Recent Posts

5526

Living Room / Re: Ads in Skype

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2012, 12:32 AM »

Meanwhile on the mobile version of skype, are there still ads? (IS there a mobile version?) Because Mobile is getting nasty bandwidth caps, and ads are getting big and bulky lately.

-TaoPhoenix (June 15, 2012, 04:46 PM)

I forget what I was using and when, but I've seen mobile video ads. WTF?!? I don't really use my phone much at all anymore now that I have a tablet, so I don't know if they're more popular now or what.

Give 'em a new toy and watch 'em abuse it... sigh... 

5527

Living Room / Ads in Skype

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 11:32 AM »

Well, I suppose it couldn't last forever... More ads coming to Skype. Guess MS needs to pay off that hefty $8 billion bill.

http://venturebeat.c...pe-conversation-ads/

Skype is pushing ads into the conversation view, basically forcing its users to take in a little commercial content with each call they make.

The company said it’s personalizing the content and is hoping you’ll even discuss it with your friends while you talk. They’re even calling the new inventory “Conversation Ads.”

Here’s how I imagine that “conversation” going down:

“Hi, Dude, are you coming to bowling practice… Wait, what the [expletive deleted]?”

“What’s wrong, Walter?”

“Dude, there’s a huge ad right next to your face now.”

“What are you talking about, Walter?”

“It’s a [expletive deleted] ad for something called ‘Pleasure Hunt 2,’ and it’s right next to your face.”

“Walter, what the [expletive deleted] are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about unchecked commercialism, Dude.”

“Just take it easy, Walter. You don’t even pay for Skype. If you did, they probably wouldn’t be showing you ads.”

I actually pay, so I won't see them for now...

5528

General Software Discussion / Re: Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 10:26 AM »

That was a good farewell letter. Very well done.

Too bad they can't just sell it off to someone though. That would be nice to see the product passed on.

5529

Living Room / Re: World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 10:23 AM »

Sigh... The browser warz...

Meh...

Fact is, it all depends on what you want to do.

If you want to do stupidly CPU intensive crazy stuff, then IE is your friend. While people may hate them, BHOs and ActiveX let you do things that JavaScript plugins just don't.

For plain surfing...

Webkit is great, but Chrome spies on you.

Opera is the innovator, but flip-flops around between being uber-awesome and broken.

Etc. etc.

But IE7? Sheesh... It's not much better than 6.

Personally, I loathe programming for IE at all. It's the last thing I look at.

5530

General Software Discussion / Re: Can a simple blog be inserted into an existing static HTML page

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 08:52 AM »

You could always make a link to the "blog" page, then use regular frames in it, or an iframe as Carol said above. They're different, so you'd need to know what you want to decide. You'd then have absolute freedom to use whatever you want for the blog.

5531

Living Room / Re: Techie News Roundup

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 08:25 AM »

Regarding the little girl's blog... Anytime you need to stop taking pictures, there's something to hide.

Nice round up~!

5532

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 04:29 AM »

There's something hysterically funny there about Google applying for a hundred, Apple only wants one. "If it ain't .apple, it's second rate." 

-TaoPhoenix (June 15, 2012, 04:22 AM)

Well, yeah, funny until I think that Apple is a pure predator, and likely has some proxy company doing everything else for them. That's how the stock market works, so I doubt this is much different. Apple defines itself by being simple, so anything else is bad publicity for them. Google on the other hand is trying to be all things to all people, so .mom, .etc all make sense for it.

But I really do wonder now that you pointed that out...

5533

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 03:59 AM »

Well, UNetBootin or whatever, it's no matter now as the other method worked too. The thing there was the IMG file wasn't able to be read by a few different disk image programs.

Configuration took a while, but it was reasonable and things are up and running. It was mostly because I'd never looked at it before, and just needed to figure out where things were after not reading the docs then finally going back to them.

I went with ZFS RAIDZ1 primarily because I don't want to spend the rest of my life surfing for porn to fill it up with GlusterFS. Well, that and I can't afford the 500 trillion drives either... I really just want the thing to work and not have to fart around with it any more than necessary.

But, it's looking good. It looks like it will take some time though to move data onto it. It's getting about 5.5 MB/s at the moment writing from an external drive, so it's one of those that's a tad slow. But whatever. I finally have a bit of breathing space...

5534

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on June 15, 2012, 02:02 AM »

Setup of my new NAS is in progress...

Nothing can ever be simple...

Getting one of the wire unhooked required a knife for pressure... 20 minutes or so of farting around for that...

Getting FreeNAS onto a USB... Miserable, but have it imaging to the USB now thanks to this:

http://forums.freena...-image-under-Windows
http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php

Had to get a partition manager to format the USB drive as an EXT2 partition, then physdiskwrite finally worked.

Updates to come.

5535

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 11:23 PM »

Well, can't buy it, but registered interest.

-Renegade (June 14, 2012, 12:59 PM)

You can also register at RS Components (Australia), it'll be AU$41 delivered, cheaper than Element 14 - (formerly Farnell and the 14th element is Silicon in case you're wondering ).

The queue must be mighty long, I registered a while ago and so far they've invited two lots of 4000 to order.....and I wasn't one of them.

-4wd (June 14, 2012, 08:36 PM)

Great! Thanks for the heads up there! I was rushing through things and didn't check for that.

5536

Living Room / Re: World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 01:20 PM »

That is just 31 flavours of awesomeness~!

5537

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 12:59 PM »

Ummm... I'll take 2?

At that price... sheesh... You cannot go wrong.

EDIT:

Odd... Page won't load for me... http://www.raspberrypi.org/ seems down for me (and just me)...

EDIT 2:

Well, can't buy it, but registered interest.

5538

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 11:35 AM »

+1 for 40hz

An RSS reader would be good.

One of the most complicated things for a GOOD RSS reader is scheduling threads to download stories. I heard Nick Bradbury talk about that once and the extreme effort it took, and that he'd tucked the option away in a tiny little menu item because the UI usability was so very important to him, and despite the effort, that's all it warranted. (The topic was actually about good UI design.) (Nick wrote Homesite way back when.)

One cool thing would be a feature to snag RSS feeds from sites that you visit in the browser (from the history) then offer frequently visited sites as choices to the user. (And good ****ing luck in doing anything like that in iOS or any mobile platform where things are so horribly isolated that almost every cool integration is impossible unless your name is Apple, Google, or Microsoft...) That I would really like in an RSS reader. Sometimes finding RSS feeds on a site can be a PITA, and having it done automatically from stuff you already visit? That would be cool.

5539

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 05:14 AM »

From what I hear, use Xcode not other frameworks, as you will still have to learn the API's anyway but debugging becomes a lot harder, and other frameworks need to be updated after new OS releases to stay in sync. Apparently in a few days you will get used to the different syntax. Most of the time goes in learning the APIs.

-justice (June 14, 2012, 04:32 AM)

One of the core issues with Xcode is that it forces an MVC methodology on you, which turns the simplest tasks into something far more involved and complicated than they need to be.

It's not that MVC is bad or anything - but for simple things, it's overkill and completely counterproductive.

5540

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by Renegade on June 14, 2012, 01:24 AM »

Hey! I have a great little idea for you!

Make an app that:

1) Opens up a song in the music library.
2) Lets you select a few seconds of the music, e.g. A line in the chorus, etc.
3) Fade in/out on the clip.

Sorry... That was naughty of me... Of course you can't do that because you don't have file access to the media library in iOS. You would simply bang your head against the wall in frustration as things are locked down to insane levels.

How about a custom browser that lets you surf Apple Hate sites?

While that would take you around about 10 minutes in Visual Studio, you'll quickly find that it takes a day or more in Xcode...

Man... I gotta come up with better ideas...

Ok, how about this...

Nah... You'd just pull your hair out again...

Ok! I've got it!

A comprehensive hello world app that demonstrates multiple screens that maintain state with different widgets/controls on the various pages, does a few nifty things, like animate Cody or something, and links back to the tutorial page on DC~!

DC iOS Hello World~!

It would let you explore things and write up an article on it all.

In any event, good luck.

Oh, and you might want to look at MonoTouch as you can use C# instead of Objective-C, which may lead to less hair loss. (And you're not forced into Xcode... where everything takes 3x as long... on a good day...)

5541

Living Room / Re: FOI Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 11:23 PM »

Disclaimer: Blatant OTT conspiracy theory to fit in with Renegade's mindset.

-4wd (June 13, 2012, 07:33 PM)

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean it isn't all true~!

I wouldn't trust it.

The way Tor works is that it relies on other clients to provide peer to peer routing.

All it takes is for the world governments to start setting honeypots- modified clients that intercept and document traffic passed through them, which of course would also be rather high performance systems to encourage use of them, and they will rather quickly be able to intercept and tamper with Tor traffic.

Seems to be the weakness of any P2P based system- all it takes is malicious clients serving as supernodes and the entire system is compromised because those malicious clients are then able to intercept traffic in the system as they see fit.

-SeraphimLabs (June 13, 2012, 08:10 PM)

I think you're right there about tampering. TOR isn't encryption. It's anonymization.

But I'm not sure if it's possible to do traffic analysis on TOR traffic to figure out the end points... Anyone know?

But if you add in encryption, then you fundamentally change the game. Well, provided the encryption is strong, etc. etc.

5542

Living Room / Re: Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 11:17 PM »

They say that the ungodly amounts required are to filter out non-serious inquiries, but it seems more like it's to restrict new gTLDs to corporations only.

Raise your hand if you have $185,000 extra to spend on a domain...

Didn't think so...

http://www.latinospo...eking-new-domain.htm

Google applied for over 100 names of such domain names including .youtube, .music, .android, .boo, .and, .dad, and .new, .cpa, .esq, .phd, .prof, .baby, .kids, .mom, .dad, and .pet among others. According to the Washington post, the costs surpassed $18 million dollars. Amazon also applied for 76 names that included .amazon, .app, .author, .book, .buy, .news, .cloud, .dev and .music.  Amazon and Google both went after .game, .movie, and .wow.

Apple Corp. only applied for one: .apple.

Other applications from major companies include .abc, .yahoo, and .bmw.

I don't see this ending well. When private companies control cognates (root words like "book" or "apple" or "food"), it's simply too open to abuse. It really needs to have some kind of FRAND attached to it. Meh... This will go the same insane route as patents and copyright IP.

5543

General Software Discussion / Re: Video Editing software - Any recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 11:09 PM »

So, one of my requirements - a new and mandatory one - could be defined as "Video editing software must be able to input, edit and output HD 1920 x 1080 standard without loss/degradation."

-IainB (June 13, 2012, 08:09 PM)

This is a pretty hefty requirement. The video camera (or source) that you're using MUST record in raw video and be lossless to start. If not, all is lost. That is, most video cameras use some kind of compression because video is simply ungodly large on disk. But once you have that, you likely need a dedicated video disk for the massive files from the camera/source.

I haven't checked, but I find it unlikely that most consumer level video editing suites would process raw video simply because most consumer level cameras use compression.

I would check out Media Chance though. Roman (the owner) is detail-oriented, and my guess is that he'd go that route. (I haven't checked though.) Otherwise, check other professional-level software first to see what they do, then search again for any possible cheaper software that will do the same.

5544

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 10:40 PM »

My POINT is to MAKE SURE that nobody misunderstands Renegade's accurate and wise comment as meaning they should pass their data through more than one compression algorithms. I *hate* seeing this, ZIPs inside of RARs, inside of ZIPs, etc.. absurd. Don't anybody do that, please .

-db90h (June 13, 2012, 01:50 PM)

Ooops. Sorry about that. You're quite right. Successive compression doesn't guarantee size reduction, and in fact often results in larger file sizes. I didn't clarify that properly and left it open there to the wrong impression.

Thanks for the clarification there~!

5545

Living Room / FOI Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 11:54 AM »

So, we have it from the horses mouth that TOR works:

http://www.activistp...undernet-beyond.html

Recently released documents detail the federal government's inability to pursue cybercriminals shrouded by the tricky anonymity tools used by the Silk Road marketplace and other darknet sites - tools which are funded in part by the federal government itself. In this particular case, a citizen reported stumbling upon a cache of child pornography while browsing the anonymous Tor network's hidden sites, which are viewable with specialized, but readily available, tools and the special .onion domain.

So, chalk up a victory for TOR and .onion~! The surveillance state isn't perfect yet.

(Shame about the kiddie porn there... No sympathy from me and only violent rants to ensue, but for the privacy issue - all thumbs up.)

5546

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by Renegade on June 13, 2012, 10:14 AM »

What I'd said above applies there for multiple and iterative processes.

The entire question is about entropy. This also goes for compression, though in a different manner.

What you want to do is to maximize entropy when encrypting (or compressing in a sense) data.

By layering on the same algorithm (or another one) you effectively increase the entropy each time you iterate the process.

So, if you want stronger encryption (assuming no exploits against the algorithm), you merely need to run it several times, or use multiple algorithms in succession.

Every time you go through the process, you increase entropy, which basically means stronger encryption.

So yes - SHA512 x 2 is stronger than SHA512 x 1. Or whatever.

IIRC - This is true for symmetric and hash encryption.

5547

Developer's Corner / Re: Essays on Proper Storage of Site Passwords

« Last post by Renegade on June 12, 2012, 10:21 PM »

I remember a Security Now! show a few years ago where they went on to explain exactly how iteration increases entropy and that the net effect was indeed cumulative and not simply a single step in entropy. It's very much the same thing as what they're talking about there with stretching password hashes. While the discussion was in a symmetrical cryptographic context (IIRC), the principles are all pretty much the same.

It's kind of funny how these exact same issues come up again and again in security. You'd think that people would learn their lessons by now... 

Anyways, the articles were good and really well focused on that issue.

5548

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

« Last post by Renegade on June 12, 2012, 10:03 AM »

A man needs to do a fertility test. He goes to the doctor. The doctor gives him a phial and says him to fill it.
...

-Giampy (June 12, 2012, 09:59 AM)

Hahahahah~! Nice one~!

5549

Living Room / Re: In search of ... name of an old TV series

« Last post by Renegade on June 11, 2012, 11:59 PM »

The only ones I can recall are "Blue Thunder" and "Airwolf". But those are what you're looking for... Maybe they'll help jog someone's memory though...
 

5550

Living Room / Re: Gmail to Warn Against State Sponsored Hacking

« Last post by Renegade on June 11, 2012, 11:28 AM »

All this proves is that the corporations are indeed making a push for world domination.

Why?

...Because throughout history evil dictors have always first shown up as protectors.

-Stoic Joker (June 11, 2012, 11:18 AM)

I truly wish that you were just being a smart ass and joking...

But you're bang on. It always starts with "protection" and "safety".