Recent Posts

601

Living Room / Re: After PSN. Who's next?

« Last post by phitsc on May 05, 2011, 10:12 AM »

Nobody dismisses '"brute force" cracking techniques as being impractical any more. Today's multicore CPUs make it an extremely workable crack for most passwords people are able to commit to memory.

-40hz (May 05, 2011, 09:55 AM)

Check this out concerning brute force cracking of passwords. Was posted just recently somewhere.

602

Living Room / Re: After PSN. Who's next?

« Last post by phitsc on May 05, 2011, 09:06 AM »

This is exactly why I go out of my way to avoid cloud services.  Especially passwords...I don't see how people are comfortable storing ALL of their passwords in the cloud with another company.  I don't care what they say about encryption and security...it just doesn't seem wise to me.

-superboyac (May 05, 2011, 08:57 AM)

The cloud is just so damn comfortable for certain things, especially for us geeks who are using multiple devices and computers.

But I agree with your concerns. Even if cloud service companies try to do everything to keep our stuff safe, there are still people operating these companies, and people just make mistakes. Also, while one can prove mathematically that encryption is safe, there is still all this technology around it that is not free of bugs.

603

Living Room / Re: After PSN. Who's next?

« Last post by phitsc on May 05, 2011, 05:50 AM »

I don't get it. What am I reading here, could you clarify?

-zridling (May 05, 2011, 05:25 AM)

Yeah, sorry about being a bit woolly here. Like ewemoa said: PSN is Sony's Playstation Network which was hacked a week or two ago. Basically, 77 million user's private data including password and possibly credit card information was stolen.

The message about LastPass just reminded me that, assuming Sony's IT guys are not complete idiots, what could happen to them could happen to others as well.

604

Living Room / After PSN. Who's next?

« Last post by phitsc on May 05, 2011, 05:00 AM »

http://blog.lastpass...ty-notification.html

605

Developer's Corner / Endless Projects - Dr. Dobbs article

« Last post by phitsc on May 05, 2011, 02:53 AM »

I read this article on Dr. Dobbs yesterday and was asking myself: does the programming language really make such a big difference on productivity.

Obviously, the availability of libraries makes a big difference on productivity. I also think that some programming languages are much better suited for certain tasks than others (e.g. systems programming vs. web stuff). But for something like a desktop GUI application, why would I be 10 times more productive with Ruby than with Java or C#, or even with C++ using a decent GUI toolkit for that matter?

606

General Software Discussion / Re: Brilliantly Simple Programs, that's what I'm looking for

« Last post by phitsc on May 04, 2011, 10:34 AM »

ClipX - A Clipboard History Manager.

607

Living Room / Re: Congratz to the US Military Forces!

« Last post by phitsc on May 04, 2011, 03:04 AM »

You're really going for that clown badge, aren't you?   

Funny tho! 

-nosh (May 03, 2011, 11:48 PM)

Hell yeah~!

-Renegade (May 04, 2011, 12:01 AM)

My suggestion was in full earnest! I really think you deserve it 

608

Living Room / Re: Congratz to the US Military Forces!

« Last post by phitsc on May 04, 2011, 03:02 AM »

I am hearing how OBL should have had a trial. Without taking any position on that I wonder:
1. where it would have been held. If he wasn't extradited to the USA with all legal formalities observed, could the defence have got him off on a technicality?
2. Would his entitlement to a "fair" trial be jeopardized by the publicity/reporting since 9/11. I would imagine defence lawyers rejecting jurors wholesale.
3. Whilst he was awaiting trial, how would the increase in hostage taking by pro-OBL elements be countered?

I'm sure there must be another thousand practical issues to be considered ... so easy to call for a trial as a spectator. Buggered if I know the answer.

-tsaint (May 03, 2011, 05:45 PM)

Something similar to the ICTY for example. There are some big names on their list. People just as bad as OBL (like Karadzic, Milosevic or Mladic).

I think the US did not communicate the whole situation well (well, they probably did for US citizens, but probably not for most of the rest of the world). Had they said that they tried to seize him, but had to shoot him in self defence (even if it wasn't true), it would have been a different situation. More like cops trying to seize a criminal. But saying that the aim was to kill him just leaves a bad taste for civilized people.

609

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR window shrinks over time

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 09:17 AM »

... (great work BTW) ...

-skajfes (May 03, 2011, 09:07 AM)

Thanks

610

Living Room / Re: Nifty Gmail feature

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 07:39 AM »

Thunderbird has similar heuristics.

-f0dder (May 03, 2011, 07:37 AM)

I've been using Thunderbird for many years. Can't remember ever having seen that. But then I never read the help file

611

Living Room / Nifty Gmail feature

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 07:29 AM »

I was quite surprised and found this one really clever:



Although I wonder what else Google reads in my emails

612

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR window shrinks over time

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 07:14 AM »

Until mouser fixes the problem you guys could use my FARR MultiMonitorAndCenter plugin to keep FARR's window at a certain percentage of the screen's width.

613

Living Room / Re: should I ragequit?

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 01:43 AM »

Welcome to the Hotel Coderfornia~!

Such a lovely place...

-Renegade (May 02, 2011, 09:42 PM)

I think it's about time Renegade gets awarded with the 'Official Forum Clown' badge. I think he demonstrated more than enough recently that he possesses the necessary skill and endurance

614

Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by phitsc on May 03, 2011, 01:28 AM »

Now it starts getting ridiculous.

615

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by phitsc on May 02, 2011, 03:20 PM »

For fans of Angry Birds, check out Stupid Zombies.

616

Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by phitsc on May 02, 2011, 02:43 PM »

I sooo love my PS3. I guess I would even have bought it had it been from Apple

-phitsc (May 02, 2011, 02:36 AM)

That seems kind of stupid... If it were from Apple, you wouldn't be able to play games on it~!

(Sorry - couldn't resist that one~!)

-Renegade (May 02, 2011, 12:25 PM)

I guess it would be call the iStation anyway

617

Developer's Corner / Re: New Twist on Basic

« Last post by phitsc on May 02, 2011, 04:32 AM »

After just glancing at the OP sample code, I'm pretty sure I could do the same sample dialog in pure C with  less code ... *Shrug* ... So I'm lost on an advantage there.

-Stoic Joker (May 01, 2011, 10:28 AM)

With C, you can't use goto without being outlawed

618

Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by phitsc on May 02, 2011, 02:36 AM »

I don't purchase things from ruthless companies.

-Tuxman (April 30, 2011, 03:41 PM)

I sooo love my PS3. I guess I would even have bought it had it been from Apple

619

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by phitsc on April 29, 2011, 10:25 AM »

Just installed the Bookmarks Up Top plugin, adding a bookmark button next to the Firefox button on Firefox 4. I wish I could configure it to only show bookmarks of one specific bookmark folder.

620

Living Room / Re: Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading List

« Last post by phitsc on April 29, 2011, 09:01 AM »

When a fantasy writer meets the web:
http://www.newyorker...ller?currentPage=all

-zridling (April 27, 2011, 08:15 AM)

Now that was interesting (although a bit lengthy). I started reading the series about 1 1/2 years ago and am now somewhere into the 3rd book (or is it the 4th?). I stopped reading a few months ago having got really bored with the book. The reason is not the story though, as it is really cool, unusual, well written and absorbing. The problem I have with it is the shear number of parallel story lines. There can be 7 or more at the same time, all telling the same story with the view of different characters. Now that is no problem if you can read a lot. But if you have time for only a few pages a day, it can take weeks until you can read on on certain characters. This started to bother me so much that I decided to put the book aside and read something else first instead.

Now, after reading the linked article, I might even wait reading on until the story actually has an ending

621

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to index bookmarks (or is my install not listing plugins for some reason??)

« Last post by phitsc on April 28, 2011, 04:35 AM »

IIRC, ...

-ewemoa (April 28, 2011, 04:31 AM)

Damn, I need to look this one up every time

622

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to index bookmarks (or is my install not listing plugins for some reason??)

« Last post by phitsc on April 28, 2011, 03:25 AM »

Concerning FarrFox, although I'm not using it myself, I'm not sure it can handle Firefox 3 / 4 bookmarks (Since Firefox 3 bookmarks are stored in a database instead of a text file).

Looks like Chrome does store its bookmarks in a text file (seems to be JSON) so making a plugin for this or adding the functionality to FarrFox shouldn't be too hard.

623

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to index bookmarks (or is my install not listing plugins for some reason??)

« Last post by phitsc on April 28, 2011, 03:19 AM »

All the subfolders you have underneath your Farr/Plugins folder are not actually installed plugins, but just placeholders for some (most?) of the plugins available for FARR. These directories contain files that allow the DCUpdater application to install these plugins for you, i.e. you need to install DCUpdater if you don't want to install these plugins manually.

To see what plugins you have really installed, open FARR and type aplugins.

624

Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by phitsc on April 28, 2011, 01:51 AM »

625

Living Room / Re: Sony Playstation Network hacked - All your infos are belong to hackers.

« Last post by phitsc on April 27, 2011, 02:46 AM »

Damn, seems like I have to change my password scheme which I have been using for years now. Updating all these passwords is a lot of work.

Might be a good time to read up on OpenId.