course of the speech he also explains how the music and movie industry made pirating music what almost seems like a moral necessity for many people in response to the way the industry treated its artists and customers.

An excellent and thought provoking speech. Give it a listen. It's twenty-three minutes well spent.

Link: http://blip.tv/file/1996369

10337

Living Room / Re: ZDNET: Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 04:58 PM »

I think the simple existence of so many Linux distributions speaks volumes about the notion of a post-Windows era. It isn't so much that people are considering Linux instead of Windows for their OS. It's more that many people no longer care what they're running as long as they can get to the web with it.

And in that framework, it becomes very hard to justify paying a few hundred for a general purpose OS like Windows when free alternatives are readily available. So if not for general purpose computing, then what?

I think games and DRM-protected media will be the only two things that ultimately keep Windows going.

But maybe Microsoft has already seen their future. And that future boils down to a sophisticated entertainment appliance that looks something like an XBox on steroids.

Unless Apple gets there first. Again.

 

10338

Living Room / Re: Maddening little online game

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 02:44 PM »

hehe this is quite fun! But it's hard on the touchpad of my laptop.

-housetier (April 20, 2009, 02:26 PM)

[40hz grovels]

In some primitive societies, people who were good at using touchpads were considered gods by the general populace.

Just thought you'd like to know, 

Darn you...  I shouldn't have looked at your post.

-bob99 (April 20, 2009, 02:14 PM)

Sorry. I thought about it after I posted and debated whether I should remove it for that very reason.

Then I said: Nah!

10339

Living Room / Re: Gothic's New Blog on Server Administration and a cool console-y wordpress theme

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 02:24 PM »

.. Of course, the opposite is true as well:
Why should I make a switch button when 99% of the internet that makes MY eyes hurt doesn't have one.

-Gothi[c] (April 17, 2009, 11:21 PM)

wow! kinda harsh...

10340

Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 12:26 PM »

My understanding is that neuro and linguistic research doesn't support the political 'repression and conspiracy' arguments for how languages develop.

All the 'hard science' seems to indicate that the development of languages, grammars, and vocabularies is just something the human species does. And further, that such language development continuously takes place at all socioeconomic levels in every human society.

So much for the 'ruling class' theory of linguistics.

Perhaps we're confusing language with law?

They're not the same thing - even if some people's word is.
 

10341

Living Room / Maddening little online game

« Last post by 40hz on April 20, 2009, 11:45 AM »

Red Square is an utterly fiendish little time-waster to play while you're waiting for that download to finish.

Link: http://mikemiller.net/redsquare.html

A screenshot of the page says it all.

My best score after 5 minutes of practice:

10342

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft releases SmallBasic for Newbie Programmers

« Last post by 40hz on April 19, 2009, 08:10 PM »

Friends don't let friends use BASIC!

It is possible to write OK structured code with a BASIC flavor like Visual Basic, problem is that the language, IDE, and the type of programmers it attracts usually lead to... horrible... code. And sometimes, irreversible brain damage. Haven't looked at SmallBasic, but doubt it's any different

-f0dder (November 16, 2008, 06:00 PM)

Funny thing.

I've heard the same things said about people who use C...and Java...and PHP...and Fortran...

And I have one very good friend (who is a true LISP roshi and code warrior ) who says the same thing about all of them - including LISP.

I think the simple truth is that there is no such thing as a computer language so good that some idiot couldn't code and absolute pile of dingo's kidneys using it. And also no language so bad that a real professional couldn't turn it around and use it to do a creditable piece of programming.

Based on what I've observed over the years, I also think most coders tend to prefer (and defend) the first language they truly mastered (as opposed to merely 'learned') over anything else that comes along later.

While it is very true that some languages are inherently more flexible, elegant, and better designed than others, no one language has emerged that is so superior in every technical respect - or for every class of problem - that it emerges as the single best language for everything.

If there were, we'd all be using it and not having any of these discussions.

-----

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure:  Modula-3 will always be my favorite, which is probably the reason why I'm very partial to Python. I'm also a dyed-in-the-wool Forth fan.

<EDIT on 4/20: fixed a minor grammatical error in one of my sentences above.>.

10343

Living Room / Re: copying files over a school network

« Last post by 40hz on April 19, 2009, 06:31 PM »

How about writing a batch file to distribute to a list of recipients and then the teach just has to drop a file on the icon?

-Carol Haynes (April 19, 2009, 04:48 PM)

If these are just files, as opposed to executables, you could create a series of read-only shared folders which could be mapped to a desktop shortcut called something like "Class Materials."  Once set up, you could then have the students open the folder (under a teacher's direction) and drag/copy any enclosed files onto the individual desktops. It's just like having the students get a book off the shelf and bring it back to their desks.

Access to specific folders could be controlled through the usual group/folder share privileges so the 8th graders wouldn't be loading shortcuts meant for the 12th graders, etc, or deleting or adding their own stuff to the folders.

You could even structure it in such a way that the individual teachers have read/write/delete access to these folders thereby allowing them distribution control over any files needed for their courses. These desktop folders could also be synchronized to the desktop from the server. Just be sure to set the override option to force the desktops to synchronize from the server folder only. Don't do a 2-way sync or you'll have major problems.

We set up a version of this for a school once. It worked out very well for them.

---

There's always 'push server' (SMS et al) solutions for more complex deployments. But they can be quite expensive. They're also fairly complex to set up and administer. So, if you're uncomfortable with batch commands, something like SMS definitely is going to be out of the question.

10344

Living Room / Re: The need to unplug and recharge is upon me

« Last post by 40hz on April 19, 2009, 02:43 PM »

Is the same true for you?

-zridling (April 16, 2009, 12:14 PM)

Boy do I ever hear you! Transitional seasons always get me antsy.

Periodically, I need to grab an acoustic musical instrument (or two) - or even just a pen and notebook - and go someplace where I can sit and create. And without the need to be plugged into anything other than my imagination to do so.

15 years ago, if my friends told me I'd be saying this, I would have laughed in their faces. I was the most 'plugged-in' person in my social circle. A real Technoboy if there ever was one.

But I seem to be getting less and less enchanted with technology as time goes on. I no longer see technology as something intrinsically liberating. Quite the opposite in fact.

Of course, if I happen stumble on this post 15 years from now...

10345

Living Room / Re: I'm bored, what to do?

« Last post by 40hz on April 17, 2009, 10:35 PM »

Volunteer?

There's lots of worthwhile causes that could use your help and would be more than happy to help you channel some of that energy.

Just a thought.

10346

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by 40hz on April 17, 2009, 04:21 PM »

I wonder if they would have gotten less of a slap if they didn't insist on acting like defiant little macho twits all the way through the trial.

-40hz (April 17, 2009, 12:57 PM)

And that is actually the only thing I have against TPB (even if it's been amusing).

-f0dder (April 17, 2009, 01:18 PM)

My grandfather used to say: You can get whatever you want - or you can say whatever you want - but you'll seldom get away with doing both.

I'm one of those people who would rather get what I want.

When I was in high school, some of us used to do a thing we called "soft parade." What it boiled down to was getting good grades, keeping your mouth shut, paying minimal lip service to the powers that be, and pretty much doing whatever the hell you wanted the rest of the time.

We got away with a whole lot more than the 'wild crowd' because everybody mostly ignored us. The wild boys thought we were boring. And the school staff figured we were the "safe ones," so they left us alone.

I'd have thought the PB4 would have been smart enough to do something similar. Lots of people trifle with unfair laws, and get little more than a frown of annoyance or an amused smile from the courts.

But the people that thumb their noses at the judicial system invariably get their butts handed to them. Sometimes even if they're innocent of what they're being charged with.

Oh well. What's done is done. We'll have to see how this one ultimately plays out.

10347

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by 40hz on April 17, 2009, 12:57 PM »

Well...word just came in on the the Pirate Bay trial over in Sweden,

Final verdict: Guilty.
1 year jail time for each defendant, and a total of $3.6-million in fines. The news report I saw didn't say how the fines were apportioned out.

I wonder if they would have gotten less of a slap if they didn't insist on acting like defiant little macho twits all the way through the trial.

10348

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu 9.04: Thoughts and experiences

« Last post by 40hz on April 17, 2009, 01:10 AM »

Dumb as it may sound, I tend to skip the odd-numbered releases. I never seem to have very much luck with them. Not that they don't work. It's just that they always seem to have more odd-ball problems. I'm at that stage of my life where the 'thrill' of wrestling with some FOSS technical issues is long gone.

I sometimes wonder if the odd releases are the ones where Canonical pushes the features envelope, and the even releases are where they regroup and get things tidied up.

Three install attempts is pretty spooky.  Even allowing for one miss due to a faulty CD, it's still one too many for a distro that's going to be put on a 'work' laptop.

I follow a simple rule for new distributions. If the initial installation doesn't go smoothly*, I just drop it and wait for the next release. Or move on to something else...

I'd be more inclined to go with Zaine's suggestion and think seriously about using openSUSE instead of  Ubuntu 9.04 at this point. He's absolutely right about openSUSE when he said: everything works. I've had very good luck running SUSE on laptops.


* Ok...ok..make that "mostly smoothly." This is Linux we're talking about. 

10349

Found Deals and Discounts / Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 Administrator's Companion- free download

« Last post by 40hz on April 17, 2009, 12:33 AM »

Microsoft is providing a free PDF download of their book Windows® Small Business Server 2008 Administrator’s Companion.

In hardcover, this 720-page tome will set you back about $60 at Barnes & Noble. (Amazon wants $38 for it.)

If you're responsible for a Win2k8-SBS; thinking about setting one up; or just curious, download this PDF while it's still available.

  Excellent 'light reading' for a snowy winter's evening by the fireplace.


Link: http://csna01.libred...ital.com/?urws8un4p7

Celebrating 25 years
For 25 years, Microsoft Press books have focused on helping you take your skills and knowledge to the next level. Celebrate our 25th Anniversary with a "Free e-book of the Month" offer! Simply sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection Newsletter for notification of offers, register, and download the selection of the month.

Windows® Small Business Server 2008 Administrator’s Companion
By Charlie Russel and Sharon Crawford
ISBN: 9780735620704

This comprehensive administrator’s reference delivers the details you need to successfully deploy, manage, and support Windows Small Business Server 2008. For more information or to buy the print version of this title, visit the Microsoft Learning website.

10350

Living Room / Re: Gothic's New Blog on Server Administration and a cool console-y wordpress theme

« Last post by 40hz on April 16, 2009, 04:29 PM »

I really wish I could read it but that color makes it almost impossible for me.  I can only make it a few words before needing to look away.

-Veign (April 16, 2009, 09:41 AM)

Spend at least half my computing hours in MonoAmber-Land now that I think about it.