Recent Posts

2226

Living Room / Re: comparative study of international acceptance of evolution

« Last post by JavaJones on August 11, 2006, 01:24 PM »

You know, evolution as a theory may have a few problems, but it's a long jump from "the theory of evolution is incomplete" to "it's false". I'm kind of dismayed as a resident of the US, but not really surprised I suppose. *sigh*

Edit: someone correlated this with "happiest nations on Earth". Apparently Denmark is #1, but look at the list that follows:

Following behind Denmark came Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and the Bahamas.

http://www.cnn.com/2...orld.reut/index.html

That sounds like a pretty good list of countries to me. I'm packing my bags right now.

- Oshyan

2227

Living Room / Re: Smart Rabbit Computer Buddy Gadget

« Last post by JavaJones on August 11, 2006, 01:08 PM »

Does anyone here ever buy this kind of thing? I want to know what kind of person actually spends money on and even potentially uses these.

- Oshyan

2228

Living Room / Re: Video: What's the difference between Microphones?

« Last post by JavaJones on August 11, 2006, 01:04 PM »

Bummer, this looked really interesting. That's what he gets for hosting useful info on a .Mac site though.

- Oshyan

2229

Living Room / Re: Meez: your 3d avatar

« Last post by JavaJones on August 11, 2006, 01:03 PM »

Creepy, lol

- Oshyan

2230

Developer's Corner / Re: The start-up inflection point: Nice Blog Article

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 11:48 PM »

Sensible comments and advice I'd say. Whenever I read these sorts of articles about startups I always wonder how I'd handle the situation(s) in question. There is the natural tendency to think "I could deal with that", but I wonder how I would really react in an actual, practical situation like this. Only one way to find out: I must found a startup.

- Oshyan

2231

Living Room / Re: Damn Interesting: Natural Nuclear Reactor

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 11:08 PM »

No, no, agnostic (which I am) is simply "you know that you don't know". It is not indifference, just the acknowledgement of lack of knowledge and of possibility.

- Oshyan

2232

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: A new name

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 11:03 PM »

Likewise for me superticker: spelling is key IMO. There really are a ton of other clipboard extending apps out there, but few of them deal with spelling.

- Oshyan

2233

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a wiki? Compare, compare!

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 11:00 PM »

Wow, I could have sworn PMWiki wasn't there yesterday. lol

- Oshyan

2234

General Software Discussion / Looking for a wiki? Compare, compare!

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 01:33 AM »

I found this nifty online Wiki chooser/comparator/advisor yesterday while researching a wiki for a couple projects I'm working on. It's has detailed feature breakdowns and matrices for 61 wikis, with a wide range of features, platforms, requirements, and licenses. I thought it surely must be useful to someon else!

http://www.wikimatrix.org

It is not an exhaustive list, shown by the fact that it is missing PMwiki for one thing. But it is pretty remarkably inclusive nonetheless. And all this just goes to show: there are too many damn wiki apps out there!

- Oshyan

2235

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 12:59 AM »

Less than a week now people, let's get 'er done!

Mukestar will need time to assemble everything together and I'll need time to record my intros for everyone, so ideally we would get everything a few days before the 15th, although that is still the official deadline this time. We're aiming for a really good production and I think you guys will all be pleased. But all the more so if you're in it!

Remember: we're giving away free mics to a select few who need them and who choose to contribute to the podcast. So if you're on the fence and are just worried about audio quality let us know and we'll hook you up.

- Oshyan

2236

Living Room / Re: build your own shirt folding machine:

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 12:44 AM »

Well, my results were not exactly as seen in the video, but close enough to satisfy *me*, and "good enough for government work" I'd say. Just remember that some of the ugly bits are hidden on the back of the folded shirt...

- Oshyan

2237

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: Visual FileSystem

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 12:26 AM »

Please do so and report back! I'm not at a place where I can really delve too deeply into this but it does sound very promising.

As far as the lack of use of existing meta data fields, yes that's true, but I think that's partly because the interfaces to putting in such data are not really easy to deal with, not at all automated, and seldom work on a mass scale. Even if one application implements a great interface for editing meta data, it probably only applies to the media type that app deals with, and often the data won't even persist to other applications. That's why universal meta data of *some* kind is very important IMO.

Does anyone have any suggestions, just for example, on the best photo organizer that uses tags well? A simple example of what I'd want: Put in my digital camera card with a few days worth of captures on it. It auto-starts (or asks me if I want to take pictures off) and first copies all the photos to a temp location (so it can work on them faster), then examines dates, looks for periods of inactivity (explained in a moment), and looks at other meta data like general exposure range, ISO, and shutter speed. From this data it makes some educated guesses about the number of locations involved (significant gaps in picture taking, especially combined with notably different exposure or shutter speed ranges), the number of "sessions", and other possible desirable categorization. It then auto-suggests some tagging, either generally or specifically, and gives you the groups it has made guesses about (groups by location guess) which you can easily refine for accuracy. Then you can quickly name the groups, and the photos are automatically tagged as a result. They could also optionally be tagged with me as an author and any personal data I wanted based on a profile in the photo program. There are lots of these kinds of functions I can imagine. The real key is that it's somewhat intelligent and it tries to help you do effective and quick tagging (optionally of course). So, any intelligent apps out there?

This is an example of the kind of thing I would want to have based on (and plugging in to) an underlying meta data and database file system. It wouldn't be particularly more difficult to do without this underlying framework, but *data interchange* would definitely be more of a challenge. Especially where the file type does not have an existing meta data standard defined. Perhaps that is quickly becoming a thing of the past though what with EXIF, IPTC, ID3, etc...

- Oshyan

2238

Living Room / Re: Tea anyone - Bubble Tea that is....

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 12:13 AM »

I need to go find one of these places. Sounds like a really interesting "taste sensation"!

- Oshyan

2239

General Software Discussion / Re: XnView 1.90 Alpha (Early test version)

« Last post by JavaJones on August 10, 2006, 12:04 AM »

Irfanview always seemed very clunky to me. Frankly I never understood why anyone stuck with it after they found XnView. They're so close in major features (support of 100's of file formats being their major selling point) that I always figured the one that was "obviously better" would win. I guess "obviously better" is subjective though, since a lot of people seem to still dig Irfanview.

XnView and Irfanview are both great, powerful apps really. But I find XnView more intuitive and pleasant to use by far, and it also seems to develop faster. Better still I am constantly discovering cool new features it has, similar to all the stuff I keep finding in PSPad, my favorite text editor. They're both like the swiss army knives for their respective media formats - text and images. From batch processing and renaming to online gallery creation and tabbed image viewing, I think XnView stands above many others. Fortunately there are lots of options for those who disagree.

Anyway I'll wait until this goes final, but I'm curious what has changed. I see the list of features, but it's too long and mind-numbing to really pick out what's significant. Can anyone who has tried this new version point out anything significant they noticed?

- Oshyan

2240

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Flock: Web2.0 and all that buzz

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 11:59 PM »

Interesting stuff. I've often contemplated starting a blog. If I ever did I might be more inclined to use this. Otherwise it's not so compelling, but it seems like a great product for lots of other folks.

- Oshyan

2241

Living Room / Re: Damn Interesting: Natural Nuclear Reactor

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 10:56 PM »

That is holy gosh-darned interesting! This was an expecially interesting comment from another reader:

Johnny Wayne says:

I just had one more thought. Depending on the timing of these reactors, I wonder if they had an impact on the development of life. What sort of life was around a billion and a half years ago? Was it single cell stuff? Could radiation from fission have had an impact on allowing for more complicated lifeform structures? Now I have to go dig up the timeline for the development of life on earth and see if there are any correlations. hmmmm

So, this could be the missing "prime mover" that creationists yammer about.

- Oshyan

2242

Living Room / Re: build your own shirt folding machine:

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 10:44 PM »

Tried the "oragami" method, it totally works! not very hard, either. Remarkable.

- Oshyan

2243

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm running a pirated version of Windows and can't get caught!

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 10:36 PM »

This is classic.  I agree with him, WGA seems pretty unreliable. Sure the *percentage* of false positives (or negatives) may not be that high, but in terms of actual numbers of people it seems to be an unacceptable level IMO. Especially if, as the article asserts, there are readily available keys online that are not yet blacklisted!

- Oshyan

2244

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: Visual FileSystem

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 08:55 PM »

Good info you've dug up there! I'm really not surprised to see a lot has been discussed and some even done in these areas. Frankly I'm surprised (and a bit dismayed) that *more* hasn't been done, on the Windows side especially. I'm also a bit surprised that this thread doesn't have more interest, but maybe it's a topic name thing. It seems like a lot more people would be interested in "next generation file browsing"! Maybe change the name to that.

Edit: These "topic maps" seem interesting, to be sure. But I wonder, how do you create them without tremendous amounts of work? Is it suggested that this would somehow be automated in a file system?

- Oshyan

2245

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Purposeful Spamifier

« Last post by JavaJones on August 09, 2006, 08:50 PM »

Haha, technology helps us with all our unpleasant little daily chores! This reminds me a lot of the "document corrupter" posted recently.

- Oshyan

2246

Living Room / Re: BookMooch - exchange your used books

« Last post by JavaJones on August 08, 2006, 12:06 AM »

Cool idea. Just wish I spent much time reading books anymore...

- Oshyan

2247

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: Visual FileSystem

« Last post by JavaJones on August 07, 2006, 11:32 PM »

Interesting indeed! But .NET. Not ideal IMO. But maybe worth something...

I have money on this if there are any takers. Seriously.

- Oshyan

2248

Living Room / Re: National Poetry Slam 06 - audio+video as well - Aug 9 thru 12

« Last post by JavaJones on August 07, 2006, 09:37 PM »

True, true. I'm just not sure a festival is for me. Maybe a "best of".

- Oshyan

2249

General Software Discussion / Re: Blog Discussion: Piracy is Progressive Taxation

« Last post by JavaJones on August 07, 2006, 09:36 PM »

Good stuff. I agree with pretty much everything he wrote and a lot of this has been part of my own arguments about the subject for many years. I also love his concluding paragraph:

And that's the ultimate lesson. "Give the wookie what he wants!" as Han Solo said so memorably in the first Star Wars movie. Give it to him in as many ways as you can find, at a fair price, and let him choose which works best for him.

Great wealth be to any man who will use Star Wars references thusly in prime real-estate of his concluding paragraph.

- Oshyan

2250

Site/Forum Features / Re: Recent topics

« Last post by JavaJones on August 07, 2006, 09:15 PM »

Yes, your monitor is much too big, like mine. I see room for about 2 1/2 of the current toolbar.

- Oshyan