Recent Posts

6401

Living Room / Re: Obama not a fan of Adam West Batman, prefers Twitter instead

« Last post by Deozaan on June 26, 2010, 07:06 PM »

Twitter will be responsible for the nuking of Russia.

6402

DC Gamer Club / Re: Steam, and the gift of game...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 26, 2010, 06:55 PM »

I took care of it. Thanks y0himba.

6403

DC Gamer Club / Re: Steam, and the gift of game...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 26, 2010, 04:35 PM »

Check your PM. I'll be writing.

6404

Living Room / Re: Weekend moment of zen -- Caturday!

« Last post by Deozaan on June 25, 2010, 06:35 PM »

(Not me in the photo, of course.)

-zridling (June 25, 2010, 06:19 PM)

I didn't think it was you in the photo. Your reputation here would be ruined if that was your laptop without any naked women on the screen.

6405

Living Room / Re: Obama not a fan of Adam West Batman, prefers Twitter instead

« Last post by Deozaan on June 25, 2010, 04:35 PM »

Great, so now it literally will be some twit that blows-up the planet.

-Stoic Joker (June 25, 2010, 09:22 AM)

6406

Living Room / Re: Weekend moment of zen -- Caturday!

« Last post by Deozaan on June 25, 2010, 04:34 PM »

I thought tomorrow was Caturday...

6407

Living Room / Re: I'm gonna need some grief counseling...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 25, 2010, 02:55 PM »

My sincere condolences for your loss.

6408

General Software Discussion / Re: Trying to remember a website mentioned here before...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 09:44 PM »

However, the speed is $20 per month, so being early retired I won't use it.

-Curt (June 22, 2010, 06:25 PM)

Whoever set their pricing is on crack. Their web site outlines how you will save $380 every month. Even if this "new" math were accurate, who is it will be installing all their apps *every* month?

-Innuendo (June 23, 2010, 07:08 PM)

I agree. The page is geared toward if your job is a technician setting up software for people. Actually it's if that's your business and you have 3 technicians doing it.

You can change the numbers to update it to your values. I tried changing it all to 1 and it said I'd save $1 somehow.

I might consider paying for the pro version if it was a one-time fee of $20 (especially for that Ninite One service) but a recurring fee of $20? Not gonna happen.

6409

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 02:47 PM »

Yep, that's it. The superscript wasn't in the quote! I didn't actually read the article because the quote seemed so wrong.

(Though my calculator says 0.95⁵⁰ is about 7.7%, not 8% but that's just getting nitpicky.)

6410

General Software Discussion / Re: Want to build a new OS today? It's going to cost you $1.4bn (or more)

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 02:34 PM »

Admittedly I don't know much about the hardware or software architecture involved in OS design, but your point here describes why I say we could use more innovation:

And most times it's more prudent to run your "old but working software" on a faster machine than it is to try to improve the code beyond a certain point.

-40hz (June 21, 2010, 09:12 AM)

The technological potential we have today is so much greater than it was in the 70s and 80s when UNIX and Windows were designed. And back in those early days, almost every electronic device had it's own custom OS on it, written specifically for that device. And history shows that we don't use something because it's the best. In fact, like you said, we often resist changing to the best and just stick with what we know works.

I'm not in a position to say what we need or what would be better, but I do believe that we're not going to find anything if we're not even looking anymore.

I just recently watched a video by Douglas Crockford that briefly (about an hour and 45 minutes) summarized the history of computing. Time and again he demonstrated how old conventions were cherished and fought for while better methods were outright rejected for the better part of 20 years.

Even to this day we're arbitrarily and artificially limited by hardware limitations that no longer apply. Ever heard of the 80 character limit in programming? That's a holdover from when you would write your code in a punch card and feed it through the machine. The card only had space for 80 characters. We haven't had that physical, hardware limitation for decades, but the tradition gets passed down as "good coding practices" in software. And bash/terminal/command prompts and even old editors like vi still use 80 characters as a limit.

I just think it's time for some fresh ideas as to what an OS can be. I'm not saying I have any good ideas myself, but it'd be great to have some people working on it.

6411

Living Room / Re: IP address on public network

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 02:12 PM »

From what I understood, he didn't even fake his neighbor's real e-mail address. I think he just created a new account in his neighbor's name.

The only thing he did that requires any kind of special knowledge is know where to find child pornography to send to his neighbor's co-workers.

Which by the way, makes me curious as to why the guy isn't being charged with possession of child porn. I suppose making a threat against the VP would probably be considered a worse crime though (from the law's perspective).

6412

Living Room / Re: How to Use a School Project to Score Political Points 101

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 02:04 PM »

I think it is a very good thing that there are people that confront the politicians and do not just sit and complain about them. This is what we all should be doing. Even if the student is not right or if the video is edited to make the politician look bad (shame on them in this case!!!), I think we have something to learn from this.

-bgd77 (June 21, 2010, 07:28 AM)

That was exactly the point I was trying to make & probably didn't succeed very well at doing it. Everyone who is in a position of power should be made accountable for their actions.

-Innuendo (June 21, 2010, 09:11 PM)

I agree.

6413

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 01:58 PM »

has an overall reliability of .9550, or barely 8%!

-Paul Keith (June 22, 2010, 12:54 AM)

In what world is 0.9550 == 8%?

0.955 is actually better than 95%. It's 95.5%, whereas 8% is 0.08.

Or am I missing something really obvious here?

6414

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: HDMI Cables: $0.60

« Last post by Deozaan on June 23, 2010, 01:52 PM »

Kind of funny. I wondered what sort of corrosion would happen on metal. Didn't really think about just plain 'ol rust.

So basically, gold doesn't (easily) rust and copper does. Got it!

6415

General Software Discussion / Re: Trying to remember a website mentioned here before...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 06:55 PM »

Yep that's it! Thanks a bunch!

6416

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 04:49 PM »

Well so far so good. I don't know what it was, but it seems to be fixed now.

Thanks everyone who helped out.

6417

General Software Discussion / Trying to remember a website mentioned here before...

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 04:48 PM »

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to remember the name of a website that lets you select a bunch of freeware applications and it will give you a link to a small downloader that will automatically download everything you selected and install it with the default settings, opting out of any extra toolbars and that other crap.

I believe it was app103 who started the thread, and I know the website changed its name when it came out of beta. I just can't for the life of me think of what it was called and I can't puzzle out useful search terms to help me find it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

6418

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 03:41 PM »

Well... this is odd.

I rebooted back into Windows and everything seems to be running along just fine now.

I could have sworn I rebooted my PC yesterday when I was trying to solve this problem.

6419

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 03:07 PM »

Just to narrow down the problem I rebooted into Ubuntu and the internet seems to be running fine. So there's definitely a configuration problem somewhere in Windows.

I'm glad it's not the network adapter, but now to figure out what the problem is in Windows. BTW, I'm running Win7 64-bit.

6420

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 02:55 PM »

I just did a tracert and it didn't even make it to the router. They all timed out.

6421

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 02:49 PM »

I tried ipconfig /flushdns and that didn't help.

As I said before (in an edit, so you may have missed) I tried pinging other domains and they resolved to the same IP on both PCs, and with mwb's information it looks like the domain is resolving to the correct IP/name for Yahoo.

My hosts file is empty (well, every line is commented out) so that shouldn't be the problem.

I set my network adapter to use OpenDNS and now when the websites stop working and I try to ping www.yahoo.com I get a message saying "Ping requiest could not find host www.yahoo.com. Please check the name and try again." so when I ping the IP I just get timed out.

That makes me think that when things stop working, I can't even connect to OpenDNS to resolve the IP from the name.

And I'm not panicking. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. If it was a virus at least I'd know and I could take some steps to fix it (even if that meant a format). As it is, I still don't know if it's a software issue or a hardware issue.

6422

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 02:06 PM »

I pinged it on my computer that isn't having problems and then pinged the same IP on the PC with the problems. It all timed out.

Also, https didn't load, and ftp doesn't work either. But my download manager is still chugging along (though sometimes even that stops as well).

EDIT: Here's an interesting thing, though:

The netbook which can succesfully ping resolves www.yahoo.com as www.yahoo.com [67.195.145.138] but my PC with problems resolves www.yahoo.com as any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com [67.195.145.138]

So it's the same IP address but the domain name is wrong. Is it a virus/trojan?

EDIT: I tried a few other domains (like donationcoder.com) and they all have the same name on both PCs.

6423

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 01:59 PM »

it sounds to my novice ears like your problem is with the nameservers you are connecting to.

if you find that you can ping websites by their ip address but not by their domain name.. then that would pretty much confirm it.

-mouser (June 22, 2010, 01:55 PM)

How would I find out the IP address?

6424

Living Room / Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 22, 2010, 01:43 PM »

Hi everyone,

I just started having an issue yesterday that I can't figure out.

Basically, I can use the internet just fine for about 10 seconds. A page will load, I can ping any servers and get a reply, etc. But then after I load a page or two I can no longer load any websites and I cannot ping any servers. But the strange thing is that my IM programs still connect and my download manager will still download. So I know I have a connection to the internet, but somehow all traffic to my browser (and ping, etc) is being blocked.

The other strange thing about it is that all the other computers on the network work fine and have no issues.

If I go to the command prompt and type "ipconfig /release" followed by "ipconfig /renew" then the process starts over. I can ping and visit a website or two but then suddenly all pings timeout and no websites can be loaded.

HALP!

6425

Living Room / Re: South African doctor invents female condom with 'teeth' to fight rape.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 21, 2010, 04:35 PM »

Interesting that this story seems to have cropped up all over the interwebs today, the device itself was developed 5 years ago and I remember seeing it mentioned in an Encyclopedia Dramatica article at least 3 years ago.

-Eóin (June 21, 2010, 03:07 PM)

I read something in the article about the device being distributed or made available for the World Cup, so maybe that has something to do with it.