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751

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX - Problem with Steam shellscript may delete user files

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 21, 2015, 05:14 AM »

^Well...it happened. Not much else we can say about it since we could only speculate endlessly as to why it happened.

-40hz (January 19, 2015, 02:37 PM)

Hehe I've been watching too much TV. We just call Homeland Security and have them haul the programmer and his boss in for interrogation upon threat of watching Barney episodes and make them tell us!

Why is it the little people are reduced to speculation?

752

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Visual Progressive Countdown Calendar

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 06:42 PM »

Is the calendar portion crucial?  If not, perhaps mouser's own Progress Bars of Life might suit you?

https://www.donation...oftware/Mouser/pbol/

-skwire (January 20, 2015, 05:50 PM)

The calendar portion is interesting, because stuff happens "on days", not really "in a bar". I've had real trouble staying focused for a while! And also you can see the overlapping time frames, and on any particular day you make your decisions based on the dynamic priorities.

So as you suddenly discover yourself unfocusing--> procrastinating, to see the days click by as "wasted" (or not, if you are prepping a multi day thing bit by bit), has value.

An interesting alt second half is stuff that needs to be done "in varying shades of now", and then maybe it starts a different color bar in the opposite direction of how badly the unfocusing is making the time slip away!

Now, this is all easy to do, to a point, on a reg calendar with pencils and pens, but just saying the physical day integration has its own value. For ex a progress bar can "overstate" how much time you have left, and you subconsciously fail to correctly back out weekends that aren't business days.

Programming wise, it may not be wholly necessary to super-calculate stuff, but maybe have some nice drag-drop so let's say you have a four day item, you just drag the bar over four days, and then the program just logs what you drew. "Oh. Four days. Got it. I think. Is this correct? Yes/no."

753

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 05:05 PM »

2015:
Listened to chess lecture. Dad calls. Sound card burns out.

-TaoPhoenix (January 20, 2015, 03:43 PM)

Would Buzz(Lightyear?) be proud of your solution to that?

-Arizona Hot (January 20, 2015, 03:53 PM)

He is now!

So you can have your main volume "is what it is", but somehow the separate Wave ended up at zero and you can't see it on the simple master volume interface.

754

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 04:07 PM »

Because we have a 50 50 chance of ending up in a dystopia like the classics but with better tech (than some of them, but not others!)

-TaoPhoenix (January 20, 2015, 03:32 PM)

Then I suggest you start studying classic dystopias, so you can have a response prepared. Do you expect Big Brother to be watching you?

-Arizona Hot (January 20, 2015, 03:49 PM)

Big brother(s), little brothers (corporations), and everyone on social media is watching already.

My current response is self-induced psychopathic defeatism to stay below the radar. "Everybody has things to hide. Some are less interesting than others."

Planned response #1: Everyone will eventually be assigned their very own agent. And since it's National Security, they might be just a wee cut above Go-Phone tech support.

So invite your agent to have Pizza! 

755

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 03:43 PM »

20 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Moon Landing

-Arizona Hot (January 20, 2015, 03:18 PM)

Still a bit edgy, but more towards the interesting stuff side here.

1969:
As the guys were getting ready to lift off of the Moon to go back home, Buzz noticed something important was amiss. A switch from a kind of important circuit breaker had fallen out -- the breaker that allowed the Lunar Lander (LEM) to take off from the Moon...Buzz found the hole where the breaker used to be and jammed a pen in there to complete the circuit.

2015:
Listened to chess lecture. Dad calls. (???? Unknown actions). Sound card burns out.

756

Living Room / Re: The Rant Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 03:37 PM »

Blecch!

I was watching a chess lecture this morning, and because of server side tech problems, they kept saying to increase the volume. Then Dad called, and by some unholy devil's-miracle of somethings-pressed while trying to minimize it, I think I maxed out my audio output (after *eight years on this comp*!), and I think I blew out my sound card!

   

It still is "just a sound card" and I have a backup laptop to still watch stuff on, so I didn't just become electronically-deaf, but COME ON! Ridiculously impossible Murphy's Law stuff like that shouldn't happen!

Chances are I'll end up waiting on the sound card until my big test/overhaul this summer with Win10, but still, that's among the more unbelievable pieces of bad luck!

Update:

So you can have your main volume "is what it is", but somehow the separate Wave ended up at zero and you can't see it on the simple master volume interface.

757

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 03:32 PM »

If anyone tries this and it can be done, let us know what you thought of it.

-Arizona Hot (January 20, 2015, 03:22 PM)

Well, their site design looks pretty strange, and I couldn't get a handle to get going!

"Tell me web design doesn't look like that in the future!"


Aging software is pretty old news. But I'm skeptical of the text responses to stuff. It has to just be dressed up grade B scifi/futurism. Because we have a 50 50 chance of ending up in a dystopia like the classics but with better tech (than some of them, but not others!)

758

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 20, 2015, 06:56 AM »

From the other thread:

"Windows 10 to have a grand coming out party on January 21"

Start your graphics!

    

759

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX - Problem with Steam shellscript may delete user files

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 19, 2015, 02:28 PM »

I'm amazed whoever put that command in a script didn't realize that could happen. Especially since rm -rf/* is one of the first "killer commands  Linux users learn and repeatedly get warned about. My guess is that whoever did this is probably a Windows programmer by trade. Windows has some built-in safeguards when you run the rd command. That, however, is not the case in Linux, which assumes you know what you're doing when issuing commands within a terminal session.

-40hz (January 19, 2015, 02:15 PM)

This is what I was trying to explore / express.

Valve isn't a three man op - they have a few bucks to their name.  So I'd think if they write Linux code, they'd presumably get a decently skilled Linux coder who is aware of the basics like this. Or if they have to have a "Windows programmer by trade" write the bulk of the code, they'd at least get a Linux guy to eyeball it for sanity.

I'm particularly disturbed that it was labeled "scary" - to me, that seems like something is missing from the programming "story", especially as you remarked how basic of an issue this is, this being in people's top lists of scary commands to be really careful of. I can't imagine anything I'd do for work that I'd notice as "scary", then ... not check it with a boss! Notice especially it's work, for a big company, not some well meaning guy just trying to write a nice little utility and getting it wrong. And the severity of what can go wrong is also a red flag for me.

760

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX - Problem with Steam shellscript may delete user files

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 19, 2015, 01:05 PM »

As a newbie question, I am responding to these bits:

-----------

# Scary!
rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*

Yes, $STEAMROOT can end up being empty, but no check is made for that. Notice the # Scary! line, an indication the programmer knew there was the potential for catastrophe.

-----------------------

So is this a bug?! Or a hack?

How does a line like "rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*" even begin to have a legit purpose?

And then how does a programmer label something "scary" and do nothing about it?

I'm missing the meta-story here. Given the number of "blah" security reports on random "vulnerabilities", wouldn't this rocket to the top of someone's to-do list to investigate?

Did someone bulldoze the programmer, who then felt trapped and the best be could do was add "scary", counting on the tech media to somehow do an end-run fix?

761

Living Room / Re: I no longer read WIRED - and why I'm glad I stopped reading it years ago

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 18, 2015, 01:28 AM »

Unfortunately, real-life always overrides such requests, and desks and walls start getting covered in paper, sticky notes, whiteboards scrawled with god-knows-what and other materials.  If you want work done in a workplace, the artifacts of that work will start messing things up.

-Innuendo (January 17, 2015, 07:22 PM)

The scary parts start when they don't actually want real work done, they want the image because it makes for more money during investment meetings, combined with the stress-deflection of yelling at people to get more work done!

762

Living Room / Re: I no longer read WIRED - and why I'm glad I stopped reading it years ago

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 18, 2015, 01:24 AM »

It looks quite literally like the set of some dystopian techo-hell film. I suppose this is just one peek into the mindset of the technocrats.

-Renegade (January 17, 2015, 07:16 PM)

Again, sometimes life is even creepier than films!

I didn't think it looked like a dys-film at all!
Instead, it looks more like just a boring case of "you're not here to work. You're here to be furniture to my expensive board meetings as the west coast office of Conde Nast."

763

Living Room / Re: Congratulations Terrorists, You are getting what you want!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 18, 2015, 01:21 AM »

I think a moderately important exception about law enforcement might need to be "a lot of the time, the lowest uncontroversial law enforcement can be trusted". This is the tone of my response to everything from that "don't talk to cops" lawyer video all over youtube, to just talking to cops randomly while getting lost on the streets of NY City.  As long as it's "painfully easy" with no wrinkles, then you can (mostly!) trust them.

It's just the minute when it gets complicated that things begin to get hazy.

764

Living Room / Re: "Secure Email As a Potential Terrorist Indicator" ??!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 18, 2015, 01:18 AM »

I know people hate black/white answers a lot of the time, but...

-Renegade (January 17, 2015, 08:15 PM)

I'm all for Black and White Answers, but ...

765

Living Room / "Secure Email As a Potential Terrorist Indicator" ??!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 17, 2015, 01:48 PM »

After some thought, this one ended up in the Living Room. A couple of notes why at the top:

- I'm not mis-firing inflammatory language. A judge did that!
- This creates a legal-advice quandary for any tech users in Spain!

------------

Slashdot's summary:
Spanish Judge Cites Use of Secure Email As a Potential Terrorist Indicator

Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist? Although it's a ridiculous notion that using secure email implies criminal activities, a judge cited that reason to partially justify arrests in Spain. In December, as part of "an anti-terrorist initiative" Operation Pandora, over 400 cops raided 14 houses and social centers in Spain. They seized computers, books, and leaflets and arrested 11 people. Four were released under surveillance, but seven were "accused of undefined terrorism" and held in a Madrid prison. This led to "tens of thousands" participating in protests. As terrorism is alleged "without specifying concrete criminal acts," the attorney for those seven "anarchists" denounced the lack of transparency.

http://yro.slashdot....-terrorist-indicator
http://www.networkwo...orist-indicator.html

-----------------------------------------------
Something that jumped at me:

"over 400 cops raided 14 houses and social centers in Spain".

That's in the range of 30 cops per house! I can't even recall the last time I saw thirty cops in one place!

Meanwhile, for the entire premise of "Secure Email As a Potential Terrorist Indicator", well my ??! comes from modified chess annotation punctuation, and approximately means "platypus-$hit crazy, but usually you can laugh that kind of thing off in the Basement if it bothers you, but this time it's in a legal ruling from a judge, and judges are more difficult to laugh off!!"

766

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 17, 2015, 12:44 PM »

Yes, perception and political correctness. I think you could try to define these things as being "patterns of behaviour", but I'm not sure that psychologists would necessarily be able to agree with that without at least some better definition. The problem is that, in usage, such terms often seem to be merely clichéd ad hominem attacks - simplistic and pejorative labels which appear to be intended to force other people to maintain the labeller's paradigm or cognitive bias - i.e., it becomes mandatory that the thing being labelled be perceived in that light. If one does not perceive the thing in the "correct" light, then one is punished by the pejorative label being applied to oneself, either directly or by implication - e.g., "If you can't see that that is a racist thing to do/say, then you must be a racist also" (which is a non-sequitur). This would seem to be irrational.

-IainB (January 17, 2015, 11:02 AM)

The psychologists are right to object to things as vague as "patterns of behavior". That's a slightly aggressively creepy way for putting a negative slant on anything that isn't "crazier than a nutcase loon playing a chaotic random D&D character in real life"!



I'll try to add a new angle: political correctness especially pays overt attention to the differences between denotation and connotation, and also creates "excluded middle" fallacies. So you don't have to see things in the PC label's context, but it then forces you to then use it as the "anti" opposite.

767

Living Room / Re: ideas that will change society

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 17, 2015, 10:57 AM »

The third one is not a fact!!

768

General Software Discussion / Re: youtube ad blocker for seamonkey?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 17, 2015, 01:58 AM »

Do you often thank yourself, or is it just on special occasions?

-Stephen66515 (January 16, 2015, 06:48 PM)

all the time. sometimes i talk to my cat. 

-bit (January 17, 2015, 12:17 AM)

That's just fine.

The fun starts when the cat talks back!

769

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

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 15, 2015, 08:42 PM »

Isn't called the godwin point or something like that (sorry, late here, no time to google...).

-MerleOne (January 15, 2015, 05:48 PM)

Yes it is, and that's normally a Basement trigger. : )

770

Living Room / Re: Laboratory-Grown Penises Ready To Be Tested In Humans

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 14, 2015, 11:08 PM »

Well, they are extending resources to give one a leg up on the competition.. I mean if you really just want them to help you stand for something...is the angle at which it's done really that critical?? And there's no point in needing/having/wanting longer arms, if you can reach anyway...

-Stoic Joker (January 14, 2015, 09:36 PM)

Remember the great Microsoft strategy of the 1990's?

"Embrace, Extend, ... "

... uh...

 

Suggested distribution wrapper:



I just don't know why this isn't in the NSFW humor thread.

771

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 14, 2015, 11:00 PM »

The psychopaths never give up.

http://gizmodo.com/t...me-as-the-1679496808

The New CISPA Bill Is Literally Exactly the Same as the Last One

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. That's a cliche, but politicians often follow the hoariest routes to power, and attempting to enact change by doing the same thing repeatedly is one of them. When word broke last week that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the twice-defeated bill known as CISPA, was being re-revived by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), it wasn't clear if the zombie legislation would be updated to address the myriad concerns with previous versions. We combed through the full text of the bill and, nope, it's exactly the same, word for word for overly broad data-scooping power-granting word.

More at the link.

-Renegade (January 14, 2015, 07:50 PM)

Well, that first sentence is one of those "logical fallacies". It's not insane if it works. In this type of situation it's clearly about exhausting the defensive resources through attrition.

And if it DOES work, it's "insane" not to. Ethically it's (Insert seventeen Renegade words here), but not insane.

772

Living Room / Re: Congratulations Terrorists, You are getting what you want!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 14, 2015, 01:52 PM »

@4wd - BTW, you spelled "Godvernment" wrong there.

-Renegade (January 14, 2015, 04:18 AM)

I liked "godverment" more.

Especially now that so many are acting like divinely ordained beings, with godlike indifference towards their charters, rather than as legally constituted and defined bodies whose function was to serve those who created them.

Such monsters we create for ourselves and loved ones!

-40hz (January 14, 2015, 08:44 AM)

Well, vermin is spelled with an 'i' and they make their own money in the national mint, so is that "godvermint"?

773

N.A.N.Y. 2015 / Re: NANY 2015 Release - Splat (Simple Program Launching and Termination)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 13, 2015, 10:29 PM »

<---- proceeds to demonstrate the neutrality of tech intersecting with intelligence and the hopes that there is morality behind intelligence.

Ahhh, Skwire Skwire Skwire.

You know you just opened Pandora's handbag, right? Let's go pull things out of it!

While technically possible before, it would have been rather tricky to play audio files in the right order. But I'm guessing this new version has portions of Trout mashed into it. And with that, you get another whole-greater-than-parts result.

You just invented a cute new alarm clock! With Snooze! And instructions!

Whazzalldat you say?

Because it's not about the cute obvious case of just getting up in the morning. Any old Minecraft 16 bit computer alarm clock can do that!

No. I'm talking that you built an incredibly easy Macro timer program, and now you stuck *sound player* capability into it.

And just like Wizards of the Coast found out in 1993, you can take simple little pieces and produce terrifying results. Here we go!

1. First just find a cute couple of little songs to anchor different purposes.
2. Design the profile(s) needed per notes below.
3. Use a virtual/desktop splitter to jam Splat out of the way in the background.
4. Text to Speech produces audio files. Make a bunch of things you need to be reminded of.
5. Space them apart with the wait command and your choice of waiting until the audio is done or not before the master profile keeps going.
6. Because it's audio, if you are doing stuff around the house, you don't have to keep drifting back and forth to the computer to keep checking your list. You can get a Star-Trek-Computer effect "hollering" out stuff like "Did you call the cable company yet?"

Bonus tricks:
On a friend's computer, you can do this and tuck it behind the splitter, with TTS messages loaded. So they are hanging out doing stuff. With a good guess, like you know they lose motivation after working for about two hours of work, you schedule a TTS message in a nice creepy voice, "Hello. This is your computer. Find anything interesting on Facebook? You might want to get back to work."



So, you will be responsible for at least $500 of increased productivity and Pwning April Fool's 2015 somewhere in our fine user base's community!

774

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Versions and cultural "Moods"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 13, 2015, 09:11 PM »

And now, for me, the deep waiting is over. The info, such as it is, is in, for me.

As I've remarked elsewhere, the grand slam would be if my deeply envisioned comp from 2006 can (maybe slightly slowly) run Win 10. (If not, it just comes down to economics of a new machine.)

But through those last four Win iterations, it feels like the mood is changing. Current "mainstream" support of Win7 is ending. Under MS's confusing terms, it will still get emergency security patch support, but no new features. Nothing actually exciting.

http://www.pcworld.c...being-abandoned.html

And trying to merge the following article with some basic older news elsewhere:

MS declared a while ago that it would basically support only "two major OS versions at a time". So in many ways, while I was "waiting and buying time", Vista is now clearly just a fading old feeble giggle, Win 7 was important ... but starting to age as well! Win 8 is newer, but everyone is also racing to forget it as fast as possible. In doing so, it counts as one more clock-tick of past OS versions that will start to fade out.

http://www.pcworld.c...-august-release.html

To me, that leaves me banking a LOT of hopes on Win 10. Early reports are coming in that Satya Nadella is starting to put some sanity back into Windows. And because it's the crisp freshest new chance for them, it's the "good version" that they tend to do after one of their "disaster versions".

So if they are going to ever add anything really nifty, it will eventually show up in Win10. It might also just fix a few backbone gripes.

So, like a student who only got C's in prophecy school, unless some giant catastrophe shows up which I doubt, I can't see anywhere at all what a "Post Win-10 mood" will be. It's a total blind spot. But if it's decently solid as an OS with not too much silliness grafted onto it, that could be the next one I sit on for six years waiting for the next safe waystation.

And by that point, something monumental could have happened in the computing cultural world. But that's 2020's problem. For now, I just really want this version to be something I can count on.

 

775

General Software Discussion / Windows Versions and cultural "Moods"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on January 13, 2015, 08:52 PM »

Okay, this is a very jagged and halting post, probably going to suffer more from my own erratic perceptions rather than offending too many people. But here goes.

I feel I am representative of a certain class of Windows user: I am not a "fan". I have no need to embark on promotional enthusiasms.

I am just still with Windows because my stray efforts to do other things just ended up worse.

I am still on XP, modified over the years and creaking at the seams, until it totters just a little. I am not a "fan" of XP - just very respectful of it as a solid baseline that let me just do things for a good chunk of time, and that longevity has formed my current computing opinion.

But I did take strong notice, and am taking baby steps to begin thinking about upgrades. (Right now it's a race between the slowly growing concerns about the end of security support for XP, with pondering some slowly aging hardware, starting with my comp cpu fan that's going to go fairly soon.)

A brief history of my eyeballing of Windows versions follows. Picture "rhetoric quotes" around everything.

95: Saw it from afar, def preferred it visually over Windows 3.11. However I heard how buggy it was.
98: Win 95 like it should have been. This will become more than a one-shot deal - it seems it will become how MS works.
Win 2000: Workhorse version that was safe and stable, because we forget just how bad XP was for a couple of *years* in the early days before it became what it is now. But support also began to die out "a little too soon".
Win XP: After certain critical chunks of time to get deeply repaired, XP finally evolved into the successor of Win2000. Your choice of which SP was the "turning point", but it was def one of them, and not XP "raw". I'll just idly suggest it was SP2.

... And then it all stalled out. So when my old temp machine began to age badly, I set out to build a strong machine to just "buy as much time for key info and moods" as I could. I believe I mostly succeeded. That waiting time involved:

Vista: After the old dreams of Longhorn died, and after someone's "Implosion Memo" at Microsoft, (nominee for one of the worst bad days for someone in a decade!), MS desperately slammed out Vista knowing it was total junk, and feebly tried to bluster its way into something barely above total panicked embarrassment.
Win7: What Vista should have been. What people of "that and this time" are using as a way-station in these kinds of decisions.
Win8: The Metro fiasco, though reports have emerged that if you find your choice of ways of dealing with that, there's still an engine under the hood.

And so we get to where I am now: Win10. Naming silliness aside, early reports are saying that once again, it's a "should have been", in this case Win8 as it should have been.

A few more notes next post.