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7526

Developer's Corner / Re: What "Laws" Would You Be Comfortable With?

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 08:34 PM »

as a web page:
http://www.constitut....org/law/bastiat.htm

-rxantos (May 17, 2011, 01:40 PM)

Thanks for the link - I Just love this part:

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain -- and since labor is pain in itself -- it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

Plunder stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

Now that's beautifully simple and quite clear ... I think I'll have it engraved on my gun. 

-Stoic Joker (May 17, 2011, 02:44 PM)

I have a very real problem with this:

All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

Law should protect PEOPLE. That attitude is the one that lets lawyers run rampant protecting "property" through silly patents and whatnot.

But I do like the general sentiment in that quote. I've not had time to read the page itself yet, but it sounds like a very good read.

7527

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatic document creation. How?

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 08:06 PM »

I'd shy away from Access.

But you can do that any number of ways. XML + XSLT is one. Database => business logic (to create random set of questions) => XML & XSLT.

Or PHP or ASP with HTML & CSS templates. (Or any other scripting language.)

Those are pretty cheap and fast.

I don't know how you'd do that for InDesign though. I suppose there's a way to connect it to a database and use a template. InDesign is much nicer than HTML for presentation. You could automatically generate the basics, and pass it off for further design/tweaks.

7528

Living Room / Re: An Excellent Quote from the Opera CEO

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 07:32 PM »

And you're also paying for that ad you don't want!

-zridling (May 17, 2011, 07:21 PM)

I've noticed the CNET mobile site is streaming video ads now, which is bandwidth intensive, which of course I pay for. Sigh...

7529

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 11:15 AM »

A recent concert with David Gilmour and Roger Waters doing Comfortably Numb:

http://www.facebook....5558573&comments

If you're a Pink Floyd fan, it's a must see.

7530

Living Room / Re: Now you're REALLY screwed...

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 10:47 AM »

I think this thread is at an end.

-cranioscopical (May 17, 2011, 09:25 AM)

He called it dead!

7531

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 08:53 AM »

It just occurred to me... The cost of people not being able to properly read/write in cursive will be high as illiterate pharmacists try to decipher doctors' scribblings and end up poisoning people!

-Renegade (May 17, 2011, 04:27 AM)

Not really, print is harder to completely butcher. So if doctors drop cursive it should actually help the situation.

When I was younger I had a fairly nice signature, now arthritis has turned it into a scrawl. ...I haven't written in cursive in so long I've actually forgotten some of the letters.

-Stoic Joker (May 17, 2011, 06:34 AM)

On the good side, a pharmacist could give you morphine...

I'd prefer to think that doctors will always scribble and that I could luck into some morphine.

7532

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 04:27 AM »

It just occurred to me... The cost of people not being able to properly read/write in cursive will be high as illiterate pharmacists try to decipher doctors' scribblings and end up poisoning people!

7533

Developer's Corner / Re: AttachMate/Novell Lays Off People - Mono Hit

« Last post by Renegade on May 17, 2011, 04:25 AM »

It seems now to be confirmed that *all* Mono developers have been made redundant.

De Icaza has founded a new company to hire these guys in order to continue working on Mono.

http://www.h-online....Xamarin-1244119.html

-phitsc (May 17, 2011, 03:29 AM)

YAY~!

http://www.xamarin.com/

I really hope this all works out.

7534

Living Room / Re: Don't hit the switch - interesting toy

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 09:26 PM »

Here are some expressions:



(From the guy's blog here: http://translate.goo...%26p%3D2&act=url )

7535

Living Room / An Excellent Quote from the Opera CEO

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 07:34 PM »

This is excellent:

http://www.reuters.c...dUSTRE74F52X20110516

On location-based advertising: "For a lot of people, when they talk about location-based advertisement they talk about what I would call spam."

Hahahaha~! Nice!

7536

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone using Silverlight?

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 07:16 PM »

what's the general consensus on Silverlight? Also, your take on Adobe Air...

-nosh (January 27, 2008, 01:42 AM)

I've never used Silverlight, as far as I know, but I did briefly use Adobe Air.  Someone asked me to give him feedback on a language-learning program he had developed, and it required Adobe Air.  All I remember now is that the EULA for Adobe Air troubled me.  IIRC, it had me waiving all kinds of rights to privacy, etc.  As soon as I had put his program through its paces, I uninstalled both the program and Adobe Air.

-cyberdiva (May 16, 2011, 06:47 PM)

This seems to be an increasingly disturbing trend with software vendors using their software basically as a personal trojan into people's lives. As for Adobe Air itself, I loathe it. Most of the software I've used that uses AA is simply horrible to use. Adobe's help uses it, and it's god-awful. (And who is the retard that thought putting all help online was a good idea?)

7537

Developer's Corner / Re: Keeping the UI Responsive - What Would You Do?

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Well, I've used a combination of threading techniques with blocking and non-blocking techniques where I use blocking Forms, e.g. Form.ShowDialog(), and non-blocking forms, e.g. Form.Show(), that get dismissed automatically at thread termination.

I think I still need to do an "idiot review" to rule out some possibilities, but things are looking good so far.

One issue I ran into was the VS WebBrowser control... I hate that thing sometimes... It's just an ActiveX control underneath. I wish they'd do a real .NET browser. The current control is a POS sometimes. It's mighty convenient, but still... Has its drawbacks too.

Anyways, you have to be very careful with it as you can't use it with threads very easily. Underneath, it's still a POS. I don't think I'll swap it out for XulRunner, but it does give me pause for a second thought there.

Incidentally, for anyone that is interested, check out MozNet. It picks up from GeckoFX. (XulRunner/Firefox for .NET.)

7538

Living Room / Re: SEO Say What?!?

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 06:07 PM »

Yeah... I get those as well.

I think they're from mildly retarded 'SEO gurus' that people hire to do SEO for them. e.g. Hire me. I'll spam people and get links for you.

I think the idea is that you scrape information from WHOIS, then spam out and count on the trillions of inexperienced people out there to take advantage of your wonderful offer for a link back, because they heard that links are good.

It probably works to some degree.

Hmmm... maybe I should start a link-back farm on one of my domains that I'm not using...

Very, very, very NSFW domain name

rapesatan.com

Just kidding~! (But I do own that domain...)

7539

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone using Silverlight?

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 05:42 PM »

It's kind of disappointing that more sites don't use Silverlight. Everytime I've seen video done in Silverlight it's been far superior to anything in Flash by a wide margin. Much nicer to use. Oh well.

But no... There are no sites that I regularly use that use Silverlight.

7540

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 05:35 PM »

The Hungarian language is spelled phonetically.

-40hz (May 16, 2011, 09:11 AM)

Korean is like that. If you can pronounce it, you can spell it, provided you know the pronunciations for the letters, their rules, and you know multiple ways to use the word. It's quite a good system. Works well for Korean anyways.

7541

Developer's Corner / Re: Apples, Walled Gardens, and Screw Deals - Oh My!

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 05:05 PM »

Why not simply stop developing for Apple and concentrate on the Android?

In fact, instead of writing to Apple (which will do no good), write to congress. Ask for a stronger anti-monopoly law. Make it so companies cannot disallow competitive stores.

If enough people do this, Apple will be forced to spend more money on government kickbacks to avoid an antimonopoly law. Everything will stay the same, but hey, you feel better.

Then again, who knows, car manufacturers had a monopoly on parts, and if you put even oil not made by the manufacturer, you lost the warranty. But congress made this illegal. So is possible that a pro consumer anti monopoly law can be passed.

-rxantos (May 16, 2011, 03:42 PM)

I posted here:

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=26731.0

About a few things that I thought might be good for contract laws and EULAs. That could be a start to what isn't allowed. It would be nice if there were a law that you couldn't be a "super dick". Everyone can be a dick at times, but man... This takes the cake. Way over the top.

7542

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 09:05 AM »

@kyrathaba - Cat wuz ekselint!

7543

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 16, 2011, 12:54 AM »

I learned cursive in the 2nd grade; took less than a full hour of instruction over the week. Are schools so gobsmack stupid now that we can't take a hour or a week to teach cursive as part of penmanship? And what about diaries? Future fontographers? Unbelievable.

-zridling (May 15, 2011, 11:04 PM)

I wonder if getting really really drunk/high then standing on my head would help things like this make sense... I know a full lobotomy would work.

Are schools so gobsmack stupid?

-zridling (May 15, 2011, 11:04 PM)

Yes. And don't forget the students.

No child left behind! Teach them nothing and none of them will go anywhere, guaranteeing no child gets left behind...

If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Give 'em School House Rock, and let 'em sink.

Want to start a war? Try introducing a modest amount of "discipline" in schools. Let the blood letting begin~!

My education was clearly inferior, as proven by my mistaken belief that education and educational principles should improve and advance. Man... Was I wrong...

7544

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 15, 2011, 06:36 PM »

It reminds me of a UK education minister back in the 80s saying we don't need to teach kids to do sums any more as they all have calculators. He had a point but where is the understanding and ability to estimate.

-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2011, 06:25 PM)

I distantly remember something like that. But it entirely misses the point -- that being that the ability to do math is a general logic and thinking skill. The skill in itself leads to others. Like a gateway drug.

7545

Living Room / Re: The end of the line for cursive writing

« Last post by Renegade on May 15, 2011, 05:59 PM »

Don't worry about cursive disappearing.  As soon as the oil runs out so no plastics and much less energy, rare earths run out so no semiconductors, copper at a premium, etc., meaning NO COMPUTERS, they'll have to reinvent quill pens and iron gall inks to record anything.

-rjbull (May 15, 2011, 04:14 PM)

That's December 21st next year. Either the Zombie Apocalypse or Skype.Net...

Cursive is good for motor-skill development, so I think they're kind of losing out there.

7546

Living Room / Re: Cat and Owl are Friends

« Last post by Renegade on May 15, 2011, 07:47 AM »

That was very cute.

7547

Living Room / Re: A real bicycle that you can grow?...from nylon?

« Last post by Renegade on May 14, 2011, 10:29 PM »

Looking at the bike, it instantly make you think of 3D printing, and:

Similar in concept to 3D printing, the bike design is perfected using computer-aided design and then constructed by using a powerful laser-sintering process which adds successive, thin layers of the chosen structural material until a solid, fully-formed bike emerges.

But they don't really explain the difference.

Still, it sounds very cool. I wonder how long it will be before it hits production.

7548

Living Room / Re: Sound problems

« Last post by Renegade on May 14, 2011, 10:25 PM »

Make sure to have the correct drivers and update them.

A while back I had encountered some issues with a sound card driver that caused bad audio.

Just one thing to look at. Not sure if it will help in your case...

7549

Developer's Corner / Re: AttachMate/Novell Lays Off People - Mono Hit

« Last post by Renegade on May 14, 2011, 10:21 PM »

I think Microsoft is beyond that point where they can try to kill Linux. It would only hurt them. They need a different direction. So I don't see them killing Mono or anything like that.

They have nothing to gain there. Linux is entrenched. There's no killing it. They can only try to gain there.

Azure and all that cloud stuff is where they can gain. Linux can be an ally there. Mono can help. MS is losing relevance.

7550

General Software Discussion / Re: email troubles

« Last post by Renegade on May 14, 2011, 10:39 AM »

Having suffered many different email problems over the years, I may be able to help.

Is your email server your own? Which server? An ISP email? (Run away!) Popular web mail?

I've seen some of those issues in the past.