Recent Posts

2276

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2013, 10:21 PM »

Accused bank robber wants NSA phone records for his defense

And so it begins...

-wraith808 (June 14, 2013, 08:21 PM)

Well it had already begun ...
This is just where it starts to get really really funny!
It's a brilliant defense! Especially if in fact he is innocent! (Wouldn't he be able to get them from the telco first - then purposely ask the NSA for their copy?)

2277

Living Room / Re: Where all those rules against possibly upsetting people will soon lead all of us

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2013, 03:16 PM »

Where the hell do you find these graphics?

-Stoic Joker (June 14, 2013, 12:37 PM)

Once they began succeeding demonizing porn, the Internet became For Graphics!

2278

General Software Discussion / Re: *ALERT* Debian warns its users to remove the Debian Multimedia repository

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2013, 10:28 AM »

Sure, on target again 40hz.

I absolutely get that a former "trusted source" flips hands and then you have no idea where it goes - that's a classic precursor to malware vs less than aware users.

2279

General Software Discussion / Re: *ALERT* Debian warns its users to remove the Debian Multimedia repository

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2013, 07:51 AM »

Slashdot's copy of this story adds a "Debian is not so innocent" wrinkle though:

"If you're wondering where it went, it moved to deb-multimedia.org, after the DPL (at the time) asked the maintainer to stop using the Debian name."

http://lists.alioth....2012-May/026678.html

So ... if you tell a maintainer to stop using the Debian name ... they just might!?

2280

Living Room / Re: WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2013, 07:26 PM »

 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  

-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)

Well, it's quite funny if you take it at the original source of Weekly World News. I was then wondering why it ended up in the Guardian - am I missing something or is that a grade B but "real" paper?

Meanwhile, has no one else noticed that Moore's Law never seemed to hit the Space Age? The calculations should be cake by now. Shouldn't the manufacturing have gotten cheaper too?

Or did we get lucky exactly once to barely squeak through the edge of impossible through a bit of national delusion obscuring how dangerous it really was?

Instead, in a way, notice how "cheap" modern tech is. All this modern War on Terror junk is really kinda cheap, just guys sitting at computers listening to / reading our online chatter, but it's all modular - let's say $50k and poof, you have another analyst at work on it for a year. Whereas the costs to do the next stage of space flight, which is a Moonbase, are colossal, and in our current penny pinch pound foolish mode, we're squeezing ourselves out of the window to make it happen. I'd say it would take 100 years to do right, because that takes SERIOUS infrastructure to make it legit, not a 1 shot publicity stunt.

And if you think we're having fun hunting "terrorists" NOW, just wait when you risk blowing out the entire air reserves with a $100 bomb.
 

2281

Living Room / Re: WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2013, 07:17 PM »

 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos telling any possible life-forms where we are in the universe with hopes they would send messages back.  The U.S. gov't stopped funding SETI in 1995, and now it's still being run with civilian grants and funds.
  So why does it bother me?  What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?  If they are advanced enough to speed of light travel, we would most likely be like ants for them to study and/or conquer.  Yeah, just like the series Falling Skies.  We have a plethora of resources here that would make for a nice pit-stop for any conquering entities looking to expand into the cosmos.  Hell, we may even be a food source ourselves!

-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)

Hmm, I'd put it 50-50 that super aliens are "nice". The basic theory is that aggression isn't sustainable etc etc. I'd put it more likely that we'd be considered "cute pets" or maybe an anthropology lab world. But more basically the timeline is just so tight - I'm not at all certain we'll still be "this race" 500 years from now. We could end up in a resource scarce dystopia not from WWIII, but just really maxxing out the "easy resources" and then when a glass of water is $12, a big bad epidemic of Bird Flu Six will spiral us down into the dark ages again via brain drain by losing 500 million people in a too-specialized world. So then when the aliens get here, we'd be back in twilight again.

2282

Living Room / Re: 16K word sample of my sci-fi ebook, due on Amazon and B&N in October

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2013, 04:48 PM »

FYI gang this can be read in the STDU viewer, though there seem to be a couple of formatting artifacts that I presume are not present on an ebook device. (At least in the epub version.)

Interesting that you chose to use a pen name.

2283

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2013, 12:34 PM »

I wonder if it's even possible to completely avoid politics and have a "purely technical" discussion about any technology of significance in today's world?

-40hz (June 12, 2013, 08:14 PM)

It might not be possible anymore.

For example, one aspect of the damage this "mind war" has had on me is that I have real trouble believing news stories are "just stories" without instinctively thinking of vicious angles.

Let's try Google Glass for a moment. That's the fore-runner of a signature piece of SciFi tech that's been part of Near Future stories for half a century. (Heads up type displays and data systems etc.)

But now it's got Google and remote server uploading and stuff all mixed up in the story. Our privacy has been eroded almost irreparably, but a few people with an IQ of 180 did a brilliant job of making us Like it! (Pun!) But at least a phone pic was just artificial enough so that in the seven seconds it took you to set it up, someone could object. But with "Always On" live filming, that could make us really nervous just to live our lives. Because forget Google per se - they're just the Apple analogy to the mp3 player. It's the Chinese knockoffs (here assumed to actually work, just maybe not as well, but 10 times cheaper!) that will spread, and then everyone will have the tech "automatically on".

I've worn "really heavy glasses" for years now as the "symbolic image" of these types of glasses. One day if I were to get a "new pair of glasses", people who know me might just give me a compliment/insult and forget about them ... and not even THINK to ask if they are data glasses!

Meanwhile half the time I see "innocent" news stories about interesting discoveries, I start seeing really nasty side effect uses of them.

2284

Living Room / Re: WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2013, 12:21 PM »

Well, yes, here is half of the joke:

http://weeklyworldne...d-with-super-humans/

It's based on a Weekly World News (heh!) "story". (I didn't know they were Online!)

The next question is why the Guardian has it.

Could that be the next step of Vulnerability Reporting?

Today:
"Dear Guardian. I have found a security hole which could allow an attacker to compromise your systems. See attached concept notes."
"Dear Researcher: We appreciate your report, and we will work on it." (aka "Go away".)

Tomorrow:
"Dear Guardian. Because you failed to take my vulnerability report seriously, I posted a WWN tabloid item to your main web site. Regards, Researcher"
(Heard in Guardian CEO office) "RED ALERT! Get IT to fix this NOW!!"

 

2285

Living Room / Re: CalendarHome.com has a cool 10K year calendar

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 12, 2013, 07:21 PM »

Heh I have a 40 year calendar as part of a tourist souvenir that I thought was "good for the money"! It's also amazing me that I have kept up with it since 1999 after having moved four times since then!

Calendars are also a favorite trick of autistic "small-savants". Rain Man did a tiny bit of damage to the public impression because he was One in a Million. (Based on Kim Peek). Most "Savants" are far less talented than that. But of those, a bunch of them can do Calendar calculations. I knew one from child days at a summer camp. There was no way to check him, but he was reeling off days of the week confidently, so even if he maybe "missed a leap year" or something, he clearly had the concept-pattern down.

In a sense it's "easy enough to do" - there's only some twelve rules, then you just flip multiples of 7/14/28/100 until you get there.

2286

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 12, 2013, 11:10 AM »

I dunno, it feels different now.

I ignored the War on Drugs as the comedy it is, and it never mattered to my life.

But the interlocking agenda selling/sniffing internet data are different - they are much closer to the old horrors of 1984 and Harrison Bergeron. (No one seems to invoke that story lately!)

2287

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 11, 2013, 12:02 PM »

New Facebook Privacy Controls
 (see attachment in previous post)

-wraith808 (June 11, 2013, 07:51 AM)

That's awesome!

2288

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 11, 2013, 06:48 AM »

Eric Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

I'm of a mind that this is not foul play.  No one would be that stupid yet, would they?

Part of me feels like there's some vague irony in the fact that his name is "Snowden", like as in the Snowden from Catch-22.

-wraith808 (June 10, 2013, 09:38 PM)

Hmm.

"Snowden's choice to remain in Hong Kong was "baffling to some legal experts" reports the BBC's Jennifer Pak from the Chinese territory"

Earlier an article (that I can't quite place right now) was saying that going to Hong Kong was "brilliant" because it was supposed to be hard to extradite him from there.

He also applied to Iceland for asylum but they invoked a technicality and gave him a grumpy chilly answer back.

So we'll see a nice case of "if you anger the big bad wolf", does he blow your house down and eat you?

2289

Living Room / Re: Messed Up in Miami

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 10, 2013, 03:55 PM »

Yikes!

Good luck Miles!

I've been OD'ing on Dr. Who and other SciFi lately, and I'm giggling about a mental image of using your prior software to fix your life!

"Hit control F10 and a special version of BBSS recreates your wallet!"
 

2290

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 10, 2013, 07:39 AM »

Today's xkcd has a beautiful "spark of rebellion" nature to it:
http://xkcd.com/1223/

2291

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 09, 2013, 11:54 AM »

@40hz: Thanks for the OP and link. Very interesting, albeit the whole situation is confuzzling to me (looking in from the outside).
There's an interesting post at Slashdot:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

... "NSA officials have repeatedly denied under oath to Congress...

-IainB (June 09, 2013, 09:09 AM)

Ever notice that "interrogation techniques" are in fact "only Rated R"!? (VERY high R!)
Your choice of Ominous Dark Knight to say the following:
"Pshaw ... yeah, pain, suffocation, blah blah. But you know what? Rated R. They still don't *truly* scare the victim. So let's do this. Let's turn the alphabet dial ... up to X."

2292

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 08, 2013, 12:47 PM »

Well, I'll start with the pessimistic view:

I will take another semi-break from all this stuff here again soon. "Living locally" I get by day to day just fine. However I could easily end up in the "wrong place at the wrong time" and then my "rights" won't matter ... and they're NOT rights. Unfortunately there's no such thing that those founders believed in as "inalienable rights". What you are allowed to do is whatever they feel like allowing you to do.

From a different news item elsewhere, Pres. Obama was saying stuff like "this is a compromise that Americans can be happy with..."?! Nah. So just assume "Anyone and everyone" is into your data, and then just go back to your daily life for the day.

2293

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 08, 2013, 06:51 AM »

Paperless future (video clip): http://www.flixxy.co...less-future-emma.htm

-IainB (June 06, 2013, 05:41 PM)

I like this one!
I'm a "medium" paper user.

2294

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Sync folders by renaming files

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 07, 2013, 08:47 AM »

Hmm.

I liked this idea so I decided to give it a try. But I can't get it to work!
I get an error:
"Choice is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file."
What am I missing?

Tested on my slightly infamous Win XP system.

2295

Living Room / Re: Article about startup founders stuck in the middle of making it or breaking it.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 06, 2013, 12:06 PM »

In some ways, this article bothers me - if business is about "acquiring talent", then who says the founder has to be the one to *get* the money? Not running out of money is an Ops thing - getting it is something else. So why not hire a "funding" guy/gal whose whole role is to schmooze the investors?

Also this post describes what I'll call the "danergerously thin role of Founder" - if all you have is the Idea, but you're "acquiring good talent", how do you stop a coup?

"In terms of market conditions we pulled off a trifecta of unsexiness. We were e-commerce, subscription commerce, and “family tech.” By this time investors weren’t very interested in any of those things. That was clear early into the fund-raising process, but we kept trying to push it through."

(Figuratively to Founder) "So why in fact were you starting that business?"

Elsewhere in a whole other context I saw an article about a woman who did the "semi-amateur" call girl circuit to ruthlessly get cash for her art career. So this guy sounds like he's straight out of the biz books section and then reality called his bluff. If you have the Long Game idea, but you're stuck on funding, find a simple "boring" side biz to pay the rent.

"Cutting costs is one of the more difficult things an early-stage founder has to do; I can relate. ...The operational and employee-happiness costs should be easy to cut. I know we all want to create a great company culture, but if you need to extend your runway that’s a lot more important than catered lunches or other perks. A loyal team member is going to stand by you even when times are tough and the snack cabinet is bare."

This is TOTAL BS. If your biz is so thin that "snacks for the kitchen" are killing you, you're toast. Playing "penny wise" with the staff also does NOT generate "loyalty".

2296

Living Room / Browser based mental training for efficiency

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 06, 2013, 12:13 AM »

After slowly accumulating evidence that Pale Moon doesn't quite perform certain subtle things, right now for me mainline Firefox is clearly the better of the two for me.

So taking advantage of both the color coding of the icons and that they can each have a different home page, today I separated my favorite links into two categories - Serious and Fun. Traditionally all my life I get distracted by fun things, and it's finally starting to catch up to me in a bad way. So using a couple of cute little bits of psychology (and an hour cleaning up my comp desktop and home workstation!) I now have to make an actual decision to click the "Fun side" (Palemoon, Blue-ish), as a conscious choice when I have Serious things (Firefox, Reddish-Orangey) to be doing.

Just one more little tidbit in how to maximize the tools at hand!

Maybe this will help someone else. : )

2297

Living Room / Re: If Wikipedia existed back in the DOS era

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 05, 2013, 10:54 PM »

I think so. You're looking at EGA resolution if I'm not mistaken. 16 colors @ 640x350 with a .28 dot pitch. So don't try to play it full screen using today's resolutions.

Forgot how bad it used to be huh?

-40hz (June 05, 2013, 09:10 PM)

But ... but ... the good ol' days! ... (mumble mumble sputter)

: )

2298

General Software Discussion / Re: From the B.F.D. Dept. - Microsoft releases first video preview of Win 8.1

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 05, 2013, 08:23 PM »

(cringing)
iPhone user... yes
fanboy ... no! Whew! Safe!

2299

General Software Discussion / QuickJS 1.1 Results (ongoing)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 04, 2013, 09:37 PM »

Okay, because it's even simpler than the one mentioned above, I'm testing this one first! : )

It appears as a "Google-Like" wheel shaped button on the navigation toolbar. When it's a "wheel", Javascript is on like normal. When you toggle it off, JavaScript is blocked. Early impression: This kind of thing is really promising!

It works so far on:

Yahoo Mail's Sign-Out "News Rotator"
ComputerWorld's drop down menus
IT World Live "scrolling feeder" (but not their drop menus, they seem to be something else and are still very large!)
Lots of stuff on DenverPost.com
Fark.com's yellow drop down nag "feed our squirrels"
Rawstory.com's "Like us on Facebook" Right-Left Slider
Wxyz.com's black "switcher menus"
ArgusLeader.com's big blue drop menus.
NY Post's big drop downs from arrows.
(Found another one) Intl. Business Times ibtimes.com


Does not work so well on:
Uproxx.com's color changing menus
opposingviews.com's menus
Hypervocal.com's huge dropdowns

Tip: Tends to block the video news of new sites, so if that's what you are actually there for, caveat.


((I plan to edit this post a few times as I amble across the web.))

So the other suggestion has a few more buttons, but it's on hold for a little while until I see a "killer" that this ittybitty addon doesn't catch.

Summary for today: So the basic concept is what I was looking for - it seems to eat about 80% of the worst stuff.
And Yahoo Mail seems to mostly still work with it on (at least the old style). So I don't have to toggle it off that many times just to check mail.
 

2300

General Software Discussion / Re: "Click to Enable Javascript" Firefox Addon?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 04, 2013, 09:00 PM »

Okay, first two I'm testing out QuickJava 1.8.0 and QuickJS1.1.

I'll report when I can! : )