Recent Posts

1651

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 09:01 PM »

This one is for Superboy. Alison Moyet (with that lovely contralto of her's) doing Cry Me a River. Ms Moyet comes the closest to Julie London's definitive version of this classic. Truth be told, I like some of Moyet's phrasing and her less affected delivery (plus the overall band arrangement) just a tiny bit better.

Silky smooth bass and drums plus some excellent piano accompaniment, marred only by that clueless twit who is playing the most un-jazzlike of all guitars, the dreaded Gibson SG! (WTF? Seriously. WTF?)

Alison is just one of the many fine indie musicians soon to disappear from YouTube if Google goes ahead with some of its recently announced plans.

1652

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:26 PM »

Surveillance technology use is more addictive than crack AFAICT.

One reason why I never participated in any project that involved monitoring people was because I have seen what this technology does to the people who use it.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-40hz (June 14, 2014, 01:31 PM)

Do you feel the same about home surveillance of your own pad?

-superboyac (June 17, 2014, 02:18 PM)

Yes I do. Even with pets at home and me being out a lot.

It's not completely rational I know. But I'm sort of where Mark Twain was when he told his doctor he couldn't moderate his smoking or drinking habits. Twain said while he could give up a bad habit completely, he didn't think he could moderate one indefinitely.

Probably I could. Maybe I couldn't. But why even go there to begin with?

Lead us not into temptation...and all that.  

Like a certain lady said: "I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel."

1653

Living Room / Re: Google's new "Hey Indies! Pay or your video won't play!" subscription service.

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:15 PM »

Why are people still using youtube anyway.

-SeraphimLabs (June 17, 2014, 05:53 PM)

It just works.  And by default, other sites hook into YT.

-wraith808 (June 17, 2014, 06:06 PM)

Yes indeed. There's that.

Notice how we don't have a

tag set?

1654

Living Room / Re: Building Another Budget Gaming PC...

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:12 PM »

Corded keyboard and cordless mouse (with a long-living and easy to change battery) is the way i would go.

-mouser (June 17, 2014, 06:10 PM)

+1 x 100.

1655

Living Room / Re: [SOLVED] Please Help Me Recover Invisible Files!

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:08 PM »

 

Ok...that works too!

1656

Living Room / Re: Google's new "Hey Indies! Pay or your video won't play!" subscription service.

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 03:34 PM »

Hey Larry Page? Didn't somebody resembling you once say "Do no evil"?

-40hz (June 17, 2014, 03:22 PM)

That's a common misunderstanding. What he actually said was "Do know evil." Which is why Google are so good at collecting and analyzing every detail of our lives.

-Deozaan (June 17, 2014, 03:29 PM)

LOL Awesome!

1657

Living Room / Re: Please Help Me Recover Invisible Files!

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 03:32 PM »

Try resetting the attributes to remove a possible "hidden" flag that got set. From within the directory try attrib -h *.* or download a copy of unhide.exe from bleeping computer and use that instead. Link here.


If that fails, try booting off a Linux live CD or other rescue disk and see if your files are recoverable from there. I've had to do this on certain rare occasions to get a file back when Windows couldn't see it.

Luck!

1658

Living Room / Google's new "Hey Indies! Pay or your video won't play!" subscription service.

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 03:22 PM »

With the imminent launch of Google's new subscription music service, reports are coming in from many independent labels about phone calls and letters from Google warning that their content may be blocked unless they sign onto Google's new service. What this means is unless your label is part of Google's subscription service going forward, all your current videos will be removed and any future videos will blocked from streaming via Google.

That in itself would be bad enough. But the indies are also complaining they're being offered inferior terms compared to those offered to the last standing "old boys" like Universal, Warner, and Sony. Most of the indie labels contacted have characterized Google's behavior in this matter as arm-twisting and corporate bullying.

Most interesting of all, Google is making no attempt whatsoever to downplay or mitigate any negative fallout. They've offered this statement:

"Our goal is to continue making YouTube an amazing music experience, both as a global platform for fans and artists to connect, and as a revenue source for the music industry. We're adding subscription-based features for music on YouTube with this in mind — to bring our music partners new revenue streams in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars YouTube already generates for them each year. We are excited that hundreds of major and independent labels are already partnering with us."

The message seems to be: Hey kiddies! Don't get left out. All the other cool kids are doing it already! Sign up now - or you won't get to play in our sandbox.

Links to several articles on this can be found here.

Just one step closer to officially sanctioned art.



Hey Larry Page? Didn't somebody resembling you once say "Do no evil"?

1659

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 01:00 PM »

Very droll: Congressman asks NSA to provide metadata for “lost” IRS e-mails | Ars Technica

-IainB (June 17, 2014, 12:12 PM)

All I can say is:

 

1660

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 10:12 AM »

@Giampy - Love it!

1661

Living Room / Re: "English" <> "German" translations

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 07:47 AM »

Why so complicated? German agencies should not be used as a source for English terms.

-Tuxman (June 17, 2014, 07:35 AM)

Exactly.

Just use: configure, install, and setup.


---------------


@AbteriX - The real challenge for English/German translation is that both languages are similar enough (in many respects) that it's all to easy too miss how different they actually are. Especially grammatically.

English doesn't have the stricter word order rules German seems to have. English also doesn't have the same flexibility about the position of a noun in a sentence. For example, all of the below sentences are correct in German AFAIK.

Der alte Mann gab mir gestern das Buch.
Das Buch gab mir gestern der alte Mann.
Das Buch gab der alte Mann mir gestern.
Das Buch gab mir der alte Mann gestern.
Gestern gab mir der alte Mann das Buch
Mir gab der alte Mann das Buch gestern.
                                                        

They would all be incorrect (or at the very least considered awkward constructs) in standard English.

Standard English would more likely say (transliterated below):

The old man gave me the book yesterday.
Der alte Mann gab mir das Buch gestern.

or

Yesterday, the old man gave me the book.
Gestern, der Alte Mann gab mir das Buch.

                                                                     

IIRC enough of my high school German, both transliterated English sentences would be considered somewhat incorrect in German wouldn't they?

Human languages! Such a fascinating subject!

1662

Living Room / Re: Stuff We Feel Like Bitching About

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 07:16 AM »

I'd rather give them a couple bucks a month and get rid of all ads.

-wraith808 (June 16, 2014, 09:27 PM)

Amen!

1663

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:56 AM »

My guess is that if the message is real, any discrepancies with proper Latin grammar, etc., can be relatively safely attributed to the difficulty in creating an English sentence to properly fit.

-Renegade (June 16, 2014, 08:22 PM)

Certainly. But also remember that these people are cryptographers. I don't think getting it to work using a real Latin sentence would have been much of a challenge for them.

-40hz (June 16, 2014, 08:48 PM)

Maybe not much of a challenge on the surface.  The challenge is in doing so in a way that our Neighborhood Shopping Allies can't prove it was done intentionally.  Thus mistakes.

-wraith808 (June 16, 2014, 09:24 PM)

Proof? Since when was proof required for anything with these people? They maintain they don't even have to show you (or a court) the text of the law they claim you've broken. "Have waterboard - will travel!"

(That's N-Sic that comes in at the end btw. )

 

1664

Living Room / Re: Building Another Budget Gaming PC...

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:36 AM »

I think your CPU spec is especially spot on. The i5 3570 is a great chip for the money. In fact, it's a great chip period. 

1665

Living Room / Re: "English" <> "German" translations

« Last post by 40hz on June 17, 2014, 06:23 AM »

I'll also agree that "configuration" is the word you most likely want to use.

"Commissioning" implies giving some sort of permission - or assigning a task to something/someone. Usually a person.

"Configuring" is doing all those little things needed to make something work - or work properly.

Most technical instructions I've seen written in American-English seem to follow a sequence where:

• hardware is either set-up or installed
• software is installed
• then both the hardware and software are configured

The above are not firm usage rules.

It can get confusing because "setup" (or "set-up" ) is often used interchangeably with the words "install" and "configure" when used informally. American-English colloquial forms, slang expressions, and technical jargon are no easier to follow than they are those found in any other language.

About the only other similar IT term is the word "provisioning." But that word is mostly restricted to the network and telecommunication sector. "Provisioning" is an all-inclusive term that refers to the entire process needed to make a network-based product or service available to a customer. That would include hardware, software, wiring, setups, configuration, activation, etc.

I've never seen the word "provisioning" used in context of anything other than enterprise-level hardware or software.

Hope this helped.

1666

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 08:48 PM »

My guess is that if the message is real, any discrepancies with proper Latin grammar, etc., can be relatively safely attributed to the difficulty in creating an English sentence to properly fit.

-Renegade (June 16, 2014, 08:22 PM)

Certainly. But also remember that these people are cryptographers. I don't think getting it to work using a real Latin sentence would have been much of a challenge for them.

1667

Living Room / Re: please tell the name of this font!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 08:26 PM »

This is what the basic Trajan looks like:



Find a bit of history and discussion about it here.

You can download a copy of TrajanPro-Regular here or here.

Looks pretty close:



 

1668

Living Room / Re: please tell the name of this font!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 07:13 PM »

Looks to be based off Trajan.

There are dozens upon dozens of variants of this famous font. Good luck.

1669

Living Room / Re: Stuff We Feel Like Bitching About

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 05:33 PM »

So in a sense readers are losing the inflation race. "An article is always an article", but it's like the site landlords are raising the rent or whatever on what ads they want to hold the writer hostage with.

-TaoPhoenix (June 16, 2014, 02:58 PM)

There are some forms of respect that can be taught. For everything else, there's DDoS.

1670

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 05:26 PM »

Well...if the creators of TrueCrypt wanted their app to spark a lively debate and leave a bit of mystery that might never disappear off the radar screen (remember Amelia Earhart, the Philadelphia Experiment, and D.B. Cooper?), having it shut down without explanation (other than some nonsensical recommendations) was one good way to almost guarantee that happening.

I'm starting to think there's definitely some game in play here. Whether it's just a publicity stunt, or something deeper (and possibly darker) is anybody's guess.

We can speculate endlessly in the absence of anything concrete. The web excels at that sort of endeavor.

Which just might be the real goal here...

1671

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 01:32 PM »

Okay, so if you two agree that that ain't Latin ... I'm inclined to put my money (so to speak) on that ain't Latin.

-Stoic Joker (June 16, 2014, 11:35 AM)

Well, I'm not an expert in Latin by any stretch. And I've probably forgotten far more that I remember. But the way that sentence is constructed seems more like a transliteration using a robo-translator. So while the words map out to the same words in English, it's not the way I'd suspect a Roman - or somebody who is well acquainted with the Latin language - would have said it. I personally would have thought the sentence would have started with something like "Si vis" (if you want to), which is a fairly common construct.

This however may also be a clearer proof there's such a hidden message than otherwise. Very few people bother to learn real Latin these days. And most of what does get presented as a Latin phrase is really just English run through Google trans.

 

1672

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 11:08 AM »

That's not Latin.  Not even near in the same neighborhood as Latin.

-wraith808 (June 16, 2014, 10:46 AM)

Shhhsh! Don't let facts get in the way of a good story!
 
And yeah, that was the "stretch" part for me too! Far too many years of schooling plus attending  Latin Masses not to recognize Latin when I see/hear it .

1673

Living Room / Re: Stuff We Feel Like Bitching About

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 09:15 AM »

^I've pretty much given up granting the benefit of doubt to websites any more. My script and ad blockers are switched on and remain on. Later, if I decide I like the site and I am being treated with a modicum respect by it, I will then (and only then) disable blocking on it. There was a time when I would only block as needed. Now I do the opposite - block by default and unblock only where justified. Sad really. But I have limited patience with most of the nonsense up on the web.

So it goes.

1674

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by 40hz on June 16, 2014, 08:53 AM »

Definitely interesting. With something else it would be a stretch. But placed in context of the puzzle & word game world of cryptographers and their ilk, there just might be something to it. Maybe.
 

1675

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

« Last post by 40hz on June 15, 2014, 08:03 PM »

Go I-man!