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3676

General Software Discussion / Re: Shape Shift 1.0.9.0 and MoveIt 1.1.8.4

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:11 PM »

I just wanted to drop you a line Miles praising your dedication to new features.

3677

Living Room / Re: Ads in Skype

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 03:59 PM »

"Hi Renegade! You coming to practice at Joe's Bowling before 6PM to take advantage of the Early Bird String for only $2? That other soft drink machine is down so let's get a nice cold delicious Pepsi Next, because it only has 10 grams of sugar but the same Pepsi taste! "

Oh wait - that's the Truman Show.

3678

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 03:55 PM »

There's now a big "ObamaPacman don't hotlink us" notice on there.

3679

Living Room / Re: World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 10:28 AM »

If they can get away with it without tanking sales, this is possibly the endgame of the browser wars. We went from "optimized for Internet Explorer (custom nonstandard crap)" to "charging a service fee to use IE" (as a market driven punishment for that custom nonstandard crap). Conceptually I think that's kinda neat.

3680

Living Room / Re: Techie News Roundup

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 10:19 AM »

Meanwhile, Facebook wants Users cell phone numbers to bolster security, hmm? Aren't cell phone numbers one of the most private pieces of info below the really top tier stuff? Phone books are dead - if you want someone's number you use any of the other 10 ways to communicate to *ask for it*.

Do I really want a company that specializes in selling private data to have my cell phone number?!

3681

Living Room / Re: Techie News Roundup

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 10:16 AM »

Regarding the little girl's blog... Anytime you need to stop taking pictures, there's something to hide.

Nice round up~!

-Renegade (June 15, 2012, 08:25 AM)

Let's play the next round of our game Renegade!

Let's see what the cards/game pieces are.
1. Are school lunches "licensed" to students (??!) so that students don't even get all rights to the meal, just a "license to eat it" but not the right to take pictures? So is that a patent violation on the cooking process to make the lunch, or a copyright violation since there should only be one instance of the lunch on the student's tray? What happens if that license is revoked?
2. Free Speech: in the process of taking down the blog, they prevented her from posting her scientific data on how many bites it took to chew the lunch! That could be the basis for a nutritional science fair project!
3. Won't Someone Think of the Children? In this case, no.

3682

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 10:06 AM »

There's something hysterically funny there about Google applying for a hundred, Apple only wants one. "If it ain't .apple, it's second rate." 

-TaoPhoenix (June 15, 2012, 04:22 AM)

Well, yeah, funny until I think that Apple is a pure predator, and likely has some proxy company doing everything else for them. That's how the stock market works, so I doubt this is much different. Apple defines itself by being simple, so anything else is bad publicity for them. Google on the other hand is trying to be all things to all people, so .mom, .etc all make sense for it.

But I really do wonder now that you pointed that out...

-Renegade (June 15, 2012, 04:29 AM)

I really don't think so - that Proxy thing is more a Microsoft kind of move. I think this is another of Apple's Walled Garden moves, trying to create fear that anywhere outside their nice cozy eden is a virtual ghetto that will get you virtually shot.

It's Microsoft that seems to do more the Jackson Pollock marketing - "let's throw stuff into userspace and then when we change our minds 2 years from now we'll throw more stuff."

3683

Living Room / Re: Skype now has a "Login With Facebook" Button

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 10:03 AM »

I just posted an article on the web on a site powered by Disqus, and I signed in under a Yahoo profile. I am very grumpy that it did not take my email address, but *grabbed my real first name and last initial off the yahoo account* and used that instead!   

Not that it's still easy for anyone to find or that it is damaging, but this "real name" crusade is getting on my nerves.

3684

Living Room / Re: In search of ... name of an old TV series

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:26 AM »

The internet age is a wonderful thing. That question would have occupied a bunch of buddies for an entire year with "I dunno man." (Drinks more beer.)

3685

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:24 AM »

They say that the ungodly amounts required are to filter out non-serious inquiries, but it seems more like it's to restrict new gTLDs to corporations only.

Raise your hand if you have $185,000 extra to spend on a domain...

Didn't think so...

-Renegade (June 13, 2012, 11:17 PM)

You're looking at next year's DC fundraiser! 

3686

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:22 AM »

There's something hysterically funny there about Google applying for a hundred, Apple only wants one. "If it ain't .apple, it's second rate." 

3687

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:18 AM »

Possible miniapp idea:
Lazy workday clock - A clock that runs slow in the mornings and fast in the afternoon. Always wanted one on the wall, but an interactive one would be fun. Take your time in the morning and finish early.

-justice (June 14, 2012, 04:32 AM)

A related mini App that already exists for iPhone is the 25 hour clock. It goes in reverse - makes the morning go fast, to help quell the tendency of some offices "not to get rolling" while everyone spends an hour getting coffee, so it adds a little urgency up until about 2PM (including finishing lunch.) Then a couple of places I worked at had "5PM fever" where things would suddenly appear about 3PM and "have to get done today". So then you turn it off, and poof: It's only 2:25, so you get an extra half hour to finish the mayhem.

3688

Living Room / Re: The Board Game 'Renaissance'

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2012, 04:12 AM »

I think a themed variant of Stratego would be funny given all the Patent/Copyright/Terrorist/ForDaKidz new laws going around. One side plays the Govt-Corporate Alliance and the other plays Citizens of the Free World. Typical character pieces on the Alliance side are, of course, ACTA, SOPA, and all those. Other ones are maybe Oracle Corp's Lawsuit, Maybe Apple's Lawsuits, etc.

The Citizens include individuals at a low power level, Internet Blackout Day, maybe the EU Commissions that are rejecting ACTA.

3689

Living Room / Re: FOI Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2012, 09:31 AM »

I've seen previous articles about corrupted nodes and so on, so I'm inclined to believe it's not quite as perfect as it sounds, but more of a pain than nothing at all. So knowing our govt, they'll play BOTH sides, simultaneously whining "awww we can't catch the terrorists" but then in fact spying on the few who get through.

3690

General Software Discussion / Re: WebPage notes

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2012, 07:25 AM »

Anand's app might work. It triggers off window titles, and I experimentally used it a couple times at work to annotate g-mails.

3691

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 14, 2012, 05:30 AM »

"How small is small"?

Are you looking to spend more of your time on internal logic or pretty graphics? For better or worse, what the i-device generation did well was bring shiny graphics to the masses.

3692

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2012, 06:45 PM »

On another front, this is one of those campaigns where they're gonna try to get all the naughty sites to be forced to use a .sex extension, to make it easier "to protect the children".

It's also gonna make Phishing a horrible risk because some scammer will nab domains like donationcoder.ferrari or something. "What? You mean I don't get a free Ferrari when I make a donation of any size?"

3693

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2012, 07:08 AM »

If my ailing memory serves, he was definitely remarking on the security side, I think it was in relation to the data - I don't recall speed considerations.

But heh I think I also walked into the "obscurity" theme a while back - that's one of those topics where it protects lower level situations and it is somewhat useful, but I learned that you have to assume that the algorithm could be discovered.

Re: Mouser, you were talking about the damage level of a breach of LinkedIn. I think it's worse than it sounds, because it's a dangerous Phish opportunity. I am grumpy at LinkedIn because they *already* turbo-spam people's addressbook - I got two separate ones and that's from normal accounts. Give attackers an hour logged in and all kinds of fun could happen.

3694

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2012, 06:23 AM »

Bruce Schneier posted an article somewhere on his blog about double-layering of different algorithms on top of each other. Last I recall you added a couple of new corollaries.

3695

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2012, 01:54 AM »

A few point by point comments from the Brian Krebs article:

"Separate password breaches last week at LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm exposed millions of credentials, and once again raised the question of whether any company can get password security right. "

Hmm, I hadn't heard of the ones at eHarmony and Last.fm. And interesting choice of phrase  - "whether *any* company can get it right" (emphasis mine).

"Ptacek:  The difference between a cryptographic hash and a password storage hash is that a cryptographic hash is designed to be very, very fast. ... Well, that’s the opposite of what you want with a password hash. You want a password hash to be very slow. "

Okay, so I can *almost* see a somewhat smaller "less important" site like Last.fm making this mistake. (Although even they are too big.) But LinkedIn strikes me as different. In some ways, except for a couple of annoying software features they have that lead to address book invasions, I respect LinkedIn more than any of the "recreational" social networks. LinkedIn is for a fairly high grade of professional - not that many fast food workers, etc. So I would think that would be a very demanding clientele. Wouldn't anyone at that level have wanted LinkedIn to just spend $50,000 for a month's worth of consulting to review their overall practices? The security guy Brian Krebs talked to nailed in twelve seconds. Add another $100,000 for a two-man security programming team for a year. Done (sorta).

Okay, here we go: further down:
Ptacek: At a certain point, the cost of migrating that is incredibly expensive. And securing Web applications that are as complex as LinkedIn is an incredibly hard problem."

So now we get a new question, that maybe someone *did* notice, but it got tabled as a migration cost issue. That's a whole different notion.

Edit 2:
So okay, in the NY Times article, it seems my off the cuff guess wasn't so bad after all:
"Mr. Grossman estimates that the cost of setting up proper password, Web server and application security for a company like LinkedIn would be a one-time cost of “a couple hundred thousand dollars."

3696

General Software Discussion / Re: Math-O-Mir: Equation Editing (and a new approach to GUI input)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 13, 2012, 01:39 AM »

Thanks for your report, Tao. I am not able to reproduce this on my PC, but will keep an eye on the problem whenever I am testing the software on different configurations. Eventually I will solve it

-Danijel (June 11, 2012, 12:53 AM)

Hallo.

I have some more info on the bug.

It looks like it has to do with the routine(s) that draw the equation entry box. So for example if you click say 3 pixels away from the first box, nothing happens, it's probably an error trap on purpose. But farther away if you click in the white area it deletes the first entry box (assume you did nothing with it), and creates a new one. On my machine those two actions are not instantaneous. Now the bug seems to be related to clicking just far enough away from the first entry box that the program wants to spawn a new instance, but right about that point if you're also holding the left button and moving the mouse, it seems to catch a bad double instance and that's where the fatal crash shows up.

Does that help? It's pretty repeatable here, and even after a reboot.

3697

Living Room / Re: A judge with programming experience, maybe there is hope?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 10, 2012, 06:07 AM »

Excellent ruling!

It's so refreshing to see sanity prevail. 

-Renegade (June 09, 2012, 10:37 PM)

Our insanity-infinity game shall be suspended for this week then!

3698

Living Room / Re: For your viewing pleasure: a Windows 8 BSOD

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 09, 2012, 03:36 PM »

Go Metro! Even the blue screen is now ugly!

3699

Living Room / Re: Must read articles on publishing standards and the future of public libraries

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 08, 2012, 09:27 PM »

Sorry Iain, while you performed a useful service posting that article, I don't buy its premise. "Competing with themselves" = another way to say that they're playing all sides of the game. They're simultaneously trying to make us jaded so that anything more than 3 years old "isn't good enough and that we must buy new stuff", while echoing my note above "older stuff that isn't a Disney Mouse isn't worth fixing up to resell", and then finally "woe is us, if people got to watch/listen to all the old 80's classics they won't buy new stuff".

Nope.

While not the obvious elephant in the room, maybe the lost underfed cat in the room is Education. Over on that topic, we're whining about US has no education, blah blah. But the new age is about mashups and extreme forms of active learning. But we can't do that without the raw materials to throw around.

So, I don't buy the 70 year copyright term gig. I think only X small percentage of items need that level of protection. The rest just vanishes out of print. And the first reply comment on the blog doesn't buy it either.

3700

Living Room / Re: A judge with programming experience, maybe there is hope?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 08, 2012, 06:35 PM »

http://gigaom.com/mo...ystem-dysfunctional/

In his remarkable ruling, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner stated that there was no point in holding a trial because it was apparent that neither side could show they had been harmed by the other’s patent infringement. He said he was inclined to dismiss the case with prejudice — meaning the parties can’t come back to fight over the same patents — and that he would enter a more formal opinion confirming this next week.

-Jibz (June 08, 2012, 04:40 PM)

Edit: This is very close to the judicial equivalent of STFU! 

Wait, is that a new test? "To Show Harm"?

Can it work for copyrights?