Recent Posts

5401

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« Last post by wraith808 on October 13, 2013, 11:43 AM »

"Who thought it was a good idea to assign DebtCeiling as a global variable? Can we deprecate?"

5402

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

« Last post by wraith808 on October 13, 2013, 09:41 AM »

5403

Living Room / Re: Google to Sell User Profiles, Photos in Ads

« Last post by wraith808 on October 13, 2013, 09:38 AM »

^ That's the same link above

5404

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

« Last post by wraith808 on October 12, 2013, 11:53 PM »

Studio C's Shoulder Angel (and a Shoulder Devil):

-Deozaan (October 12, 2013, 01:52 AM)

Hilarious!  Thanks for that!

5405

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Clarify screen recorder on Bits du Jour today, 2013-10-12

« Last post by wraith808 on October 12, 2013, 04:10 PM »

I have their prior software before it was bought (screensteps), and that was a great piece of software.  Never tried this before now... but I'm thinking about it.

5406

Living Room / Re: Google to Sell User Profiles, Photos in Ads

« Last post by wraith808 on October 12, 2013, 03:50 PM »

Users are opted in to Google's new scheme by default. In the past, Google gave itself permission to use users’ +1s alongside advertisements unless the user specifically opted out. The new “shared endorsements” are an extension of that setting, wherein Google gives itself permission to take even more of a user’s content and place it alongside ads.

Had you opted out of that already?

5407

Living Room / Re: Google to Sell User Profiles, Photos in Ads

« Last post by wraith808 on October 12, 2013, 11:38 AM »

You can opt out.. though there's no real 'link' to the opt-out page.

Article
http://arstechnica.c...-content-in-its-ads/

Opt-out
https://plus.google....ettings/endorsements

5408

Living Room / Re: Going cold turkey on the unholy trinity

« Last post by wraith808 on October 11, 2013, 10:56 AM »

Adobe slimmed down the PDF reader stuff a while ago in response to the 3rd party pdf readers, but it has seemed to bloat up as of late   I might have to get back on the alternate PDF bandwagon at some point.  My problem is that my job now uses a plug-in to do some functionality, so I have to keep it available for testing/development. 

5409

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

« Last post by wraith808 on October 10, 2013, 12:06 PM »

Three guys walk into a bar, an FBI agent, a CIA agent, and an NSA analyst. They get their drinks and the FBI guy says, "So, how's that Budget Accountability Review treating you?"

The NSA guy says "I can't talk about it."

The CIA guy says "I'd have to kill you."

With a chuckle, the FBI agent goes to the bathroom, at which point the NSA analyst turns to the CIA agent and says "Okay, I have to ask - everyone keeps talking about a 'budget' and I have NO IDEA what that is."

The CIA guy replies, "I'll tell you all about it if you can explain what 'accountability' means."

5410

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 09, 2013, 02:23 PM »

This seems to ignore the primary function of MC and Visa... to bankroll those people who like to live outside of their means.   Bitcoins does nothing for that use.

5411

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person bothered by the differences in Free?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 10:55 PM »

+1000

5412

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person bothered by the differences in Free?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 04:12 PM »

Many font designers handle this in a very clever way. If you go to their sites for a freebie, you often discover you need to register first to download. All their no-charge fonts go in their shopping cart just like everything else they offer does. An invoice gets generated with a total of $0 which gets emailed to the 'buyer' along with the download link plus a copy of the license. Brilliant!

-40hz (October 08, 2013, 03:10 PM)

Actually, now that you point this out, this is exactly what I told my wife to do, but didn't take my own advice.  She's a photographer, and to build up her name/portfolio, she regularly does stuff for free (especially for the kids in the neighborhood/friends of my kids).  I told her to generate invoices and put down the price of her services discounted to zero rather than just doing it for free, so that they and others could see the value that they were getting.  Makes a lot of sense, even if it does involve more work.

5413

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 04:02 PM »

I would only ask how much difference there is between the NSA/government and parents when it comes to actually caring. I somehow doubt that the former really cares about people, whereas the latter do care about their children.

-Renegade (October 08, 2013, 03:32 PM)

I'd say none. These things always start with a desire to care for/protect X. But than as circumstances extenuate more stringent measures are needed. So before anybody realizes what's happening an NSA class invasion is born.

Baby steps and good intentions...that, is precisely how anything goes to shit.

-Stoic Joker (October 08, 2013, 03:57 PM)

You're giving the government too much credit and parents as a whole too little IMO.  I don't think that most gov't applications start out as anything other than a power grab.

5414

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 02:05 PM »

In light of that, I'll recuse myself from this discussion going forward.

-40hz (October 08, 2013, 01:28 PM)

Well that's a downer since you're the one that started it.   Conversation ended more surely than the invocation of Godwin's Law.

5415

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person bothered by the differences in Free?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 02:03 PM »

Unfortunately, very true

5416

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 11:49 AM »

please keep politics out of this thread.

-mouser (October 08, 2013, 11:00 AM)

And i think that's the point.  This thread is not about politics, nor about political abuses.  This software is not even intended as such.  But because of abuses by those in power, any uses of such things are conflated with the morass of political arguments about such issues.

Does this software (and others of its ilk) have potential for abuse?  Well, the answer to that is pretty obvious.  But does the existence of such software necessarily equate to it being abused in such a way in any given use case?  I don't think that's as clear, nor true.

5417

Living Room / Am I the only person bothered by the differences in Free?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 10:41 AM »

I've not seen any pushback on this particular topic in the realm of newspeak.  Free has always meant free as in I give you something for no charge.  But now, we need such disambiguations:

From Free Software on Wikipedia^w

Free software may refer to one of the following.

• Freely redistributable software
• Free software, defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which may be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed ("free as in free speech"), but is not necessarily available for no charge
• Open-source software, similar to free software
• Free and open-source software, software that can be classified as both free software and open-source software
• Freeware, software available for zero price, but not necessarily with the rights to modify and redistribute it
• Free Software Magazine
• Free Software Magazine (China)

And when I say that my software is Free, because of the appropriation of the term Free Software by Stallman, people say that it's not.  

Isn't that the same as the newspeak that the establishment practices?  Re-appropriating known and well-defined phrases to mean something else?

...sorry, just a rant, as you give stuff away for free that has taken your time and effort to develop and people rail against you because you won't give the source (which in many cases you can't).  But I really want to know where the demarcatory line is drawn on such practices.

5418

General Software Discussion / Re: Run a security check on your Gmail account - if not already done

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 09:30 AM »

You can also turn on 2-stage authentication.  It works really well.

5419

General Software Discussion / Re: Objective upgrade Netbook with XP to Netbook with Win 7

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 09:29 AM »

Correct, but it's possible to do the in-between step of Vista. It'll feel like hell, taking ages for 2 consecutive upgrades, but if an upgrade is required to keep some unique application installed, it's a solution.

-Ath (October 08, 2013, 01:39 AM)

I didn't even mention that b/c its not really viable in the space that most netbooks have (ask me how I know).  Once I got through both, the system was pretty borked and slow, and I had very little HDD space left.  Thankfully, I had an image of how it was before, so I was able to just do a clean install and get what I needed from the image.

5420

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 08, 2013, 09:19 AM »

Surveillance technologies beg to be abused. And if the Snowden revelations have shown anything about this technology, they've shown us that the temptation to 'abuse and extend' is apparently too great to resist. Especially when it comes to the people most entrusted not to abuse these capabilities.

Surveillance technology is a drug. And addiction, in the guise of "mission creep" (that clever euphemism for abuse and violation of trust) inevitably follows.

-40hz (October 08, 2013, 08:39 AM)

Power corrupts and such?

But that's given as a truism (as you did here), and I think it still hinges on something that hasn't been addressed as the difference between monitoring such as the NSA and outside forces and monitoring that some people are advocating here.

Respect vs. Disrespect
Interest vs. Self-Interest

If you respect the person, and have their interests at heart, then the corrupting influence won't come into play.  That comes into play when there is a measure of control rather than guidance needed.  At this point in my son's life, the only thing I do is ... nothing.  There's a GPS in his cell phone, but I've only accessed it once in the situation that I described- the first time he rode with someone else (also a minor) to a city about 1.5 hours away.  And that was just to make sure that he was in the area since he hadn't called and not hung up half-way there since the phone went straight to voicemail.  And we had a talk about it when he got home, and he knew that I'd used the GPS and why, and what he could do in the future to mitigate the circumstances.

This is down from having all sorts of things in place from internet filtering to keeping track of the games that he played and the videos and music he was exposed to and limiting his xbox and computer playtime and all sorts of things.  As he began to be able to make those choices, those things fell away.  Why?  Because he was getting older, and has the right to make those decisions and they won't interfere with our primary goal- to make sure that he is equipped to be able to assess and make his own choices, and deal with the consequences of those choices.

So I think that (like many other things) it's not the technology that's to blame.  It's the people.

(and it's sad that my joke fell flat on everyone!  especially considering that there are some firefly aficionados here.  And that firefly love of the themes should show where I come down on the fence in all reality...)

5421

General Software Discussion / Re: Objective upgrade Netbook with XP to Netbook with Win 7

« Last post by wraith808 on October 07, 2013, 10:42 PM »

As far as I know, there is no upgrade path from XP to Windows 7.  You have to do a clean install.

http://windows.micro...o-windows-7#T1=tab01

As far as where to get it, I just purchased copies from Newegg a bit ago.

http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16832116986

5422

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 07, 2013, 06:54 PM »

But seriously, after all I've told you about how I handle things, after all that y0himba told you about how he handles things, after valuing the ability of the parent to make a decision for good or bad and do what they are supposed to do...

-wraith808 (October 07, 2013, 03:06 PM)

Hay man, it's all good if it's working for you, but there are 2 sides to everything. I can think of half a dozen or more names of kids that I died while I was growing up as they finally got out of a repressive monitoring oriented culture that encouraged strict child control. Because when they (the children) finally realized that for the first time...there really was nobody "watching" ... They handled it badly.

So you have my sincerest wish that this does indeed work as well as you have it planned. But please understand that I have seen first hand just how badly it can go.

-Stoic Joker (October 07, 2013, 05:28 PM)

I guess my thing is what Ren said earlier- it varies based on the child and the situation.  And for as many instances as I've seen, and as many as you've seen, it's just a drop in the bucket.

5423

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 07, 2013, 06:52 PM »

^I think you're taking what I said personally.

I have no problem with you or any of the others here. But thats a small percentage of the how many million parents out there?

But even with that, I think bugging a kid's or personal acquaintance's phone is a big mistake and sends the entirely wrong message.

-40hz (October 07, 2013, 03:45 PM)

No... that's why I started with a joke 

But it seems that with counter-examples it's rather strange that there is *no* give... sort of like the people on the other side of other arguments.

5424

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 07, 2013, 03:06 PM »

What bloody?

But seriously, after all I've told you about how I handle things, after all that y0himba told you about how he handles things, after valuing the ability of the parent to make a decision for good or bad and do what they are supposed to do...

...you're willing to just discard it out of hand based on possibilities?

Hmmm 

5425

Living Room / Re: Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 07, 2013, 12:58 PM »

Electronic monitoring is a tool. As is the taking away of "any expectation of personal privacy." While it may make some people feel "safer" or "more responsible" in their duty to society and family, it is also instilling a potentially hazardous meme in the mind of someone who is too young to question it before it becomes a part of their accepted "reality.".

-40hz (October 07, 2013, 12:17 PM)

Not if done correctly.  I had very little privacy when I was a child from my parents, but I had it from everyone else.  In fact, was a private child and am a private person.  These things had no bearing on each other.