Recent Posts

826

General Software Discussion / Re: Rainmeter may be on the move again. Can I ask for your Help?

« Last post by Eóin on April 23, 2009, 07:21 PM »

Never heard of this before. Must say it has made a very good first impression. Time to explore it more

827

Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by Eóin on April 21, 2009, 01:56 AM »

You are saying that grammar helps to standardize the language, sure and that is precisely what I am against for. I personally do not want standardized languages especially done by some small group of people. Can you tell me who make these standards? I am not looking for a conspiracy, really, but when we say standardizations we mean that some people some institutions some groups come together and at least make some basic desicions. And I find that morally and socially wrong. That is pretty much it.

-kartal (April 20, 2009, 11:41 PM)

Well that's pretty clear, and fair enough. I feel entirely the opposite on the subject but I guess that's more a philosophical disagreement.

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Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by Eóin on April 20, 2009, 01:43 PM »

A Mackintosh I believe, and quite funny at that

829

Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by Eóin on April 19, 2009, 01:34 PM »

Guys I think your over reacting a bit. The point of language is just communication. We can all see different dialects around us and so of course some consistency and rules have to be established to create a common base that all can understand and read and information can flow freely.

This is all a good thing, the rules aren't drawn up by some elitist to keep the little man down, rather they have developed over time. Of course along the way someone has to step in to keep things clear but those people who do that are ordinary people, you or I. This whole process is not done to subjugate, classify or divide people, instead it very definitely unifies people. Through a common language we can all be equal, information is not tied to a select few but is accessible by all. And quite the opposite of hamper or structure creativity, it's frees it completely.

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Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by Eóin on April 19, 2009, 04:04 AM »

Not sure I'd agree there kartal, there has to be a 'right' way to say things otherwise the ambiguities of language would get out of hand. Also language rules were not decided by some elitist, they evolved over time with the language as spoken by whole populations. Who are we in this generation to turn our backs on the rules of a language much more ancient than ourselves.

And surely grammar is no more unnatural than language itself, they always go hand in hand.

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Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by Eóin on April 17, 2009, 07:20 PM »

Nicely said sgtevmckay, 'David' certainly seems like a spoiled brat. He almost sounds so extreme however that I'd seriously question the quality of his parenting. Though such people can easily come from the best of homes and yet be warped by society around them instead.

Writing some free apps myself I mostly find the world quite grateful and so I try to not let, what often amount to, personal attacks ever get to me. But the ferocity of some do take you back initially.

By coincidence I came across this message just yesterday on the Exodus Jabber client issue tracker.

Come on. Its not even worth my time jot them the issue with this version.
Peter would be turning in his grave, god bless his soul.  What you guys did
to destroy this package is unbelievable - PEOPLE - OPEN SOURCE, FREE OR
NOT, QUALITY ALWAYS COUNT - LEARN THAT!   I've been using Exodus for many
years, and only by change did I came across this 0.10 version - Wonderful I
said, lets see what what the gookids have done - WOW! JUNK!!!

Let me name the most obvious!

- Non-sticky layout - does not stay when you exit and come back.
- Attempting to bring up the plugins - POOF - GPF!

Come on people, take PRIDE in what you do!!  Just became its FREE doesn't
make you have to produce and release junk.  Gees, what this world coming to
- BUGS are an exceptable way of life - I'm tired of this baloney.

"There is no such thing as a bad languange, just bad programmers!"
    - Doctor Debug, 1986

-http://code.google.com/p/exodus/issues/detail?id=68

Now I haven't used the latest version to know if the technical complaints are justified but clearly the personal insults are uncalled for. We all suffer from the like of these people.

I fear to think how many neat free applications have been abandoned not because the developer got tried working for free, but rather because (s)he became disillusioned from all the harassment. I personally made a rule for myself that every thank you should count for about 1000 insults. That approach so far has the thank yous in the lead, hopefully that will continue.

832

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows editors - do they have to be so bad?

« Last post by Eóin on April 13, 2009, 04:20 PM »

My understanding was that the spirit of a personal license versus commercial comes into play if it is the company that is buying it versus an individual. But the specifics are usually a bit ambiguous in most cases.

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Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by Eóin on April 13, 2009, 01:39 PM »

My thinking seems to follow what CWuestefeld just said. If all the content industries collapsed tonight we'd still wake up tomorrow with an endless supply of creative content being produced. Open source proves that would be the case, money is not the only motivation behind creativity.

Sure the entitled generation is a bad thing. And I agree yes that priacy is stealing. But if we get realistic for a moment it's naive to let those pesky moral issues come into play when the 'industries' were talking about really are just capitalist greed machines.

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Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by Eóin on April 12, 2009, 02:48 PM »

I don't believe there are many out there who feel things should be free, but I do agree that the situation has gone towards that extreme. However I firmly believe that it is being pushed ever further down this extreme road by the greed of the content distributors (much more so than the content creators). Xkcd nicely summed up the current situation properly.

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Living Room / Re: Cell Phone recommendations?

« Last post by Eóin on April 12, 2009, 07:54 AM »

I was a long time and very happy owner of a Nokia E70. It has full keyboard yet still fits fine in your pocket. Check here for a very biased and crude review from someone who is clearly also a happy owner.

It may be dated though, I mention it only because I can personally attest to it's quality. If I were going to go for another phone today I'd be looking for a more recent model. Instead though I went down the smartphone road, which as a techie I'm extremely happy with.

836

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by Eóin on April 10, 2009, 06:31 AM »

While complaining about Steam, why is it that buying the physical and presumably more costly boxed game in a local store is easily about half the price you'd pay online?

This whole Steam business is the biggest swindle being forced on us by capitalists in a long time. There is no competition so games are being 'rented' to us at prices far in excess of anything we were paying before.

837

Living Room / Re: Online Dictionary that visually shows relationships among words.

« Last post by Eóin on April 07, 2009, 10:17 AM »

Very cool.

838

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

« Last post by Eóin on April 07, 2009, 04:05 AM »

More childish than silly, I give you flasher:

Spoiler

839

Living Room / Re: Most Wiki'd Item? HTTP 404

« Last post by Eóin on April 06, 2009, 05:18 AM »

Perhaps but HTTP 404 is a proper Wikipedia page explaining the error, and a Google for even just 404 turns up that page as 1st result so my instincts are that something on those days prompted alot of people to look up what 404 actually means when seen online.

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Living Room / Re: hoovering mouse over FF is not as smooth as on other apps. A win-64 thing?

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2009, 10:43 AM »

Exactly what behaviour are you experiencing? I'm on a x64 Server 2008 machine now and don't notice anything out of the ordinary.

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Living Room / Re: Most Wiki'd Item? HTTP 404

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2009, 10:41 AM »

Actually wasn't being sarcastic, I do think it's kind of funny that 404 was the most viewed item.

But I'm even more curious that it seemed to spike at the end of the month. I wonder what happened around the 27th and 28th that prompted so much interest. Did a popular site start 404ing?

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Living Room / Re: Most Wiki'd Item? HTTP 404

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2009, 07:10 AM »

I agree, funny stuff, but why oh why did nearly all those searches occur 27th to 30th March???

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General Software Discussion / Re: Against ellipsis ... (dot dot dot)

« Last post by Eóin on April 04, 2009, 08:12 AM »

This isn't the first time these have been mentioned; https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=11405.0.

Personally I like them, they look more profession (or something) to me

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General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by Eóin on March 31, 2009, 03:46 PM »

So long ago I couldn't give you a time frame...

I think it's actually a testament to the stability of Windows recently that the much parodied 'classic' BSOD dates back to 9x versions.

845

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 30, 2009, 05:35 AM »

I just saw the film recently, haven't read the book yet. My film review; excellent 4 star movie. Few if any Hollywood cliché. A bit philosophical at times but well woven into the narrative. I would disagree with Lashiec on the characters bit, I thought they were refreshingly down to earth and human.

All in all like I said, excellent 4 star movie, not quite a 5 star classic but perhaps the book is.

846

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Eóin on March 28, 2009, 01:01 PM »

Not too bad for humans, but I'd suspect very simple for computers also in it's current implementation.

847

Living Room / Re: BIOS Level malware attack

« Last post by Eóin on March 28, 2009, 12:20 PM »

Any chance locking BIOS flashing either through a setting or a jumper on the motherboard would make things safer or is that really just a superficial lock?

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is the difference between a program & an application?

« Last post by Eóin on March 28, 2009, 08:34 AM »

Of course a program not considered big enough to qualify as an application could be just called an app

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Living Room / Re: Android phone - anyone using it?

« Last post by Eóin on March 24, 2009, 05:21 AM »

I've a Windows Mobile phone, browsing on that with Opera is fantastic. Not sure if that's of anyway help to you?

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Living Room / Re: What would it take to create and then sell a very successful website?

« Last post by Eóin on March 23, 2009, 11:55 AM »

Don't forget costs. Hosting a popular website is very expensive.