Recent Posts

8751

Living Room / Re: May be time to change password at Twitter

« Last post by Renegade on January 09, 2011, 04:02 PM »

Another good reason not to have a Twitter account

-Ath (January 09, 2011, 05:51 AM)

Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with Twitter, and everything to do with a bunch of <insert word of choice /> in the US government. They are the problem. Not Twitter.

I was glad to hear the Icelandic Foreign Minister stand up and say that they would stand behind their MP who the US govt' had subpoenaed account info for.

Related issue (fair warning - NSFW - it's one of my rants on the issue over an article at Law.com): This is Not the United States of Planet Earth

For those that are looking for anonymity, iPredator seems to be pretty good: https://www.ipredator.se/ It's very reasonably priced at about $7 a month or so.

8752

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Duplicate Photo Finder

« Last post by Renegade on January 09, 2011, 05:28 AM »

Thanks Renegade, for this improvement
I'm always extra careful, even with lots of backups, with all my photo's, so I'm usually waiting for this kind of improvements before I even install tools like these.

-Ath (January 09, 2011, 05:19 AM)

I hear you. I'm paranoid about things being deleted and regularly have too many backups of some things.

In the past I've always leaned in favor of giving control to the user, but I think those days are pretty much done. Decisions are "hard", so just making the decision for the user just makes things "easy".

8753

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Duplicate Photo Finder

« Last post by Renegade on January 09, 2011, 04:58 AM »

I watched an early test screencast that Wraith made and it went into some nice detail and examples that were cool. Wraith pointed out something that i thought was important.  He pointed out that if you select the same folder for both, and checked all items, it was possible to delete BOTH copies of a photo by accident.

I have a really simple solution suggestion:

Right before actually deleting, check that the original file partner of the pair still exists -- if not, skip the delete.

-mouser (January 07, 2011, 08:37 AM)

Went a different route. Tried a few things, but I think this works best.

The warning screen used to be this:



And it was possible to delete them all.

The problem that was supposed to address was "deciding which was the original". It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

* Decide -- removes control from user
* Don't decide -- leaves room for user error

Behavior now is:

1) Warning/Notification (now waffling on this as to whether or not it is needed as it is purely informative now):



2) Use only 1st image as "original" -- all successive photos are considered duplicates. e.g. The following images (1.jpg to 8.jpg are all identical):




Anyways, it is no longer possible to delete originals as described above.

Version updated to 1.3 (other speed optimizations added).

8754

Living Room / Re: Need a New Mouse

« Last post by Renegade on January 09, 2011, 04:39 AM »

That's what I've heard. They didn't have the HTC Desire HD when I wanted to buy, so I stayed with Vodaphone.

-Renegade (December 26, 2010, 09:23 PM)

Maybe you shouldn't have

Vodafone records leaked onto Internet

-4wd (January 09, 2011, 03:55 AM)

Sigh... yeah... Sometimes I really hate this place... That's just the tip of the iceberg with Vodaphone and telecos here in general...

8755

Living Room / Re: Fantastic Rant ...

« Last post by Renegade on January 08, 2011, 10:52 PM »

PhD in finance huh? Pretty cool! And look at the bright side. She may someday go on to write one of those marvelous formulas that finally succeeds in crashing the entire banking and finance sector once and for all. (Why should the hedge funds have all the fun?)

-40hz (January 08, 2011, 10:36 PM)

I'll nickname her "John Galt" then.

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Living Room / Re: Fantastic Rant ...

« Last post by Renegade on January 08, 2011, 09:34 PM »

Banks are little more than legalized criminal institutions. They are amoral, deceitful, evil agencies.

...

Banks and financial institutions on the other hand pimp out their services under false pretenses and conceal the true nature of their business. They are deceitful and evil.

-Renegade (January 08, 2011, 07:50 PM)

@Renegade - love reading your words - and generally think the world of you - but c'mon...you've got to get the hyperbole under control a little better for 2011.   

-40hz (January 08, 2011, 08:53 PM)

Ok, maybe a little bit of a stretch, but not much.

Using your money without your authorization (e.g. withhold it during transfers) to profit from is misappropriation of funds and is criminal. Well, actually the banks have made it all legal, so it's not technically criminal.


The credit sector revenue model shifted a while back. They used to make responsible loans to people that could pay the money back and then profit from the interest on the loans. Now, the industry makes its money from making loans to anyone at all and charging fees for usage and late charges. Bills conveniently don't get delivered on time, causing further late fees. i.e. They target people that cannot afford to borrow money, then keep them in a state of constant debt that they can never escape from, debt-slavery. How does that not count as evil, or at a very minimum as deceitful?

I'm only scratching the surface there.



For what it's worth, my wife is doing her PhD in Finance, and we don't agree on any of this stuff either.

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Living Room / Re: Fantastic Rant ...

« Last post by Renegade on January 08, 2011, 07:50 PM »

Banks are little more than legalized criminal institutions. They are amoral, deceitful, evil agencies.

Credit creation through fractional reserve banking essentially hands over the money supply to banks allowing them to print money. It moves sovereign currencies from the state to private banks. Today, there are no more sovereign currencies. The money is controlled by private interests. This is NOT in the best interests of the people of the state.

The overnight lending rate is obtained by temporarily stealing funds from people. When you transfer money, those funds take a few days to clear. During that time, the bank has control of that money. They then use it for overnight lending to profit from it. It does not belong to them, yet they profit from it and give nothing to the rightful owners.

The subprime mortgage crisis is yet another example of how irresponsible greed ran wild.

There is no end to the laundry list of evil there.

I have more respect for drug dealing and prostitution than for the financial industry. Drug dealers sell a product with everyone knowing full well what it is. Prostitutes sell a service under similar terms.

Banks and financial institutions on the other hand pimp out their services under false pretenses and conceal the true nature of their business. They are deceitful and evil.

8758

Screenshot Captor / Re: adjust and choose quality of screenshot

« Last post by Renegade on January 07, 2011, 06:22 AM »

You will always get pixelation from zooming.

It's a basic rule: The more you zoom, the lower the quality.

It all boils down to simple math, and there's no way around it.

8759

Screenshot Captor / Re: adjust and choose quality of screenshot

« Last post by Renegade on January 07, 2011, 05:38 AM »

Use PNG instead of JPEG. You'll get better quality screenshots with lower file sizes.

8760

Living Room / Re: Link: Why Google does not qualify for searching the web anymore

« Last post by Renegade on January 07, 2011, 02:01 AM »

oh dear. i didn't realise that. that is terrible. what a load of b*stards.

-nudone (January 07, 2011, 01:49 AM)

It's worse. They're big, rich b*stards.

The level of complexity to a lot of them is astounding.

8761

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by Renegade on January 07, 2011, 01:51 AM »

Well, got one done:

Not the best though. I've got the full resolution one at 1024x768 if that's better.

8762

Living Room / Re: Link: Why Google does not qualify for searching the web anymore

« Last post by Renegade on January 07, 2011, 12:21 AM »

Well, thank you, Web 2.0 with your "user-generated" mindfuck.

-Tuxman (January 06, 2011, 11:52 PM)

Pretty much.

Google has every reason to serve up shit because shit serves Google ads.

8763

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 09:13 PM »

Wow, I'd have figured they'd have ported the Drawing namespace as a top-priority...

-kyrathaba (January 06, 2011, 08:52 PM)

Well, there's Android.Drawing, but it's just not the same. I need to do more investigation though. Spent a few hours the other day on it, but it doesn't look like I can reuse some code.

The available assemblies are (in MonoDroid):

I18N.CJK.dll
I18N.dll
I18N.MidEast.dll
I18N.Other.dll
I18N.Rare.dll
I18N.West.dll
Mono.Android.dll
Mono.Cairo.dll
Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.dll
Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll
Mono.Data.Tds.dll
Mono.Security.dll
mscorlib.dll
OpenTK.dll
OpenTK.xml
System.Core.dll
System.Data.dll
System.dll
System.Json.dll
System.Runtime.Serialization.dll
System.ServiceModel.dll
System.ServiceModel.Web.dll
System.Transactions.dll
System.Web.Services.dll
System.Xml.dll
System.Xml.Linq.dll

Docs here:

http://docs.monodroid.net/

Problem is stuff like this:

Bitmap   Documentation for this section has not yet been entered.
Bitmap.CompressFormat   Specifies the known formats a bitmap can be compressed into
Bitmap.Config   Documentation for this section has not yet been entered.
BitmapFactory   Creates Bitmap objects from various sources, including files, streams, and byte-arrays.
BitmapFactory.Options   Documentation for this section has not yet been entered.
BitmapShader   Documentation for this section has not yet been entered.

Makes using it kind of tough.

8764

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 08:53 PM »

BB Flashback Express only records the initial state of the program

then you must be doing something wrong.

-mouser (January 06, 2011, 05:31 PM)

Grrr... Grrr...

That's a double-grrr.

It will only record in the primary monitor.

Grrr...

That's a delayed pre-double tertiary grrr.

Grrr...

That's a grrr just for me being so bloody stubborn, knowing full well that was the likely issue, and simply not wanting to work around it...

I have a Camtasia Studio license

no reason an older version won't work well.

-mouser (January 06, 2011, 05:31 PM)

Actually, v6 installed on Windows 7 nicely and seems to be running. Here's crossing my fingers... And hoping that those horrible audio bugs are fixed from v3... I don't remember at the moment...

Back to it now anyways...

Grrr...

That's a "I had to go out and buy a new mic because my mixer appears to be hosed and I don't feel like spending another hour on it" grrr.

8765

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 08:48 PM »

Microsoft's Shared Source CLI (codenamed "Rotor") enables .NET application development on Mac and FreeBSD.  Couple this with Mono, and you've got four of the most common platforms that can be targeted by .NET apps.  I confess Mono is unfinished (yet very nice, even at its current incarnation).

-kyrathaba (January 06, 2011, 08:27 PM)

Ahem...

Date Published:
11/5/2002

Pretty useless in 2011.

It would have been nice to see MS maintain it though. But, then I suppose that's why we have Portable.NET and Mono now.

Semi-related -- I just saw that a bunch of namespaces I'd like to use are not available in MonoDroid, e.g. System.Drawing.

8766

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 05:19 PM »

Grrr...

BB Flashback Express only records the initial state of the program...

Having finished recording, now I'm out to do it again. Hopefully CamStudio will work.

(I have a Camtasia Studio license, but I'm sick of paying for upgrades that really offer no benefit at all and are still buggy.)

8767

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 06:57 AM »

VB.NET is trivial to learn. I think it's great to start with.

But once you have a basic grip on the .NET framework, switch to C# as soon as possible.

If you like functional programming, check out F#.

8768

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 03:54 AM »

Don't forget me -- I'll get one done. I'm just a day behind due to some client work that popped up and was much more than expected.

8769

Developer's Corner / Re: How to program for all 3 platforms at once

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 01:12 AM »

Some better options than java-

BASIC  - Mono.net (Visualbasic.net), Gambas, Borlands basic(don't know where they are now)

Python - Ironpython(which works on all platforms with .NET framework)

C# - using mono

Wxwidgets is also used by some people to code cross-platform but learning curve is steep. QT has some license issues for commercial apps so no point in investing time with them.

Edit - ron, tested ruby shoes it's small GUI tookit and there isn't much in it. But for web based desktop apps can still be coded with it.

-mahesh2k (January 06, 2011, 01:07 AM)

QT allows licensing as LGPL, which is fine for commercial development.

8770

General Software Discussion / Re: Ini manipulation tools (text manipulation tools) software

« Last post by Renegade on January 06, 2011, 12:52 AM »

There are a few categories that I think might be relevant:

* Code generator utilities
* Regular expression utilities
* Search and replace utilities

You can find lists in Wikipedia usually.

8771

General Software Discussion / Re: remove objects from photos

« Last post by Renegade on January 05, 2011, 08:19 PM »

How did you do it? Clone & pixel adjust?

8772

Living Room / Re: RedLetterMedia Reviews Star Wars and more

« Last post by Renegade on January 05, 2011, 08:18 PM »

About the best thing I can say for the TNG films is that the directors finally gave the Deanna Troi character a decent hairdo.

But maybe that's just me.
 (see attachment in previous post)
Why don't you be the judge?

-40hz (January 04, 2011, 05:54 AM)

Yes. I'm still waiting for 80's poofy hair to become a criminal offense...

8773

General Software Discussion / Re: remove objects from photos

« Last post by Renegade on January 05, 2011, 08:05 PM »

Wow. That's amazing. 4 minutes? Jeez.

-Renegade (January 05, 2011, 07:51 PM)

the 2nd set of 2 minutes was simply removing the cyclist and reconstructing the bus...theres a whole bunch of stuff that could be fixed with what I did, but visually, from a distance, you cant really see them.

-Stephen66515 (January 05, 2011, 07:58 PM)

Really, THIS is more like what computing should be -- the computer doing the work that you want/intend for it to do.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Drupal is f*cked

« Last post by Renegade on January 05, 2011, 08:02 PM »

Drupal 7 is now public
http://drupal.org/

-mouser (January 05, 2011, 04:43 PM)

How is it? Is it as mind-numbingly terse and stubborn as it used to be? Or is it now usable by mere mortals?

8775

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Fusion 11: $100 off!

« Last post by Renegade on January 05, 2011, 08:01 PM »

How is it? I used it years ago before it was bought out, and I didn't like it. But that was YEARS ago. It was rather inflexible then.