Recent Posts

4351

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

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 07:16 AM »

Ok... I'm going to put this in a spoiler because it is of a political nature... But man... This has GOT to be one of the FUNNIEST things I've ever seen in my life~! Really. Be forewarned... This is fall-off-your-chair-pissing-your-pants hilarious~!

Seriously... I'll be pissing myself laughing over this for YEARS!

So funny that you may injure yourself!

https://petitions.wh...-government/1wrvtngl

LOUISIANA PETITION TO SECEDE FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

4352

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

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 06:56 AM »

The most awesomest clock face ever.

4353

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

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 02:32 AM »

This is just hilarious - from The Onion!

4354

Living Room / Interesting Internet Defamation Lawsuit - Statute of Limitations Reset Online?

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 02:08 AM »

This is really interesting... A lawsuit against a site that was taken offline in 2009 that had defamatory material on it... The statute of limitations is 2 years. Game over? Not quite...

http://www.thestar.c...vist-for-2009-report

The statute of limitations for defamation is two years, but the groups argue that period has not expired because the report was published online and continues to be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

“The limitation period is accordingly renewed every day that the report remains online,” says the Notice of Civil Claim filed with the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Oct. 25, which alternatively argues that the period is renewed every time someone finds and reads the report.

Don Crane, the lawyer representing Arthur, disagrees and plans to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds the limitation period has passed.

So... 

Does online accessibility reset the statute of limitations for defamation?

4355

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 01:27 AM »

Just for reference, there's another post over here (DC) about the same basic deal in the commercial/proprietary world.

4356

General Software Discussion / Re: Aviary advanced suite now officially offline

« Last post by Renegade on November 11, 2012, 01:26 AM »

This reminds me about this thread. Same basic deal, just about open source and not commercial/proprietary.

4357

Living Room / Re: Popular Wrench Fights a Chinese Rival

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 09:32 PM »

Just saw a Sears commercial on TV for the knockoff wrench

-Krishean (November 10, 2012, 09:28 PM)

Shameless. 

4358

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 08:45 PM »

Not so sure if these are "friends"...

http://www.huffingto...llage_n_2089483.html

Herd Of Drunken Elephants Ransack Indian Village After Drinking Purloined Liquor

A pack of boozing elephants turned a small Indian village upside down Sunday as they trampled crops and homes in search of a strong local alcoholic beverage called Mahua.

About 50 elephants had been drawn out of the jungle by the smell of the drink, according to the Times of India, and their first stop was a shop that sold the beverage. The elephants made quick work of the shop's supply --18 containers of the drink, made from the nectar-rich flowers of the mahua tree.

But it is kind of funny!

4359

Living Room / Re: DHS Monitoring For Dissent

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 08:22 PM »

From the first link:

Collection of Information
Requirement: Under this initiative OPS cannot: (1) actively seek PII; (2) post any information on
social media sites; (3) actively seek to connect with individual social media users, whether
internal or external to DHS; (4) accept invitations to connect from individual social media users
whether internal or external to DHS; or (5) interact with individuals on social media sites.

OPS/NOC is permitted to collect PII for the seven specific categories of individuals listed in
Table 1 when doing so lends credibility to a MMC Report or facilitates coordination with
interagency or international partners. PII on these individuals may include full name, affiliation,
position or title, and publicly-available user ID. PII inadvertently or incidentally collected
outside the scope of this discrete set of categories of individuals must be redacted immediately
before further use and sharing.

Translation...

Paragraph 1: We're not allowed to do bad things...

Paragraph 2: Unless we feel like it.

"It's not stealing/murder/violence when *WE* do it..."

Yeah. Right.

And to think that someone actually put in a lot of effort to come up with that drivel. And they probably really believe it too.

One of the people covered in "Table 1":

U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make
public statements or provide public updates;

I think that just about covers everyone.

4360

Living Room / Re: Popular Wrench Fights a Chinese Rival

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 07:41 PM »

I feel sorry for that guy.

Seems like the reality is that large companies can do whatever they want against individuals because regular people often don't have the resources to get justice. Yet another reason to limit the "rights" of companies/legal entities.

4361

Living Room / Re: Don't You Want to be "Safe"?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 10:06 AM »

I wonder exactly how hard it really is to generate a 'small' EMP..

-Stoic Joker (October 31, 2012, 07:45 PM)

Not hard at all. There's people with capacitive discharge machines used for coin crushing that work by generating local EMPs of sufficient intensity to shrink metallic objects.

-SeraphimLabs (November 10, 2012, 10:03 AM)

Got a URL?

4362

General Software Discussion / Re: Accessing the world from China?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 10:05 AM »

If you can read Chinese, probably check out Chinese blogs for the answer. I'm sure they've already solved that problem 100x over.

Or TOR? Simple solution there.

As for router solutions - I have no idea. I'm sure someone here knows more than me about that.

4363

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 07:52 AM »

The most popular daily paper in Germany is the "BILD", some rainbow press which is full of lies, except the sports part.
Don't mix up popularity and quality.

-Tuxman (November 10, 2012, 06:49 AM)

Well, when it comes to mainstream media, I think the purpose *IS* to lie. Does anyone actually believe anything on CNN anymore? They've been outted for being PAID to air "stories" as "news" - yes it is as bad or worse than it sounds. So, BILD is probably doing a pretty "good/quality" job.

But yeah - I take you point that popularity and quality aren't the same. Windows is the most popular OS after all. (It's a lot better now than it used to be.)

4364

Living Room / Re: Apple Apologise to Samsung - yeah right!

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 07:29 AM »

Oh, i didn't mean it that way, or that precedent was even a good principle.  I just meant that without precedent (and without being *called* on the precedent, which is stupid) one judge won't overturn another, for fear that they will be on the other side- it's a form of 'professional courtesy'.  And I had a copy of the law in court, and the judge outright told me that if I wanted to bring up the letter of the law, that I should have gotten a lawyer.  And without one, the law in his court was what he said it was.  (And of course, if I had the money for a lawyer, I wouldn't have been in court, so there's that too).

-wraith808 (November 09, 2012, 10:07 PM)

Ah. Got it.

It's amazing just how much contempt for the law you see in the system itself. "...the law in his court was what he said it was." Perfect example. However, sadly, not unique.

I'm dying to bring up a fantastic example of a "law" that is regularly used to punish the snot out of people, but... here's the great part... there is no law. Bah. I can't resist.

This WILL piss some people off - so, you're forewarned - more inconvenient facts

Income tax in the US. There is no requirement to pay.

If you think there is, then just cash in on the $50,000 reward for anyone who can cite the law. (Or something like that - I forget exactly how much the reward is.)

A fun way to find out more is here:

Aaron Russo goes through the history very well.

4365

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 06:59 AM »

A similar approach was used when developing their OpenSSH companion project. OpenSSH is the single most secure implementation of the SSH protocol currently available. It is also the single most deployed version last I heard.

-40hz (November 10, 2012, 06:50 AM)

Boom! Nailed it! OpenSSH is THE go-to for that. Any time you look into the topic... you ALWAYS end up with OpenSSH pretty much no matter what. Pretty much every time I ever need to do some kind of encryption, even if I'm using a third party component, I end up using OpenSSH.

For OpenBSD - dunno - I don't know it, but I'll take your word for it. I have no experience with it.

4366

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 06:47 AM »

I would not say Apache is a good example of quality. The reason why it became so popular is that it has unique features like .htaccess support and MOD_REWRITE.

-Tuxman (November 10, 2012, 06:40 AM)

Well, as the most popular web server, they're probably doing something right, and probably good enough to run most web sites. (I primarily use IIS.)

4367

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 06:39 AM »

Projects which change this dynamic (either having QA provided by a company as a donation, roping in users en-masse for QA, or changing the dynamics and status balance with "marathons" or better recognition for QA) end up beating commercial software.

-iphigenie (November 10, 2012, 01:35 AM)

Are there any?

-Tuxman (November 10, 2012, 06:02 AM)

Does Apache count?

4368

Developer's Corner / Re: Funny Comments in Your Code?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 05:53 AM »

Related comments from the Microsoft Windows 2000 source code....apparently, "We are morons"

Source

And no one had better change those tabs to spaces!!!!

-Josh (November 10, 2012, 05:39 AM)

That was still funny! If you can't swear in comments, what point is there in life?

4369

Developer's Corner / Re: Funny Comments in Your Code?

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 05:20 AM »

I was actually digging through some of the first versions of my old executable packer the other day, and found some rather obscene comments here and there . It seemed like I had a thing with putting a comment in with a strange word in it to be able to use the search function to get back there, I guess my editor back then didn't have bookmarks or anything.

It was also interesting to see just how horrible the code actually was -- most of it was written while I was trying to learn C. It works and all, but I would hate to have to fix a bug in a mess like that .

Slightly related.

-Jibz (November 10, 2012, 04:12 AM)

I know how old code can be embarrassing.

Regarding that link - very fun! I looked around a bit, and ended up here:

http://me.veekun.com...actal-of-bad-design/

Seriously funny. And serious. And funny.

4370

Living Room / Re: Best Vodka IMHO

« Last post by Renegade on November 10, 2012, 03:20 AM »

http://www.huffingto...8.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

4371

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 09, 2012, 11:56 PM »

That's one nasty Devil~!

For the Windows ZIP utility... It's so poor and awkward to use that I wouldn't consider it worth using under any but the most dire circumstances. It just takes too long to use - it's miserable. The most usable one I've used (and I've used a LOT of them), is still ALZip - it's just all that much easier to use. But it isn't FLOSS - it's freeware.

For Paint.NET vs. Photoshop - that's why I specified for regular people. It's more than enough for *most* people. But, like you said, if you need more, then it just doesn't cut it. (I still love my Photoshop~!)

And yes - for convenience/time/money, it's often easier and faster to go for commercial software as in some spaces the FLOSS software that's available is simply too miserable to use. I'm not a command line fan... at all. If people want to prove just how "hard-core" they are, why don't they stop using human languages and just start typing in 1's and 0's. (The command line has a time and place, but those situations are becoming fewer and fewer.)

4372

Developer's Corner / Re: Funny Comments in Your Code?

« Last post by Renegade on November 09, 2012, 11:08 PM »

It was liberally laced with profanity, and just hilarious!

-Renegade (November 09, 2012, 10:28 PM)

I did this before, to earn an achievement in VS. 

-wraith808 (November 09, 2012, 10:41 PM)

I've never seen that before! Love it~!

4373

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 09, 2012, 11:02 PM »

Not saying that it couldn't... especially in the long run.  But in the short run... show me a case.

-wraith808 (November 09, 2012, 10:42 PM)

Well, for an abstract position...

David Hume's empiricism and on to rational maximization with John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism. That pretty much fits the bill for reducing costs and time investments.

For a more concrete example of preserving freedom and saving time/money in the FLOSS universe, 7-zip. It's faster & cheaper to download and use 7-zip rather than to take the time to purchase a license for a commercial compression utility. You save both time and money there.

For normal people, it is far faster and easier to use something like Paint.NET rather than Photoshop. The learning curve on Photoshop is pretty steep, whereas in Paint.NET it's much simpler and easier to use. You save money and time there. (I'm not saying that professional designers should use Paint.NET - I mean regular, normal people that do not do design and just want to draw a bit or do some simple image manipulation - those people outnumber professional designers by quite a bit.) The philosophical attraction to freedom there ends up saving time/money.

We could go on at length, but I think those examples should suffice.

4374

Developer's Corner / Funny Comments in Your Code?

« Last post by Renegade on November 09, 2012, 10:28 PM »

I was just going over some old code, and had a serious laugh. It was liberally laced with profanity, and just hilarious! (Not because of bugs or anything - just curse words used for no real reason other than perhaps to make me laugh.)

Anyone ever go back, read old comments, and laugh?

4375

General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

« Last post by Renegade on November 09, 2012, 10:10 PM »

That's a matter of time.  Usually philosophical reasons make you take a less efficient and less convenient route, i.e. cost you more time.

-wraith808 (November 09, 2012, 08:27 PM)

I think that's a point where we'll never agree. I see no reason why philosophical reasons can't make you more efficient or lead you down a more convenient route, costing you less time and money. It can go either way.