Recent Posts

5726

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: 1-action Unzip

« Last post by Renegade on April 24, 2012, 05:33 PM »

I came up with this functionality for ALZip v7 or v6.x a long time ago. You can check to see if they still have it in there. Basically, you could select how to treat files, so you could double-click a ZIP file to unzip it to a folder, or open ALZip or display the context menu. It was the fastest way to unzip files you could possibly imagine. http://www.altools.com/

However, things may have changed since then. Not sure if there's a copy of the v6.x or v7 hanging around out there somewhere that you could use.

5727

General Software Discussion / Re: automate database building

« Last post by Renegade on April 24, 2012, 05:07 PM »

The only thing I can think of is building some custom software/script to parse the text and create the database like that.

But without knowing much more, that's about all I can say.

For a single file, maybe store the PDFs in the DB as a blob in a single table?

5728

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday Renegade!

« Last post by Renegade on April 23, 2012, 01:22 PM »

It's 4:20 am and I am NOT sober~! Whoohoo~!

5729

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday Renegade!

« Last post by Renegade on April 23, 2012, 11:43 AM »

Well, I'm not blowing those candles...

Any volunteers?

(And thank you for the birthday wishes! I appreciate it! )

5730

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Security Software/Solutions

« Last post by Renegade on April 23, 2012, 07:17 AM »

Simplest is to not draw attention to yourself (e.g. by using a constant encrypted stream). Here's the thing 90% of the Marijuana grow houses that got busted in the past few years got busted the same way, by the same people. The local power company. Because the power usage was just too oddly high (lots of grow lamps...).

Low tech tends to get ignored by high tech. The only "encryption" that was never broken by the Germans during the war ... was actually a simple open discussion by Cherokee Indians. Low tech is key ... Because high tech tends to draw too much attention.

-Stoic Joker (April 23, 2012, 06:48 AM)

That's what I was thinking. Go low-tech as much as possible. For the low-tech stuff, I'm simply not going to ask about any of it as I don't need to know. I've already recommended going low-tech for as much as possible for the same reasons that you've outlined -- and the fact that hi-tech is too easy to spy on now. (This isn't for me -- it's for other people and their particular circumstances.)

However, at some point some hi-tech will be needed, so that's why I'm asking here.

40hz sent me some info on OTP:

http://en.wikipedia....rg/wiki/One-time_pad

It looks like it may prove useful.

5731

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: OpalCalc 1.42

« Last post by Renegade on April 22, 2012, 09:22 PM »

Cheers. Been busy beavering away on 1.43!

Oh I use Opera btw - not as fast as it used to be though (last nippy version was Opera 5 AFAIR). Table copy and pasting worked fine with it though.

-Twinbee (April 22, 2012, 04:51 PM)

Hmmm... Maybe something changed, or I could simply have confused it with another browser... Anyways - 1 version of 1 of the browsers out there (at least) monkeys things up.

And I'm looking forward to 1.43! You have a really cool piece of software there!

5732

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Security Software/Solutions

« Last post by Renegade on April 22, 2012, 09:16 PM »

I think that I need to assume that any given server can be compromised, so I can't rely on them being secure. The only way to secure a server is to run it yourself and make certain that security is locked down, but without a budget, this is off the table. Besides, it would require highly skilled people to run, which again, without a budget, is off the table.

The surveillance is digital, analog, and physical. So I think the key is to have strong public key encryption, but layering will be difficult because the people that need to use it won't be able to handle too much information or too much complexity. Something that could layer easily would be good. I'm afraid that multiple steps would be too difficult.

Think of third-world farmers/peasants that will be challenged simply to send an email. (GUI would be infinitely better than command line...)

I forgot to mention in the first post that information needs to be sent out to multiple people as well, so some way to bulk encrypt with public key encryption and email will be needed. Has anyone ever heard of anything that can do this?

So far, looking around Cryptophane seems to be about the best thing to fit the bill:

http://code.google.com/p/cryptophane/

Does anyone have any better suggestions?

5733

General Software Discussion / Looking for Security Software/Solutions

« Last post by Renegade on April 22, 2012, 11:17 AM »

I'm looking for some software to provide secure communications under the assumption of state sponsored surveillance. The budget is near zero.

I'm thinking that any web services are completely out of the question (way too many exploits and if you don't own the server, all the worse), and that the only real solution is to use strong passwords in public key encryption of documents to email. If the email is intercepted, then it won't matter much.

Is that about right? Am I missing anything?

Remember, the key assumption is state surveillance.

5734

Living Room / Re: LHC Researchers Expect First Glimpse of the Higgs Boson Next Week

« Last post by Renegade on April 22, 2012, 10:19 AM »

A corollary there... If there is good science happening, there must be no vested interests in that particular field quite yet...

-Renegade (April 21, 2012, 05:36 PM)

Yes, I wondered about that. This project must be consuming a mass of money and it'll probably be funded by organisations with more than an entirely philanthropic interest in pure research.

-IainB (April 22, 2012, 12:24 AM)

Well, once you put it like that... 

I was holding out for some hope of actual science happening still.

5735

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: OpalCalc 1.42

« Last post by Renegade on April 22, 2012, 09:55 AM »

Been using OpalCalc on my desktop since I got home... it is just so much nicer than Calc.exe or other clones.

All the cool stuff like typing this:

"1468 days in years"

It's just so much nicer to do math in words rather than fart around so much.

5736

Living Room / Re: LHC Researchers Expect First Glimpse of the Higgs Boson Next Week

« Last post by Renegade on April 21, 2012, 05:36 PM »

Hiding in the Higgs data: hints of physics beyond the standard model
Looks like some seriously good science is going on here, demonstrated by the openness to revealing positive results as well as negative results.
It will be interesting to see whether a theoretical model - Standard ("Higgs") or Higgsless - might eventually be supported by the results of this research.

-IainB (April 20, 2012, 04:25 PM)

A corollary there... If there is good science happening, there must be no vested interests in that particular field quite yet...

5737

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Filler

« Last post by Renegade on April 20, 2012, 06:48 AM »

Probably MySQL or something like that is your best bet. However, it is far from trivial to setup for most people. But, you get a LOT of flexibility to do almost anything you can imagine.

If you don't know what MySQL is, you probably need to narrow your focus and be more specific.

5738

Living Room / Re: Cute jokes' thread

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 11:58 PM »

(see attachment in previous post)

-wraith808 (April 19, 2012, 06:31 PM)

Bwahahahahaha~!

5739

Living Room / Re: List your (wireless) router and experiences

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 11:57 PM »

D-Link DSL 2740B

It's so-so. I don't know whether it's the router, or my crummy ISP, but periodically I need to do a hard reset (power plug out for 10 sec). As far as I'm concerned, I need to do it far too often.

And as for whether it's my ISP or the router, can't be bothered to figure it out as it's unlikely to make any difference, and spending a minute every now and then is less time than spending hours and hours trying to figure out the problem.

My iMac sucks on it. But that's the Mac and not the router - other computers have zero problems, except for the one above.

Same goes for my wife's iPad. My Android tablet never has any problems. Just something with Macs being sucky at networking I suppose. (Other problems with them as well.)

But, I suppose I'm relatively happy with that router. It's got lots of goodies on it that I don't use. They are there if I ever want them. Nice to have options.

5740

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of the 6 million (est.) murdered in the Holocaust

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 11:50 PM »

Would it be wrong for me to suggest this thread started off as being borderline appropriate for DC and is only becoming more so..   It's not that these discussions aren't valuable to have, just a question of whether they are most appropriate for this forum..  Of course there is great latitude for going off topic in the Living room section, but still..

-mouser (April 19, 2012, 11:43 AM)

+1

Not censorship per-say, but focus.  If this isn't a place to discuss religion and politics, then that's just not the focus, and calling that censorship is IMO cheapening the effect of the word when used if not an outright misuse of the word.  There's a big difference between having a set of rules so that people that come to the site know what to expect and censoring posts.

-wraith808 (April 19, 2012, 06:27 PM)

+1

A couple days ago I emailed mouser about the frequency of posts I have been making on the topic of technology and censorship. The amount of it out there is alarming, and I probably post less than a tenth of what I'd like to, but, still, it's getting to the point that it's now over the top and the focus here is DC software and other software/technology topics.

I'll be scaling back as the volume has simply gotten too high. It's not that I'm "censoring" myself, but rather that it's detracting from the primary purpose of the forums here.

Incidentally, and somewhat on topic, I view censorship like we are seeing now simply as one step towards democide. I know that I'm far from alone in that view.

Regarding the suggestion:

How about members only section, so that politics, history, religion threads don't show up in DC public feed?

-mahesh2k (April 19, 2012, 12:01 PM)

I like that idea. The ASP has a newsgroup called "Soapbox" where the Sargent at Arms rarely steps in. It's basically a free-for-all, but topics are overwhelmingly politics and religion. People disagree about things, but it's mostly civil, or as civil as the ASP gets anyways. (Much more flaming there than in here, that's for certain - but that's not limited to soapbox -- most sites have a massive amount of flaming going on compared to DC.) "Soapbox" is basically a place to vent.

5741

Living Room / Apple Sued Again - By Parents...

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 09:55 AM »

This gave me a bit of a laugh (via):

http://www.dailymail...addictive-games.html

Parents sue Apple over children's costly and highly addictive apps: Some are aimed at children as young as four - but can rack up bills up to £1,300
'In-app' purchases allow children to rack up bills
'Game currency' purchased with real money
Bills of up to £1,300 from 'free' apps

Parents whose children have accidentally run up huge bills playing games on their iPhones could be in line for compensation from Apple.

Campaigners are awaiting the result of a U.S. court case in which a group of disgruntled parents are suing the company  after their children’s innocent game playing ended up costing a fortune.

They accuse Apple of enticing children to spend money on iTunes

It's very different from the usual law suits you read about.

5742

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 09:30 AM »

Though if there's one of those bad Filipino bands on the boat, you could be in for worse horrors than just zombies...

-Renegade (April 19, 2012, 04:37 AM)

Very, very off-topic, but it all started here in this thread...

Spoiler

Think you can opt out of Google Analytics? Think again...
http://cynic.me/2012...opt-out-is-bullshit/

5743

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of the 6 million (est.) murdered in the Holocaust

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 08:34 AM »

By the way, though you say:

...the Jews were very far from unique...

- several things about the Holocaust do make it, historically, kinda unique, including for example:

-IainB (April 19, 2012, 05:35 AM)

Quite right there. I'm simply very inarticulate at times. I mean unique in the sense that people were murdered. I didn't consider any surrounding circumstances.

5744

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 04:37 AM »

One of the most effective things for any potential combat, and certainly one of the most under-rated:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Renegade (April 19, 2012, 01:05 AM)

Pretty effective against serial killers wearing a mask... but against Zombies? Depends on the "Zombie universe" you're in.

Slow walkers? No need to run. Just walk away and avoid them (as seen in "Night of the Walking Dead")
Fast Runners? Running away won't help. They'll never get tired.

I guess the best way to deal with a Zombie outbreak is hiding in a bomb shelter for some months, until the walking corpses decay. A gun with plenty of ammo is also a good idea, but don't forget a silencer. Zombies are usually attracted to noise. So shoot one zombie, and fifty others will hear you. A cordless nail gun could be a good idea. ;-)

-wr975 (April 19, 2012, 03:25 AM)

The Zombies in "I Am Legend" were fast. Guess a better defense against them is this:



Though if there's one of those bad Filipino bands on the boat, you could be in for worse horrors than just zombies...

5745

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by Renegade on April 19, 2012, 01:05 AM »

One of the most effective things for any potential combat, and certainly one of the most under-rated:

5746

General Software Discussion / Re: can any explorer alternative do this?

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2012, 11:39 AM »

each file manager is going to have some pros and cons...

-tomos (April 18, 2012, 11:04 AM)

I've run into some problems with many Explorer replacements, but I need to deal with multiple languages, which many can't handle properly for what I need.

But overall, the ones I've tried/buyed, are all pretty good. It's a mature market, so it's hard to find one of the mature ones that doesn't do what you want.

For search, just try them and see what you like.

5747

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2012, 09:38 AM »

I started a thread with a link where people can sign a petition against CISPA here. Hint hint.

-Renegade (April 18, 2012, 06:30 AM)

Thanks! Signed.

-IainB (April 18, 2012, 08:39 AM)

Awesome~!

(Hint hint... everyone else, you'll be awesome too if you support not being spied on and not being censored. That was so totally shameless... I should be ashamed... But I'm not~! )

5748

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of the 6 million (est.) murdered in the Holocaust

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2012, 09:34 AM »

By no means do I wish to trivialize the deaths of 6 million people, but really, this is completely distorted in terms of attention paid to it.

In the 20th century 262,000,000 people were murdered by their governments. The Nazi holocaust represents around 21,000,000 people. Remember, they murdered the sick, elderly, disabled, mentally retarded, homosexuals, political dissidents, and basically just whoever they didn't like. i.e. The Nazis murdered about 8% of the victims of democide^w in the 20th century. The Jews represent about 2.3% of the victims of democide in the 20th century.

That means that we're basically ignoring the 97.7% of people that were murdered by their governments.

Human is human. Whether that's Jew, white, black, yellow, red, Chinese, Ugandan, Russian, gay, straight, bi, genius academic, invalid cripple, or whatever.

I would ask that alongside the heinous murder of 6 million Jews, we also take time to remember that there have been many, many more than that.



And it is continuing today. And it will continue tomorrow. We need to know and understand that the largest single cause of unnatural death is government. Governments always think they are doing "good".

Sorry - I don't mean to derail this thread or demean the deaths of anyone. I merely want to point out that the Jews were very far from unique, and we need to come to grips with that vast scale of evil before we can try to prevent it from happening again.

5749

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2012, 07:28 AM »

Looks like Brin may have felt he was misquoted or quoted out of context, or something. See the clarification on his G+ here.

-IainB (April 18, 2012, 04:27 AM)

But regardless of how you feel about digital ecosystems or about Google, please do not take the free and open internet for granted from government intervention. To the extent that free flow of information threatens the powerful, those in power will seek to suppress it.

+1 for Sergey Brin there! Totally on board there. Just not sure if he's on the level there... But that doesn't mean he's not right.

5750

Living Room / Re: CISPA is the New SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/etc. etc. etc.

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2012, 06:30 AM »

Such churlish disregard for the proles!

Translation:

"This bill is going through whether you like it or not, so shove it."

-IainB (April 18, 2012, 06:19 AM)

Well, if enough people scream about this, they may make *him* shove it~!

I started a thread with a link where people can sign a petition against CISPA here. Hint hint.