Recent Posts

951

Living Room / Thoughts on "Piracy".

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 23, 2014, 10:23 AM »

Hey guys,

For a long time, I have been wondering what you guys think on the subject of piracy.

Personally I DO pirate Movies, Games, Software etc...but I have a logical reason behind it, and I will explain this now:

Quite simply, I do not have the money to splash out on Software I may not fully utilize, Games I might not enjoy or Movies that might suck so badly the DVD is worth nothing more than to play Frisbee with.  Coupled with this, and the fact that most "Demos" or "Trials" are...well...useless and usually  constrained in terms of features...how can one really judge if something is worth spending money on?

This is where piracy comes into play for me...I can simply download the full versions of whatever...and then decide if it is worth me paying out for...I wouldn't have bought nearly 3/4 of the games on my Steam if I didn't pirate them first...I wouldn't own the movies I own if I had not have pirated them and watched them first...and I certainly wouldn't own most of the (Payware) software I own if I had not tried the full versions via piracy first.

I do understand that my situation and reasoning for piracy may be different to most...but for me...those developers would never have got a penny from me, had I not been able to pirate their stuff first...so...they have GAINED by me "Breaking the law".

So...My question on this is, what do you guys think...I know a lot of you hate piracy, but a lot of you will also (whether publicly, or secretly) download things...so it would be nice to hear your thoughts!

952

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 20, 2014, 02:21 PM »

Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, England (Current Home)







Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England (My Fiancés Home Town, where we are moving)

953

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 20, 2014, 01:59 PM »

I'd love to see some more photos of where people live..

-mouser (November 20, 2014, 10:53 AM)

Just outside our windows, or of the local area as well?

954

Living Room / Re: Google Glass dead, already ?

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 19, 2014, 08:38 AM »

Finally! Rose-colored glasses made a reality.

-40hz (November 19, 2014, 06:51 AM)

I want the "Beer Goggles" app!

-Stephen66515 (November 19, 2014, 08:20 AM)

Dude... Stop being such a lazy bum and just brew your own!

-Renegade (November 19, 2014, 08:25 AM)

Been wanting to do that for ages actually! 

955

Living Room / Re: Google Glass dead, already ?

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 19, 2014, 08:20 AM »

Finally! Rose-colored glasses made a reality.

-40hz (November 19, 2014, 06:51 AM)

I want the "Beer Goggles" app!

956

Living Room / Re: Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 03:41 PM »

Yeah, sounds like BS, the whole thing

-tomos (November 17, 2014, 03:37 PM)

More than it would be possible to imagine

957

Living Room / Re: Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 03:29 PM »

Best of luck with the whole thing Stephen

-tomos (November 17, 2014, 03:18 PM)

Honestly...If the work was remotely connected to anything I wanted to do...or failing that, supported a charity or small local business...I wouldn't have as much of an issue....but would still disagree with the whole thing.

958

Living Room / Re: Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 02:23 PM »

We have Lidl and ALDI here as well..and in my town we have the largest "Free Site" in the UK...People are actually surviving by people literally swapping items with each other (Very basic things like Washing Machines, Kettles, Fridge/Freezers) - This is how bad it has got.

I do often wonder...when I heard on the radio recently that the UK is down to "Only 2Million Unemployed"...what is the real truth?  Are they counting the "Legalized Slavery" jobs?  If so...then that number would be significantly higher than they are claiming it to be...is it really just a complete cover up to make the UK seem like it is way more prosperous than it is?  Seriously...Don't be fooled by reports saying the UKs economy is rapidly rising and getting stronger...as somebody living in the thick of it...it REALLY ISN'T.

By the way, for the sake of openness and honesty...The reason I am so aware of this Slavery Scheme, is because I receive government benefits (I live in a craphole town with no jobs at all) so I have to sustain our living costs somehow...I asked my Advisor at the Job Center for a careers advise appointment of sorts (Basically to try talk it out and figure out what is the best University courses for the paths I want to go down), and the person I was talking to, ignored everything I said and decided that me working as a Warehouse Operative for Boohoo.com (Yes I WILL name and shame them) - In a town 8 miles from here...would be the best thing for me (Bearing in mind I suggested that my 2 career paths are [Working within the Technology Industry] and [Flying Instructor]...2 completely different paths I know, but both things that I want to do more than anything).  Oh...and my travel costs.....they have to be paid by me...so...I get to work...AT MY FINANCIAL LOSS, for a company valued at over £600MILLION GBP.

The only 4 words I plan to say to the "Adviser" (I use that term very loosely here), are as follows:

"Not a fucking chance"

959

Living Room / Re: Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 01:35 PM »

Sounds about par for the course for the UK? (Not trying to be offensive - but looking at successive UK governments' records does not inspire.)

-tomos (November 17, 2014, 01:28 PM)

Whoops, completely skipped over this:

No offense taken (From me anyway) on that...it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say as far as I am concerned.

The thing is though...after looking a little more into it...It seems that this happens in way more countries than I first suspected...it is quite literally a world-wide happening 

960

Living Room / Re: Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 01:32 PM »

Sounds about par for the course for the UK? (Not trying to be offensive - but looking at successive UK governments' records does not inspire.)
Prime basement material, this is Stephen ;-)

-tomos (November 17, 2014, 01:28 PM)

The reason I didn't post this in the Basement is because I didn't intend for it to boil down to the political aspects...more of the moral aspects and the implications that such a scheme causes (Taking away actual paying jobs and such).

I can see how it could turn into Basement material though and if it does...then it shall be moved

961

Living Room / Mandatory Work Activity (UK) - Stupidity Beyond Belief. [DEBATE]

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 17, 2014, 12:43 PM »

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) is a workfare programme in the United Kingdom that started in May 2011, whereby individuals must work for their benefits or risk being 'sanctioned' and losing them. An academic analysis by the Department of Work and Pensions cast doubt on the effectiveness of MWA, and despite finding "little evidence" that workfare improved claimants gaining paid employment, the DWP ignored the findings of the study, and in June 2012, the scheme received a £5m expansion. A similar but little-known scheme 'Jobseeker Mandatory Activity' (JMA), was piloted by New Labour in 2006, but did not last beyond 2008. JMA targeted those claimants 25 and over, who had been unemployed for 6 months or more and made claimants liable to 'sanction' for non-compliance.

Legal challenge to the scheme, and retrospective legalisation
The legality of the scheme was indirectly challenged in the case Caitlin Reilly and Jamieson Wilson v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The High Court partially found in the claimants' favour; they then appealed to the Court of Appeal, which ruled in February 2013 that the 2011 Regulations 'were unlawful and that the Secretary of State had acted beyond the powers given to him by Parliament by failing to provide any detail about the various “Back to Work” schemes in the Regulations'.

The Department for Work and Pensions appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, it also drafted new regulations to ensure the continuance of the work placements. During the period of the scheme which had been ruled unlawful, perhaps 300,000 people had had benefits of an average of around £530-70 withheld, totalling around £130m which the DWP was potentially obliged to repay if Reilly and Wilson won their case in the Supreme Court. The Government sought to avoid having to make these repayments by retrospecively changing the law through the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill, which became law on 26 March 2013.

However, Mandatory Work Activity was created under its own set of regulations so though the ruling touched on many of the same issues and the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act amended the regulatory foundation of the scheme, it was not directly affected by the outcome of the Appeal Court ruling.

The law firm acting for Reilly and Wilson, Public Interest Lawyers, reportedly lodged submissions to the supreme court, arguing that 'the actions of the secretary of state … represent a clear violation of article 6 [of the European convention on human rights] and the rule of law, as an interference in the judicial process by the legislature'.

Legal challenge to non-disclosure of participating organisations
The Department for Work and Pensions has worked to keep secret the list of organisations participating in the MWP scheme. A freedom of information request submitted around March 2012 resulted in a first-tier tribunal ruling in May 2013 that the DWP must reveal these names. The deadline for appeals expired in October 2013, but no list has been forthcoming, as of December 2013. A provisional list of organisations using workfare has been collected by the Boycott Workfare campaign.

The above is from: http://en.wikipedia....datory_Work_Activity

Now, That being said...this still happens here in the UK...People are FORCED to work, in order to keep their benefits.  Some of you may say "Well, they are still getting money" ... yes...they are...less than 1/4 of the National Minimum Wage.  These people are not forced to work for charitable organisations, or small companies who would otherwise not be able to hire staff...Instead they are forced to work for huge companies worth BILLIONS in yearly revenue.  Comanies such as BooHoo.com, Tesco, ASDA and many others.

My question is this:  How can this be reasonable...or even legal?

I ask how it can be reasonable, because it stops those huge companies from being bothered about hiring anybody, because the government is basically saying: "If you don't want to pay people, we will send you some and WE WILL pay them slave wages....so you get FREE staff who have NO other choice".

The Job Center staff are the ones responsible for  sending people on these mandatory placements and will send you to whatever company they want...regardless of if it is something you even seem remotely capable of doing...oh...and if you get fired, don't turn up, or simply are not suitable for the job so are asked to leave....your benefits will be stopped for up to 3 years.

There is no benefit for people to do these work placements other than to quite literally live on a slave wage, and barely be able to survive.  I agree for SOME that it may help them get full time work, but for the vast majority...this is pointless to them.  Why can this "scheme" "stupidity" not be voluntary?  If it is supposed to help people like they claim...then why not just help those who want to be helped...in a way that REALLY helps them?


I am more than open for a debate on this with anybody who has anything to add!

962

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 16, 2014, 04:45 AM »

963

Living Room / Re: Please recommend a Canadian domain name registrar to me

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 15, 2014, 01:51 AM »

Just out of curiosity...what difference does it make if they are from other countries?  Does it mean anything special, or is it a purely political choice?

964

Living Room / Re: How The Internet Was Born.

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 13, 2014, 07:02 AM »

^ - That explains it!   Thanks!!!

965

Living Room / Re: How The Internet Was Born.

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 13, 2014, 06:16 AM »

Thought this was cool enough to share here

Side note: Anybody know what Sputnik has do with any of this?

966

Living Room / How The Internet Was Born.

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 13, 2014, 06:15 AM »

967

Developer's Corner / Re: Announcing .NET 2015 - .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 13, 2014, 05:37 AM »

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. Once again. 

Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

-40hz (November 13, 2014, 05:24 AM)

* Stephen66515 offers 40hz a gift

 

968

Developer's Corner / Announcing .NET 2015 - .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 12, 2014, 11:14 PM »

Announcing .NET 2015 - .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux, and Visual Studio Community

It's happening. It's the reason that a lot of us came to work for Microsoft, and I think it's both the end of an era but also the beginning of amazing things to come.

The .NET 2015 wave of releases is upon us. Here's what's happening and we announced it today in New York. There's a lot here, so drink it all in slowly.

Be sure to check out all the blog posts I'm linking to at the end, but here's my personal rollup and take on the situation.

We are serious about open source and cross platform.
.NET Core 5 is the modern, componentized framework that ships via NuGet. That means you can ship a private version of the .NET Core Framework with your app. Other apps' versions can't change your app's behavior.
We are building a .NET Core CLR for Windows, Mac and Linux and it will be both open source and it will be supported by Microsoft. It'll all happen at https://github.com/dotnet.
We are open sourcing the RyuJit and the .NET GC and making them both cross-platform.
ASP.NET 5 will work everywhere.
ASP.NET 5 will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mac and Linux support will come soon and it's all going to happen in the open on GitHub at https://github.com/aspnet.
ASP.NET 5 will include a web server for Mac and Linux called kestrel built on libuv. It's similar to the one that comes with node, and you could front it with Nginx for production, for example.
Developers should have a great experience.
There is a new FREE SKU for Visual Studio for open source developers and students called Visual Studio Community. It supports extensions and lots more all in one download. This is not Express. This is basically Pro.
Visual Studio 2015 and ASP.NET 5 will support gulp, grunt, bower and npm for front end developers.
A community team (including myself and Sayed from the ASP.NET and web tools team have created the OmniSharp organization along with the Kulture build system as a way to bring real Intellisense to Sublime, Atom, Brackets, Vim, and Emacs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Check out http://www.omnisharp.net as well as blog posts by team members Jonathan Channon
Even more open source.
Much of the .NET Core Framework 4.6 and its Reference Source source is going on GitHub. It's being relicensed under the MIT license, so Mono (and you!) can use that source code in their .NET implementations.
There's a new hub for Microsoft open source that is hosted GitHub at http://microsoft.github.io.
Open sourcing .NET makes good sense. It makes good business sense, good community sense, and today everyone at Microsoft see this like we do.

Source: http://www.hanselman...StudioCommunity.aspx


This could be a MASSIVE game changer...simply...wow.

969

General Software Discussion / Re: 32bit vs 64bit question

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 11, 2014, 06:02 PM »

1. Your name is appropriate for the thread.

2.

32-bit processor

The 32-bit processor was the primary processor used in all computers until the early 1990s. Intel Pentium processors and early AMD processors were 32-bit processors. The Operating System and software on a computer with a 32-bit processor is also 32-bit based, in that they work with data units that are 32 bits wide. Windows 95, 98, and XP are all 32-bit operating systems that were common on computers with 32-bit processors.
Note: A computer with a 32-bit processor cannot have a 64-bit version of an operating system installed. It can only have a 32-bit version of an operating system installed.
64-bit processor

The 64-bit computer has been around since 1961 when IBM created the IBM 7030 Stretch supercomputer. However, it was not put into use in home computers until the early 2000s. Microsoft released a 64-bit version of Windows XP to be used on computers with a 64-bit processor. Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 also come in 64-bit versions. Other software has been developed that is designed to run on a 64-bit computer, which are 64-bit based as well, in that they work with data units that are 64 bits wide.
Note: A computer with a 64-bit processor can have a 64-bit or 32-bit version of an operating system installed. However, with a 32-bit operating system, the 64-bit processor would not run at its full capability.
Note: On a computer with a 64-bit processor, you cannot run a 16-bit legacy program. Many 32-bit programs will work with a 64-bit processor and operating system, but some older 32-bit programs may not function properly, or at all, due to limited or no compatibility.
Differences between a 32-bit and 64-bit CPU

A big difference between 32-bit processors and 64-bit processors is the number of calculations per second they can perform, which affects the speed at which they can complete tasks. 64-bit processors can come in dual core, quad core, six core, and eight core versions for home computing. Multiple cores allow for an increased number of calculations per second that can be performed, which can increase the processing power and help make a computer run faster. Software programs that require many calculations to function smoothly can operate faster and more efficiently on the multi-core 64-bit processors, for the most part.
Another big difference between 32-bit processors and 64-bit processors is the maximum amount of memory (RAM) that is supported. 32-bit computers support a maximum of 3-4GB of memory, whereas a 64-bit computer can support memory amounts over 4 GB. This is important for software programs that are used for graphical design, engineering design or video editing, where many calculations are performed to render images, drawings, and video footage.
One thing to note is that 3D graphic programs and games do not benefit much, if at all, from switching to a 64-bit computer, unless the program is a 64-bit program. A 32-bit processor is adequate for any program written for a 32-bit processor. In the case of computer games, you'll get a lot more performance by upgrading the video card instead of getting a 64-bit processor.
In the end, 64-bit processors are becoming more and more commonplace in home computers. Most manufacturers build computers with 64-bit processors due to cheaper prices and because more users are now using 64-bit operating systems and programs. Computer parts retailers are offering fewer and fewer 32-bit processors and soon may not offer any at all.

Sauce: http://www.computerh.../issues/ch001498.htm

970

Living Room / Re: Everything You Need To Start Making Webcomics For Free

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 11, 2014, 01:10 PM »

Or are YOU? 

How do you know HE is doing it wrong?

Who are YOU to say HE is wrong?

YOU might be wrong!

Trololololol

haha

971

Living Room / Everything You Need To Start Making Webcomics For Free

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 11, 2014, 11:00 AM »

The webcomic is the best storytelling medium for hobbyists. Its visual nature hooks readers faster than written form stories. Its serial nature allows for bite-sized consumption without sacrificing long story arcs. And best of all, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than making films or writing novels.
Given enough time and determination, anyone can make webcomics for free, and that includes you. Here’s how to get started right away.

Read the full story here: http://www.makeuseof...king-webcomics-free/

972

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 09, 2014, 02:58 AM »

I just went back and read all 14 pages of this thread...at 8:30am on a Sunday...wtf am I doing with my life?

973

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 09, 2014, 02:11 AM »

...I guess it could be useful for a home media center if you got rid of whatever Crapple OS it runs...then install Linux instead...use it for storing movies or whatever on it, connected up to your main home TV?

-Stephen66515 (November 09, 2014, 01:38 AM)

Yes, I couldn't see anything much else of use for it except extending its original purpose. But Linux? Apparently not feasible or worthwhile with this model?

-IainB (November 09, 2014, 02:06 AM)

Meh, I just have a hatred for all things Apple...so for me...well, I would have declined to take it

974

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 09, 2014, 01:38 AM »

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a sea anchor for a lightweight dingy.
So, no use at all, then, eh?

-IainB (November 09, 2014, 01:16 AM)

I guess it could be useful for a home media center if you got rid of whatever Crapple OS it runs...then install Linux instead...use it for storing movies or whatever on it, connected up to your main home TV?

975

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on November 09, 2014, 01:06 AM »

I have been given an unwanted 1st generation Mac Mini with the DVI graphics port:
 (see attachment in previous post)
I got this and other pix from Wikipedia - Mac Mini .
The question is. What good use could I put this device to, or is only good for scrap?

-IainB (November 08, 2014, 11:36 PM)

Doorstop?