Recent Posts

3576

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 11:58 AM »

Remebering the past always let thing look very nice and beautiful. That´s a human mechanism. This emulator reproduces all on an electronic based reproduction with such a detail no other emultor does at the moment.
You can change the settings to the level you like - also clean and perfect if you wish.

-Crush (August 05, 2012, 10:58 AM)

Nah, not quite beautiful, just I'm absolutely positive my screen didn't shake quite THAT much. I was a sensitive kid and it would have freaked me out (not exactly a headache, but something in that category.)

3577

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday TRS-80

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 11:55 AM »

Here's what a very advanced trs-80 full screen graphics game looked like back in those days: (see attachment in previous post)

-mouser (August 05, 2012, 09:33 AM)

I remember playing games like that!

-Renegade (August 05, 2012, 10:28 AM)

I remember programming games like that! (Different system, different gameplay, still just sayin')

Okay, I'll get off your lawns now.

3578

General Software Discussion / Re: software to write gamebooks ?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 11:44 AM »

I could see designing this as raw webpages and then just giving each webpage a "page number". Then just export the whole thing.

3579

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 07:56 AM »

I don't understand what is being emulated - I don't recall my old C64 as a kid looking anywhere near that awful on the TV.

3580

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 03:55 AM »

Poke Renegade 53280,0 to turn his shirt and pants black to make him a ninja!

3581

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 05, 2012, 03:53 AM »

Interesting legal decision reported by arstechnica: MPAA "embedding is infringement" theory rejected by court
(The text of the post is in the spoiler below.)

-IainB (August 04, 2012, 06:51 PM)

Ooops. Looks like someone in the MAFIAA forgot to buy off that judge...

-Renegade (August 04, 2012, 06:56 PM)

It's Judge Posner again (Hooray!)

Someone should do an indie animated anime about him, he's on a RAMPAGE trying to stop the IP madness all by himself!

3582

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 03, 2012, 08:48 AM »

Probably already discussed but every time I hear "Metro app" , sandboxing comes to my mind: how sandboxed File manager is supposed to work?

Interesting note:
http://www.freelists...on-Windows-8-for-ARM

-fenixproductions (August 03, 2012, 08:44 AM)

Except - Oops! Now the Metro name is gone! So we can do the Prince Glyph thing "Apps using the mobile&desktop interface formerly known as Metro"!  

3583

Living Room / Re: What do you desire from your job?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 03, 2012, 03:55 AM »

Job Satisfaction works like a Canary Server!
"I was not humiliated at work today."
"I was not humiliated at work today."
"I was not humiliated at work today."

(Crickets)

 

3584

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 03, 2012, 12:53 AM »

Good to know. I'll probably wait until the drive actually does, but I'll step up the migration process from "3 years from tomorrow" to beginning to put the pieces in place.

3585

Living Room / Re: What do you desire from your job?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 03, 2012, 12:38 AM »

1. No danger of being fired *Or Laid off*
Since that just happened to me, the rest of it all doesn't matter anymore, does it? (Token Networking offer - any of you folks have jobs?)

2. Working hours are short; lots of free time
For me this is that burnout risks falling into #1, depending on the types of mistakes your particular personality slides into. I'm no Spring Phoenix anymore, and I could never do the 24-year-old workaholic gig anyway.

3. High income
Several levels here, it doesn't have to be 6 figures. But minimum wage is no fun at all either.

4. Chances for advancement
It doesn't mean you are a psycho for wanting to advance. In fact there is some evidence (I know, Citation Needed) that if you have the SAME job for a zillion years, it begins to look a little funny to certain potential employers in some company cultures. It's okay to want to become an Assistant Manager after a chunk of time doing the entry level job.

5. Work important and gives a feeling of accomplishment
Let's rule out "Stupid Work", along the Dilbert/Office Space lines. That's just abuse. I'm in various branches of accounting, I have no delusions that I am Saving Lives or Changing the World. On a good day work is ... just work, you Do Stuff, and then you go home. It's nice to have a spread of duties, so your life's work isn't setting tables for a caterer every day, but relatively speaking I'm no Type A either.

3586

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 02, 2012, 01:07 PM »

I'm getting a "caution" in "reallocated sector count" - what does that mean?

-TaoPhoenix (August 02, 2012, 11:02 AM)

You are running out of spare sectors, which is one of the signs of the end for the drive.

-Stoic Joker (August 02, 2012, 11:39 AM)

Maybe you can give me a little more detail.  Like xkcd's jokes about graphs with no axis labels, the caution drive is listed at "97" (of what?) reallocated sectors, with the "threshold of 36" (of what?). But the data drive is listed as "good" with reallocated sectors at "100" (of what?) with a "threshold of 5". Why So Different? So how is one Caution and the other good?

3587

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 02, 2012, 11:02 AM »

I just downloaded it now.

I'm getting a "caution" in "reallocated sector count" - what does that mean?

3588

General Software Discussion / Re: A strange Hijack

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 02, 2012, 08:46 AM »

(Ahem) In the world of pr0n, there are a lot of page redirects similar to the one I think you are talking about. There's probably a few types of ways to code the concept, but basically one version is a kind of hot-rotator link that feeds the correct linked-to page say a third of the time, and the other two times it sends you to one of their "affiliates", presumably for ad revenue. I'm no expert so I'm probably describing it wrong but the links often look sorta like "spinbot.rotator.com?cgi="outputfeed"&affiliate="534856"&visitclickID="5428"

3589

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 02, 2012, 08:40 AM »

Okay, this topic confuses me on so many levels, so the following are only opinions and should not be taken as advice.

1. What is a "powered up hour" and why is that different from simple elapsed time? My current desktop is doing okay per se, I haven't run any diagnostics but I haven't noticed any Flaking either. So the whole machine was custom built in 2006 by a friend, and it's basically been running steady ever since without any down time.

2. I am not initially inclined to just "randomly" decide "ho hum, it's been seven years, let's just retire my drive". Instead, at the time of designing the system I put in a dedicated backup data drive, opposite the OS, precisely to have resources against a hard drive failure. While my backups are far from as often as might be smart, let's just say that a random week's worth of a full copy-over plan would bring things up to snuff.

3. Let's suppose that my only data copy was on the D aka "Data Drive" opposite the OS on C, wouldn't the C drive with the OS actions and upkeep be the drive that fails first? Wouldn't the data be pretty safe since the D data drive does nearly nothing but sit there?

3590

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 01, 2012, 10:09 PM »

I think Metro will go the way of the Zune. We have a bad problem with "3 year marketing" from MS right now, where because we have to live with every day at a time, we get pummeled by their ad budget, and the related MS-Controlled-Blog-Spin with the slanted What-about-this articles.

Metro sux. Any more and I'll end up in the Basement. It's the Zune for OS. I don't know what the RIGHT answer is yet, I'm not THAT good. Only that this feels like another of their myopia-inducing campaigns, except it's not music where they went from PlaysForSure to Zune to Nothing, it's their core OS. I profoundly don't trust it. Sure there are minor usability problems in the classic Windows Explorer model, but Metro isn't the answer.

3591

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 01, 2012, 07:49 PM »

Don't rule out other sites for marathons...especially free ones.

I had a mini-marathon last night of old episodes of The George Carlin Show, on the WB site.

http://www.thewb.com/shows/full-episodes

-app103 (April 19, 2011, 11:52 AM)

I'll second this. I learned about Wire in the Blood from the Hulu side, and it impressed me. It was on time delay so I could only see a couple seasons a month, but I REALLY like the longer 1.5 hour format for dramas. Almost everything in the US is at the 42 minute mark, and it eventually the pacing gets under my skin once in a while when I sorta know "something X has to happen" even if I don't know exactly what, the pacing rules the show. In that longer format, the character get to ponder and deal with the problem longer.

3592

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 01, 2012, 07:39 PM »

Has anyone used the Mozilla Archive Format, as discussed in the description of the following FF extension?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-archive-format/?src=cb-dl-featured

-kyrathaba (August 01, 2012, 07:21 PM)

That looks fascinating, but I won't try it just now, I'm distractible these days and this looks like it could chew up an entire day!

3593

DC Gamer Club / Re: Warning: Big Security Risk In Some Ubisoft PC Games

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on August 01, 2012, 09:38 AM »

I used to keep a semi sandboxed extra machine I called "NetScreen" to investigate nastiness like this. It was a machine designed to get pounded on, and contained mostly no important data other than stuff I was too lazy to properly double-copy to the real machine. (Heh).

Back when the world was new, and neither I nor the malware writers really knew very much about computers, I had a little bit of fun blocking a few pieces of malware by placing special null files in the designated spots. Then when the hooks tried to call the virus, it acted like a Find-Robot kind of thing for my favorite software I used every day! Whee!

Just curious if anyone has tried that in modern times, like installing a null add-on where the uplay one wants to go, hoping that the mean one will bounce. Thoughts from better geeks than I?

3594

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 31, 2012, 01:26 AM »

Andy Warhol was right, but more like in a futurist sense predicting now.

-TaoPhoenix (July 31, 2012, 01:01 AM)

I think what he was getting at was TV would be enough to do the damage. Probably among the first to feel the pain was the stand-up comic.  Going town to town playing clubs (s)he could earn a living for years from 45 minutes of decent material.  One shot on Carson and it's over. Everyone has already seen the shtick.

-MilesAhead (July 31, 2012, 01:18 AM)

You're on the right track, but at least at that point people HAD seen the schtick, so he'd be famous for X minutes to write a new one.

What we have now is a giant case of "Who?" Kinda the whole US in our own little pockets and only a very few make it to be generally known across the net.

3595

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 31, 2012, 01:04 AM »

Yeah I saw that one too, why can't "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" matter OUTSIDE expensive court rooms?  What's the deal with blatant lies carrying the day?

3596

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 31, 2012, 01:01 AM »

Nah, it's different now.

Andy Warhol was right, but more like in a futurist sense predicting now. Back then you really did get "some fame" (reference to Charlotte's Web). In small towns especially, the point was that overall events were slower, so small events really did last months. I have a running joke about those times, where some woman was a mini matriarch or something, "In a Post-Insult-To-Mrs. Whipple-World, Things Will Never Be The Same". (Play off the 9-11 meme from the US.)

In my own little reading world, the same books would be on some bookstore shelves *for years* because they were the iconic items to have stocked there. Now except certain sections, bookstores ditch their stock roughly every two years, so if you got busy, and wanted "that book", it's gone. It got so bad I had to pre-emptively buy stuff for my collection simply to keep it from vanishing off the shelf.

So it is different now, badly. Yes we have more Long Tail diversity, but in the Social Media age Fame (or Notoriety!) no longer brings money.

3597

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 30, 2012, 04:05 PM »

Fame is one of those things that's in the mind of the beholder. It may let you cut the line at a restaurant(or even get a free meal) if the owner is a fan. But if you watch the video when they tout the Tennis Hall of Fame
during the last grass court tournament of the season, played at that site.. a guy walks in with a hand-held video-cam.  You see a few pictures on the wall. A couple of trophy cases. And maybe 2 laptop computers showing video of old matches. I think I'd pay $5 to be spared taking that tour.

During one of the broadcasts of the Newport Tournament I remember Barry MacKay talking about how in the old days the tennis pros were paid so little he had to sleep in the attic of the museum, to the director of the tournament who came on air for a bit.  The director replied to the effect "the attic is still available if you need it Barry." 

-MilesAhead (July 30, 2012, 02:42 PM)

I think the Internet devalued fame. Back when EVERYTHING was scarce, things were "celebrated". If a local town had a winner, he'd get free lunches at the diner for life because of the name draw. Now it's "bah, you had your free meal, now go home".

It's the end of the speed-culture effect. Nothing at all matters for more than a year.

3598

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 29, 2012, 04:13 PM »

I'm more alarmed by the strictness of copyright enforcement over the 2012 games.

Was always under the impression that the Olympics were supposed to be a global event to promote peace and prosperity, as well as some good clean sporting fun.

But this? I can't even enjoy them because I can't get cable TV here, and nobody on the internet has succeeded in uploading more than a few seconds worth of opening ceremony clips without attracting the copyright banhammer.

-SeraphimLabs (July 29, 2012, 12:13 PM)

My thought on the medals is that much pure gold was vetoed because it would become instant ebay-bait, making the purpose of winning to sell off your medal, rather than the traditional nebulous glory.

Meanwhile with the whole copyright thing, that's also bitter because I think there were rules that the athletes themselves were not supposed to be "paid professionals" aka "doing it out of love for the sport", yet now we have the committee making a blatantly commercial grab.

Hehe we're software guys, what if someone forked the Olympics and made it GPL (or whatever license applies to physical motion!)

3599

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 29, 2012, 04:08 PM »

Hmm, I kind of lost interest after watching the Olympics in China. Not only did they abandon a perfectly fine scoring system for gymnastics(perfectly fine meaning a person could understand it without consulting a professional) but the position of judge for the Women's Gymnastics became a "no show job."  Nearly every contest was determined by falls off the beam or uneven bars, and stepping out of bounds on the floor exercise.  IOW, the judges were taken out of the equation.  Didn't matter if they took a tenth off for this balance bauble and not for that. The mandatory 5 tenths deductions for falls and step-outs determined the results.

Instead of trying to calculate levels of difficulty and some jazz about a possible max score of 15.77588991112 I just counted the falls for each team.  The team with the fewest falls won.

-MilesAhead (July 29, 2012, 02:20 PM)

Doesn't this threaten the entire concept of the __________ (Copyright Unmentionable) games themselves by encouraging Lowballing? Just pick a safe routine with fewer risks, because you can't afford a fall.

3600

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 29, 2012, 08:14 AM »

Very close to "Guilty, regardless of innocence". And down THAT road come some VERY scary things.

-TaoPhoenix (July 28, 2012, 09:05 PM)

Hahahaha~!

+1

And very well put~!

(Just for future reference, I think I just may steal that one! )

-Renegade (July 28, 2012, 10:31 PM)

Of course you mean that you will be requesting a Copyright License from me, right?