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Recent Posts

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4601
Living Room / Re: Read Your Brain Waves
« Last post by 40hz on November 09, 2012, 06:33 AM »
from the collection: The 40hz Big Book of Seriously Silly Poems for Seriously Crabby People :P

;D Well done! And laughter is a great way to deal with otherwise angering topics.  :Thmbsup:

Agree.

It all comes down to an appreciation and cultivation of "cosmic humor." We all sometimes suspect that a good portion of human existence is nothing but a bad joke the universe is playing at our expense. And you can either scream or laugh about it

I prefer to laugh. Cosmic humor is a lot easier to live with than cosmic horror. And you don't have to crash planes into things in order to deal with it.
 8)
4602
General Software Discussion / Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?
« Last post by 40hz on November 09, 2012, 06:20 AM »
It's generally not wise to rely on completely free of charge software from small or unknown developers for mission critical use.

I don't think something also being open source software has anything to do with it.

Of course Microsoft (and others) would very much like people to mentally equate the term "open source" with words such as: inferior, unreliable, infringing, hobbyist, infected, illegal, unstable, and unsupported.

And I think Joel Fannin's semi-snarky comment shows just how effectively they've colored many people's attitude towards "open source" in general.

As Renegade implies in his earlier post, for most software projects, "completely free of charge" is not a good model for long term sustainability. As many successful F/OSS developers have already realized. Not all open source software is made available free of charge. The FSF actively encourages F/OSS developers to charge money for their work. FSF has repeatedly stated that a price tag is not incompatible with the GPL.

Open Source is a product development methodology and philosophy - not a business model.
 :)
4603
Windows 7 won't become a rarity overnight, and Microsoft will surely fix windows 8 in SP1, just as it did with Vista every other version of Windows.

FTFY  8)

I've not known a version of Windows to be solid the first iteration yet.  It's just with some iterations, people forget it more than others.  ;D

+1 w/wraith - Three has always been the 'magic' number for Microsoft if their past history is anything to go by. Either Version 3 or Service Pack 3 - whichever came last.  :-\
4604
Living Room / Re: Read Your Brain Waves
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 11:13 PM »
So?  Present us with a limerick?

@barney - We aims to please. :)

Ahem.....


Empty-Your-Head-graphic.jpg

There was a young man from St. Paul
Who when scanned by police at the mall,
Said that: I'm not ashamed
That these cops read my brain,
I'm just glad that they found one at all!


from the collection: The 40hz Big Book of Seriously Silly Poems for Seriously Crabby People :P
4605
Living Room / Re: Read Your Brain Waves
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 09:43 PM »
Most Americans should be safe.

Some people's minds are like an open book. A very very short book.

In the case of us, it's more like a limerick. :P
4606
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 09:25 PM »
Something a little different. A jazzy solo bass arrangement of the classic Beatles song In My Life from their groundbreaking Rubber Soul album.

I normally don't go in for things like this since they're usually more interesting to watch as displays of technical virtuosity than they are worth listening to as a pieces of music. But in this case, bassist extraordinaire Rob Smith handles it with aplomb (and some string tone to die for) in this little homemade video.

I'm still amazed at how (through some adroit tapping) he manages the entire harpsichord bridge that is the signature part of this song.

Check it out! :Thmbsup:



 :Thmbsup:
4607
@4wd- Thanks for that link! :Thmbsup:
4608
+1 w/Shades. That does sound like a firewall or related security setting somewhere is blocking the call.

It could also caused by the localhost variable in a script. XAMPP may be trying to connect to an instance of MySQL or php which is already active on the desktop machine - and that may be what is actually refusing the connection rather than something internal to XAMPP.

4609
N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 03:04 PM »
^Will give it a retry at earliest opportunity. Thanks for getting back so quickly! :)
4610
Living Room / Re: Apple's difficult products
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 01:18 PM »
                                              avatar_3073_1327010257.gif


^Best let it rest quietly. Strange unexplained phenomena are sometimes better left unexplained.  :P
4611
The setting should be in the file my.cnf where port=nnnn

You can try a direct edit rather than trying to do it through MySQL's admin panel. I don't think XAMPP will let you change the port using that.

The only problem is I don't know what ripple-down effect that's going to have on your pHp scriots and everything else that may reference that port number.
4612
Living Room / Re: Apple's difficult products
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 12:18 PM »
@Ren: Hmm...the resemblance is rather uncanny at times.... :tellme:

hellraiser-pinhead.jpg_thumb.png   jobs-mad.jpg

Coincidence? (You be the judge!)
4613
Living Room / Re: Apple's difficult products
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 09:21 AM »
I'll agree with the difficult part. An earlier incarnation of my company had an authorized Apple repair department. Disassembling and working on most Apple products felt like a cross between solving a Chinese puzzle box and disarming a tactical nuke. I was always amazed at the number of different types and sizes of screws they had holding things together. Apparently each model was designed independently of the others without regard to manufacturing engineering "best practices." I can only imagine the size of their stockroom...

I understand the take-apart (i.e. "case cracking") instructions for the Macintish SE was a modification of the instructions that went with this device:

fullsizepuzzlebox010xx.jpg

Can't really say if that's true. I was out the day one came in for "repair." Fortunately. ;D

4614
N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log
« Last post by 40hz on November 08, 2012, 08:47 AM »
Looks very nice. It doesn't seem to want to accept input in the actual hours field. I'll enter a number, but it always reverts back to 0. I've tried hitting enter and tabbing out of the field but neither seems to work. Editing start and stop times also seems to be a problem. I doubleclick as directed but nothing happens. Probably just something I don't understand how to do.

I'm using Firefox 16.0.2
4615
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 08:44 PM »
Here's a short excerpt from Cowboy Bebop:The Movie  This is the opening, part of a song by Yoko Kanno called Ask DNA.



Gummed up, brain dead and can't decide
you can't pray enough, you can't hide
You can be cool or you can cry
Do it wrong
Not it all
Or do it right

No one owes you, no one's to blame
Save for bad genes or DNA
Ask your conscience the why and how
Do it then
Do it when
But, do it now


Actually, all the music in the Cowboy Bebop anime series and movie is worth a listen. A quick search on YouTube will spot you dozens. :Thmbsup:
4616
Though the "tenor of the news" counts for a lot too.

Glad it still does somewhere. :(
4617
Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 06:11 PM »
Naw, something is wrong there. We're missing the giant piece of this Combo Play.

Maybe Bollywood thinks they found their entree to the western movie market?

$400 million? That's chump change, baby!  :P
4618
Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 03:32 PM »
^Yup. But under the so-called "names deal" as relates to tax evasion, it doesn't take anywhere near as much as it used to.

Don't forget the neat little trick under federal law and the IRS code that makes all income derived from illegal activities taxable. And since crime related proceeds and transfers are seldom reported, almost any criminal act also entails some form of tax violation if money or property was involved.

And with some of the new homeland security legislation, who even knows what's illegal or not any more?

Lest we forget, they only nailed Al Capone on tax evasion. They were never able to get him on anything else. But it was still enough to effectively put him away for life when they were finished with him.

"The Dark Force is strong in the US Tax Code," says Yoda. "Fear it"  ;D
4619
Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 03:09 PM »
Or is that haven less of a haven these days?

Last I heard it was much less a haven than it used to be.

From what I've seen, the fabled Swiss neutrality only applies insofar as the Swiss can stay out of something. When their own national interests become involved, they are anything but neutral. There are also some treaties that have recently gone into effect which impact Swiss banking operations and policies.

Switzerland may be an independent nation politically. But it does a great deal of business with the US and EU. And much like the US with China, Switzerland is learning to bow to necessity and seek compromise whether it wants to or not.

About the only major financial institution that still is able to maintain virtual absolute secrecy while retaining an aura of legitimacy is the Istituto per le Opere di Religione or " Vatican Bank." And even they are having their share of scandals and problems lately.

4620
I'll leave this one to my betters to see if this law is a Good Thing or not.

Most times it's less an issue of the law as written - and more a matter of how it's interpreted (and abused) in practice.

In Canada's case, I think only time and future judicial decisions will show whether it was a good thing or not.
4621
Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 02:49 PM »
Yeah. I'd like to follow the money myself. Although there are enough self-styled mavericks (Shuttleworth, Sir Richard Branson, Turner, et al.) backing various social agendas who do have the financial resources and connections to either pull it off - or put a consortium together.

The only problem is it will paint a big red bullseye on the forehead of any major backer dumb enough to go public about funding it. Be interesting to see where the money would be kept too. It would be pretty easy to seize it under a variety of pretenses if it were banked in any of the usual "legit" places.

"Curioser and curioser," said Alice.
4622
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 02:37 PM »
@Martin - some really good stuff there. The Goal is a must read business text IMO. I've been an Elli Goldratt admirer since that book first came out. Pair it with some of Deming's books on management, and a copy of Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers, and you have an MBA that fits on a bookshelf. :Thmbsup:
4623
No email yet  :(

From some of the comments being posted over at Steam it sounds like they've already closed the beta group to new testers.
4624
General Software Discussion / Re: CSS File Content "Vanishes" on Ubuntu Machine
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 12:15 PM »
In my defense, I've had a lot going on the past few months,

Understood. No shame in that.

But this left me puzzled so I got to thinking...

I think with Firebug it didn't actually load anything which is why it displayed a blank from within the calling page. You asked for a non-existent (under Linux naming convention rules) element and it displayed what it found. In this case nothing - as in null. Which isn't quite the same thing as a blank page - which is technically something. Maybe it creates an empty file on the fly if it can't locate the one being requested?

A "stylesheet not found" error message would have been a lot more helpful, but whatcha gonna do?

Stuff like that happens to me all the time. I can successfully troubleshoot the most bizarre Windows server problem over breakfast. But then I'll make the dumbest typo imaginable for a common command in a two line script I've written before lunchtime. Or fix something really complex, run a test, catalog the fix, archive a copy, pop it on a USB key, invoke it on the live machine as a final test and verify it works there  - and then forget to write the changed file to disk on the machine it's supposed to run on. After the script's termination, or following the next reboot, the old script loads and the problem I just "fixed" is back. And I'm sitting there like a dork thinking  "Swell! What else just broke?"

Happens to all of us.  :-[

Try not to think about it too much. :)

Hope you're feeling better! :Thmbsup:
4625
Living Room / Re: Kim Dotcom 400 Million Dollar Plan for NZ Free Internet!
« Last post by 40hz on November 07, 2012, 10:31 AM »
^Fun idea that does a lot to really put the whole issue into sharp focus and clearly expose what is really behind the current agenda.

Too bad. Because what he's proposing is soooo not gonna happen.

There's no national government that will let him do that. None. Zip. Nada. And his network has to be physically located somewhere.

Hmm...maybe it's time to get really serious about opening portals to alternate dimensions?

In the immortal words of the poet E.E.Cummings:

          listen: there's a hell
          of a good universe next door; let's go


Works for me. I'm in! :Thmbsup: ;D
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