Recent Posts

3876

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 10:27 AM »

"No no no Iain, xkcd is holy scripture and should be treated as such. While it doesn't have chapters, it has Verses. So you should have quoted "xkcd verse 386".  

P.S. It's a play off the cartoon you posted - get it?

3877

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 10:09 AM »

I prefer some of the newer distros to start on.

Instead of Slackware as a "run on bare metal" choice I'd go with Arch Linux if you really want to learn what it's all about on a very fundamental level. Good docs too.

Instead of Mandriva (who's future is still up in the air) I'd go with Linux Mint for an easy to use minimal hassle Linux that's very Windows like. A very polished and svelte distro, perfect for beginners - and more than powerful enough for an advanced user. Top user pick over at Distrowatch. And for good reason.

-40hz (February 28, 2012, 05:22 PM)

Warning: Newbie hilarity ahead!  

I finally quit being lazy and set out to try to see which distros behave on my older test box after getting skunked by Ubuntu, and Mint was first on my list. (Last year's entry was Open Suse which almost worked, so that's my counterweight.)

Unfortunately, Mint isn't behaving clean - it almost doesn't boot. I mashed a bunch of keys and stumbled into the command line, at which point I exhausted my fortune-cookie level of Linux knowledge by typing apt, then "went for the candy" with dist-upgrade, which at least was better in that it is now doing "something" (aka claiming to be installing all kinds of juicy packages. Before it wasn't even booting, so that's progress.) If that still doesn't work, I'll just have to try another distro.

Whew! Long story short, I'm not good enough to brute force a distro for the sake of the distro, for me as representative of a type of new linux user, having the distro be able to pass the test of "But Linux is good on older hardware!" is important. I don't really plan to do a full migration over like AC in the title post, I just wanted to know where the state of Linux is these days. In that sense I'll live with glitches, but boot problems are over my tolerance limit. This is just a random Best Buy box from a few years ago, maybe Pentium 4, so it should be right in the target market. With the advent of MS trying to push XP to end of life, I think we'll see a flood of former XP boxes floating around so Linux could be waiting in the wings for a nice small usage boost.

Edit: Still doesn't boot - gets stuck checking "battery state". So off I go to another distro...

3878

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 09:49 AM »

Microsoft seems to have tried to sorta stay out of the tracking headlights. I'm not sure what to make of them on these topics.

-TaoPhoenix (April 28, 2012, 08:44 AM)

Well, they probably would back away - wouldn't they? They probably just want to get on with the business of making a mountain of money, by continuing to be the market's de facto monopoly, producing some pretty good software, and without risking unnecessary alienation of their market.

-IainB (April 28, 2012, 09:09 AM)

Ooh, you have an interesting theme: Free versions abuse your privacy, and then Microsoft/someone markets "privacy protecting" paid versions. I know all about MS's anti-competitiveness tricks and lock-in, but if they stuck with a classical stance on protecting user privacy we could be watching a nice clash of concepts.

3879

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 08:44 AM »

Microsoft seems to have tried to sorta stay out of the tracking headlights. I'm not sure what to make of them on these topics.

3880

Living Room / Re: Gibiru - Uncensored Anonymous Search

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 08:36 AM »

It looks Egyptian, but I don't quite get the pun.

3881

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 28, 2012, 08:12 AM »

Then again, even without CISPA and friends (sounds like a kiddy show!) our favorite .gov folks have this:

"The FBI Workaround For Private Companies To Share Information With Law Enforcement Without CISPA"
"What has been left out of the debate thus far, though, is the model that CISPA appears in many ways to be based upon. The FBI has been information-sharing with private industry for over a decade without a bill like CISPA in place.

In 1997, long-time FBI agent Dan Larkin helped set up a non-profit based in Pittsburgh that “functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement.” Its industry members, which include banks, ISPs, telcos, credit card companies, pharmaceutical companies, and others can hand over cyberthreat information to the non-profit, called the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), which has a legal agreement with the government that allows it to then hand over info to the FBI. Conveniently, the FBI has a unit, the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, stationed in the NCFTA’s office. Companies can share information with the 501(c)6 non-profit that they would be wary of (or prohibited from) sharing directly with the FBI."

http://www.ncfta.net/become-ncft-partner
National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance

3882

Living Room / Re: Did "Todoist" Just Wake Up?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 27, 2012, 11:46 AM »

That's service for ya in the Cloud!

3883

General Software Discussion / Games supplying UI & App "Paradigms"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 27, 2012, 07:30 AM »

Last night I fiddled with a few more Ludum Dare games. (I'm not sure I like this year's "small world" theme, does anyone have the links to the other years?)

A couple of them led me to daydreams of crossing software with "Mimsy were the Borogoves", new apps so wonderfully strange that they are barely conceivable in today's app "paradigms". It would be fun if I had money to burn on a commission just to program as many outre features into an app that it practically becomes a Klein Bottle. (http://en.wikipedia....rg/wiki/Klein_bottle)

Anyone ever daydream of stuff like this? For example one game had you circling planets collecting rings, then when you have collected them all, you jump to a new planet, with a fuzzy physics interpretation of gravity. I can just barely imagine that being an interface to something "so simple" it becomes the new Go To idea.

3884

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 27, 2012, 07:20 AM »

This is one of the longer running threads, so I'll bring up the topic of Adobe again. Much earlier posts remarked on interface problems - for Acrobat 10 Adobe put about half of the features into a sliding command bar on the right side. It looks simple enough to me. Meanwhile, a big new feature in Adobe Pro is it can mostly compare two PDFs and annotate a report with the differences. So sometimes if the "flagship program" in a field can keep innovating, it knocks out a lot of the alternatives.  So for editing, it's Adobe Pro for me.

But for reading, I like exploring some of the smaller apps.

3885

General Software Discussion / Re: Lifetime license from Audials+GAOTD: no good

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 27, 2012, 06:35 AM »

What is the status of Microsoft DRM these days? I remember some stories about it back in the Vista days, and being on XP, I decided to forget about it. But as we are told XP is nearing end of support life, what is the true scoop on MS DRM? Is it spying on users? Does it report anywhere when it thinks it finds an "infringed file"?

3886

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 06:02 PM »

More CISPA news.

http://hothardware.c...of-Privacy-Invasion/

"One of the bill's key passages is a provision that gives private companies the right to share cybersecurity data with each other and with the government "notwithstanding any other provision of law."

Edit: US House passes CISPA.
http://www.wired.com.../house-passes-cispa/

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, sponsored by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), passed on a vote of 248 to 168.

Lovely. That means it's "Bi-Partisan", so there's no escape in the upcoming election.

3887

Developer's Corner / BSOD

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 05:55 PM »

I was apparently rather lucky, I haven't seen a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death on MS Windows) for YEARS.

Heh - one of the Ludum Dare games just hosed me! (I forget which one since it vanished with the BSOD!)

I know they were a staple of Win 95/98/Me, but have any if you seen them much lately?

3888

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: 1-action Unzip

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 04:32 PM »

I think it works! Munch Munch!

Another Coding Snack Wins!

3889

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Drive launched

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 12:23 PM »

There's a story out there that the TOS allows Google to basically fold, spindle, and mutilate your data, far beyond what dropbox and MS say "only use the data for providing the service."

3890

Screenshot Captor / Re: "Invalid pointer operation" error message - all changes to screenshot lost

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 11:47 AM »

Undo will not work on object operations I'm afraid -- only things like cropping, resizing, borders, special effects, etc.

-mouser (April 26, 2012, 11:18 AM)

That's a pity.   

Oh well, that just means I'll stick with my other workflow of importing stuff into Stickies. I'm curious why it wouldn't work, but I won't insist - I need to save my Pest Mana for other battles! : )

3891

Older DC Contests and Challenges / Re: "Unconventional Encryption Challenge"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 11:07 AM »

You can click Modify, copy that post into notepad, then replace all underscores with a space. (You can get the space by copying one and pasting it into the replace field.)

Then you can repost the clean text!

Welcome to the forum!

3892

Screenshot Captor / Re: "Invalid pointer operation" error message - all changes to screenshot lost

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 09:13 AM »

Well, on the next lilypad error over, upon seeing this thread, I made a test screen shot. However, for me Undo fails to do anything at all!

I drew an arrow, then clicked Undo, and ... nothing. I made a text box, clicked Undo, and ... nothing.

Does that make things even more confusing?

3893

Older DC Contests and Challenges / Re: "Unconventional Encryption Challenge"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 07:59 AM »

also, u crazed, dude? cuz, you cut and pasted most of your shit. Basically, imho, you could have said this: Hey! come and click this site! we have "trojans" but not really! and if you know anything about that silly little machine used in WWII, Hacking the Gibson, and how to look up Tempest, or even pixels, or even ways to close little tiny loops, and blah blah blah blah.  basically, you need to reinvest yourself in a more wise decision, try this:    take a few variables, make it 5, and apply primes to those five, let's call them a, b, c, d, e, and then, let's make a+b+c/82-3.21 and put the letter N (as an exponent), and then route it back to the original equation of a-b =b-a, then just pretend now, that 0 equals a circle, and that 1 equals a dot, then pixel that shit, then put it on a ray, right to left, right? and don't forget to add mole day, that computers are out of control (or doubled as they say every 18 months or so), and tell me, what you have here that any one of use couldn't do or find? and for 100 dollars, i think you should pay me. because this post I have here, makes no sense.///But, if you like imaginary numbers, html, and maybe you should stick to 128bit, because as everyone knows you cannot add another 32, because that's still off from 154 ......or something....

-itsonlyme (April 19, 2012, 08:31 PM)

Well, it turns out that weekend I was a little crazed, but I'm not in any of the hacking groups, and anything about 7 and 4 that might be related is pure coincidence. Meanwhile in that same weekend I thought it would be fun to see a pro codebreaker bust up my feeble attempts, but apparently they don't work for free and if I'm not interesting enough they won't bother.

Meanwhile, I came to my senses since then, and it's 2012 not 1999, so no one thinks breaking amateur codes is fun. It's all about the money now.

3894

Living Room / Re: Hack an old monitor and 3D glasses for instant privacy.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 07:52 AM »

Now we just need an entrepreneur to sell these! I don't have the physical skills to do this, but I might pay a modest amount to buy one!

3895

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: 1-action Unzip

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 07:50 AM »

Ok. I updated FastUnzip Snack to refresh after extraction. Download from original post or here -> https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=30797.0;attach=65859

-c.gingerich (April 26, 2012, 07:24 AM)

Heh What time zone are you in Chris? I just got to work so I won't know the results until tonight! Let's hope that I remember to test it when I get home! : )

3896

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: OpalCalc 1.42

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 26, 2012, 12:06 AM »

I'm very frightened of that graphic!

3897

General Software Discussion / Re: Url Pack 1.5.1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 25, 2012, 11:32 PM »

I'm happy for it all to be default browser, so long as it doesn't keep ripping control. So my method above looks pretty good! : )

3898

Living Room / Re: Do a Barrel Roll ;)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 25, 2012, 09:45 PM »

This is cute. I remember, this showed up a while ago, maybe a couple months.

(Too lazy to google it!)

3899

General Software Discussion / Re: Url Pack 1.5.1.0

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 25, 2012, 09:24 PM »

That just might work!

Given that Transdesk is already open, I pick a "secondary node" and run URL pack, wait just long enough for the turbo-loaded browser window to appear, then click into a "primary node" (with DC or something going on), and then later go to that second node, the loaded browser is there!

I love Rube Goldberg Chaining mini-apps : )

3900

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 25, 2012, 08:28 PM »

Time to spice things up a bit.

I somehow landed on a few Spam music marketing lists ... but I make a point to only "mark them read" and not tell Yahoo's filter that they are spam - because if nothing else it seems like the first break in the Copyright game. (How come you spammed me a copy, but I can't share it out if you're gonna go all Copyright on my a$$?)

So this time I got Arabic (!?) music spam! And ... it's listenable! My copy was an mp3, but of course YouTube has everything, so here it is!

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=PeMdfVLmwPI

Reza Shiri & Mehdi Khazaei - Khaab