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3051

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 05:42 PM »

Continuing this week's theme of using stuff from other threads to inspire jokes, elsewhere saw:

KittyCatCast?

-Deozaan (November 07, 2012, 04:29 AM)

Sing along time!
KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast!
Our fine Mouse Chasing Friend! We love you!
KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast KittyKittyCatCast!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=ZTTzcXSLjhI

3052

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013: Please post requests!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 02:23 PM »

I have one idea that's a bit too far for a Coding Snack but it could work as a Coding Lunch with I think some partial commissioned code already

-TaoPhoenix (November 08, 2012, 02:04 PM)

I think we discussed it then, and couldn't get to an agreement/understanding of what, how and when. But maybe it was just me, being confused

Writing this thread I was thinking of just a general idea of a tool/app/solution to be coded, but eventually I found me a subject and pledged with that already

But I'd be able to pick up a snack-size target if you have one

-Ath (November 08, 2012, 02:15 PM)

Naw, it's a little bigger than a snack. And I'm semi amnesiac, so I don't recall the results of our earlier chat if any. It can wait... it was just a text converter from the ebook site produced by my treeDB program into standard code layout used by the Zen CSS project, and theoretically the result is a turn-key "7 click" entire website using any Zen CSS graphics layout. I was getting half way there on a commission exactly when I lost my job.

3053

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013: Please post requests!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 02:04 PM »

Hallo. I only just got the idea to click on the master NANY thread. Is this offer to get an app still open?
(Homer) Free Coding Lunch... (/Homer) (As opposed to "Coding Snack", did you see my post on that a while back?)

I have one idea that's a bit too far for a Coding Snack but it could work as a Coding Lunch with I think some partial commissioned code already if I didn't hose myself doing my recent system cleanup.

Taking a ticket for the First Come First Serve Dept,

--Tao

Edit: I am posting too fast today and getting topics all in the wrong order. Heh however I'll leave this post here because it's always fun to beg for free stuff!    (And it really is a fun app idea!)

3054

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 02:01 PM »

From the NANY 2013 thread but I can't miss the windup:

Death is not final. All things are subject to change.

-Deozaan (October 13, 2012, 01:45 PM)

I think there's potential to start a religion there! 

3055

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Provides Funding For Surveillance

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 05:52 AM »

But ... But ... destroying your rights is Hard Work!!! Think of all the jobs that would be lost if they let you keep all those pesky liberties!!! You're not against jobs, are you???

3056

Living Room / Re: You Might Be A Terrorist

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 05:37 AM »

Am I the only one who thinks this could be funny as a Jeff Foxworthy gig?

"If you breathe too long ... you might be a Terrorist!"

Edit: Now excuse me while I watch an hour of Jeff Foxworthy on Youtube. 

3057

Mouser's Zone / Re: Mouser's Election Predictor - A Memory from 2004

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 08, 2012, 05:33 AM »

Running with a hint from Mr. S's own site, he wants to predict ... what will actually happen. However in the last couple of elections the two sides with a slant on the Repubs, are making statements that they want to *alter* the predictions *with*!

(Satire)
Mouser has got zero of the vote in Alaska right now. So Mouser needs to work extra hard in those other states. Remember folks, that's *Mouser* that needs to win in *Conneticut* if he has any chance to win! Don't forget, *Mouser* has been showing strong in the midwest, because he lives out there and knows the area well. People like *Mouser* out in the midwest!

(This message was contributed by Tao for Mouser for the role of Zaphod Beeblebrox in any future production of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and was not endorsed by Mouser. )

3058

Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2012, 05:42 PM »

What does he get out of it? 400 million is a lot for a "present" to give a country! (In other news, does operating megaupload make that much money? Or is someone else financing this for him?)

-TaoPhoenix (November 07, 2012, 11:33 AM)

That's the 400 Million Dollar question- especially as part of the money is being fronted by 'silent investors'.  Of course, it could be national pride and philanthropy.

-wraith808 (November 07, 2012, 01:49 PM)

Naw, something is wrong there. We're missing the giant piece of this Combo Play. You don't get knocked around by the US Copyright Brigade, have your Cloud-File business destroyed, then go all "hey, let's give New Zealand Broadband!" without *some* tip point to the maneuver. Not for $400 Million.

3059

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2012, 05:34 PM »

I'll leave this one to my betters to see if this law is a Good Thing or not.

-TaoPhoenix (November 07, 2012, 11:57 AM)

Most times it's less an issue of the law as written - and more a matter of how it's interpreted (and abused) in practice.

In Canada's case, I think only time and future judicial decisions will show whether it was a good thing or not.

-40hz (November 07, 2012, 02:59 PM)

Though the "tenor of the news" counts for a lot too. For example in the bills in the title of the thread, The Internetz rose up with an "OhDearGawdBBQ No!". Whereas this one seems all "look, it's moderate for the little guy!"

3060

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2012, 11:57 AM »

I'll leave this one to my betters to see if this law is a Good Thing or not.

"This morning, the majority of Bill C-11, Canada's copyright reform bill, took effect, marking the most significant changes to Canadian copyright law in decades."
http://news.slashdot...-reform-takes-effect

http://www.michaelge...ntent/view/6692/125/

3061

Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2012, 11:33 AM »

No quotes for this one... It's such a jaw-dropper, that you have to read it yourself.

http://theintelhub.c...-with-free-internet/

Free Internet? Wow. Ambitious!

I really like this guy more and more all the time!

-Renegade (November 07, 2012, 09:35 AM)

What does he get out of it? 400 million is a lot for a "present" to give a country! (In other news, does operating megaupload make that much money? Or is someone else financing this for him?)

3062

General Software Discussion / Re: Any program to manually run startup programs?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 10:20 AM »

How are you opening Firefox? Do you open to a session with multiple tabs? I don't do much with Tab Mix Plus. So I don't know if there's a hotkey to open a session. But it seems to respond much faster if you can separate the loading of the app from the loading of pages. I open to a blank page. Then I hit a button to open FVD Speed Dial. Admittedly I don't use sessions. But you could experiment with open to blank page then hitting a button to open last session.

That's the main reason I was using chromium. Even with it I opened to a blank page. But it was snappier than FF until the last couple of versions. Seems like 14 and later loaded much faster. I'm on 16.01 Waterfox now and 16.02 on the 32 bit machine.

-MilesAhead (November 06, 2012, 10:08 AM)

This is just a generic "click on icon and open a window" - no fancy sessions or anything. It just seems to take FF some30-45 seconds to get a handle on stuff and get going right after a cold boot.

3063

General Software Discussion / Re: Any program to manually run startup programs?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 10:19 AM »

I kinda dread rebooting because I lose almost 10 minutes to MS Security Essentials. The bonus time losses occur when you Rightclick - New file - ______, and Rightclick - Send to _____. Plus Firefox and Open Office take a bunch of time to open the first time in after a boot as well.

I've skipped rebooting from updates until I had a couple in a row because it's so bad. : (

-TaoPhoenix (November 06, 2012, 08:20 AM)

wow, that's bad - are you on windows 7 or XP?
Lucky enough win 7 still boots quite fast here (without OO, otherwise similar)

-tomos (November 06, 2012, 09:05 AM)

I'm on a slightly quirky copy of XP - I made my funny "tag" because I have found a few obscure bugs that few other people seem to have... but the OS itself boots fine, then MS Sec. Ess. sucks up some 7 minutes trying to get a grip.

3064

Mouser's Zone / Re: Mouser's Election Predictor - A Memory from 2004

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 10:14 AM »

Nate Silver is almost as smart as you. (/Brownnose) 

-TaoPhoenix (November 05, 2012, 11:48 PM)

Found it! I saw an article that went on a bit about Nate Silver's methodology and another methodology:

http://www.globalres...recast-model/5310583

Based on the LV polls, Obama has a 98% probability of winning the Electoral Vote , not 80% as Nate Silver would have you believe. His model is obviously contaminated by extraneous variables. Nate tries to impress with 100,000 simulations. In reality only 500 are necessary to determine the EV win probability.

It goes on a bit about methodology and stuff.

What would be interesting is to see models that account for voting fraud based on historical tendencies. My guess is that it would simply be impossible though, with it basically being stochastic, etc. etc.

@mouser - Did your software predict the right outcome? (Accounting for fraud or for the popular vote?)

-Renegade (November 06, 2012, 03:09 AM)

Careful Renegade. As much fun as you are, something feels wrong about that site. It tries to paint Obama winning by 98%...
"Based on the LV (Likely Voter) polls, Obama has a 98% probability of winning the Electoral Vote..."

That just feels wrong. That kind of percentage is the Give Up and Go Home level, and that just feels way off. I'm a little out of my depth on spiraling statistics, but that article is too simple to believe completely. "Everyone" agrees there are some 5-7 swing states, so if everything else is a wash, the percentages in those swing states are absolutely not 98% for Obama. So then the rest of that article goes down the tubes.

3065

Mouser's Zone / Re: Mouser's Election Predictor - A Memory from 2004

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 10:08 AM »

Heh Mouser you don't want to release an Obama Romney version just for the giggles?

-TaoPhoenix (November 05, 2012, 11:48 PM)

I was going to ask the same question, but I thought the race was between Goldman Sachs Red Team and Goldman Sachs Blue Team. hehehehe 

-Renegade (November 06, 2012, 01:14 AM)

(Satire) Come on, there are other banks out there, it could be at least between two bank consortiums! Goldman Sachs and Citibank on one side, Bank of America and Chase on the other side! Or we could cast it as RIAA + MPAA on one side and your choice of the other side! (/Satire)

3066

Living Room / Re: Good Luck to Our US Friends!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 09:52 AM »

I just want to wish all our US friends all the best luck in the next day or so. Big things will happen, and you'll need all the luck you can get~! Sorry... Couldn't help that. But really, good luck! I wish you all the best.

-Renegade (November 06, 2012, 09:34 AM)

Heh I note that the particular candidate who represents Good Luck is not mentioned! What does that mean!? : )

3067

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 09:19 AM »

P.S. I finished about as much as I wanted of my book index so I'll try to post that sorta-soon. (Meaning before I die!)

3068

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 09:18 AM »

Sometimes the most useful books on a given topic weren't actually written about the topic itself. A good example is Scott McCloud's classic book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
 (see attachment in previous post)
Although ostensibly about the design and construction of "comic strips" (or what cartoonist Bill Eisner used to half-jokingly refer to as "sequential art") Scott's book is really a study in how we process visual information. It's also a crash course in how we construct continuity and closure from discrete images and sensory impressions. Students of gestalt psychology will feel right at home with the concepts presented in this book.

-40hz (November 06, 2012, 06:02 AM)

There's a minor debate going on over at Gunnerkrigg Court comic by Tom Siddell (Which appears to be undergoing some kind of glitch!) where a sorta-random character named Ms. Jones turns out to be basically as old as the planet Earth, but it came through as about 3 weeks worth of wordless strips, so in his daily comments that he posts, a lot of users are getting grumpy asking for closure.
(Though right now something happened and it looks like the whole page got wiped.)

3069

General Software Discussion / Re: Any program to manually run startup programs?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 08:20 AM »

I kinda dread rebooting because I lose almost 10 minutes to MS Security Essentials. The bonus time losses occur when you Rightclick - New file - ______, and Rightclick - Send to _____. Plus Firefox and Open Office take a bunch of time to open the first time in after a boot as well.

I've skipped rebooting from updates until I had a couple in a row because it's so bad. : (

3070

Living Room / Re: Only 16GB Free on 32GB Surface

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2012, 08:16 AM »

This "OS eats up a lot of room" business comes from that MS especially is borrowing code that used to run on Terabyte drives, so in those ratios it didn't matter all that much. Then they didn't strip it enough so even their "stripped" version become X percent of a suddenly space-less object. If Apple managed to squeeze iOS into 1GB (explains a lot!) then yay them, whereas MS has classically avoided really bloody fine-tuning by banking on hardware increases until this time it caught up with them in a bad way.

3071

Mouser's Zone / Re: Mouser's Election Predictor - A Memory from 2004

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 05, 2012, 11:48 PM »

Heh Mouser you don't want to release an Obama Romney version just for the giggles?

Nate Silver is almost as smart as you. (/Brownnose)  

Plus you could make a new category - NANE - New Apps for the New Election!

3072

Living Room / Re: Only 16GB Free on 32GB Surface

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 05, 2012, 11:43 PM »

If you're mangling any metaphors, maybe switch "foot" to "face".

-Renegade (November 05, 2012, 10:49 PM)

Nah, they outsourced that. They hired someone to be shot in the face when something bad goes wrong.  

3073

Living Room / Re: Files aren’t property, says US government

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 05, 2012, 05:14 PM »

If files aren't property, then they also cannot be someone else's Intellectual Property, nor can they be stolen property in an infringement case.

I honestly think this is the biggest good news for the average person since internet file sharing was invented- as long as you don't actually download the stuff onto your own machine, it isn't your property to be charged with possession of, and all the liability falls onto the host storing that content- except files aren't property so they get off easy too.

This is amazing, it really would break every single infringement case on record and completely destroys the notion of software patents and copyrighted software.

-SeraphimLabs (November 05, 2012, 05:07 PM)

You'd think, but of course it won't work out that way, it will become "Schrodinger Property", when and if it suits someone to have it be in whichever state suits their evil ends. You didn't think the US Gov managed THAT kind of end run on Copyright, did you?

3074

Living Room / Re: Reader's Corner - The Library of Utopia

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 05, 2012, 03:06 PM »

For Dictionaries, I think I agree. I've almost never used one myself, and even book donation places say "no dictionaries"! If I want to know what some cutting edge word is, I don't think "let's go check the dictionary" - I get there faster with a web search. I see dictionaries as one of those things where you get one good one, and then it's good for 10 years.

3075

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 05, 2012, 11:49 AM »

I'd guess I'm some sort of Undead Daikaiju, though I hope to be more outgoing soon after my move to NYC.