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1701

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2013, 02:15 PM »

Borrowed from the NANY thread.

New Apps for the New Year. Out with the old in with the new. New, new, new, all this focus on new .

As a counterweight (and because I didn't manage to come up with a good idea for this year, but don't tell mouser), I decided to release this little DOS 16-bit game, which I wrote roughly 15 years ago!

-Jibz (December 16, 2013, 10:42 AM)

Too good to pass up!

 

1702

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2014 pledge: Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2013, 02:09 PM »

Seems like .NET 4.0 is the latest version supported by Windows XP SP 3 (download).

TaoPhoenix, if you want you can re-download using the link in the first post and try on your XP machine (if you have SP 3 and .NET 4.0 installed).

-phitsc (December 16, 2013, 10:27 AM)

Yeah Phit, that looks much better. I haven't actually tested it yet, but it opens and looks "sensible" if you know what I mean aka no horrible bugs etc. (Heh I provide an interesting test case because my comp's OS has gone slightly downhill, and a few "obvious" things don't work on it.)

So I'll pick a day later when I am in my "testing mood" and poke at it. Quick memo for now: under "Web" and then "source" without anything selected, I get:

"Error: The path is not of a legal form."

So I don't know what that means. If you're trying to tell the user that he hasn't entered any data, maybe you can do a quick check and just advise that "the field is blank ... you need to enter a web page address" or something.

But in other news, for "my education", do just say what version of .Net you used that other time - 5.x? So does Windows 7 support that and up etc?

Also, I'm stunned that a 36k application can do all that stuff and still have a GUI on top! How is that even possible!? So that puts a perspective on "today's Bloatware"! (3-18 megs for simple programs, etc. If you did all that in 36k, what are those other programs wasting 18 megs on?!)

Cheers,

Tao

1703

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 06:02 PM »

I was thinking how much fun it might be on a bus through Newark, NJ. Might not even have to use an actual cell phone. Might be able to get away using an old pocket pc. Who the hell would know the difference, these days, between a 13 year old Jornada 540 and a smart phone?

-app103 (December 15, 2013, 05:58 PM)

You wouldn't. ... we're thinking the same lines, aka useless faux hardware. I just am not leet enough to have a Jornada.

<<Tao worships App for 17 minutes>>

1704

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:54 PM »

Cell phone crashing at the airport.

At first I thought it was only slightly amusing, but as it went on I couldn't help smiling and laughing more and more. 

-Deozaan (December 15, 2013, 04:33 PM)

Now, that might be a reason for me to have a cell phone. I wouldn't even have to pay for service to do that. 

-app103 (December 15, 2013, 05:52 PM)

Heh yeah App, you can get a fake discarded cell phone for like ten bucks, right? "...Entertainment ... priceless!"

P.S. You can annoy Flight Attendants with it... when they ask you to "turn off your cell phone" you can rip it in half! "There. Satisfied??!"  : )

1705

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:52 PM »

Amazing sleight of hand by Magician Yann Frisch.

(I know that's what the video title says, but I wrote it out to be search friendly)

-Deozaan (December 15, 2013, 04:07 PM)

Haha! Now we know the true cause of the 2008 Financial crisis!

   

1706

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:48 PM »

Cell phone crashing at the airport.
...
At first I thought it was only slightly amusing, but as it went on I couldn't help smiling and laughing more and more.  

-Deozaan (December 15, 2013, 04:33 PM)

Yeah Deozann that's pretty classic. Amazing we haven't seen that before, it's an "easy" stunt to pull. : )

1707

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:46 PM »

I don't know enough about the RealPolitik of all this, but it seems to me Germany is an interesting place for him to go to. Definitely "Friendly" per se. And they seem to be one of the (three?) strongest countries in the EU. So this would be an interesting development.

Bonus Joke: Don't make the Germans Angry. You wouldn't like them when they are Angry!

1708

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:44 PM »

Re this thread, rather than "pre-emptively kill" (which means guessing) my HD, I'd guess I'd rather just have a "silent backup" available that maybe only needs a quick bios switch to make "bootable live". Because we put a bit of work to get quality parts in my comp. Why "pre-emptively" lose 3 years of service just from one random article?

1709

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:41 PM »

Extremetech has an article today on an issue we've discussed before -- the longevity of hard drives.

This data covers only the first 4 years, but i have to admit it's a bit scary to me:

If you buy a hard drive today, there’s a 90% chance that it will survive for three years. If your drive makes it to the three-year point, you would be wise to back up your data, as there’s a 12% chance per year that your drive will die.

If you don't have a good backup plan in place, start one this week.  I recommend a combination of monthly full drive imaging combined with a constant online backup service for your documents and/or file mirroring.

(see attachment in previous post)

http://www.extremete...es-actually-live-for

from slashdot.org

-mouser (November 12, 2013, 03:47 PM)

Heh my tech skillz are feeble. The best I have done so far is use that Bvckup2 program from that other thread. So my "soft data" is prob in passable shape, except maybe the last few months, but it was an easy prog to run. (Though I should test the "apps" copied over to be sure they are legit files!)

I think on a bigger scale, not counting building a list of progs to install, is thinking about Win 7. Last I knew scuttle was that was due to be "safely supported" for a while ... though with MS's prev rumblings about "not supporting more than three OS's back", and with the advent of 8.1, does that mean they'll drop support as of Win 9? (Will there be a Win 9? Or will  they call it Windows Secure or some other meaningless name?)

I we tried to look pretty far ahead when we custom built my current box with an eye at the future in 2006. First QuadCore Kentsfield series, 2 Terabyte drives, including the fresh D drive I can re-label as C. (Re that article ... if a Hard Drive sits in a "forest" and does absolutely nothing, does it still die?)

So I *think* we looked far enough ahead that my comp can run Win 7, maybe with an extra Ram chip if I feel like splurging. But all that is so far away, and a multi ...week... project I'm not up for yet!

 

P.s. If I have a Fresh OS install maybe Skwire won't hate me anymore!

 

1710

Developer's Corner / Re: Can a user force an alternate routing to a website?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 03:07 PM »

I dunno if that's what Coral Cache was meant to do, but suddenly it's loading every time.

-TaoPhoenix (December 15, 2013, 07:53 AM)

It is what Coral Cache was built to do.

re: Coral Cache (emphasis added)

Publishing through CoralCDN is as simple as appending a short string to the hostname of objects' URLs; a peer-to-peer DNS layer transparently redirects browsers to participating caching proxies, which in turn cooperate to minimize load on the source web server. CoralCDN proxies automatically replicate content as a side effect of users accessing it, improving its availability. Using modern peer-to-peer indexing techniques, CoralCDN will efficiently find a cached object if it exists anywhere in the network, requiring that it use the origin server only to initially fetch the object once.

 

I'm guessing you're likely looking at cached content rather than being served directly off the target site.

-40hz (December 15, 2013, 10:31 AM)

Maybe, but for the site in question, it's a perfect candidate because it only updates very slowly, such as a few new posts per day. So whatever the reason, before every link clicked produced up to a minute delay (!!), where the cache might miss a misc new post but loads mostly normally - I'll take that!

1711

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY - Image Capture and Upload Program

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 09:40 AM »

Meanwhile it looks better first run here too.

From a Sticky (of a webcomic) http://i.imm.io/1ml9v.png

So bugs will be bugs but it looks better here now too.

1712

Developer's Corner / Re: Can a user force an alternate routing to a website?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 07:53 AM »

It's basically out of your hands. You can pretty much only control the routing within your own network. Once it leaves there it gets routed where it does. You might try changing your DNS server setting to see if that helps. (It probably won't btw.)

-40hz (August 04, 2013, 07:57 PM)

Maybe it's not.

On a hunch I've been loading it today through Coral Cache .nyud.net

I dunno if that's what Coral Cache was meant to do, but suddenly it's loading every time.

So good enough for me!

In other misc news on another topic entirely, I managed to unhook some aggressive scripting via adblock element hider, and then the Wiki thing, so my web usability went up today! Hooray!

1713

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 06:17 AM »

Necro Thread Rise!

Today I was back thinking about MindMaps, specifically in relation to web pages. My original idea was hopefully to find something that automatically tracked the pages you visited and made a "mind map" out of them with sister-nodes for the same site, and branches for outbound links.

However, a brief review of the various map programs all seemed you want you to manually structure your tree. So I settled for a FireFox plugin called Session History Tree.

https://addons.mozil...src=api#install-beta

Specifically, under the "Developer Channel" down at the bottom, look for the Beta version.

So while not perfect, it at least gives you a running chain of the pages you visit. It does keep the "alternate pages" but it's not so clear there which ones do. But at least it takes a little strain off remembering where all you went in what chain of logic.

My suggestion is to use it Per Tab when you have a big new branch to follow of stuff to look at.

1714

Post New Requests Here / Re: Anti-Wikipedia-Beg methods?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 06:09 AM »

Not trying to sound mean, but I think the world's number one free encyclopedia site asking for (not "begging for") donations once in a while (once a year, intermittently) with a simple block of text isn't something people should be annoyed of so much as to figure out ways to block it. Think of all the benefits they mean to people, and indeed they run an enormous infrastructure and several sites which are pretty much funded only by donations, so they sure need to ask their (non-paying) users/visitors to chip in whatever amount of cash if they can and if they feel like it. You would do the same if you would run a global, advertisement-free website like Wikipedia for the public's benefit. They aren't much different than DonationCoder, they are just involved in way bigger goals.

-Rev01Yeti (December 15, 2013, 05:58 AM)

It's not once a year. Notice my start to this thread. Nov 14. It's now a month later. It's not intermittent. It's every Wiki page load. (Maybe it "remembers you said no" if you have history and cookies on or something, but with my fairly typical set of anti-track tools on, it doesn't.) And it's a huge ugly banner! 

1715

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 05:45 AM »

Borrowed from the Basement:

Renny invents a new HTML 5 tag!

"<WHIP>Oh man... I've been keeping all of this out of the Living Room entirely. Sad When I saw you post in this thread, I thought I was in trouble yet again. </LASH!>"

1716

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 03:13 AM »

Heh all that reminds me of this song:

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=oD7ABpMk2lI

Epcot's 1982 Computer Song!

Ahh, the good ol' Pre-NSA days!

1717

Post New Requests Here / Re: Anti-Wikipedia-Beg methods?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 03:09 AM »

Try Greesemonkey browser extension/plugin (use a regex pattern)  

edit: http://userscripts.o...a+donate&submit=

-mitzevo (December 15, 2013, 02:07 AM)

Heh somehow Greasemonkey has scared me in the past as seeming "too hard to use" - scripts and all that. But it doesn't look so bad! So I installed one of the scripts from your suggestion link ... but now it will take time to see if it's that script or my other trick working!

The "beg banners" don't come up every page load, so it might be a few days before I start to get some page results!

But for a "quick common resource" that banner has been pretty annoying... so I'll quietly keep poking at this!

Update:
For the moment this works! So for "efficiency" I'll leave Greasemonkey off until I need it later for something else.

I'll report later if Wiki updates etc and the banners come back, but for now it works. (It appeared every browser start with adblock off. With it on and that rule on, it did take a min to parse, but it works.)

1718

Post New Requests Here / Re: Anti-Wikipedia-Beg methods?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2013, 01:03 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)
I don't know if you can block DIV elements in AdBlock but here's the one you want according to Inspector, (Menu->Web Developer->Inspector):
 (see attachment in previous post)

-4wd (November 14, 2013, 09:00 PM)

So I revisited this again.

Wiki is changing the id's on their begs, so in today's version it was already totally different, which would have made adblock useless. So this time I tried blocking all items that call for "display block". So we'll see!

(Note to self - currently done on PaleMoon. FF is left alone for the moment, for scientific comparison goodness! More notes to self. Palemoon might be a good testing ground for new addons, as the "second best" browser, and then I can keep FF proper for only the really good ones. )

1719

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2013, 11:55 PM »

Yep - people "smarter than me" at play!
 

1720

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2014 pledge: Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2013, 11:17 PM »

Hi Phit, once again I am having trouble with the program. This time I'll phrase my support question differently.

Heh using ChrisG's image uploader, look at this screenshot of the "Mega" service - it's listing the program at only 18k zipped! That doesn't sound right - way too small!

http://i.imm.io/1miTx.png

Any advice?

1721

Screenshot Captor / Capture Delay!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 13, 2013, 01:01 AM »

Unless this was fixed in V 4.8 or higher,

There seems to be a delay when I can click the SC icon vs when it "wants to" capture the screen. In a key movie scene, that's important because a 3 second delay kills a .5 second scene! This leads me to "guess" the scene about 17 times to get the "screen capture right". Any advice?

1722

General Software Discussion / Re: Yahoo mail outage!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2013, 07:43 PM »

Here's the redux after it's mostly all over.

Yahoo finally quit being silent without admitting what FUBAR'ed them:

http://help.yahoo.co...n_US&id=SLN22473

From a CNN article:
"CEO Marissa Mayer made revamping e-mail a part of her effort to kickstart a Web company that, in the eyes of many, had grown stale and was bleeding money."

Not sure I wholly like the design, but since I use the company for nothing else, not a bad place to start. (Plus a few non-Google searches.)

So it seems back now, but a 3.5 day outage is pretty bad...

1723

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - how to capitalise the first word of every line

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2013, 07:28 PM »

It's no big deal.  I'm just arguing for my position.    The reason I think he's likely to have multiple files is my assumption that each page scanned will automatically be saved to a file. It's just an assumption.  But sed will work either way.. one file or a thousand.

-MilesAhead (December 12, 2013, 05:20 PM)

Just a random comment.

There's no assumptions when dealing with "scanning". The three rough options are "single file", "single page", and "...other".

Even my junk scanner and certainly the pro-grade one at work lets you batch pages! So no need to have single page files!

But neither would I raw-scan everything to a single file! First, that tends not to be the Way-of-part-of-the-Web.

Chapter scanning is becoming really popular - small enough to parse both on production and people side, but more than a page.

So one vote here for multi files, just not 1000 - maybe 17-30.

1724

Living Room / Re: Migrating from Google Gmail.com to Microsoft Outlook.com

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2013, 01:12 PM »

From another angle, do we have any info about the content mining practices of Microsoft? To me this is a new wrinkle in the "meme".

To me the whole Google-Microsoft thing is a Scylla and Charybdis mess. (Greek Myth reference here at Wiki - http://en.wikipedia....Scylla_and_Charybdis )

Weren't we all grumpy about the ails of Outlook the local program back in the day? So Gmail is good ol' Gmail, "now with more spying." So what's preventing Microsoft from pulling something sneaky? There aren't many more places to go. We just saw Yahoo get Fubar'ed for *three days* this week, and they're far from great. I have only stuck with them in this amused sense of "they're (NOT-Google) and (NOT-Microsoft)." I don't know of any serious 4th entrants to the party. (And even then I don't think I'd trust them to be around for X more years per se - too many smaller projects finally running into the ground! Yikes)

Remember, this is MS of the Windows 8-series fame. And some rumblings about other fresh lock-in tendrils.

1725

General Software Discussion / Re: Yahoo mail outage!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 11, 2013, 09:11 AM »

After reading your message, I checked my Yahoo accounts.  I had no trouble reading mail, both old mail and mail that had arrived today. 

-cyberdiva (December 11, 2013, 09:04 AM)

Sure, that's the randomness bit. Some people are fine, but we're starting into day 3, so someone will be unhappy over there at Yahoo!