Recent Posts

4976

Post New Requests Here / Re: REQ: HTPC Util - Move tv shows older than 24 hours to external HD

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2014, 09:46 PM »

The key to understanding regex is realizing they are 20% knowledge, 70% experience (including, but not limited to your own), and 10% voodoo - except when they are 100% impossible. Unfortunately determining which formula applies is, in many cases, pure guess work.

-Vurbal (February 23, 2014, 01:14 PM)

I currently work on the ratios of: 60% Search, 40% Voodoo = 100% WTF 

-4wd (February 23, 2014, 05:49 PM)

I had 99 problems... then I gave users access to the regex functionality, and now I have 127 problems.

... that's a true story.

4977

Living Room / Re: ASUS routers hacked

« Last post by wraith808 on February 20, 2014, 12:01 AM »

Someone posted a list of working FTPs on pastebin- if you have an asus router, you want to check to see if your IP is present.

UPDATE: Deleted the list- not sure if it's best to have a direct link.  Instead, go to pastebin.com and search for your IP.  If it's present in one of those lists, it should come up (just tested this).

4978

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« Last post by wraith808 on February 18, 2014, 04:09 PM »

http://codetojoy.blo...rsus-crocodiles.html

Specifically: The passions are so high, because the stakes are so small.

4979

Living Room / Re: What Google Plus is all about

« Last post by wraith808 on February 18, 2014, 12:59 PM »

Google [replace with Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, or your preferred corporate villain/hero] is not your enemy. They are also not your friend. "They" are, technically speaking, not even a they but rather an it, and it is a corporation.

You forget that at your own peril.

-Vurbal (February 18, 2014, 01:57 AM)

+1

-Jibz (February 18, 2014, 02:23 AM)

+1000

4980

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 18, 2014, 08:24 AM »

That's not exactly fair.  You're speaking to the feelings of people on a scale that we can't even know.

-wraith808 (February 17, 2014, 08:24 PM)

Not sure I understand - its not a question of being fair it is what my customers tell me on a daily basis. How are the feelings of the average user in a business "on a scale that we can't even know"?

-Carol Haynes (February 18, 2014, 05:07 AM)

Look at where you said that.  If you'd said your customers.  Or the people that I'm involved with.  But you didn't.

[...] since Windows 8 was released I have met precisely 1 customer who says they actually like the new interface - everyone else the first thing they say to me is 'how can I get rid of this'.

-Carol Haynes (February 17, 2014, 12:34 PM)

in fairness, [I presume] you're dealing with people who are looking for help, i.e. you're [probably] not dealing with people who are coping well with the change (they are out there - look at Josh/Allen/Innuendo/Josh's wife/wraith's son/etc./etc.).

Mind you - even after saying that - I reckon I'd fit well into your customer base

-tomos (February 17, 2014, 03:48 PM)

To be fair even the ones coping quite well with using it want rid because it just annoys them all the time. If your main use of a computer is Word, Excel and Outlook what exactly is the point of the not-Metro interface.

-Carol Haynes (February 17, 2014, 04:06 PM)

You're talking about the ones coping quite well, after Tomos talked about specific people quoted on the board.  Implying that the people on the board who are coping quite well want to get rid of it.  As I said, my son hates to go back to windows 7.  So, I can say for sure that the one case that I know of and have knowledge of personally doesn't want to get rid of the interface.  And he's not the only one I know that has windows 8- it's just not come up.

4981

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 17, 2014, 08:24 PM »

To be fair even the ones coping quite well with using it want rid because it just annoys them all the time. If your main use of a computer is Word, Excel and Outlook what exactly is the point of the not-Metro interface.

-Carol Haynes (February 17, 2014, 04:06 PM)

That's not exactly fair.  You're speaking to the feelings of people on a scale that we can't even know.  My son quite likes it, and when he has to go back to his Windows 7, he doesn't want to.  Just being able to search for anything through the charms appeals to him.

On the other hand, I had a Windows 8 Pro tablet.  I really wanted to like it... but after being used to the iOS interface on my other tablet, and some strangeness b/c of the fact that there was a whole OS underneath that wasn't aware of anything other than portrait, I sold it.

It's really a matter of individual opinion.  They just didn't do enough to sway, and more attempted to force.  Truthfully, I think if they had an option to us a classic start menu in order to ease people into it and give people a choice, it would turn out to be pretty much a non-issue.  And having the option might have meant that people would have eventually had not-metro grow on them.  Of course, trying to make WinRT on top of it is the reason that they didn't do that.  Some key decisions were just stupid, IMO.  And I think that's their largest pain point.

4982

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 17, 2014, 10:56 AM »

I...My wife and I must stand alone as two people who thoroughly enjoys Windows 8.1...

-Josh (February 17, 2014, 10:36 AM)

My son loves it.  He has W7 on his school computer, and w8 on his laptop... he's never on his school computer anymore and gets around it it very adroitly with no help from me, I might add.  I think it's a matter of what you're used to.  And MS tried to force it on people- and some just didn't want to go.  They could have avoided the whole debacle by having an option to boot to the desktop, and use the classic start menu.  They've done it before... when they introduced the wider start menu we have now, you could change it to classic.

4983

DC Gamer Club / Re: My Initial Impressions of The Elder Scrolls Online

« Last post by wraith808 on February 16, 2014, 05:53 PM »

As you found out... yes they did, or I wouldn't have posted that.  Had it in my back pocket for a while waiting on the NDA to drop.  And they do take it seriously... had a friend that had his son decide to try out his beta... and he livestreamed it on youtube.  My friend found out later when the next beta came around and tried to get in and didn't know what his son had done.

4984

DC Gamer Club / My Initial Impressions of The Elder Scrolls Online

« Last post by wraith808 on February 16, 2014, 12:53 PM »

Full impressions on my site, but summary and conclusions:

As of yet, I’ve only been able to get to level 9, so no PvP for me.  There’s also things that if I were paying, I’d be annoyed by.  But I do know that I’ve pre-ordered the game, based purely on my beta experiences, as I hadn’t really had a plan to be in day one before I played.  After each beta experience, it left me thirsting for more.  And I was really interested in seeing where I could take the character.

4985

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 16, 2014, 11:17 AM »

I just had a lengthy email debate about this very article. I won't re-post my entire reply as it was very long, but Windows 8 was not a disaster. It presented a different way of doing things that people who had been used to doing things a certain way for nearly 30 years had trouble adjusting to the new way. People complained that Microsoft moved too far away from a work-flow that was suited to a desktop and Microsoft listened. The release of Windows 8.1 came out which addressed a lot of these complaints and most of the criticisms have melted away.

Come next month, Microsoft is going to be releasing Windows 8.1 Update 1 which offers even more goodies for desktop users (I'm running the leaked version right now & it's pretty nice).

Why do people take this Thurrott fellow seriously? Why is it that when a new Microsoft operating system is about to be released, he has nothing bad to say about it? Well, that's because any criticism would hurt his book sales, that's why. However, tech book sales are not like normal books. They wane over time as the market is saturated and people start looking towards the next version of the program or operating system. This is when tech writers have to drum up business if they want cash to keep flowing into their pockets. Best way to do that is to get traffic to your site to surge so you can get some of that ad revenue.

Hmm...what would cause a spike in traffic? Another article on how good Windows is? Or perhaps doing a 180 and try to incite some rage from the user base? Then these users will email their friends and post in forums to get more people over to the site to view ads. I wouldn't care, but it irritates me that people fall for this every single time. Yes, he's done the exact same thing with previous versions of Windows. About a year after the OS has released and sales are down, he tries to spark interest in his site again by raging against the Windows OS du jour.

-Innuendo (February 16, 2014, 10:50 AM)

This.  The real place that windows 8 was a disaster?  Marketing and forcing things on people.  The same way that Vista was a disaster.  The OS in and of itself isn't that much different from windows 7- it's a few key decisions that they made for people (based on what focus groups, I'll always wonder) and a desire to push into tablets.  That interface isn't even really good for tablets, truth be told.  But that's not the sum total of the OS.

I'm very skeptical of someone when they put this in what amounts to an opinion piece:

This is not open to debate, is not part of some cute imaginary world where everyone's opinion is equally valid or whatever. Windows 8 is a disaster. Period.

What does that mean?  I don't want to address anyone that doesn't have the same opinion about this point.  This has now become a soapbox, and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

4986

Living Room / Re: Security breach at Kickstarter

« Last post by wraith808 on February 16, 2014, 11:12 AM »

The usernames and emails aren't really going to be all that useful in most identity scams.  Perhaps phishing, but then again, with that, you have to be complicit once again.  The other things that you need are the big ones that aren't vastly public knowledge are the ones that you need to perpetrate such things.

4987

Living Room / Re: Security breach at Kickstarter

« Last post by wraith808 on February 15, 2014, 11:02 PM »

Not really.  Yes, name and address are valuable information for scammers, but only in combination with other things- and there are easier ways to get those than breaching a website.

4988

General Software Discussion / Re: CMS lite with fine RTF editor

« Last post by wraith808 on February 14, 2014, 06:04 PM »

I know that you said RTF, which implies WYSIWYG.  But if you don't mind writing in Markdown (more straightforward even than using an editor, IMO), Jekyll might work for you.  Its free to host on github also.  There are concessions to be made in your requirements, but I think it pretty much meets a lot of what you've said you're looking for.

4989

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by wraith808 on February 13, 2014, 08:08 PM »

ah yes, getting back to the old-school approach: maybe the chemicals will fix the problem?

-tomos (February 13, 2014, 03:51 PM)

Only if the room is dark.  Otherwise, there's too much exposure.

4990

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by wraith808 on February 13, 2014, 01:25 PM »

I shutter to think what may happen next. 

-MilesAhead (February 13, 2014, 01:17 PM)

Chris will come along and flash us.

4991

General Software Discussion / Re: It's not a valid windows 32bit application

« Last post by wraith808 on February 12, 2014, 09:14 PM »

Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one.

4992

Living Room / Re: Stop NSA Spying!

« Last post by wraith808 on February 12, 2014, 12:16 PM »

^ Exactly. +1000!

4993

Living Room / Re: Stop NSA Spying!

« Last post by wraith808 on February 12, 2014, 10:54 AM »

That act (viewed at https://www.leahy.se...introduced-10-29-131) looks like a hack job.  The verbiage is too convoluted and twisted for me to follow without a lot of work, and then you have to re-interpret the changed verbiage after the fact.

An example:

14 SEC. 303. PROHIBITION ON REVERSE TARGETING.
15 Section 702(b)(1)(B) of the Foreign Intelligence Sur-
16 veillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1881a), as redesignated
17 by section 301(1) of this Act, is amended by striking ‘‘the
18 purpose’’ and inserting ‘‘a significant purpose’’.

And, the only way to stop NSA spying (and spying in general) is to get rid of the organizations.  Even then, they will crop up again in a different form.  Not to say that fighting it is an unworthy cause.  But just not to do it with the unrealistic expectations that you will 'stop NSA spying'.

4994

Living Room / Re: Project Christine - Modular PC from Razer

« Last post by wraith808 on February 11, 2014, 10:00 AM »

Well, no more vendor lock-in than laptops and such... right?

4995

Living Room / Re: Project Christine - Modular PC from Razer

« Last post by wraith808 on February 11, 2014, 08:03 AM »

uhh... PC as we know it is already a modular architecture.

-eleman (February 11, 2014, 02:21 AM)

Not truly.  You have to go through a whole lot with *any* current pc if you want to change everything.  This one doesn't seem like it's that difficult or involved to change anything.  Like the hard drive bays that allow hot swaps and such.

Choose any module on-the-fly in any combination, whether it’s the CPU, memory, graphics card, storage or power supply module, and simply plug it in. The PCI-Express architecture of Project Christine automatically syncs the components.

There's not a box out there right now that allows this.  Pretty impressive if it works.  And even more impressive if its the same price as other high-end gaming rigs (which I doubt).

4996

Living Room / Project Christine - Modular PC from Razer

« Last post by wraith808 on February 10, 2014, 11:15 PM »

http://www.razerzone.com/christine

It's an interesting idea- also wonder how it's going to affect hardware locked software activations?

4997

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

« Last post by wraith808 on February 09, 2014, 09:26 PM »

Best Youtube Video Ever!

4998

General Software Discussion / Re: hubiC, DropBox like service with interesting pricing

« Last post by wraith808 on February 07, 2014, 10:51 PM »

Oh, I get that there was somewhere else... but it was strange that the one linked to (and that you agree to) if you sign up is the wrong one.

4999

General Software Discussion / Re: hubiC, DropBox like service with interesting pricing

« Last post by wraith808 on February 07, 2014, 09:55 PM »

That's funny... b/c I got that off of their sign up page... 

5000

General Software Discussion / Re: hubiC, DropBox like service with interesting pricing

« Last post by wraith808 on February 07, 2014, 10:45 AM »

Don't think so, but you can save the PDF and then upload it to Google Translate.

-Jibz (February 07, 2014, 09:46 AM)

Some things, I don't trust with translations.  Legal documents are *definitely* one of those things.