Recent Posts

1901

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 05, 2013, 10:23 AM »

Plus I think there's a knowledge paradigm problem for teenagers. They're used to being "babied" "oh look how cute you drew a horsey in crayon", until one day they break critical mass and suddenly they connect enough skill to go "yeah, look, how cute, I have hardware access to the phone and if I jailbreak it and use a 0day exploit, your monitoring app doesn't work, how cute."

1902

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 05, 2013, 10:18 AM »

Even if it is "your kids" (insert strongly worded language what one might do to protect "your kids"), I still think that's beginning to slide down the wrong path. Particularly for Teenagers is where it all gets fuzzy.

I think that if there is a meta-theme where the parents have to have Always On monitoring, that resentment will simmer "nice and fine" until it blows up like a volcano. Then in the resulting emotional explosion is when it gets really dangerous because the kid will be in Rebellion Mode!

Plus these monitoring solutions are "lazy" - "I do nothing, I know every step you make". The whole country isn't one gang war zone. And as that resentment builds, the kid will actively try to break the app himself.

Rob Malda of Slashdot fame posted an anecdote once that his parents tried to reprimand something he did as a child, and took away his computer, so he logged into his friend's computer or something.

Then what happens when the kid turns 18? That's why college sees a lot of bumpy stuff, because suddenly after living in a virtual walled room, all that goes away and then the kid has had no practice taking his baby steps to live a real life.

1903

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 04, 2013, 10:01 PM »

Interesting note:

Although the AlternativeTo webpage talked about monitoring children, I didn't see any mention of that on the product's decidedly unusual website. In fact, there was little mention of what it should be used for.

Sounds like an excellent tool for jealous significant others, jilted lovers, closet pedophiles ("She's not my 18-year old daughter daughter officer! She's only my live-in girlfriend's daughter!"), psychos, pervs, big-brother employers (on company issued smartphones), rogue police officials, wacky politicos, whistleblower-hunters, shady private investigators, and a raft of other weird types as well.

-40hz (October 04, 2013, 01:28 PM)

Bingo! "For the Kidz" is the sales meme. But then these companies are making tech that is just horribly abusable!

1904

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 04, 2013, 02:17 AM »

There's an "obstruction" charge in there if he is not careful. It makes for great "copy". But then the $300,000 fine 22 days later is not so fun!
 

1905

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 04, 2013, 02:10 AM »

I do have a prob with "monitoring" ... wait for it ... kids!

That's right, because it's a kid it's suddenly okay?! Oh look, 18th birthday. You think the power trip will wear off?!

You ask the kid where he's going, you ask him later where he went, and no one really cares the few min in between.

1906

Living Room / Re: The issue of Ad-Blocking in our browsers.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 01:12 PM »

This begins to overlap with my threads on the anti-javascript plugins. "Ad blocking" increasingly means site-served stuff. Forbes is coming to mind with horrible "sliders".

1907

Living Room / Re: Blacked Out Government Websites Available Through Wayback Machine

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 01:06 PM »

So in some senses this is a "legal" way for the agencies to say they are annoyed - of course the content isn't going to go sour in a day, but it's now more "in the face" of average Americans.

-TaoPhoenix (October 03, 2013, 10:15 AM)

They did not request, nor were granted a permit for this protest. The American people do not need anything rubbed in their faces regarding how badly the US government handles money. Congress OTOH should be immediately fired in total, and the janitorial staff should be allowed to clean up the mess...in an expedient fashion. Which I would happily bet a testicle they could pull off by sundown with time to spare.

-Stoic Joker (October 03, 2013, 12:03 PM)

A. No permit needed. I "bet" $10 that somewhere in the voluminous regs they can do what they did and somewhere on page 33 of a 60 page legal doc in a file cabinet marked "beware of stoic joking leopards" it says so. Not counting the usual snarkiness aka Basement, on boring stuff nothing the gov does is "illegal". Not on that level.

B. The American Public *does* need stuff rubbed in their face because the rest of the billion dollar machine is spending money making it sound like it's no big deal! So it's a "reverse cry wolf" - "what does it take to finally make you voters realize we have some psychopaths here?!"

C. While your last comment slides over from "literal" to "joke", Tom Clancy's novel Executive Orders said much the same thing ... and Item B leads to Item C. The way you "fire" a congress member is to vote them out. Hence why (slowly!!) I keep saying the minute we get a turbo political social media engine where for once the country can "share", and not limited to fake farms and cats, for once the politicians have to watch out!

For example there is a newspaper in Maine that published a bunch of big ticket exposes (I forgot which - sorry, blasting this note out!) where parts of the Maine Govt shut them out of basic coverage. Clear court case brewing t here. Normally that's not something that would ever be noticed in Wisconsin... but with voter-side social media, it could.

Ignoring trolls and so on, some combination of Reddit and Slashdot for Political Bills would RUIN DC. So they are riding the long coattails of inertia as long as they can before that happens. Not counting security issues, I also keep saying such a system is "easy" to build - in some ways it only needs to do twelve things. Allow granular hot button lines to push up, aggregate up and down to the candidate and back, and a few other things. Piece of cake. I keep thinking of doing it myself in Basic for #$%^#$% sake for a NANY except that it wouldn't scale.

But however much you hate him, Mark Zuckerberg "and gang" showed how the world works - you lock in the right points of time and then you have to be dealt with forever. Google too. (Microsoft before that.)

1908

Living Room / Re: The issue of Ad-Blocking in our browsers.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 12:49 PM »

I'd be happy to pay for good content I'm interested in. I've paid for site access before, am paying some sites now, and remain completely open to paying for more content in the future.

Too bad there's so little content out there I personally consider worth paying for.

I suppose that's my acid test: If a certain site switched to subscription only - would I buy a subscription? If the answer is "no" then it's nothing I won't walk away from in a heartbeat if the "monetization" strategy the site is using becomes too obnoxious.

The sad truth (IMHO) is that very little of the information buffet making up today's Internet is worth paying for. Most of it is amateurish, badly researched (if researched at all), poorly presented, and painfully shallow.

If the Internet is a vast info-ocean, it's an ocean that's 10,000 miles wide - but only about a quarter-inch deep in most places.

Or so it seems to me.

-40hz (October 03, 2013, 11:16 AM)

Not seems ... is.

You eval it on a site by site basis. X site becomes known for x1 stuff. Y site becomes known for Y1 stuff. As joked by xkcd and quietly acknowledged by game show producers, the internet is good at "factoids". Books (and "post-books" etc) still seem to reign for deep knowledge. There's a reason I have 2000 books on my shelf ... because the internet can't yet match any one of them in sequential order. Yes, if I spent 100 hours carefully building 1400 search queries I might slowly assemble one, but ... see?

Books *by definition* have X amount of knowledge! (Yes, white space etc, but I'm Anti-WhiteSpace. Rant elsewhere.) So that is/was what a bookstore used to be for ...
A. You didn't know X book existed, and you can't search for what you don't know.
B. Yay it exists. So you can look at *all of it*. Limited basically only by store hours and maybe in a few cases a hyper manager. With some practice you can get good at speed-evals. If the book keeps impressing you every five pages for 400 pages... you buy it. Simple. None of the DRM limited junk where chapters 1, 8, 14, and 22 are good and the rest are junk...

Ad-infested layouts really make "content" seem more than it is. Yes, they are passably well designed. Blocked almost right, fills a screen page, etc. But yes, once you actually look at the "article", especially if you play the game where you copy it into notepad/other, it's pretty thin! Even with all the Ad blockers on, the page wastes space with self-promotion junk. Like Me, Feeds, Twitters, and more.

1909

Living Room / Re: The issue of Ad-Blocking in our browsers.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 10:22 AM »

For other reasons, I am discovering that headphones on the desk stops this problem! On the few times I think I hear sound. I put them near my ear, then go "oh. you. right."

This service brought to you by a collaboration of your earphone and diaper departments! Posted on DonationCoder. Mouser owns DonationCoder. If you have a mouse, give it to Mouser! That's what he does! (When he's not working on Mewlo, which requires a cat.) Ever notice the disclaimers in ads are getting longer? That's Don Lapre's fault! But he passed on.

1910

Living Room / Re: Blacked Out Government Websites Available Through Wayback Machine

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 10:15 AM »

Well Joker, in a sense this is "the cash buffer". That's what the Repubs keep playing with.

So in some senses this is a "legal" way for the agencies to say they are annoyed - of course the content isn't going to go sour in a day, but it's now more "in the face" of average Americans.

1911

Living Room / Re: The Earworms Music Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 02:39 AM »

Otherwise it lends itself so that someone's cheap $30 blog post outranks me and then I have 33 of the top 75 nominees. Social media doesn't get worse than that!

1912

Living Room / Re: The Earworms Music Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 03, 2013, 02:30 AM »

No.
In an EarWorms thread that I created,  I can refuse a few items!

I already have 15 songs fighting me!

1913

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2013, 06:37 PM »

It has been said that rather than complain, it's better to be constructive, and in that vein, and in the spirit of this thread, i've decided to make a flowchart for DC member Renegade, to print out and keep next to his monitor.

-mouser (October 01, 2013, 06:49 AM)

Fortunately Renegade as *perfect judgement and taste*!
(But only when he does not mention a Proper Noun as a political figure.)

1914

Living Room / Re: The Earworms Music Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2013, 10:22 AM »

I almost hesitate to post this one since doing so has started it looping in my head. Probably for the next 12 hours...

-40hz (October 02, 2013, 10:11 AM)

That leads to the fun game of "Battle of the Earworms"! If you jam enough of them in your head they scorch the mental earth and then they all die!

More fun ones:
Lion Sleeps Tonight (a fresh new live copy rather than the old studio one.)
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=mwy5uqemp6c

Shoes!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA

Mr. Roboto!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=IHT382x8Foo

Never Ending Story!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=3khTntOxX-k

Laura Branigan - Gloria!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=mdlyEC2wcQQ

Laura Branigan - Self Control!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=p8-pP4VboBk

Laura Branigan - Power of Love!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=ZvGWZm34Ct8

One Night in Bangkok!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=P9mwELXPGbA

1915

Living Room / Re: When will the trademark madness ceace

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2013, 10:12 AM »

The trademark/patent/copyright/IP nonsense will never stop. I'll skip the reasons as they should be obvious.

-Renegade (October 02, 2013, 09:28 AM)

The preceding comment consists of a copyrighted work by Renegade. All inquiries must be made to Renegade, preferably including a non-anthrax-contaminated bottle of a fermented liquid with at least a double digit % content. Proof is a measure double that of % content therefore it is not recommended as a measure, such as a heavy beer. This work is being only referenced in part because quoting the whole work is not yet clear that it falls under Fair Use guidelines. However, all text boards facilitate the infringement of short textual copyrighted works with a button that says "Quote"! Not valid in Wyoming or the corner of Main Street and Maple Avenue in Perth. The King of Luxembourg approves of this message.

1916

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2013, 09:59 AM »

Another in my series of key words that can spin off into the humor thread!

If I have learned one lesson over and over again in my 7+ year experience with DonationCoder, it's to fear maintenance costs!

-mouser (August 29, 2013, 12:17 PM)

1917

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2013, 07:59 AM »

Sure, backlisting  will take care of annoyances on sites - but IMHO that's not a very good reason to do JavaScript blocking.

-f0dder (April 22, 2013, 01:27 PM)

Some new updates are coming along.

My perspective is coming more from a toggable usability perspective, and I'm growing to like things like QuickJS more and more because you can see both versions of the page with "1 click". A big new entry to the topic is Chessbase's site, which is now pulling random games from the playchess server live. So 1-click the button and it goes away. But then the next page in when reviewing a news story, it *also* runs on Javascript! So then I want it back! Click off!

Forbes Magazine seems to have lot of widgets and sliders too. Click off!

1918

Living Room / Re: The Earworms Music Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 01, 2013, 10:23 PM »

Heh Edvard yeah, that's been on my top 1000 list for years!

1919

General Software Discussion / Re: wont boot normally!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 01, 2013, 07:16 AM »

A couple of ideas:

Check the System Event Log in XP just after it boots - any errors/warnings?

Get SysInternals' AutoRuns, see if it shows a lot of startup stuff that is either:
a) not supposed to be there, or
b) an entry exists but the file/program is missing, eg.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-4wd (October 01, 2013, 06:42 AM)

That looks amazing! I hadn't paid attention to SysInternals lately since Mark R went over to work for Microsoft. But that copy/version looks brand new!

1920

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 01, 2013, 07:06 AM »

That's terrifying Mouser!

1921

General Software Discussion / Re: wont boot normally!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 01, 2013, 06:57 AM »

My ideas:

1. Maybe you installed something that now decides it wants to "load on boot". Aspects of Java, LibreOffice, and all manner of otherwise legit programs certainly aren't viruses, but suppose you missed some little box during the install.

2. While you don't use that specifically, MS Security Essentials decides it wants to scan bunches of stuff on boot, so then it "fights" for the boot cpu processing power during boot up.

3. It takes time for my machine to re-link all the shortcuts, again chewing up cpu power.

1922

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 30, 2013, 11:25 PM »

Or something.

Re: Strong and Weak, I don't even know a question you could ask "him" that would prove it!

It just remains a mess/morass.

1923

Living Room / The Earworms Music Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 30, 2013, 07:30 PM »

This one is for simple tunes that just jam themselves into your head and won't go away!

Inspiration:

This game show:
http://buzzerblog.com/games/moneyvault/

1924

Living Room / Game Shows!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 30, 2013, 07:23 PM »

Lots of room here.

All kinds of inspirations:

1. When (Paul) Michael Larson *pulverized* Press Your Luck in May 1984. This inspiration is about going beyond slight tips and tricks. Larson was in between work and had time to spend noticing that ... wait for it ... what if those dancing lights *weren't* random!? And why did no one break it open before him? Once the machinery was known, why didn't X people break it after him? (Did the studio get really suspicious of memory oriented people?)

2. Funny clips on TV shows/bloopers!
A. Anne Robinson played such a stern persona that about once in ... X ... shows (see? the math won't go away!) tried to rise to the verbal challenges!
B. Hilarious clips on other obscure shows
C. (Left Blank for Later)

3. "Fun vs Math"
A. Thread inspired by this game:
http://buzzerblog.com/games/moneyvault/
The "Heuristic" is quite simple - you spread them out. But you don't know (initially/yet!?) how the money cards work on the two sides, aka why they are not just random, so "anyone" can get 6-8 entries on the board. But it's about the last few/couple that prove to be really tough because that asks you to get some 10-30% chance the final number will work. (Edited to include that a nasty run of numbers will bust you out!)

Yay. Game. But assuming no comp generator cheating, what ARE the actual odds? What is in fact the "optimal" strategy, and how often will it in fact fail?

I have NO idea how to frame that. But someone does, and I think it's a single equation (sufficiently long!). And Someone in this crazy wild world knows how to write that!

(This goes back to my old love of Solitaire, same meta genre. Notice the "Helps". So you/whoever make sure the equation covers the help resources!)

Enjoy!

--Tao

1925

Living Room / The "Obvious but Unbelievable" problems

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 30, 2013, 07:11 PM »

This is about the Marilyn Vos Savant type stuff where ____ (choose denomination) yelled at her over the "basic" problem of which door you pick on Let's Make a Deal.

Basically, it had to do with information timing theory and when you learned what, to switch doors. But basically huge swaths of people got it wrong, and unlike everything else they got wrong, that one made them angry.