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9201

Living Room / Re: Identity Theft OFFLINE - Get ready to be VERY scared

« Last post by 40hz on May 13, 2010, 11:25 AM »

^ Don't know about Nostradsmus...

But I am in on a tech news pool. You get to make predictions based on the news reports. You're allowed up to eight predictions at a time. Whoever has the most correct predictions for the previous week wins. You also get to smile insufferably and say "I told ya so!" (And best of all - the rules say nobody is allowed to smack you if you do. Or not too hard anyway. )

If nobody hits, the pool accumulates until somebody does.

I expect to win with this story.  

9202

Living Room / Re: Let me Google that for you

« Last post by 40hz on May 13, 2010, 09:53 AM »

You lazy good for nothing kids these days don't know nothing! Back in my day it was LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com. And we had to type it in dvorak!

-Deozaan (May 11, 2010, 08:07 PM)

Using a morse code keyer-  in the snow - while facing uphill.

And we were mighty glad to have it too!

9203

Living Room / Re: ANOTHER Lost/Stolen iPhone --- Hmmmm...

« Last post by 40hz on May 13, 2010, 07:52 AM »

"Let me get this straight Mr. Ambassador...you lost another submarine?" 

9204

Living Room / Re: Identity Theft OFFLINE - Get ready to be VERY scared

« Last post by 40hz on May 13, 2010, 07:00 AM »

Funny CBS is making such a big deal of this. Corporate IT departments have known about this for years. And the techs who service these printers knew about it from day one. And if I recall correctly, this very same story got press coverage some years back. It was in the late 90s if I'm not mistaken...

Four predictions:

1) All those overpriced wipe utilities and "features" will soon be available free of charge from the printer manufacturers. But not before some twit on TV tries to sell everybody one for $100.

2) The used upper-end laser printer market will suffer a temporary drop in volume. Many companies will likely stop selling off their old printers and decide to mothball them "just to be on the safe side" until the scare is over. Should be a good 6 to 8 month business opportunity for someone who wants to go around zapping printer hard drives for these people.

3) Lawyers are already dreaming of class action lawsuits.

4) The boys up on Capitol Hill will quickly call for hearings to address this "huge security menace." Expect a great deal of hand wringing and moral outrage. Elections are coming up, and this one is fairly safe from a political perspective. Especially since many of these printers are also from non-US companies. So expect a token bit of Euro/Nippon 'bashing' from the all the usual blowhards and pundits.


Can't wait to see what happens when they next "discover" that many of these same printers also have unprotected mini-webservers on them - and support javascript as well...

 

9205

General Software Discussion / Re: Instruction manual creation recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 09:32 PM »

@Armando - thanks for the heads-up on Chapter by Chapter.  

Very neat little Word utility. Never heard of it until your post. I downloaded and started playing with it a bit. I'm quite impressed already.

And here I thought I knew them all...

CxC in combination with AutoVer (for version control) could be just what I need for a new book project I'm soon to be involved in.

9206

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred font?

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 09:27 PM »

It's user selectable.  I like it.  Others may not.

-MilesAhead (May 11, 2010, 06:10 PM)

MilesAhead - how does that work?

I'm looking at the font and I don't see the lowercase-e minus the crossbar character.

(And how are you selecting it? A user-selectable character within a font? That's a new one for me.)

 

9207

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred font?

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 06:15 PM »

I personally find monospaced fonts a lot easier to read when dealing with code - can't put my finger on what exactly makes it that way, but it's not exclusively being able to line things up.

-f0dder (May 12, 2010, 05:52 PM)

Funny. I always thought that too. (It's definitely not just about lining things up.)

I used to suspect it was from coding "to card" and (later on) to either a CRT terminal or a standardized input form. But there's lots of people who (mercifully) never had to deal with that nonsense that have said much the same thing.

Maybe it's some sort of gestalt or perceptual psych thing where:

monospace font = machine code and

proportional font = human language?

Dunno...

Interestingly enough, many editors will tell you that a lot more typos get caught when a manuscript uses a monospaced font like Courier than they do when it uses a proportional font like Times.

Apparently there's something going on that your brain mentally fills in, glosses over, or corrects more when it's reading proportional fonts.

9208

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred font?

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 04:59 PM »

F# which requires 4 space indentation

-Eóin (May 12, 2010, 04:45 PM)

There's a language that has a specific number of spaces as a requirement for indentation? Lordy! That's almost like going back to RPG-II.

I figure the (is there a specific name for font creator people?) author of the font ..

-MilesAhead (May 11, 2010, 10:54 PM)

-mostly, a designer.
MyFonts also like to call them "lettering artists and illustrators".

http://www.myfonts.c...tters/rs/201005.html

-Curt (May 12, 2010, 09:45 AM)

+1 with Curt.  

AFAIK, the closest thing to an official designation is "type designer" or "typeface designer."

At least that's what they're called in university level graphic design courses and most books on type design.

You'll may also see them (incorrectly) called typographers. It's a common error.

Like Mark Twain said: The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

 

9209

General Software Discussion / Re: Email change notification solution?

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 01:02 PM »

Don't know how big your list is...but if it's huge and you're allowed to directly send SMTP (which you may) or you have access to an SMTP server (which you do) you can always use a direct "bulk mail" app or script.

Compose your announcement. Then just send it to everyone on your list. Each message will go out as a separate email so you won't need to muck about with CC and BCC workarounds.

Bulk-mailer apps were popular during the heyday of email newsletters. They've gone out of vogue (largely because most ISPs stopped allowing them) but they're still around.

I was a big fan of G-Lock EasyMail. They still offer a free version for download if you want to check it out. The free edition only allows you one mailing group - but it does allow you to import a list - so it's no big deal to send out to one group, change the message, import a different group list, and repeat as needed.

Link: http://www.glockeasymail.com/downloads/

9210

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for May 7th, 2010 - "Birds of a Feather Update Together"

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 12:37 PM »

Great title! Very nice example of literary elusion...  

9211

Living Room / 93-page review of iPad apps and website usablilty now available for download

« Last post by 40hz on May 12, 2010, 12:31 PM »

The Nielsen Norman Group has just released a detailed report discussing usability features and issues with Apple's newest wunderkind.

This report is based on usability studies with real users, reporting how they actually used a broad variety of iPad apps as well as websites accessed on the iPad.

We are making this report available for free to support our loyal audience of usability enthusiasts by providing them with early empirical data about iPad usability. This report is less thorough than our normal research reports and does not contain as many detailed and actionable design guidelines as we usually provide. We decided to publish the report anyway (as a donation to the community) because all experience from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have disproportionally large impact on design projects.

The full report is avaiable as a PDF download.

Further info and download link here: http://www.nngroup.c...reports/mobile/ipad/

Jakob Neilsen's summary of the report is available on his blogsite.

iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing

    Summary:
    iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.

"It looks like a giant iPhone," is the first thing users say when asked to test an iPad. (Their second comment? "Wow, it's heavy.")

But from an interaction design perspective, an iPad user interface shouldn't be a scaled-up iPhone UI.

Link: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html

w/thx to the folks over at  Techmeme ( www.techmeme.com) for making this find.

9212

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of a headless server?

« Last post by 40hz on May 11, 2010, 06:48 PM »

Good luck.

Hope Amahi works out for you. Especially after that F'ndora download.

Let us know how you make out.

 

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

Addendum:

I just do not care for the directory structure(s) it creates, particularly how deep  it buries the doc root.

FWIW, I didn't think the doc root was that deep. Did you customize the install? On my machine it's: D:\xampp\htdocs

I'm also not fond of black - white? - box solutions.  At least, when I install the components, I know where to look when things [inevitably] go sour.

AFAIK, XAMPP installs things where it's recommended they be put. The end result is an Apache environment that follows all the recommendations of the Apace and component authors. Nothing black box there at all. At least as far as I can see. All the documentation and reference books I have work nicely with XAMPP. Everything is found where it's supposed to be.

You also have a goodly amount of technical knowledge. But I thought the webserver part of your comment was for a webserver for your non-technical friends. (If they were techies they would probably already know about W/XAMP or have their own server. )

Doing a raw LAMP setup is not ultra difficult. But I've seen enough people set one up who deviate from generally accepted practices and directory locations  to be leery when I encounter problems on a homebrew. So in my case that would be the back box and XAMPP would be the standard development installation.

Guess it all depends on where you're sitting.  
 

I've posted probs on the Apache forum several times & never gotten a response - think they thought it an RTFM issue

Very possible. If your question is answered in one of the FAQs, or it's an easily accessible manual lookup issue, that will happen. Something I don't necessarily approve of - but I can understand why it happens.

Popular FOSS projects aren't like DonationCoder. They're far too busy and often too big to extend the courtesies that are routinely granted to questions put here.

Aren't you glad you're a DoCo member?  

DC RULZ!!!

9213

Living Room / Re: Dagnabbit - I want my cercle!

« Last post by 40hz on May 11, 2010, 06:39 PM »

^ Bravo! A distinct touch that. 

9214

General Software Discussion / Re: Instruction manual creation recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on May 11, 2010, 09:17 AM »

All fair points. I just wonder, is it really ideal for something like documentation? I don't know, I'm honestly asking.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (May 10, 2010, 11:06 PM)

It's hard to say if it's ideal. It is a very good choice for a doc project. And it does get used for that. I have two clients that are heavily vested in LaTeX based authoring systems.

I think it all depends on how you think about and approach documentation.

IMHO a wiki is probably the most efficient way to create and maintain tech docs.

And you'll never know how much it pains me to say that.  

Now If someone could just come up with a good way to convert a wiki into a decently formatted printed manual (with good typography) I'd feel far less of that pain.

    

9215

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of a headless server?

« Last post by 40hz on May 11, 2010, 07:59 AM »

they both want a web server to test stuff out before uploading to their relative Web sites.

-barney (May 10, 2010, 11:27 PM)

If they mostly want to test out web stuff, they don't need to have a standalone server. Just have them Google WAMP and/or XAMPP.

That will let them install a full web environment on any PC with the minimal amount of hassles. You don't even need to leave it running all the time so it's an equally good choice for the PC you're doing your development work on.

Both come with nifty control panels to monitor the running services and they also allow you to switch them on an off. I prefer XAMPP, but that's just me. Either one works equally well.

I use XAMPP to test CMS and other web-based open source solutions; and I've just started using it to prototype a live website project I'm involved with.

There's virtue in simplicity.

Very cool tools.

-----

PS - Say: We are NOT afraid!!! (Now breathe deeply and repeat 10 times.)

Amahi only requires you to install Fedora because they didn't want to include it with their product. Cuts down on the bandwidth utilization on your T1 when you do it that way. (Told you these guys were smart! )

Amahi's installer is mostly a series of scripts that download some components and also configure the Fedora environment to become the Amahi server.

It's a pretty efficient concept. A lot of media server installers work the same way.

9216

General Software Discussion / Re: Instruction manual creation recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on May 11, 2010, 07:35 AM »

Ah!  latex...i remember using that for my grad courses in stat/math.  it does offer more control over styling, that's for sure.  I would consider using it personally, but not at work.  It would bring up too many questions I have no desire to answer.

-superboyac (May 11, 2010, 12:39 AM)

I hear you. I don't think there's a senior manager alive that didn't get the hots when hearing about the concept of WYGIWYM and think it was the answer to everything.

Yeah. Better forget LaTeX. You've got enough work to do already.

9217

General Software Discussion / Re: Instruction manual creation recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 10:55 PM »

Mostly it's a tool for technical documents although it's proponents wax poetic about it being ideal for just about everything. Like most good tools, it all depends on what you want to do.

As far as nice looking docs go, that's up for subjective debate. I've seen some truly beautiful documents come out of LaTeX. But graphic and print design is its own discipline so don't expect everybody that uses something like LyX to be a designer.

You'll see the same thing with people who use Scribus, Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign. Such tools may make your work easier and present you with expanded possibilities. But they still can't work miracles - or add something that isn't already there.

9218

General Software Discussion / Re: Instruction manual creation recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 10:13 PM »

For version tracking you might want to take a look at AutoVer, which has been getting some recent buzz on the freeware/software blogs.

AutoVer 1.4.1

AutoVer is a configurable automatic or real time backup and personal versioning system. It can be used as a simple real time backup or as a more complex, but transparent version control system (like a realtime incremental backup). The beauty of this system is that once you set it up (which is extremely simple) it does everything. No remembering to backup or to check in or check out files. Every time you save a file it is copied to your backup folder, drive or FTP server. You can include and exclude certain files and browse the backups with the Backup Explorer.

Great for backing up (or one way synchronising) your work or home documents to flash memory or saving every change you make to your source code or image files.

Link: http://beanland.net.au/AutoVer/

Ghacks and Download Squad, both did write-ups on it recently:

http://www.ghacks.ne...up-software-autover/

http://www.downloads...rs-got-your-back-up/

I haven't personally gotten a chance to try AutoVer yet. But you can be sure I will.

------

For really structured and complex documents, there's nothing that can compare to LyX. There's a learning curve that goes with it. But it's not a huge one. It's mostly learning that  there's a more efficient way to handle the creation of documents than the wordprocessing paradigm.

Probably not a good match for this project. But it wouldn't hurt to tuck it in the back of your mind for future investigation if you anticipate doing a lot of tech writing. LyX/LaTeX can do just about anything (including change tracking and multiversioning) when it comes to document creation and editing.





Link: http://www.lyx.org/

9219

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 10:01 PM »

Also be warned that there is no way (currently) to export / print a wave 

-PPLandry (May 10, 2010, 08:23 PM)

That's a showstopper if there ever was one!

9220

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of a headless server?

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 09:47 PM »

+1 with Shades on FreeNAS. For straight-up file sharing it can't be beat.

Same goes for Webmin. Very nice solution so long as you know what you're doing when using it. It's a fairly powerful tool that lets you easily administrate your server. And it will just as easily screw it up royally if you start clicking away without understanding a bit about what's going on underneath it.

Another nice choice is the  eBox Platform. This is more of a small business server (i.e. overkill for home use), but some home users prefer it to Amahi or FreeNAS.

eBox is the proverbial 800 lb. Gorilla in a five pound bag - assuming you don't mind mixing metaphors... 

Link: http://www.ebox-platform.com/

 

9221

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of a headless server?

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 09:36 PM »

Depends on what he wants to do, but if this is his first foray into Linux I probably wouldn't go with a bare Ubuntu server since there's a lot of configuration that can go wrong if you're not careful.

Have him take a look at  Amahi Server. It's NIX-based, free for download, and has a feature set that gives Windows Home Server (another excellent choice BTW) a run for its money.

Link: http://www.amahi.org/

For something as "set and forget" as most modern servers are, going in via remote desktop or some other tool (Synergy, VNC, etc.)  is the only way to go.

There's really not much to say about running a server in a no-monitor/no-keyboard configuration. Most servers are "headless." It's probably the most efficient way to do it unless you have an old monitor lying around and you don't mind running over to the server every time you want to configure something.


Just my  

9222

Living Room / Re: Dagnabbit - I want my cercle!

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 09:21 PM »

 

9223

Living Room / Re: Two computers - one set of secreens etc. Ideas?

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 02:13 PM »

Why not use Remote Desktop? I use it daily to manage several servers scattered all over town.

-Stoic Joker (May 10, 2010, 01:56 PM)

Me too. But it's more viable using it to administrate a server than it is to work alternately on two or more 'desktop' machines.

IMHO a hardware KVM solution is still the best bet. Especially if you're running heavy graphics or media apps. I'd hate to try and edit video or do music composition over an Ethernet link.

I use Synergy mainly when I want to do administrative tasks on my home network. And I'll use Remote Desktop when I'm logging onto client Windows servers. But for doing actual tasks on the three main machines I regularly use, I've found nothing works better than a KVM box.

Just my two...  

9224

Living Room / Farewell to Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 01:55 PM »

It was bound to happen.

The fantasy art world bids a fond farewell to one of the true icons in the field. Surreal, evocative, erotic, occasionally lurid - and sometimes even humorous, Frank's work will be missed.



http://www.comicsbea.../frank-frazetta-rip/

9225

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by 40hz on May 10, 2010, 01:06 PM »

@fwdever Hi and welcome!

Just out of curiosity, are you affiliated with the authors of CaptureSaver?

Not a problem if you are. It's just that etiquette on this website is to acknowledge any business or commercial interests in a product or service when posting.