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7251

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by wraith808 on June 23, 2012, 09:18 PM »

If indeed?  That was from an interview with the man himself, with direct quotes at times.  And, he had a point, truthfully.  And he did his part- he wasn't a Luddite.  He just had valid concerns that I think have materialized.  We live in a world obsessed with instant gratification at no cost in critical thinking or focus of purpose and thought.  Technology has undeniable benefits.  But with that benefit comes drawbacks and a deeper long term cost that I don't think is adequately addressed or readily apparent.

HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

Bread and circuses.

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Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by wraith808 on June 23, 2012, 04:50 PM »

http://www.laweekly....-451-misinterpreted/

Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.

His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.

“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbu...m/at_home_clips.html), titled “Bradbury on censorship/television.”

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Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by wraith808 on June 23, 2012, 04:02 PM »

One point that I want to bring up... F451 wasn't about censorship, and Bradbury himself would get wroth when confronted with the fact that people thought it was about the same.

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

« Last post by wraith808 on June 21, 2012, 11:40 AM »

Things have changed a lot since 1975. And one of the most notable changes is that the former 'rebels' are now doing their damnedest to become our new overlords.

-40hz (June 19, 2012, 08:00 AM)

Ummm... Apple was doing the same thing back then, i.e. Franklin Ace, Laser, and other clones.  They did it again in the 90s.  This is just part for the course for them... they never were truly rebels.

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Living Room / Re: Even if you do nothing else today, you MUST at least join Kickstriker.

« Last post by wraith808 on June 20, 2012, 10:48 PM »

And you do realize that Kickstriker is a parody site, right?  Your second link even alludes to that fact...

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Living Room / Kickstarter Highlight: Board/Card Games Ending Soon

« Last post by wraith808 on June 20, 2012, 02:50 PM »

	MEGAcquire - An Enhanced Adventure Into High Finance
Goal	$5,000 ($9,034 as of this posting)
End Date	2012-06-20
Project Creator(s)	Lloyd T. Solon
Excerpt	MEGAcquire is an exciting journey of strategy and luck, for three to six players, through the corporate world. Live in the world of fun and fortune as you maneuver to outwit your opponents. Build and merge companies while shrewdly buying, trading, and selling stocks to become the wealthiest player. Each player builds companies by adding tiles as they increase wealth by purchasing stocks in these companies. Cash flow is obtained by selling majority and minority shares through mergers. It is not always prudent to have the most stock in the biggest company, if you can build and sell enough smaller companies to generate a large income. Many different strategies can be used to reach the pinnacle of the corporate world, but you will always need the “luck of the draw”. MEGAcquire will appeal to players of any age, who like the feeling of power that is acquired through achievement. It is recommended for ages 13 and up, but cannot be limited in age because of the early possession of business savvy that can be found in younger players. Average playing time is from 2-3 hours, but shorter time limits can be set. More more information please visit: http://www.megacquire.com

	Nova Cry: An Explosive Sci-Fi Card Game for 2-6 Players
Goal	$10,000 ($11,439 as of this posting)
End Date	2012-06-21
Project Creator(s)	Steven J. Lykowski
Excerpt	Not just a space combat game, Nova Cry combines diplomacy, exploration, crew management, variable player powers, turn phases, intriguing combat choices, unique travel mechanics, and careful hand management all into one game that truly has an "epic boardgame" feel – all wrapped into a card game! Taking cues from boardgames such as Twilight Imperium and Cosmic Encounter, Nova Cry lets players customize and tailor their gameplay experience so that each game highlights a new facet of the Nova Cry universe. Gameplay centers around the six cards that each player chooses as their beginning task force, consisting of one captain card (from 15), one ship card (from 15), three crew members (from 12), and one personal weapon (from 7). These six choices will remain with that player for the rest of the game and will greatly affect their strategic choices. Link to Rulebook: http://boardgamegeek...ova-cry-rulebook-v-1

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Living Room / Re: Kickstarter Highlight: Amanda Palmer: The new RECORD, ART BOOK, and TOUR

« Last post by wraith808 on June 20, 2012, 02:41 PM »

Was in this thread to get the template for another Kickstarter post, and wanted to post an update that I should have done a while ago:this Kickstarter drive ended with over $1,000,000 (!!!) in pledges.  She also has a pretty good breakdown on where everything goes.

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Living Room / Re: Microsoft's New Surface Tablet Hybrid

« Last post by wraith808 on June 20, 2012, 11:14 AM »

much lower resolution

-nosh (June 20, 2012, 01:05 AM)

This is because of retina display, and no one but Apple has that tech, so no other tablets out currently have that advantage.  Does it look better?  Yes.  But how much better?  You can only tell the difference if you look at a Retina Display and then at a normal one.  Since they use the extra pixels for details rather than real estate, you still have the same effective resolution, just with a crisper image.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Ethics and Responsibility Question

« Last post by wraith808 on June 20, 2012, 07:59 AM »

@Renegade - I think you hit the nail on the head- it's more a combination of the two.
@Iain - More good stuff.  I was assuming this was the hypothetical in the sense of 'hypothetical', but perhaps its as he says, and it was in a workshop for the consulting firm.  I didn't think that companies did this, but I guess its possible.

And thanks for the replies, all.  When he asked, I just couldn't come up with the correct answer for this, especially considering the financial crisis and how much suffering it has caused.

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Living Room / Re: The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time: Watchmen

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 04:10 PM »

^ Cerebus is cool... there's also quite a few along those same lines with different themes in that time period.  Usagi Yojimbo comes to mind, along with Groo the Wanderer.

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General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... the whys and wherefores of NoSQL

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 04:00 PM »

I think that hits the meat of the situation.  I could maybe see a NoSQL or even non-RDBMS, system for something like the entire school system of Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, et. al., but no way can I see it worth the effort and grief for a single school.

-barney (June 19, 2012, 02:51 PM)

I don't even see it for that.  Non-Transactional with limited relational capabilities is the key.  If you need relational data (and from at least my experience with school databases, you do) or transactions (same caveat) then this isn't really the way to go IMO.

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General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... the whys and wherefores of NoSQL

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 01:36 PM »

ever expanding collections of non-structured "stuff" (images, loose document collections, tweets, messages, etc.)

-40hz (June 19, 2012, 12:37 PM)

So in fact Lotus Notes (now owned by IBM) was in fact (one of) the first NoSQL storage systems, way back then

-Ath (June 19, 2012, 01:30 PM)

Ick.  Not exactly.  I remember my Lotus Notes days.  It was like a mega-access more than NoSQL in my recollection.

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General Software Discussion / Re: DropBox to drop support for Public folder (no more direct links)

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 01:23 PM »

If you actually tried to create a link from any file outside the public folder, you will find that yes you can create a link to the file, but it will load the dropbox webpage including a download button to the actual file.

-justice (June 18, 2012, 12:04 PM)

In my experience, that's not true.  Don't know if they only do it under certain circumstances, but I've linked to stuff outside of my public folder for download and it's always directly downloaded the file.  I've shared PDFs and music files that way.

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Living Room / Re: LastPass Finally Showing Its Revenue Plans? Credit Monitoring? Bah...

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 01:20 PM »

I use 1Password and have been very happy with it.

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Developer's Corner / Ethics and Responsibility Question

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 01:18 PM »

Considering there are people with both experience in consulting, and the capability of rational thought combined with a definite moral compass, I figured I'd ask a question of the developers here regarding a ethical question that was posed to me.  Theoretically, if one consulted for a financial institution in the past (along the size of "Too Big To Fail") and someone that still worked full time for that institution contacted the consultant outside of channels for questions regarding things that might indicate that the current state/practices might (no smoking guns) violate SOX requirements (link to specific area), would one be ethically required to report such possible violations?

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General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... the whys and wherefores of NoSQL

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 01:01 PM »

I've done some research into non-RDBMS databases for a client. (I prefer non-RDBMS to NoSQL since there are at least 3 very different technologies calling themselves NoSQL right now.) I can save your school administrator some work. What I found: not ready for enterprise primetime except in very specific and specialized circumstances. For day to day general database requirements (i.e. any data that can easily be structured as a table - which is to say most data), RDBMS is still the best current choice.

-40hz (June 19, 2012, 12:37 PM)

An good implementation of No SQL is  MongoDB.  They actually have a really cool parser and examples there.  And I think that the not ready for enterprise primetime label really applies if you try to apply it to situations in which it is not meant for.  Most non-commercial solutions are not a good match- it is for IMO more consumptive uses of data, i.e. ecommerce and such.  The MongoDB website has use cases that spell that out, and examples of production deployment- and most of them mirror that ideology (though I can't see why there is a SAP deployment?  That would seem crazy to me).

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Living Room / Re: The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time: Watchmen

« Last post by wraith808 on June 19, 2012, 12:46 PM »

Yes... I've been reading it (and it's companion series Incorruptible - the flip side of Irredeemable) and they're both awesome!

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General Software Discussion / Re: From ZDnet writer - Final Thoughts on Windows 8: A Design Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on June 17, 2012, 08:50 PM »

Which is why you should use the different parts in your house for their intended purpose only.

-Shades (June 17, 2012, 02:58 PM)

Who is to say what the intended purpose is?  By all means, if electronics is intruding too much into your space, it is good to set ground rules.  But we have such things fully integrated and parallel to our social use, i.e using the iPad instead of breaking out the board games- not to not play them, but to make them more convenient so that we can spend more time playing and less time setting up.  It's really a personal decision.

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

« Last post by wraith808 on June 17, 2012, 11:58 AM »

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing for any side. It may even be good for Microsoft if it convinces people to upgrade to IE9 rather than using an old, insecure version of their browser.

-Deozaan (June 16, 2012, 06:57 PM)

In *this* case, it's not particularly bad.  But it sets a bad (IMHO) precedent.

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General Software Discussion / Re: From ZDnet writer - Final Thoughts on Windows 8: A Design Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on June 17, 2012, 11:56 AM »

Vista isn't bad, and neither was 95 at least IMO.  I loved getting away from 3.11 into 95... I was working QA at the time, and 95 made my life a *lot* easier than the morass that was 3.11.  Vista just gets a bad rap for the way that MS's hubris (to borrow 40's perfect term for MS's OS view) forced certain things on the user.  The user doesn't want to have to work around the OS, but for the OS to work for them.  Metro seems like Bob, and really shows that he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.

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

« Last post by wraith808 on June 16, 2012, 06:47 PM »

^ Yup.  This is the largest problem with this.  And imagine if someone had done this years ago when IE was market leader... if it's not good for one side, IMO it's not good for the other.

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General Software Discussion / Re: From ZDnet writer - Final Thoughts on Windows 8: A Design Disaster

« Last post by wraith808 on June 16, 2012, 06:45 PM »

Again, they could make this whole thing go away with one thing.  Quit calling the standard UI the "Classic Desktop" or whatever they're calling it.  Name it the "Standard Desktop" or something like that, make it the default on Desktop installations (or just have an option during the installation to choose your Desktop style), and quit trying to push it on non-mobile/non-touch devices.  From what I've seen, it works well when it's used for that purpose... it's just not a desktop shell.

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General Software Discussion / Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by wraith808 on June 15, 2012, 09:22 AM »

One of those things that sits in the background and quietly does its thing and gives you some interesting metrics (and ways to discover new software), Wakoopa has been around for a while.  But an e-mail that I received bodes the end of that.

Dear Wakoopians,

We are sending you this email to share with you some sad news. Six years after our plan to build the ‘lastFM for software’, to make discovering software social, we are closing down Wakoopa Social. Wakoopa will continue to make cool products only this time focussed on the corporate research market.

Read all about why we made this difficult decision and what we are going to do to give you some of your data back.

We want to thank you all for the time and effort you have put into our product. Together we truly made discovering software social.

Best regards,
Wouter Broekhof, Founder & CTO

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General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... opinions on code snippet libraries

« Last post by wraith808 on June 14, 2012, 10:05 PM »

What I seek is more a hint file than library - prolly shouldn't have used that term  .

I've long maintained a list of code snippets - not libraries or plug-ins - that I can cut and paste into what I might be doing at the moment.  Or, perhaps, I need a reminder of the syntax for a particular command, complete with all the possible qualifiers.  Basic laziness, for the most part, but once in a while exact syntax matters.

For instance, there is a script that is useful for debugging JavaScript errors.  With gbCodeLib, I just find that particular error handler, copy the script, paste it as needed.  It's generic, so no need to edit.

Other JS might need to have certain values edited, but it's easier to edit appropriate values than to try to remember the exact syntax.  For instance, there is a JS script for handling a calendar by month.  It's 109 lines.  I won't remember 109 lines  .

Right now, for portability, this is all in a text file, but traversing that file is inefficient and time-consuming at best.  Putting it into CintaNotes is only marginally better.  So I'm looking for a tool, preferably portable, that is designed for the purpose of storing, cataloging, tagging, and searching these code snippets.

(I did look at CherryTree, but my eyes don't deal well with text on a black background.  It's a viable alternative, but difficult [for me] to use, so I'm hoping for something better.)

-barney (June 14, 2012, 07:14 PM)

Ah... sounds cool.  Like templates sort of.  Yeah... I use snipplr for that and hook into http://www.snipitpro.com/ on windows and http://www.snippetsapp.com/ on mac.  Not free, but they work well...

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General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... opinions on code snippet libraries

« Last post by wraith808 on June 14, 2012, 05:14 PM »

^ I think perhaps I misunderstood your original answer.  Or something was lost in translation.  Did you mean a library of methods and such that would be referenced?