Recent Posts

3451

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 06, 2012, 07:57 AM »

And I just crossed 1000, so no more fun number'ed posts for me! Now it's just a barren tundra from here on out. : (

https://www.donation....msg298956#msg298956

3452

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 05, 2012, 07:13 AM »

Maybe he's never heard of the loose lips sink ships rule.

-Stoic Joker (September 05, 2012, 06:52 AM)

What would be really hysterical is if Korea pulls a Judo Throw with the increasing emerging info on the trial flaws and gets it overturned. Bets on whether that will happen? Hmm.

3453

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 05, 2012, 07:08 AM »

Great Line from the article: "The function of a jury is to decide facts, not just be little patent fascists."

 

3454

Living Room / Re: Fake User Reviews...The unwinding scandal

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 04, 2012, 07:44 PM »

For me I would not 'need' to look at ratings for things like books, either I know of the author or a friend or acquaintance recommends it. For gadgets and electronics I have never found consensus anyhow so ratings, fake or otherwise, have not been helpful. Example: DSL modems, there isn't one that has excellent ratings, across multiple sites at least.

Other stuff that I have bought over my lifetime like a car, furniture and clothes....consumer reports may be but not user ratings and reviews.

-rgdot (September 04, 2012, 07:31 PM)

Not all reviews are "equal". I like to look at Slashdot reviews for example because they aren't bought "quite as badly" and tend to be in depth.

3455

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 15 less of a memory hog

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 04, 2012, 07:18 PM »

And...I just now noticed that although I'm doing nothing but typing this post, FF is suddenly using 255Mb and climbing up slowly. And...it just dropped back to 205. Guess that could be called a spike?

-40hz (September 04, 2012, 03:21 PM)

Hi 40hz, that is the same / similar spike I kept having, you'd think a simple type keypress or a scroll wouldn't jam your resources. (I wasn't checking memory, I focused on CPU spikes but same category.) So I presume you have installed the new FF15 and this is there? Funny thing, my CPU spikes went away when I installed that, though it COULD have been disabling a random plugin or two at the same time, hard to know.

But for a different type of spike, this time on app close, I ran one of the "derivatives" of FF. (First PaleMoon, then Cometbird). Those magically "fixed" that particular spike for "reasons unknown". So if you like FF conceptually but have these "mystery issues" (see my sig, that's where it came from, on a different app), try a FF derivative just for giggles and report in.

3456

Living Room / Re: Fake User Reviews...The unwinding scandal

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 04, 2012, 07:11 PM »

For Another take:

"DonationCoder changed my life! A+. Would Post Again. Single best site in the history of micro-payment enabled donation-ware ever!"

Now the problem is that it might be true!

           

3457

Living Room / Re: Fake User Reviews...The unwinding scandal

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 04, 2012, 07:08 PM »

I've vaguely known about fake reviews, but somehow treated them as an inevitable evil and took them with several seas of salt.

Very roughly I ignore the reviews that make the easy mistake of rocketing to 5 out of 5 or whatever and glowing "this book changed my life! A+. Would buy again. Single best book in the history of publishing ever!"

Depending on the topic you are looking ay and how much you know about it, one fast and ugly starting point is to look at the 4 ratings, or 5's with complaints. If it's a programming book for example, and the review complains "The first couple of chapters are great, but then it strays too much into esoteric theory and whatever real world examples it does show are too trivial to hold up in a production environment." (Or something.) That kind of review is hard*er* to fake, (never impossible), because it just takes that much more sophistication to peel off a word like "esoteric" and still give it a 4 out of 5.

3458

Living Room / Re: Apple Patents Shutting Down Phones and Functions

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 04, 2012, 01:56 PM »

I am almost beyond caring. All I have left is the Canary Server mindset. (It's a term of which I lost the exact source I got it from. )
Basically, it means things like "Today I was not arrested as a Terrorist. " (Next day) "Today I was not arrested as a Terrorist." (Third day) "..." (Proverbial Crickets).

They're getting more brazen. I can't fight it all anymore.

3459

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: "Load a new browser instance with X tabs from previously located sites"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 03, 2012, 11:32 PM »

I think I like the alternating approach, because then I think it works well towards my usage of importing into spreadsheets.

-TaoPhoenix (September 03, 2012, 01:07 PM)

I think you can figure out how to mix 2 text files. Line from file one, line from file two, repeat.

-MilesAhead (September 03, 2012, 03:46 PM)

Well, the power of the original concept was avoiding tedious cut and paste to begin with. Not only is time saved, but it helps avoid data transfer errors. Besides the problems of cut-pasting one by one, ("Where was I again?") but let's say you batch run it, but you forgot and deleted a tab, now you have a corrupted batch and have to go debug.

3460

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: "Load a new browser instance with X tabs from previously located sites"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 03, 2012, 01:07 PM »

I have a first implementation of FFSS.exe which is Firefox Session Save. For now the hotkey is hard wired as Control-Shift F10.  The idea is you have FF open with multiple tabs. Make it the active window and hit the hotkey.  It uses macros to change tabs and copy the addressbar url to the clipboard, then save the list to a text file.

-MilesAhead (August 29, 2012, 05:02 PM)

would it be possible to save the tab title as well as the url?

-tomos (August 30, 2012, 05:24 AM)

I should be able to knock off a special.

I found the same macro works in chromium.  So I'm including BBSS.exe in the BrowserBunch zip.
(changing the name from FFSS since it also works in chromium. Hotkey is the same.)

How do you want to do it. Alternate url/title/url/title or urlFile.txt  titleFile.txt?  If the latter than I could add it to my utility without messing it up. I could just add an .ini option to save the titles to a separate file or not. If you want to do it another way I should be able to knock off a custom if it's not complicated.

In FF and chrome the active tab title is copied to the caption bar. FF might add - Mozilla Firefox but I can chop that off.
So it should only require cycling through the tabs and getting the window title at each position.

-MilesAhead (August 30, 2012, 04:54 PM)

I think I like the alternating approach, because then I think it works well towards my usage of importing into spreadsheets.

3461

Living Room / Re: Non-Douchiness From the MAFIAA? Am I High?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 02, 2012, 04:43 AM »

Nah Renegade, they've been posting "official" videos for years now. Cross deals with companies like Vimeo, etc.

The **AA just become (Insert adjectives here) when *other* people do it, except when it benefits them in breakout viral sales!  Then it's just fine! (Until the sales die off, then they DMCA it again.)

3462

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 01, 2012, 04:45 AM »

Jury Duty is pretty miserable. (Disclosure, I got denied when I was called up.)

Lawyers make like 200-700 an hour talking at the jury, and the jury makes like $20 a day listening to it. Basically no one in their right mind would take any job in the First World for $20 a day. So with that kind of disparity, it's amazing that the legal system has held up this well.

3463

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 01, 2012, 01:43 AM »

Kyrathaba that's the most brilliant pic I've seen all week!

Pi vs. cake, or the Martians?

-kyrathaba (August 31, 2012, 08:09 PM)

Sorry I wasn't clear, the Martians. (Though they look like they're from the movie Aliens, which is great, less of the green men meme in old creaking Martian lore.)

3464

Living Room / Re: President Obama randomly dropped by Reddit today for an AMA session.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 01, 2012, 01:41 AM »

... every POTUS in many++ years has been a corporate whore, and Obama is no different. No matter if you're a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian or martian or whatever, everybody in the last umphteen years have been passing some really, really REALLY nasty corporate-loving laws. It doesn't matter what they say during their election period, everybody is in the pocket of their financial backers. They're all puppets.

-f0dder (August 31, 2012, 03:57 PM)

Maybe I was young, maybe it was before certain services came of age like the elsewhere-mentioned Slashdot, or Fark, but I think I was pretty content with Bill Clinton. Maybe he got railroaded late in his service into signing the DMCA, but that's Congress and Disney's fault, I don't really pin that one on Clinton. Last I knew he did good work repairing the budget, before Shrub Jr blew it all to hell again. It was also "the world being the world, before 9-11". You could just be a person. He's my vote for a decent Pres.

I'm curious if anyone knows enough about Al Gore to speculate if we'd be here with the TSA business under his rule. That fateful Hanging Chad 2000 election might have 50 year consequences...

3465

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 01, 2012, 01:34 AM »

Surely not a real ad. They don't get this good! 

-Mark0 (August 31, 2012, 08:45 AM)

A long dormant project idea (of which I have too many!) I've had is "user-OptIn" ads, where the page screams "go here if you want to view an ad". Then all the ads go thrash themselves to their heart's content on the Ad Page. You make it a "cult in joke" page to view. Instead of the current model of blanketing 400 words with 7 inches of ads, just let the ads live by themselves on the Ad Page. So by clicking there the user declares he is not even trying to read any article, and is expressly saying he wants to look at ads. So then let the ads thrash each other!

3466

General Software Discussion / Re: Why not to bother with being "loyal" to Microsoft brands

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 01, 2012, 01:26 AM »

The switch to Docx and Xlsx was particularly bad. I had some contract writing software with a heavy plugin sitting on top of MS Word that *finally* got the patch for the new format ... in 2011. Before that it was only because I have a decent grasp of file extensions that I worked around that glitch.

However I do have to say I like Excel 2010, because the one thing that was missing from the ribbon was customizability. In Office 2010, you can make your own ribbons. So I made one that had my favorite 20 features in approximately the order that a document used them, and it was in fact even faster than the old menus. It was almost like running your fingers down the piano keys. But that's not "loyalty", that's just a user deciding he likes a feature.

Looping back, the Zune debacle was especially jarring because DRM is just tech, but they tried to cash in on the early waves of "social" while getting the entire concept wrong. So for those users who have a Zune, great, hope you like it. But for the ones that went beyond that and tried to "Like being a Microsoft Fan", that's the loyalty that I am talking about that got gutted like a fish.

3467

General Software Discussion / Why not to bother with being "loyal" to Microsoft brands

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 09:46 AM »

This particular post was inspired by their Music side. We all know what happened to PlaysForSure.
This time, let's look even further to their item that cannibalized PlaysForSure - Zune.

From Paul Thurrott:
"With Xbox Music Coming, Microsoft Cuts Zune Features
With its coming Xbox Music and Xbox Video services looming, Microsoft this week alerted Zune users via email about a couple of music-related features that will be dropped as that latter brand is put out to pasture. Among the walking dead are Mixview and channel playlists, Zune HD apps, and music videos.

But the biggest change, perhaps involves some core Zune functionality: Microsoft is killing “sending and receiving messages, inviting friends, sharing the songs, playlists, and albums you are listening to, and viewing past play history.” These features were part of what was called Zune Social."

http://www.winsupers...zune-features-144140

Oh, I'm sorry MS Music people, you just got hosed *twice* in a decade. Let's call it a 5 year Arc.

What Apple apparently figured out that MS didn't, (and see the Linux on Desktop themes), is that *five years is too short for a full brand lifecycle.*

If you want users to be "loyal" to your brand, you can't just rip parts of "their life" away every five years. It makes cautious/lazy/jaded-cynical late-adopters like me look smart. And I'm not all that smart, not like you guys.

So now their big music brand is Xbox-music or something. Okay, Clock starts say about 2011. (Give me a year for not bothering to get swept up in early hype.) Cue 2015, they'll have something else.

I don't have time for that $hit. (Front loaded hyped sales PR machine and all.)

3468

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 08:52 AM »

Kyrathaba that's the most brilliant pic I've seen all week!

3469

Living Room / Re: President Obama randomly dropped by Reddit today for an AMA session.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 08:50 AM »

I dunno. Could be Samsung... *ducks*

-nosh (August 31, 2012, 08:48 AM)

"And he looked from one, to the other, and could no longer tell them apart..."  Animal Farm! 

3470

Living Room / Re: President Obama randomly dropped by Reddit today for an AMA session.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 08:50 AM »

Once they got the proof right, and allowing the "Easy" questions, having a Pres randomly visit Reddit is brilliant.

3471

General Software Discussion / Re: What went wrong with Linux on the Desktop

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 08:47 AM »

Closed like the Ubuntu ecosystem?

-Tuxman (August 31, 2012, 08:23 AM)

So just use a Non-Ubuntu distro.

MS/Apple must have a couple of strange patents out there that are blocking certain features, because I just discovered that at the low OS level, I only use the OS for about 15 things, really all not that much. But the base distros can't even make a Right-Clicker like me happy.

I'm dead center of a user that Linux should be able to make happy, and they keep missing the boat.

3472

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 08:43 AM »

Where did that "ad" come from? Is it a real ad or an Interwebz special?

Meanwhile, if you're gonna lose a billion dollar lawsuit, use the results!

3473

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: P-FANCI: Petition For A New Cody Image! POST HERE!!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 02:50 AM »

Please join with me in a virtual petition to loudly demand that DC member Nudone create us a new Cody image for this year's NANY.

With Baby Cody going on so many adventures lately, I'm afraid that normal Cody is feeling left out.

And while we still have lots of Cody images to recycle through, I can't help but feel that we need to beg, harass, hound, protest, and generally bully Nudone into drawing another Cody image soon, before he forgets how to do them completely.

So please join with me in occupying this space and demanding a new Cody image from Nudone within the next 30 days.

-mouser (November 30, 2011, 10:05 AM)

Shameless bump of the Cody Thread!

Bonus question: What species is Cody?

3474

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 02:47 AM »

In an effort to reduce the number of books around the abode, trying (again) to get through the following:

• The Fabric of the Cosmos
• de Bono's Thinking Course, Revised Edition
• The Second Brain

They are all turning out to be more interesting this time through...

-ewemoa (August 30, 2012, 11:31 PM)

Unfortunately, the Number Of Books In The Abode increases like Fibonacci, while (mine at least) reading powers only manage between 4-7 per year in my current weakened state.

3475

Living Room / Re: Genius female chimpanzee found to be smarter than U.S. high school students

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 31, 2012, 02:44 AM »

It's cute, but it's pretty far on the Clickbait scale.