Recent Posts

4026

Living Room / Re: Hi-Tech laptop cooling modification for laptops.

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 08:23 PM »

Never brought a laptop into the desert. I don't lead that interesting a life. But I have worked with them in non-air-conditioned environments where the temperatures were well over 100 and the humidity not much less.

-40hz (February 13, 2013, 07:23 AM)

That is soooo begging for sarcastic comments on how horribly underpriviledged and hard done by you are for *having* worked in a non-AC place once upon a time. But, I'll leave the sarcasm to someone else~!

-Renegade (February 13, 2013, 07:34 AM)

Have your laugh. But I have worked in more non-conditioned places than I have the opposite in my lifetime. Put in many years in hot humid commercial kitchens and warehouses during my school years - and for a while afterwards while interviewing for my first "real" job. Did a lot of outside work in all seasons too.

And although I do (now) mostly wear the stereotypical geek polo shirt and khakis (actually black jeans) these days, I'm still not one of those corporate IT guys comfortably ensconced in an ergo-chair behind five or six 24" flat-screens with a 'hands-free' wrapped around my head.

Nope! I'm more the dude you'll see up in some 100+ degree crawlspace holding a wire probe, or hanging out with the vermin down in the waterlogged basement where the T1 'demarcs' come into the main utility core, or standing in a corner of a cold and noisy server room with a freshly unracked NetServer or Proliant in several pieces around me. Not very glamorous work I'm afraid.

So as you might surmise, doing something where I would need to lug a laptop out into some desert doesn't sound all that bad to me. As the matter of a fact, it sounds like a considerably more interesting work locale than most I usually find myself in,

Y'know, I think I might actually enjoy doing something like that every so often...



then again...



Maybe not!

4027

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast Installs Chrome

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 02:00 PM »

I see it from the US.  Instead of going to downloads, go to support->Downloads->Installation files.  It's the first link.

-wraith808 (February 14, 2013, 11:35 AM)

Yes indeed. 'Denser than usual' it is for sure today. Thx.

4028

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera to move to webkit/chromium rendering engines

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 01:58 PM »

Does it make sense to just borrow the FF Gecko codebase for the basics

-TaoPhoenix (February 14, 2013, 11:44 AM)

Makes sense as long as you plan on releasing your own engine under the terms allowed by the MPL/GPL/LGPL the various Gecko components are licensed under - which is to say under some form of F/OSS license.
 

4029

General Software Discussion / Re: 2013 Version: Browser Wars

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 01:46 PM »

From an accounting perspective, isn't this a write-off of a huge asset? I have no idea how browser company balance sheets work, but ditching your X years of work on your own browser can't just be smooth sailing.

-TaoPhoenix (February 14, 2013, 12:27 PM)

Can't speak for Opera, but tax treatment of software development cost is an unnecessarily complex topic in the USA.

IRS says the costs of developing computer software (whether or not it is patented or copyrighted) in many respects so closely resembles research and experimental expenses that are governed by Code Sec. 174 as to warrant similar accounting treatment. As a result, a taxpayer may use any of the following three methods for costs paid or incurred in developing software for a particular project, either for the taxpayer's own use, or to be held by the taxpayer for sale or lease to others (Rev Proc 2000-50, Sec. 5.01):

(1) The costs may be consistently treated as current expenses and deducted in full under rules similar to those that apply under Code Sec. 174(a).

(2) The costs may be consistently treated as capital expenses that are amortized ratably under rules similar to those provided by Code Sec. 174(b) and applicable regs, over 60 months from the date of completion of the software development.

(3) The costs may be consistently treated as capital expenses and amortized ratably under the rules in Code Sec. 167(f)(1) and applicable regs, over 36 months from the date the software is placed in service. (Rev Proc 2000-50, Sec. 5.01(2))

RIA observation: If the third option is chosen, the cost of developing computer software also is eligible for a bonus first-year depreciation allowance, if the requirements of Code Sec. 168(k) are otherwise met.

I'm guessing they ditched it because they've already absorbed the cost on their P&L, and their balance sheet is suffering because of it.

Since most users don't care what rendering engine is lurking beneath the browser they're using, Opera might have decided that if they got rid of the expense of developing Presto - and most everything else stayed the same for them - their books would look a lot better.

At any rate, the cost to integrate an existing engine into their product has got to be a less than the cost of continuing to develop their own. So I think this was a pure survival move on their part. Something had to be cut if Opera was going to continue. And it looks like they decided they could afford to cut Presto.

Be interesting to see how much of their user base notices - or even cares.

4030

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 01:05 PM »

@Carol - Wow! Good catch! I didn't even notice that until you called attention to it.

Having been previously accused (due to my remarks about Microsoft's walled garden/app store strategy with Windows Metro) I'm wondering if anybody here still thinks I'm indulging in FUD propagation when it comes to Microsoft?


"The real catch to me being right about all this is
                I'm even more screwed if I am."

4031

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 10:51 AM »

Humm, some people on Slashdot say that you can login to your office2013 (not *365!) account and de-auth for the current PC and auth for another - are they wrong?

Is there anything (intelligible) from Microsoft itself, or is all this based on people interpreting EULAs without actually trying the product? Does "non-transferable" really mean you can't move it to another PC, or that you cannot give the license to another person?

I wouldn't put it beyond MS to attempt something like this, especially considering they probably want to move people to their subscription based Office365... but the information on the licensing seems pretty muddy to me.

-f0dder (February 14, 2013, 09:22 AM)

Having waded through the licensing training for partners, I have no doubts that if Microsoft says non-transferable from original machine, they mean exactly that.

Looks like they've removed the transferability option that used to come with the retail versions. Apparently, the restriction to original machine that used to characterize only the OEM versions that shipped with a new machine now apply to all single copy purchases. Hope they lower the retail package price to the OEM price level if they're serious about this. Because transferability was the only justification for charging a higher price for the retail product.

4032

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast Installs Chrome

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 10:33 AM »

It's still on the US site too  

-Carol Haynes (February 14, 2013, 09:44 AM)

I can hit it with the link you provided, but I still don't see it from my end just vanilla navigating via web pages. Either I'm denser than usual today, or they're tracking your inbound ip location and serving accordingly. I guess I could proxy myself and check. But I'm not that curious that I'm about to spend additional time over it.  

4033

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 08:12 AM »

All in all there seems absolutely no reason to use MS Office post the 2010 version.

-Carol Haynes (February 14, 2013, 05:59 AM)

Agree. I've already done a client advisory to that effect.

I think the plan is to make a media purchase less attractive to their customers than going with a software subscription. Something that Microsoft has been attempting to accomplish for years. Now, unfortunately, it looks like they're resorting to 'steering' and stealth in order to make it happen.

I'm hoping for a widespread user revolt although that will also likely be the trigger circumstance for Microsoft to initiate its often threatened and long anticipated legal campaign against Linux and F/OSS.

It's only a matter of time anyway if Win8 continues to stagnate like it seems to be doing.
 

4034

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast Installs Chrome

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 07:16 AM »

(Consider changing "en-au" to your language-country codes.)

-Renegade (February 14, 2013, 06:21 AM)

@Ren - Cute! Nice catch.

Guess Avast finally got fed up with all the deadbeat users in the USA.

4035

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 07:11 AM »

^Watched a relative's son and daughter sit through it a while back. They're 7 and 5 respectively. Not a tear in sight. Truth is, I think they were rather bored by it.

4036

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 06:40 AM »

Stardust:
Adventure, fantasy, (riskier) jokes, nice effects, decent storyline and last but not least a strong cast. I mean, who can say no to Michelle Pfeiffer with Claire Daines as backup?

-Shades (February 14, 2013, 05:50 AM)

That was a BRILLIANT movie! I loved it! It's probably the closest thing to The Princess Bride, and very much comparable, though I couldn't say which I liked more. I've see TPB more times than I could count. (Used to stick it in while working - nearly wore out the tape.)

-Renegade (February 14, 2013, 05:56 AM)

+1. It was a great movie. Claire Daines hit the exact right note for her character. And Michelle Pfeiffer couldn't put in a bad performance if her life depended on it. She's an amazingly versatile actress. See her in White Oleander to catch a side of her acting talent most wouldn't suspect.

But if you really enjoyed Stardust, do yourself a favor and read the Neil Gaiman book (get a copy with the Charles Vess illustrations) it was based on.



Good as the movie is, the book is easily ten times better. Be forewarned however - the ending of the Stardust book is one of the most heartbreaking endings ever written in that it reminds us that all things - even those which we deem most precious - inevitably come with a price tag attached. Best avoided if you don't have a taste for bittersweet endings.


Ditto props for The Princess Bride. Also one of the best ever made. FWIW I'd put TPB over Stardust as a movie. As books go, however, I think Stardust has it slightly over The Princess Bride.
 

4037

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 06:11 AM »

To break away from the horror/sci-fi genre for a moment and enter into the realm of 'fantastic realism' (a place where I prefer to spend the bulk of my personal time) here's another two favorites of mine well worth watching: Big Fish and The Science of Sleep.

 

Everybody has probably seen or heard enough about BIg Fish already. But I'm frankly surprised that The Science of Sleep has remained as generally unknown as it has.

The Science of Sleep is IMHO one of the most brilliantly conceived little movies ever made. Especially impressive is the use of junk cardboard stop motion animation that runs throughout the movie. Just goes to show that you don't need a half billion dollars worth of CGI and special effects to produce a great picture. Just a solid story, a talented cast, and a little ingenuity.

Here's the trailer:

4038

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 05:20 AM »

@Mouser - +1 for Pontypool. Nice bit of originality in a sea of me-too zombie themed movies. About the only zombie apocalypse treatment I ever found believable and genuinely scary. Didn't even mind the absence of the lovely and outrageously athletic Milla Jovovich (as Alice) in that one.

An interesting cross-genre riff with some zombie/possession (and H.P.Lovecraftian blending of science and religion) is John Carpenter's 1987 Prince of Darkness. This one has it all: sci-fi, horror, demonic possession, some allusions to the (then radical) notion of the relationship between mathematics, information theory and DNA...



Suppose you could somehow capture the source of all evil and contain it in a reliquary kept hidden in the basement of an abandoned church. Suppose this evil was a tangible thing only temporarily imprisoned within a parallel dimension that was now beginning to replicate itself here in order break free within our own reality? That's the basic premise behind Prince of Darkness. An idea that got used quite effectively by Clive Barker when he penned his now legendary Hellraiser/Books of Blood series.

A university scientist-professor, along with his handpicked team of graduate students, is called in at the request of a priest to study something hidden and guarded by the church for centuries: a large glass container that was somehow sealed from the inside. It contains a swirling and radiant mass of...something. It used to be dormant. But as the priest points out -  something inside has started to awaken. Something that is trying to get out...



This film has it all. You even get a few appearances of none other than Alice Cooper as a possessed street derelict!



A few great quotes from the film:

(from the quantum physics lecture at the start of the film)

Let's talk about our beliefs, and what we can learn about them. We believe nature is solid, and time a constant. Matter has substance and time a direction. There is truth in flesh and the solid ground. The wind may be invisible, but it's real. Smoke, fire, water, light - they're different! Not as to stone or steel, but they're tangible. And we assume time is narrow because it is as a clock - one second is one second for everyone! Cause precedes effect - fruit rots, water flows downstream. We're born, we age, we die. The reverse NEVER happens... None of this is true! Say goodbye to classical reality, because our logic collapses on the subatomic level... into ghosts and shadows...

From Job's friends insisting that the good are rewarded and the wicked punished, to the scientists of the 1930's proving to their horror the theorem that not everything can be proved, we've sought to impose order on the universe. But we've discovered something very surprising: while order DOES exist in the universe, it is not at all what we had in mind!

A life form is growing out of pre-biotic fluids. It's not winding down into disorder, it's self-organizing. It's becoming something. What? An animal? A disease? What?

(static distorted borderline hysteric voice) This is not a dream... not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.

4039

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast Installs Chrome

« Last post by 40hz on February 14, 2013, 04:17 AM »

Direct download:

http://files.avast.c..._antivirus_setup.exe

If the link doesn't work just go to www.avast.com, click Support and then look at the Downloads section (bottom left).

-Carol Haynes (February 10, 2013, 05:03 AM)

@Carol - The direct link you furnished works fine. (And thx for sharing that. )

But I wonder how much longer it's going to remain up.

Because if you go to the Avast webpages, all the links you will find (or at least I could find) just direct you back to download,com (aka CNET) for the free version.



Looks like Avast has cut a deal with CNET.

4040

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:40 PM »

To avoid going down the rat-hole,...

-IainB (February 13, 2013, 07:25 PM)

Agree.

It's a topic that's been done to death in far too many places by now. For those who don't know whole Document Foundation/LibreOffice story - but are still interested in learning more - please feel free to search Google or head on over to Wikipedia for more.
 

4041

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:32 PM »

Here's two more if you like heist/caper movies. Both are brilliant semi-sleepers: Foolproof and The Score.

   

Plus a very updated remake of that classic heist film The Thomas Crown Affair that's easily 100 times better than the original:



After this film, Rene Russo Rules! Go gingers!!!

4042

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:22 PM »

Maybe somebody can help me out with this one. It's a 2009 American film called The Limits of Control..



I can't decide if this is an unusually clever movie - or just a send-up of Bergman's style.

(I strongly suspect it's a complete put on to see how many film buffs fall for it - but maybe I'm missing something?)

Anybody else out there manage to sit all the way through it like I did?

4043

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:12 PM »

I see there are a lot of SF lovers, yet no one mentioned two works that are among the best (if not the best):

Solaris

-Attronarch (February 13, 2013, 07:39 AM)

Glad you preferred the original Russian film to the 2002 Hollywood remake. Thought the way they handled  Kris Kelvin's wife (Hari/Rheya) was better in the Sov version too.

4044

Living Room / Re: proofreading on pc

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:02 PM »

@kalos - If you had handwriting input that magically became text (like Graffite on a PalmPilot used to) and it was wedded to a text processor (like it was on the Palm) you'd be home free.

But they don't sell Palm devices any more. And AFAIK - nobody else has offered Graffiti since the demise of the Palm.

So again, I think you're stuck. What you are looking for does not currently exist. Sorry.

4045

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 06:44 PM »

Libre and Open share the same original roots.

But with version 3.5, major differences in the codebase came into play. As was reported earlier in The Register speaking to one of TDF's founders:

“We inherited a 15 years old code base, where features were not implemented and bugs were not solved in order to avoid creating problems, and this - with time - was the origin of a large technical debt,” says Caolán McNamara, a senior Red Hat developer who is one of TDF's founders and directors.

“We had two options: a conservative strategy, which would immediately please all users, leaving the code basically unchanged, and our more aggressive feature development and code renovation path, which has created some stability problems in the short term but is rapidly leading to a completely new and substantially improved free office suite: LibreOffice 3.5, the best free office suite ever.”

Libre has since had major code rewrites and is now effectively its own thing. It's also not a company. It's run by the non-profit Document Foundation. It's a true F/OSS project licensed under the LGPLv3.

In many respects, The Document Foundation and LibreOffice shouldn't exist. As Carol mentions above, Libre reluctantly began its life as a fork of OpenOffice in response to Oracle attempting to assert ownership control over Sun's OpenOffice software following their acquisition of Sun.

LibreOffice is the future. OpenOffice will probably disappear within the next five or so years.

4046

General Software Discussion / Re: 2013 Version: Browser Wars

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 06:29 PM »

[ things like Netflix saying "We don't support anything other than Firefox & Chrome & IE"

-Stephen66515 (February 13, 2013, 03:17 PM)

With Netflix, it's really more them saying we don't allow individuals to use PCs running Linux.

You are required to be running a PC with Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX to view Netflix streaming movies regardless of which browser you want to use.

Which is amusing since Netflix does work on devices running Android, to say nothing of very popular Roku box.

4047

General Software Discussion / Re: 2013 Version: Browser Wars

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 06:17 PM »

Little competitive gain and a lot of cost for Opera in maintaining Presto,

-Dormouse (February 13, 2013, 04:41 PM)

Without Presto, Opera can't be considered a competitor to anything any more.

If they adopt Chrome's rendering engine they become just one more "me-too" repackager trying to sell yet another pretty interface.

4048

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 06:11 PM »

Increasingly OpenOffice is looking better by comparison,

-IainB (February 13, 2013, 05:53 PM)

You'd be much better off with LibreOffice - and wise to avoid OpenOffice.

They've just released Version 4 btw.

 

4049

Living Room / Re: Grab 50GB of Box Online Storage Free for Life (2013-02-12)

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:51 AM »

Got it, and it can be synced on Linux by mounting via WebDAV:
http://gstoyanov.com...c-box-account-linux/

Done.  

-Edvard (February 12, 2013, 10:19 PM)

@E - nice find!

-----------------------

If you don't want to autosync but just want to use your Box account as a network mounted share, this will show you how to set Box up in any Linux based file manager that has a "Connect to Server" option.

It also  includes instructions to set it up to automount on boot. But I think that's more trouble than it's worth if you're not also doing automatic syncing or something similar. I just manually link and login as needed since I generally don't like to automount anything that resides on a server I don't own.

4050

Living Room / Re: Hi-Tech laptop cooling modification for laptops.

« Last post by 40hz on February 13, 2013, 07:23 AM »

Never brought a laptop into the desert. I don't lead that interesting a life. But I have worked with them in non-air-conditioned environments where the temperatures were well over 100 and the humidity not much less.

A few times, when I was in places where I really needed to worry about heat, I've used those flat hot/cold-gel sheets (such as are employed to treat  sports injuries) with good success. Toss one in a freezer for a few hours, drop it in its sheath, and you're set to go. I have an 8x16 very similar to the one pictured below that works really well for laptops. (Works pretty well on me too!)