Recent Posts

801

General Software Discussion / Re: starting a revolt against Opera. Worth it?

« Last post by housetier on January 24, 2008, 08:26 AM »

Now that the raising behavior is under control, I'd love to be able to tag my bookmarks.

802

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by housetier on January 23, 2008, 05:04 PM »

Merle I think there is a setting I have overlooked. Previewing substrate works very well. I bet there is some powersaving thingie in my gnome-settings

803

General Software Discussion / Re: starting a revolt against Opera. Worth it?

« Last post by housetier on January 23, 2008, 04:19 PM »

I figured out what the issue was. The output from opera --help are not really clear.

In order for opera to not raise itself when it receives -remote commands, the initial instance has to be started with -noraise. I was thinking one could send a signal to the running instance with -noraise -remote but that was wrong.

So I have to admit I spent several years disliking a program for a bug it didn't have. Only its documentation was lacking in that respect, and still is.

To start opera correctly when it is not running and to send it an URL otherwise, I use this bash-script:

Code: Text [Select]

1. #!/bin/bash
2.  
3. if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then
4.     pidof opera >/dev/null && exit 0
5.     exec opera -noraise
6. elif [ $# -eq 1 ] ; then
7.     [[ $1 == http* ]] && URL="$1"
8.     [[ $1 != http* ]] && URL="http://$1"
9.  
10.     pidof opera > /dev/null && exec opera -backgroundpage $URL >/dev/null 2>&1
11.     exec opera -newpage -noraise $URL >/dev/null 2>&1
12. fi

The highlighter is incomplete though...

804

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by housetier on January 23, 2008, 04:06 PM »

Well the truth is: I have yet to see the screensaver in action.

So far the screen only went blank, I guess I'll have to ask someone with more inticate knowledge of gnome-screensaver about this.

805

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by housetier on January 21, 2008, 10:25 AM »

Impressive numbers, however I never lock the bathroom door, not even when I am at someone else's place.   

The implementation of an encryption scheme is its weakest point. DES was found to be not supersecure, so "they" invented 3DES, however it didn't bring thrice the security of DES, because the flaw was still in there. There are no absolutes, just time frames in which breaking an encryption is feasible.

Soon the old encryption schemes will be broken, and new ones will have to be found. Years ago, a numeric lock was enough for a safe. These days there are so complex magnetic-mechanic-electronic combinations, it's easier to scam people instead of stealing their money from the bank or their homes.

Encryption can be very secure, until some researcher finds a shortcut. I am confident, if you'll forgive the irony, we will see literally a breakthrough of popular encryption schemes in the next 5 years.

The only protection I have, and which you so well laid out, is the effort it takes to break the encryption. Everything is breakable, but some things take longer to break; that's all I'll get from using encryption. But that's enough for me. I used to put 2 locks on my bicycle: that wouldn't stop anybody who was after my bicycle, but it would very likely stop anybody who was after some bicycle.

Protecting my data won't stop anybody who really wants to get ahold of my data, but it might stop someone who just is after some data.

The only thing 100% certain in life is death 

806

Living Room / Re: Even V.I.S.T.A. can look beautiful...

« Last post by housetier on January 21, 2008, 09:02 AM »

::

Be sure to check out the other projects as well!

It's awesome stuff 

807

Living Room / Even V.I.S.T.A. can look beautiful...

« Last post by housetier on January 21, 2008, 08:55 AM »

An apt definition of VISTA is here.

This is so amazing, I can't find the words to describe it. They look so real, yet there is nothing natural about it. Unless we dive into a philosophical debate... /me stops

:: ::

The artists, Alex Dragulescu, takes code of found malware and has his software analyze it. After some time of number crunching, stunning images appear. These images are already being used by messagelabs; they have a few but small images.

I found this on the blog of The Washington Post, where you can find more and larger images.

808

General Software Discussion / Re: I Want To Index Every File On My LAN.

« Last post by housetier on January 21, 2008, 05:29 AM »

I don't want you in my LAN, tinjaw! Stay off my harddisk

809

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by housetier on January 21, 2008, 05:25 AM »

I don't need a lock on my door: I possess nothing of value. This sounds like such a good argument, doesn't it?

However, using encryption or locking the door is not about having to hide something or about protecting valuable items, it is about not showing it to everyone or not letting everybody in. There is this thing called privacy, upon which people place different value. For me, it matters a lot. Others do not care about my privacy one bit, that is, they do not want to know.

So, even though I don't have anything of material value, I make sure to lock the door when I leave my apartment. And I protect my electronic communication whenever possible

Encryption matters, and it helps. It doesn't provide 100% protection against a dedicated "thief", but it very well helps against lesser villains. The same applies to your locked door: it won't keep anybody out who REALLY wants to get in. It is difficult to protect against extremes without going to extremes yourself; it is much easier to protect against "normal" and more likely "threats" using normal tools.

I am especially careful to protect myself, or rather, my data, against my government and their secret police. Recent incidents have shown that government officials are incapable of handling large amounts of sensitive data. I do not want my data to be among it when they leave USB sticks in a public library, or leave the laptop on the passenger seat over night, or send encrypted CDROMs with the key printed on the front... They show no signs of respect for other people's privacy, so I will not let them near it.


OK to sum it up: using encryption is up to everybody themselves. But consider why you do one thing (i.e. lock the door) but not the other 

810

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your top 10 Tech/Software Blogs?

« Last post by housetier on January 20, 2008, 01:05 PM »

Strange indeed. I have reloaded the page several times now, I do not use a proxy, I have emptied the cache. For me it is just broken, and I do not feel like fixing it for them.

Almost all other captchas have worked so far, only blogspot's is constantly reloading itself without giving me a chance to figure out what they are showing 

I don't think I am missing out on news though:

From your  102 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 10,948 items, starred 3 items, shared 0 items, and emailed 0 items.

-https://www.google.com/reader/view/#trends-page

 

811

General Software Discussion / Re: Spicebird

« Last post by housetier on January 20, 2008, 07:38 AM »

I'll also wait until it is mature enough to import my settings from thunderbird.

But I doubt it's going the right way: I have moved many applications into the web, like email, news and calendar. OTOH if SB is capable of doing all that while using less system resources than FF, then I might be really tempted.

812

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your top 10 Tech/Software Blogs?

« Last post by housetier on January 20, 2008, 06:39 AM »

Too bad I can't fill out the contact form: the captcha image is never shown.

813

General Software Discussion / Re: starting a revolt against Opera. Worth it?

« Last post by housetier on January 20, 2008, 06:29 AM »

and towards not fixing annoying bugs in opera for linux: when I send it a URL to open in the already running instance of opera, it either raises itself and steals my focus, or it is incapable of handling URLs with commas.

I got someone from opera to accept this as a bug and was asked to keep quiet about it. I now see why: since version 8.something until 9.5 they have been unable or unwilling to fix this. As long as opera insists on interrupting my work flow I can't bring myself to use it longer than 10 minutes.

So, nontroppo, if you have some insight and maybe can give "stronger" feedback than a normal guy like me, please make them fix this

Other browsers have rough edges too, but at least I can compensate them. I cannot easily compensate for focus-stealing behavior.

814

General Software Discussion / Re: extraDNS: does it work?

« Last post by housetier on January 18, 2008, 06:58 AM »

I wouldn't pay for DNS lookups.

815

General Software Discussion / Re: starting a revolt against Opera. Worth it?

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 01:49 PM »

You can't call it "secure" when their email program does not support GnuPG or PGP.

I used to like opera a lot, but it is hindering my workflow and I can't have that.

The petition might work, IF enough people sign it. I'd sign because I want people to have many webbrowsers to choose from.

816

Developer's Corner / Re: PODdy Mouth - Good blog on self-publishing and printing on demand

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 01:21 PM »

I'll read them articles and see how they help me with my book project

817

Developer's Corner / Re: Why AJAX is Preferred for RIAs over Java

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 12:24 PM »

People might also want to look into OpenLaszlo:

 

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software.

OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and (...) DHTML.

-http://www.openlaszlo.org/

On the server side you need a Java Servlet Container such as tomcat. Programs are compiled and displayed either by flash or dhtml (=AJAX). LZPIX is an impressive demo.

I am currently trying to write a complete IRC client "in Laszlo". We shall see how it'll turn out

818

Living Room / Re: Article: Please don't steal this Web content

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 08:57 AM »

There is a web-monitoring service that scans the internets for illegitimate copies of your content. I have not tried their services, because it is not free. But when you love off writing it might be interesting...

819

General Software Discussion / Re: COfundOS: A site where people can join and fund Open Source Software

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 07:53 AM »

Isn't this similar to what we do here in the Coding Snacks section? People come and ask for a certain feature, maybe they pledge an amount or already have donated, someone fulfills the request...

Ok I only looked at their diagrams, I admit it

820

Developer's Corner / Re: Technical Debt - Nice Programming Metaphor and Long Blog Essay

« Last post by housetier on January 17, 2008, 07:49 AM »

This will become more useful to me in the future, when my coding work increases. I'll keep this in mind...

821

Living Room / Re: Insane Super Mario Bros. Mod

« Last post by housetier on January 16, 2008, 07:29 PM »

Oh my that super mario mod was purely EVIL!


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

822

Developer's Corner / Re: [Webfind] How to kill a dragon with various programming languages

« Last post by housetier on January 16, 2008, 07:19 PM »

it somehow reminded me of 99 bottles of beer. My favorite there is the perl program with code in shape of bottles.

823

Living Room / Re: Webfind: How to hire and treat your own hacker

« Last post by housetier on January 16, 2008, 06:47 PM »

This is just awesome!

824

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by housetier on January 16, 2008, 06:39 PM »

Yay I finally found a screensaver worthy to install: substrate it is! It is just beautiful, so urban!...

825

Living Room / Re: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

« Last post by housetier on January 16, 2008, 06:28 PM »

Definitions:

elite	a person who has great, vast, huge knowledge about a certain topic
noob	a person who seeks one of the elite for help in their field of expertise

When the elite come down to help the noobs they should be prepared to explain the same thing over and over and over and over again. They will face the same questions with the same (obvious for the elite) answers several times a day, day in, day out.

A noob is a noob is a noob and therefore does not know the protocol of dealing with the elite yet. Hence, the elite need a lot of diplomacy. Helping these noobs takes effort: time and energy. And only seldomly will there be a reward.

These rules were made by the elite to give them the good feeling of helping, while at the same time reducing their efforts. Now the noob not only faces a problem, he or she also must follow an unknown protocol before help is graciously given. To see the wisdom of these rules requires experience, which the noobs by definition can not have.

If the elite doesn't have the time or energy to help, then they shouldn't try to. No one can force them to help. If the stupidity is too much, don't listen. If the questions just hurt your sense of logic, don't even consider answering. From a wrong sense of duty the elite created these rules to help, except they only help to easy the elite's pain and not solve the noob's problem.

I was once a noob and was treated badly by the elite I sought for help. After a while I had learned their protocol and got along with them, even behaved like them and, like them, looked down upon other noobs. One day I realised what I was doing and totally left that community for good. I will never return to them, instead I am doing what they are trying to do, except I do it my way. And I also spend a lot of time and energy to help - if I choose to help, that is. Sometimes I am not in the mood, so I ignore all questions; and I don't feel bad about it at all: When I can't help properly I don't help at all. Otherwise it's a double-waste of time and energy: mine's and that of the noob.


Wow, I didn't think it would turn out this long. But this topic is important to me, I have seen noobs being treated so badly, I am still ashamed of it    It's been 5 years since or so, but I am still so ashamed...

* housetier submits this now before it gets longer yet