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3551

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 06:06 PM »

It's probably worth a read. As I said, I'm still not sure - and I haven't read the subsequent installments which fans have told me are better once you have the background in the first book to fall back on. It's not so much the erotic aspects (which I have no problem with if they're well written and have a good plot or storyline behind them) as I am with the fallen angel motif and (to me) the heavy lifting of societal concepts found in Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith.

I guess I'm saying I can't decide if it's actually good - or highly derivative.

re: 50 Shades of Gray

Read it and I'm not impressed. I found it rather predictable and juvenile. Other novelists have handled the subject far better, so I don't see what the big deal was for so many. Of course, there were people who thought 9-1/2 Weeks was a masterpiece, so no surprise there I suppose.

IMHO if you're going to write an erotic story - write a good erotic story. (It's a lot more difficult than it sounds.) 50 Shades never gets beyond kinky. And like Terry Pratchett observed: 'Erotic' uses a feather - 'kinky,' the entire chicken.

3552

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 05:44 PM »

I'll have to get back to you on my final opinion of Kushiel's Dart. What did you think of it?

-kyrathaba (April 30, 2013, 05:08 PM)

"Purple prose" aside? (I have a large vocabulary and I very much like James Joyce and Henry James so I don't have a problem with dense writing styles.) Truth be told, I haven't decided if it's actually a clever fantasy story; or yet another example of an exercise in "grad school eroticism" masquerading as a scifi/fantasy novel.
 

3553

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 04:43 PM »

@kyrathababa - out of curiosity...what did you think of Kushiel's Dart?

I've had trouble making up my mind about that one. Even after a second read.

3554

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

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 03:24 PM »

+1 w/Stephen earlier - If you've ever 'slept' on one you'll know...

3555

Living Room / Re: The Internet's new content cops - meet 'The Deciders'

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 02:52 PM »

^Nice one Tao! That opens up a whole new can of legal worms for these legislators!

Do you comply with the law that allows your employer to demand access. (I never joined a social site because I was expecting this btw.*) Or do you comply with laws governing contracts for the TOS  you agreed to when you opened your social site account.

Hmmm...bullshit new law of doubtful constitutionality and legality vs long established contract and tort laws plus numerous cases involving online TOS which now have legal precedent following judicial resolution...

Dunno. It could still go either way.

-----------



*Of course it may be a challenge getting an employer to accept being told you don't tweet or have a FB or Google account. I did a sales presentation not too long ago, and a twenty-something contract administrator for the company we were pitching oh-so-casually asked for my FB or G+ account so her department could "communicate informally" with me. When I told her I had neither and preferred to use secure e-mail for all my business electronic communications, she wasn't happy - stopped just short of calling me a liar - and informed me that everybody under the age of 80 has a Facebook or Google+ account. Especially if they're people in "computer and IT related" fields. (Note: this is the second time I've run into this btw.)

I told her: "I've got news for you..."

We learned first thing next day that we wouldn't be getting the contract. She sent us a fax.

3556

Living Room / Re: The Internet's new content cops - meet 'The Deciders'

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 10:52 AM »

^Exactly right. Most people don't know that. Give the lady a star!

But it gets even worse. What about intimidation and expectations of private speech when it comes to your employers? Lookee here. Scary!
 

3557

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

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 07:45 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)

-wraith808 (April 23, 2013, 01:22 PM)

3558

Living Room / The Internet's new content cops - meet 'The Deciders'

« Last post by 40hz on April 30, 2013, 07:18 AM »

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

There's a very interesting (and vaguely alarming) article by Jeffrey Rosen over at New Republic that reports on a recent meeting hosted at Stanford Law School where a very small number of people working for some of the largest Internet businesses got together to formulate policies that will have a far reaching effect on what "content" actually makes it onto the web.

Read it here.

A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online. It took place in the faculty lounge, where participants were sustained in their deliberations by bagels and fruit platters. Among the roughly two-dozen attendees, the most important were a group of fresh-faced tech executives, some of them in t-shirts and unusual footwear, who are in charge of their companies’ content policies. Their positions give these young people more power over who gets heard around the globe than any politician or bureaucrat—more power, in fact, than any president or judge.

 

3559

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by 40hz on April 28, 2013, 08:03 PM »

Maybe not to everyone's taste. But this performance always makes me smile. Two biggies if you're into busking and traditional Irish: this is 'Mundy' (aka Edmund Enright) and Sharon Shannon performing Steve Earle's hit song Galway Girl.

 

3560

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 28, 2013, 07:36 PM »

The problem with Libre is that it basically loads as a suite. So there's a base memory footprint of about 28 megs for the main bin which always gets loaded - plus an additional 7 to 16 megs for each app in the suite you open. It's an approach that has provoked much debate over the years.

Back when machines were slower there might have been some rationale for loading all the common code needed by the suite up front to save time when opening and closing apps. But with the speed of today's systems I don't think that justification (if it is still the justification) makes sense any more.

3561

General Software Discussion / Re: Problems after you install Microsoft's security update 2823324

« Last post by 40hz on April 26, 2013, 08:39 PM »

I was always under the impression that the default action of most consumer grade AV programs was "Ask what to do" or "quarantine."

i wasn't aware of any AV that had a default delete setting for anything right out of the box because of possible legal and liability concerns.

3562

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 26, 2013, 09:20 AM »

^Hear ya! I'm helping out people and organizations in the same boat. (Probably why I'm broke so often too thanks to all the pro bono and gratis work I do. ) But for spreadsheets and presentations I personally think (having tried as many alternatives as I could find) that Libre and Softmaker's products are about as good as the alternatives get right now.

3563

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 26, 2013, 09:10 AM »

@techidave - if you're on Windows XP, give this free wordprocessing gem a try. Light on it's feet, resource frugal, with all the extras you'll likely need. Plus no bloat!

It's still my favorite "full feature" WP for Windows since it feels more like Word 2000/2003 to me - and IMO that iteration was where Microsoft should have left it. It's also pretty much what I use on most of my Win laptops. (Actually, I use it's bigger brother, their "gold" paid version because I wanted native support for odt and docx files. For around $30 I'm happy to pay to help support these guys.)
 

3564

Living Room / Microsoft continues to chip away to avoid defending its patents on their merits

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 02:24 PM »

Interesting bit of news. Try to read it and not get too sick.

From OSNews this:

As I reported last week, Microsoft signed a far-reaching patent deal with Foxconn -- one of the world's biggest consumer electronics makers -- to draw fees for every device produced by Foxconn that runs Android or the Chrome operating system. According to BBC News, "Microsoft says that Google's code makes use of innovations it owns," and many were concerned that the Foxconn patent deal would set a precedent for more deals like it.

Sure enough, Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's Corporate VP & Deputy General Counsel of Legal & Corporate Affairs has put up a blog post confirming that ZTE, another one of the largest global smartphone companies, has agreed to patent license agreements with Microsoft pertaining to "phones, tablets, computers and other devices running Android and Chrome OS."
...<more>

Sad. Very sad...

But hardly surprising since Microsoft has pretty much exhausted what little innovative capacity it ever had. So now it looks like we're moving more and more towards Microsoft's reinvention of itself as patent troll extraordinaire.

3565

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 02:07 PM »

Heh well 40hz, this is like my joke about not using the language the same way with people...

-TaoPhoenix (April 25, 2013, 01:49 PM)

Oh! It wasn't meant as a knock - so I hope you weren't offended.

What I was trying to say is: what does "obsolete" mean when it comes to something that's as mature a product as a worprocessing app? If it does text editing - and doesn't crash - it can't possibly be obsolete.

This is all just part of my little rebellion against Microsoft (and all the others) who try to sell endless cycles of feature bloat as "new" versions when it comes to their office suites. Or who are constantly changing their file headers and formats for no real reason other than to make them incompatible with their competitor's products.

3566

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it?

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 11:27 AM »

^Agree!  I currently spend about 80-90% of my time in Linux these days. And it never ceases to surprise me how lousy type looks by comparison whenever I first boot into a Windows 7 session. Even when Cleartype is turned on.

3567

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it?

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 09:08 AM »

Ran into that with some clients recently. Here's the bad news:

http://answers.micro...09-bdbc-de91114d975c

eleman's suggestion to fallback or switch looks like they're your only options if you're experiencing this problem. 

3568

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 06:28 AM »

apparently SoftmakerOffice,2008 is obsolete. They have a new version out.

-TaoPhoenix (April 25, 2013, 06:06 AM)

I think it's more correct to say it's an older version rather than obsolete when it comes to Linux. Most Linux apps don't much care which kernal or flavor of GNU/Linux they run under. At least not from my experience.
 

About the only minor complaint I have is that Softmaker's Linux installer places shortcuts on the desktop like a Windows installer often will. And to add insult, it does so without asking. A definite platform faux pas on Softmaker's part AFAIC. Especially since most Linux users soon discover there are far better ways to keep their favorite apps readily at hand. As a result, very few ever develop the Windows habit of keeping program shortcuts on their desktops.

This is hardly a show stopper issue. But I still find it annoying.

In the game of Find a Replacement for Excel, LibreOffice has been the only serious contender non-web for a while now. (I tried Gnumeric some time back, but I ran into problems.)

-TaoPhoenix (April 25, 2013, 06:06 AM)

Agree. As will many if not most Excel users who have tried.

Excel is probably the single best guarantee I'll always need to keep at least one Windows machine (real or virtual) somewhere in my house.

3569

Living Room / Re: The 21 worst tech habits [PCWORLD]

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 06:07 AM »

17.  Texting at the table

Yes. Yes. A thousand times YES!.

In my little circle of tech support people, there's one person who no longer gets invited out for dinner/discussions because of her incessant texting.

Few things are more annoying than to be discussing something only to see someone's eyes constantly flicking to their Blackberry. It's almost as annoying as when this person reads a message and giggles right before saying, "I'm sorry. What were you just saying?" Something which happens about every third message.

She insists she's no longer invited because she's a woman. We know she's no longer invited because we're all fed up with her and her Blackberry. (BTW: there are two other women in our regular group, so I don't think gender has anything to do with who still gets invited.)

3570

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 25, 2013, 05:53 AM »

@Edvard: Which Linux distribution do you use? Maybe there might be issues with some, but I use Debian and everything works and looks fine. Btw., try to change some settings, maybe that helps:

-Debian (April 25, 2013, 01:44 AM)

+1. I have it running on Debian plus a few Debian derivatives and I'm not running into any of those interface or display issues. Sounds like you're having a video driver or compositor issue.
 

3571

Living Room / Re: Have you ever gone Geocaching or Letterboxing?

« Last post by 40hz on April 24, 2013, 07:44 PM »

Sounds like a good way to get stopped by the police.  



"Hey Charlie? What are all those weirdos with GPS units doing in the park over there? Oh look, they found something! Probably a drug drop! Better get this on video - and radio for some backup. I wanna find out what these jokers are up to."

----------

Actually, it reminds me a little of a game we used to play in college where the goal was to hunt down the secretive and elusive Paranoids Anonymous organization. Clues would be given during the month that would start you on a trail. The trail led to a sequence of clues. If you completed the trail and figured out all the puzzles successfully, you'd eventually figure out where Paranoids Anonymous was meeting that month. (The 'meeting' was actually a really good private party.) If you could find the meeting place (which could be anywhere in RI, MA or NH) - you automatically became a member.

Kinda like the much later 'rave' parties, except ours weren't so heavy on sex, drugs or general weirdness.

 

3572

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by 40hz on April 24, 2013, 07:35 PM »

^IMHO a wordprocessor is a wordprocessor is a wordprocessor. As is a spreadsheet.

For me, it doesn't have to look pretty or be a masterpiece of GUI design as long as it's reliable and works without any bad surprises. Truth is, virtually any WP GUI could be improved dramatically if you just cut back on the feature set. Most of the interface nightmares are caused by feature bloat which is done in order to justify the prices being charged for almost worthless and unnecessary upgrades.
 

3573

Living Room / Re: The Coffee/Caffeine Thread!

« Last post by 40hz on April 23, 2013, 08:35 PM »

Samual Adams Alpine Spring ale

-Tinman57 (April 23, 2013, 04:27 PM)

-Stoic Joker (April 23, 2013, 07:02 PM)

Sounds good. I think I'll join you. (Actually, pretty much anything by Sam - or Dogfish Head- will do nicely. )

3574

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by 40hz on April 23, 2013, 08:10 PM »

Riders of the Storm   A counter-culture gem from 1986 Starring Dennis Hopper.



This little political sci-fi comedy posits a post-VietNam war psychological warfare unit who somehow managed to commandeer a fully equipped 'psy-ops' B-29 which they've kept almost continuously airborn (for over 10 years) in order to operate the ultimate pirate television station: SMTV!

Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Pollard (Doc Tesla) lead a crew of misfit Vietnam veterans highly trained in psychological warfare and armed with a B29 equipped as a flying pirate TV station creating havoc for the broadcast networks and authorities as they fly the country on a crusade to bring radical philosophies and classic audiovisuals to a conservative and media brainwashed viewing public

There are several moments in the film that anticipate such things as torrents and the activities of Wikileaks and Anonymous.

It's available to watch (in true pirate fashion) in 10 minute chunks up on YouTube if they haven't pulled it already. First ten minutes below:

Renegade would have loved this flick!

 

3575

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: activate Windows (7) mapped network drives

« Last post by 40hz on April 23, 2013, 07:31 PM »

I ain't givin' that up without a fight.

-Stoic Joker (April 23, 2013, 05:30 PM)

Don't blame ya - and for exactly the reasons you've given. It is easier.

Especially when you discover that a share on a server named SVF01 sometimes works when it's called: \\SVF01\share - and sometimes only when it's called: \\SFV01.internal.mycompany.com\share - and this within the same domain depending on which client machine you're on!

Drives me nuts every time...

LM/NTLM vs. NTLMv2? There was mention of that in one of the articles a ran across in a quick google (For Mapped Drive Red X), it also stated that a VB script (and I suspect a .cmd) would execute more reliably than a standard batch file would.

It had something to do with that. You needed to set the DWORD LmCompatibilityLevel (in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa) equal to "1" [See here.] Basically you needed to dumb down the default authentication and session security in Win7 so it wouldn't insist on NTLMv2. This applied when using old Win2k servers as well as when connecting to some Samba boxes.

But there were also two related policy settings that needed to be adjusted depending on which version of the Win desktop you were running. There was one for 32-bit and two for 64-bit. Got it in my KB somewhere but I can find it just right now.

Now where did I file the notes about those GPO changes?