Recent Posts

9901

Living Room / Re: Google Chrome -- New Web Browser

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2008, 10:27 PM »

Didn't see those posts... Oh well...

9902

Living Room / Google Chrome -- New Web Browser

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2008, 10:11 PM »

http://www.google.com/chrome

It looks pretty good. They seem to have a decent idea on isolated tabs. I'm installing it now, but the installer seems like the Adobe Reader one... Yuck.

They've ripped off Opera's "Speed Dial", which is good. Speed Dial rocks.

We'll see though. I'll be using it for a bit to check it out.

9903

Living Room / Re: Can you live with *just* opera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2008, 10:07 PM »

Hmmm... Seems that post wasn't right (The Fine Print):

2. Although you retain any copyrights to content you own and use in the browser, Google says it has a right to display some of your content, in conjunction with promoting its services. Here's their exact wording.

"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services."

I can't find that in the license agreement at all.

That makes things much better. Though the "we get to update whatever we want" thing still kind of stinks...

9904

Living Room / Re: Mythbusters Silenced by Credit Card Companies

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2008, 09:09 PM »

Bastards.

-f0dder (September 03, 2008, 05:47 PM)

Well said. Exactly how I feel. Once again profits trump public safety. Identity theft made possible at this level is a public safety issue and ignoring it while making billions off it is immoral. Hold on... This is eerily familiar, isn't it?

-Darwin (September 03, 2008, 05:55 PM)

+1000

I can't post more without resorting to an extreme rant filled with profanity.

9905

Living Room / Re: Can you live with *just* opera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2008, 09:05 PM »

Well, it seems that I've spoken too soon about Google and browsers...

CHROME -- The Google Browser!

However, the agreement is just plain scary:

The Fine Print

Paraphrase: We get to install anything we damn well feel like and steal anything that you create and use in our browser.

So much for "do no evil". Google is WAY off the path at this point. They're worse than Real or some of the more aggressive adware/spyware guys at this point.

I really hope that Chrome fails. We don't need another browser, and especially one with such a crappy EULA.

9906

Living Room / Re: Has your phone replaced your camera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2008, 07:41 PM »

Every camera I've had on a phone has been substandard at best. I've seen pictures from other people's phones, and while they might work marginally, the pictures certainly aren't usable for anything. e.g. You couldn't print them.

9907

Living Room / Re: 80% of IT Workers Would Steal Data if Fired

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2008, 07:38 PM »

There is a vaccuum for a few products to help manage these kinds of things at the moment. But security is often low on the priority scale, so creating it doesn't mean it would succeed. Only a large company like CA with an established large customer base could manage to make a product to manage passwords effectively into a success.

When I left my last position, the only things I took were some music files I had only on my computer there and a couple files of mine. No passwords or anything. I made password lists and gave them to the person that stepped in though as they would need them.

9908

Living Room / Re: Can you live with *just* opera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2008, 07:33 PM »

Google has dropped the ball there. There's no excuse for it. When something is THAT popular and bug... errr... I mean big... When it's that big it needs to rise to a bit higher standard.

-Renegade (September 02, 2008, 12:29 PM)

could that be a conscious decision I wonder - especially with their own browser coming onto the market ...

-tomos (September 02, 2008, 01:07 PM)

They won't get into the browser business. It's already crowded and there's no incentive for them to do it other than to set the default page and search engine to them.

Considering that none of the current browsers are truly standards compliant, or truly work, it's likely too much of a pain for them to get into.

If they did, it would likely be for a mobile platform. (Google phone, etc.)

9909

Living Room / Re: Has your phone replaced your camera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2008, 12:37 PM »

just curious. with 5MP phone cameras becoming common, has anyone actually ditched their digital camera to use the phone camera exclusively for casual snapshots?

-lanux128 (August 31, 2008, 03:14 AM)

Only for those of us that smoke a lot of crack...

Cameras on phones are a total joke. They're total crap and not even remotely in the same universe as "real" cameras.

The camera on my phone is beyond crap. It's total shit. And I have a top of the line expensive phone. There aren't many phones that cost much more. But the camera is still total... I can't emphasize enough the word TOTAL... shit. It's garbage and completely unusable.

I believe that the proper measurement unit for camera phone resolution is MP (Mega Poops). Because it's all shit.

9910

Living Room / Re: Can you live with *just* opera?

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2008, 12:29 PM »

Opera + gmail is pure shit. I love Opera and keep trying to use it, but every time I check my e-mail I want to scream and find myself scrambling for file -> exit.

-allen (September 02, 2008, 10:27 AM)

Opera still has a ways to go with their javascript engine, but honestly --- it's SOOOO much better than IE or FF for speed. FF beats IE for speed with a lot of things though. I've got a site that I administer with IE because IE is simply far superior to FF in so many aspects, but the speed really pisses me off. FF on the site is MUCH faster. But IE works 100%. FF isn't there yet.

However, for a major Internet application like Gmail to not work with the top 4 browsers is just silly. Google has dropped the ball there. There's no excuse for it. When something is THAT popular and bug... errr... I mean big... When it's that big it needs to rise to a bit higher standard.

Real simple:

Switch :: Case...

NTFH. Not That F***ing Hard...

The product manager at GMail is just dropping the ball.

BUG... Errr... I mean BIG surprise!

(The U and I keys are just too close. )

9911

Living Room / Re: IPhone Security Hole Bypasses Password

« Last post by Renegade on August 28, 2008, 10:14 PM »

Blasphemy!

This needs to be censored! Nobody can ever say anything bad about Apple!

SINNER!

 

9912

Living Room / Re: If somebody offers you swapping your PC for a mac cold turkey: would you do it?

« Last post by Renegade on August 28, 2008, 11:37 AM »

Simply put, there's no decent software that I want to use that will run on a Mac.

-Renegade (August 28, 2008, 08:32 AM)

I guess you don't do any commercial graphics, publishing, or media work!

-40hz (August 28, 2008, 09:39 AM)

Well, that's pretty well founded.

For audio, the answer is NO to a Mac. Remember what the question was... Desktop.

ProTools is THE software and the platform of choice for it is Mac. But that's in a studio, and not for a desktop computer. I'm not an audio engineer.

For a desktop computer, there are much better solutions that don't cost $10k+. Samplitude or SAW Studio are excellent. If you have MASSIVE requirements, then even in a studio you can't use a Mac for audio (as far as I know). You have to use SAW Studio because it is the only one out there that can slave other computers in clusters. That's Windows only.

Graphics? I know a lot of designers that use Windows for Photoshop and Illustrator. But most use Macs. The platform doesn't really matter a lot there and is more of a personal choice. Graphics are just about all on a desktop computer, so there's no big deal there. I'm not a designer.

Video... Hmmm... I'm not too sure what people are using now. Liquid used to be popular. But I'm a bit out of touch with the professional video editing stuff right now. It's been a few years. I don't know if there are video solutions for Mac clusters. I would guess that there are.

But for doing video on a desktop? Not sure. Final Cut is excellent. (Mac)

Audio and video can now be done on a desktop computer fairly reasonably in a commercial setting.

Publishing... Quark. On a Mac. (Last time I was working with print layout anyways -- it's been a few years.)

My audio and video needs are pretty simple. I use Samplitude and Sonar for audio. Video -- I only really do screencasts with Camtasia. Layout? I don't do layout for print so I don't use Quark.

This really goes to the difference between amateur, prosumer, and professional needs. My professional needs are most important to me. That's Visual Studio and a solid text editor. I use Photoshop (7) for graphic work as nothing compares to it. But my needs there are very simple. I don't need CS#. Samplitude is simply a stellar program and doesn't run on a Mac. I don't need ProTools.

Macs are extremely expensive. Not just the computer, but the software as well. There are just too many very good programs for Windows that are reasonably priced. There's just no way I could justify throwing out a perfectly good solution that I'm comfortable with for something that's 10x the price for a Mac. The computer isn't the real cost. The real costs are the programs that you put on the computer and the learning curve for them.

Similarly, it would be nuts to get an audio engineer to switch to a PC if they've been using a Mac. etc.

Blah... I need to get back to my beer then go to sleep!

9913

Living Room / Re: If somebody offers you swapping your PC for a mac cold turkey: would you do it?

« Last post by Renegade on August 28, 2008, 08:32 AM »

I wouldn't. Simply put, there's no decent software that I want to use that will run on a Mac.

But then again to be fair, Visual Studio is important to me. Nothing really comes close to it on a Mac.

If there were more decent software for OSX, then it would be a different story. But everything I've ever used on a Mac has always been dumbed down crap with no level of sophistication. That was a while ago though, and things have likely improved. I'd need a really good text editor -- that's 200% necessary. Editplus is what I use now, and there would have to be some equivalent for the Mac. BBEdit? Dunno. But good regular expressions are 500% necessary for a text editor for me. That's he first thing I look at.

Now, if it were a high-end Mac and I could run Vista on it and Visual Studio, then yes. I'd make the switch. But only for a high-end machine that wouldn't slow me down. VMs are painful to use unless you've got a machine with some serious horse power in it.

9914

Living Room / Re: What May Happen in the Next 100 Years (Predictions from 1901)

« Last post by Renegade on August 26, 2008, 08:34 PM »

I didn't read them all, but the ones I did read were very good and very close to being true. Well, considering that they were looking a centry ahead, they did an excellent job of predicting things. Sure trains can go faster than 150 mph, but they got the right idea.

9915

Living Room / Re: Guitar Hero 3 joystick question

« Last post by Renegade on August 20, 2008, 10:50 AM »

Yeah... Ummm... Just get a real guitar!  

9916

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

« Last post by Renegade on August 20, 2008, 10:49 AM »

 

I live in Seoul... You can see concrete and tangled cables if you look up. My view is horrid and not worth posting.

I'm envious of many of you here... 

9917

Living Room / Re: Flash game : Fantastic contraption

« Last post by Renegade on August 20, 2008, 09:08 AM »

That is a very cool game!

9918

Living Room / Re: What do you do during your free time?

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2008, 08:03 AM »

It is very likely that I am going to score points for the stereo-typical camp with this comment...but hey!

When I have free time I play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (2nd Edition...for other die-hards here?  ) or prepare stuff for playing. A lot of the free hours (or should I say 'wee hours') also go into playing online race games.

-Shades (August 14, 2008, 11:08 PM)

I used to play the first edition. I even had the original Dieties & Demigods with the Melnibonean mythos and Cthulu mythos in them! (All others were original covers.)

And the biggest problem of all this is that in this country there are more women than men...and since I am a 'gringo' here a lot of females take notice of me when I do go and/or eat out. It's always a topic of conversation between me and my friends here.

I know, I know...time to grow up! 

-Shades (August 14, 2008, 11:08 PM)

Where do you live?

9919

Living Room / Re: What do you do during your free time?

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2008, 08:00 AM »

crap collecting (the physical type, digital crap doesn't count)

Hahahaha~!

I am suffering less from this, but still suffering!

9920

Living Room / Re: Do you remember your first programming job?

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2008, 04:44 AM »

I don't remember... I wish I did.

9921

Living Room / Re: DC Social Club Love-In

« Last post by Renegade on August 17, 2008, 10:32 AM »

An autolinker would be a very cool coding snack. I'll post back when I'm sober.

9922

Living Room / Re: Favorite part of the Beijing Olympics so far?

« Last post by Renegade on August 17, 2008, 08:08 AM »

No, but I played a Juicer once just because my role-playing-game-fanboy-and-good-friend was so hot on Rifts being the best RPG (evar!!) and I was roped into a wednesday night session years ago...

Quite similar I'd say...

-Edvard (August 13, 2008, 07:21 PM)

Rifts rocks! I used to play it years ago. I've played a Juicer too, and they're just pure psychotic fun! (I prefer to play psychotic Mind Melters though...)

But back to the Olympics...


BAH! HUMBUG!

Why would anyone bother to watch other people (that they don't know or care about in the least) play games?

Watch people play games? That seems purely idiotic. Why not play the game yourself? That's more fun!

It's like porn. Would you rather watch, or do?

Actually, that might be more entertaining... The PORNOLYMPICS!

Instead of  "Citius, Altius, Fortius" ("Swifter, Higher, Stronger"), it could be "Harder, Faster, Deeper"!

Lord knows sex can be physically demanding.

And it's probably easier to test for Viagra or Cialis than all the drugs and doping that goes on in the mainstream atheletic world!

Ok... Jokes aside (I'm not really kidding that much -- I'd rather play games & get laid than watch other people), the Olympics is really in the morally grey area with all that the Olympic committee is involved in. They do not present themselves as any kind of admirable organization.

Then there's the constant scandals inside of the corruption of the Olympics -- corruption inside corruption... Pathetic.

Too many athletes cheat. Games have rules. Chess... Now there's a good game where you simply can't cheat.

[RANT]

Then they're down on their knees for BEJING!?!?!

WTF! I nearly myself when they got it.

The Chinese government is one of the most blatantly evil on the planet. They torture, mutilate and murder their own people. They're sick, evil people. And this is where the Olympics are held? I puked a thousand profanities when they first got it. Nothing has changed.


While the IDEA of the Olympics is admirable with all the peace, love, brotherly whatever and let's all get along flowers are nice and I love trees and whales' have cool songs and let's be friends pass the bong got a lighter mine's broken could you mix some hash in with that weed while we make love and not war... The implementation is abysmal.


I find it abhorrent that China would get the Olympics. The Chinese government is blatantly diametrically opposed to everything the Olympics (ideally) stands for.

I haven't watched it. I won't watch it. I won't support it in the least.

And YES -- I check labels to see if something is made in China and whenever possible, I buy things that are NOT made there.

I have nothing against the Chinese people. I am morally opposed to the Chinese government, what they do, and what they stand for.

[/RANT]


A TRULY interesting sporting event to watch is seeing your kid/brother/sister play little league baseball (or whatever)!

That's something worth watching, and is time well spent. Watching the Olympics is a complete waste.

9923

General Software Discussion / Re: Is your ISP throttling you? If so, check for it!

« Last post by Renegade on August 17, 2008, 07:31 AM »

Switzerland is still too much hassle to bother with. I spent some time on it, but can't be bothered to go through the hoops for it. Nice idea, but it's still in the development stage and really only for Python programmers. Too bad because it sounds pretty cool.

9924

Living Room / Re: FCC finds Comcast in violation of net neutrality rules for BitTorrent blocking

« Last post by Renegade on August 07, 2008, 04:00 AM »

The problem is that too many companies lie about their products. "Unlimited bandwidth" is just a fiction. If they were upfront and honest, it would be different.

9925

Living Room / Re: Linux needs more haters

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2008, 10:04 PM »

I've seen more than a few applications that ran many many LAMP stack servers in the far back-end with Windows servers in the front for the web interface. This is a great setup as you get all the storage and goodness basically free, while your smaller front end can undergo quick and easy changes (relatively).

-Renegade (July 27, 2008, 11:16 PM)

Now that's my kind of hack! Very smart (if you MUST use ASP) and very sweet.

Of course there's nothing that prevents your "other" servers from undergoing quick & easy changes if you know what you're doing.

For Sun, Solaris has "zones", so you can zone out a board with the server still running, swap the board, then rezone it back. The upshot is that you have the server running the whole time with 0% downtime. THAT is some serious sexy stuff!

Sex aside, what exactly is on that board? Is it a full server or what?

Sorry if I sound dumb. My experience with Sun is limited to some work with Solaris OS and one brief but enchanting afternoon spent with a Sparc Station (talk about sex appeal!) way back in the late 90's. 

-40hz (July 27, 2008, 11:37 PM)

Not talking about typical PC servers or workstations there... It's about the real deal big ones that you get from Sun with multiple boards, CPUs, etc. etc.

They're heavy duty machines that you put in data centers for things like banks, etc. Think massive data server and that's the right direction.

You can rezone, rip out a board, then rezone back. Solaris in that environment is simply the best you can get. Zero downtime for real, no lie.