Recent Posts

9926

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

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2008, 09:59 PM »

Wait a second... It sounds like you people actually expect to get what you were told you were buying and what you paid for!

Wow! Now do we ever feel stupid!

9927

Living Room / Re: The InfoWorld Programming IQ Test

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2008, 09:50 PM »

I did horribly -- the history questions killed me.

9928

Living Room / Re: Am I too demanding, or are they all cheating?

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2008, 09:35 PM »

...
Well, this could not be called directly cheating, but anyway, I wouldn't call such a behavior decent. A big disappointment from Panasonic.

-yksyks (August 06, 2008, 11:44 AM)

Ahem... Panasonic Sucks!

This is all pretty standard now. The major manufacturers no longer make money on selling decent products to people and gaining repeat business.

They all now make money by being so large and dominating the distribution channels so well that no other players can reasonably get into distribution. Coupled with their economies of scale, even if someone could get in, they couldn't offer anything reasonably equivalent without setting a massive price tag.

As such, there is no motivation to improve products. However, they can still make more money by skimping on things and overselling underpowered/underfeatured products to consumers that by now are used to taking it in the @$$ pretty darn hard.

Other ways to skimp on products include having documentation of 10 pages to explain a that complex product is a product, but not tell you much more.

Banks, insurance companies, financial companies, securities companies, hardware manufacturers, software houses, etc. etc. etc. They all deliver short of what one would think is reasonable.

Insurance companies make money by sneaking in clauses that allow them to never pay out any money. They then hire people to investigate claims and make sure that the people don't get paid.

Why should the hardware manufacturers be any different?

Technical support is manned by talking monkeys that have a set list of 3 answers to 3 questions:

Q 1: My computer isn't working.
A 1: Plug it in.

Q 2: My MP3 player isn't working.
A 2: Charge the battery.

Q 3: My audio card drivers cause a kernel panic.
A 3: Reinstall the OS.

Support no longer answers questions. They just give some crap answers that mean nothing. Why? Because hiring intelligent people that can solve problems costs money. It's easier to hire a talking monkey for cheap.

Nothing lasts anymore as it's all made with the cheapest plastics that can be bought. High-density, durable materials cost money. Besides, when it breaks, consumers need to buy another. Self-sabotage.

You're not being unreasonable in the least. You're merely implicitly pointing out the current environment that companies are working in, and the ways in which they are cheating and deceiving consumers.

9929

Living Room / Re: Weird websites

« Last post by Renegade on August 04, 2008, 01:18 PM »

It used to be funkier, but -- http://www.hell.com/

9930

General Software Discussion / Re: Leveraging Aamzon's Servers for your own Website

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2008, 11:31 PM »

Amazon makes sense when you start getting into very high bandwidth usage. For most people, it's ok, but certainly not necessary. Their pricing gets better the more you use.

9931

Living Room / Re: The Long Tail and it's Doubters

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2008, 11:24 PM »

Niche vs. long tail is slightly different depending on the context. Generally niche refers to a small market, but then again, in a large market place with tens of thousands of products (e.g. any download site), even products with broad appeal are shuffled into the "long tail" and only the top performers get any front page exposure. You can certainly use them interchangeably though in many contexts.

9932

Living Room / Re: Zip File Bombs

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2008, 11:21 PM »

Make each an SFX that extracts the next level...

9933

Living Room / Re: Linux needs more haters

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2008, 11:16 PM »

Thanks renegade for an excellent post.
We run freeBSD on the server; it's not only TCP/IP, it's also mysql performance (20% better than linux according to some benchmarks).

When the primary cost is development, then Windows is an excellent choice with ASP.NET.

I have to admit I have never tried ASP.NET, but this statement is surprising. Which start-ups or top-100 sites are running on ASP.NET? In the startup world, development speed is everything. If what you say is true, ASP.NET would be under every startup's hood. I don't think that's the case, more like they tend to use PHP/django/rails.

Still, the fastest framework seems to be seaside (smalltalk). But's that's a left-field choice.

-urlwolf (July 27, 2008, 05:46 AM)

The thing with ASP.NET vs. Ruby on Rails (or many others) is that it scales. MySpace runs on ASP.NET. Very large applications/sites can't run on RoR or some others.

For most startups, any cost at all is a cost, so using RoR is an excellent choice. They guys that start it are bootstrapping, so their time is equity that they're sinking into it, whereas the dollars are more efficiently working with more servers and power than if they'd chosen a Windows server. If the business succeeds and you outgrow RoR, great! Rewrite it in something else -- you've already made it there. RoR is a fantastic way to get an application up and running quickly. But it doesn't scale... and the RoR guys don't care.

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).

Again, it all depends on your situation. What are the priorities, and how do you best meet them?

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!

9934

Living Room / Re: Linux needs more haters

« Last post by Renegade on July 26, 2008, 09:23 PM »

It's about time.

The "holier-than-thou" BS "FOSS or die" "Linux can do no wrong" idiocy that's been around for so long has been such a massive turn-off.

I suppose a certain degree of it was necessary to keep momentum and things moving along, but it's refreshing now to hear some kind of temperment or balance.

Still, I think if you do any web-related programming (client-server) linux must be your home.

-urlwolf

I think you kind of need to be careful when saying things like this. Honestly, I have to flat out disagree. "Must be" was a poor choice of words.

Linux is an excellent OS for a web server, and certainly does a very good job at many things. However, it's not always the right OS for the job.

For Web 2.0 type sites where profits per user can be very low, a free OS and server software can help keep costs down, and Linux is an excellent choice.

For highly profitable sites where the costs of the OS and server software don't matter, Linux loses it's free advantage, and there are much better alternatives depending on what you need.

For 100% uptime, Linux is the wrong choice. That's Solaris with Sun hardware. You can't swap out a mainboard with the server still running with Linux. You can with Solaris. But you'll need to pay highly for well educated people to do it.

When the primary cost is development, then Windows is an excellent choice with ASP.NET.

If you need to run a DNS server, Linux is the wrong choice. So is Windows. BSD is the right one. It's TCP/IP stack is superior and can handle loads that would bring other OSes to their knees.

There are good things and bad things with each OS.

That people are finally bringing out into the open some of the bad things about Linux is good for Linux as it will point out the weaknesses and maybe someday that elusive Linux desktop for the masses may become a reality.

The blog is radical, but then again, perhaps it's exactly that radical take that's need to help balance out the gushing/obsequious praise that we've been subject to so far.

9935

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

« Last post by Renegade on July 26, 2008, 08:59 PM »

I use IE7, FF, Opera and Safari.

IE7 is my default because I like the mouse gestures from ALToolbar far better than any others. They're smoother and the tracers are nice to use as well.

For FF vs. Opera, well, they work differently and usually I like Opera's behaviours better.

Safari I only use for some specific things, and not a lot.

But on this machine, Opera is my default browser. On my other machine, it's IE.

9936

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Guitar & Drum Trainer Software for Musicians Wins Shareware Industry Award

« Last post by Renegade on July 21, 2008, 09:51 PM »

Thank-you!

(Cute pun! )

I really wish that I could have been there...

Airplane tickets, lecturing at one of the universities here in Seoul... This year it just didn't work out.

9937

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Guitar & Drum Trainer Software for Musicians Wins Shareware Industry Award

« Last post by Renegade on July 21, 2008, 09:37 PM »

Renegade Minds' "Guitar & Drum Trainer" software for musicians won for the third time at the annual Shareware Industry Awards Banquest hosted at the Software Industry Conference in Boston. "GDT" is a specialized program to help musicians of all levels learn new songs quickly and easily by slowing down music, pitch shifting songs, and removing vocals or instruments.

-Executive Summary

Boston, Massachusetts, July 2008 -- Renegade Minds' "Guitar & Drum Trainer" software for musicians won the "Best Vertical Market Program or Utility Award" at the Shareware Industry Awards Banquet on July 19^th. Guitar & Drum Trainer helps musicians of all levels learn new music easier and faster, and runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

The Shareware Industry Awards are presented during the annual Shareware Industry Awards Banquet held at the conclusion of the Software Industry Conference. They honor the best software titles in a variety of categories, with nominees and winners chosen by industry professionals and experts from around the world. Past winners include titles popular enough to be household words such as Microsoft Office 2007, Firefox, Google Earth and WinZip, to lesser known programs that are popular in their niches.

Nominated for the awards in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, Guitar & Drum Trainer won in 2005 and 2006, and again this year in the "Best Vertical Market Program or Utility Award" category. Ryan Smyth from Renegade Minds was not present to accept the award at the ceremony, but in a blog post expressed his regret at not being able to attend saying that air tickets from South Korea were mostly booked and other commitments prevented his attendance this year.

Guitar & Drum Trainer, or simply "GDT", is specialized software for musicians to learn new music faster and easier. It allows musicians to slow down music, pitch shift songs to the tunings of their instruments, loop riffs and musical passages, and remove vocals or instruments from songs. Despite its namesake, the software works with any instrument, and not only guitars and drums.

The software includes tools and features specifically designed for musicians. Rather than a standard ISO equalizer, GDT centers its 62 equalizer bands on musical notes, and instead of a regular slider for seeking through music, it includes a full and a zoomed waveform display.

Major new features in version 4 of the software include vocal and instrument removal tools as well as the ability to save slowed down and pitch shifted songs as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files or MP3s with an additional LAME MP3 encoder download. Other new additions include CD playback, an improved 62-band stereo equalizer and beat detection.

Guitar & Drum Trainer has a free trial for musicians to download and evaluate before they decide to purchase and is available for USD 49.95.

About Renegade Minds

Renegade Minds develops audio software for musicians to learn new music faster and easier. It also develops several other utilities and provides consulting services to a select clientele. For more information, please visit http://renegademinds.com.

About the Shareware Industry Awards

First held in 1992, the Shareware Industry Awards were conceived as a way to honor, and acknowledge some of the best software available that uses the shareware marketing model, also commonly known as the "try-before-you-buy" model. For more information, please visit http://www.sharewareindustryawards.com.




   

9938

Living Room / Re: Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

« Last post by Renegade on July 20, 2008, 10:43 PM »

While I do have Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email accounts, they are basically unused.

For years I've been running my own email servers simply because I am infinitely more reliable as I have direct control over every aspect of things. i.e. I can't get permanently screwed by someone else.

It's not a good option for most people, but having your own domain name should be a minimum requirement for anyone that wants things to be reliable. You control things then and can switch between different email service providers without relying on any specific one.

Most email service providers, including Gmail, have options to do this.

The costs are minimal, and can save you untold frustration.

9939

Living Room / Re: DC Forum Members -- Tell Us About Your Website

« Last post by Renegade on July 12, 2008, 07:46 AM »

I've got quite a few, but most are pretty much neglected.

My main site is RenegadeMinds.com:



I really like the next site. Design and graphics are from nudone here at DC.

Fair Warning. It is offensive to some people and uses coarse language in places. There is no nudity.

NSFW

FuckSatan.com

I've got a bunch of others as well that basically run themselves. I'll have another one coming out relatively soon for a book I'm writing.

9940

General Software Discussion / Re: OH NO! Its the end of Windows 3.11!

« Last post by Renegade on July 11, 2008, 10:14 AM »

I love 3.11 WfW. I have a virtual machine set to run it and still play with it sometimes. It's how I cut my teeth with windows. Before that, it was all DOS or some terrible Tandy (RadioShack) thing, the name of which I can no longer remember.

-Darwin (July 11, 2008, 09:05 AM)

Hahaha!

I remember the Tandys. I had a Tandy 1000. It ran DOS. Version 1. Then I got version 2.

When I finally got Windows 3.1 on a new machine, I rigged it so that all the DOS commands were run as if the machine was UNIX. So "ls" was "dir" etc.

Wow. 3.11 is gone. It's about time!

9941

Living Room / Re: Rest In Peace - George Carlin - 71

« Last post by Renegade on June 28, 2008, 02:42 AM »

We Like War: http://ca.youtube.co...&feature=related

The guy was simply brilliant. The stuff he came up with was just... Well... I was going to get into some theory of humour, but that gets political pretty quick.

9942

Living Room / Re: How Interesting is Your IP Address?

« Last post by Renegade on June 28, 2008, 02:12 AM »

Hmmm... Interesting... Here's mine:



26 but I cheat at cards!

9943

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by Renegade on June 11, 2008, 09:31 AM »

I don't think this is a new attack style. I remember a number of years ago hearing about "ransomware", which is the same as described above. It would lock things up, then demand a ransom for it.

The first example of it (from the Wikipedia article above) was from 1989.

The issue now is probably the number of infections is just higher. <cynicism>Oh, and that it makes for a great news story to plug your antivirus product.</cynicism>

 

9944

Developer's Corner / Re: The internet hijacked

« Last post by Renegade on June 11, 2008, 09:25 AM »

There is no MITHM attack with SSL. That's what SSL stops.

Erm, yes there is
There are plenty of different SSL mitm attacks possible.
While it protects the casual kid from reading plaintext stuff, the attacker can inject false ssl certificates into the tcp stream, and most users will accept them without thinking twise.

No ISP needs to be compromised. It only takes one trojaned machine on your network, or a wireless router with a cracked WEP/WPA/WPA2/... key.

-Gothi[c] (June 02, 2008, 07:10 PM)

Ok. I know the attack that you're describing.

I was thinking of attacks on an SSL session, and not the proxied SSL cert vulnerability that you get with some corporate networks and ISPs.

9945

Living Room / Re: cody spotted on You Tube

« Last post by Renegade on June 11, 2008, 09:18 AM »

Didn't see cody...

9946

Living Room / Re: Drinking Vinegar?

« Last post by Renegade on June 10, 2008, 12:27 PM »

...
we know better - Renegade is friendly

-tomos (June 08, 2008, 05:27 AM)

But only until somebody tries to do something nasty to me like bite my nose. Then I become very sour and nasty!

No vinegar, i can lose half kg a week when running...drinking vinegar and doing the same run, I can lose 1kg per week....

I'll be reading your blog, and drinking a $20 bottle of balsamic a week! (Seriously, I'm really interested as I really need to lose a few myself!)

Oh, and mouser... NYAH! See! I'm not insane! (Or at least I'm not alone in my insanity... )

9947

General Software Discussion / Abusive Behahiour (Rant about Adobe Digital Editions)

« Last post by Renegade on June 05, 2008, 05:11 PM »

So I go to read an eBook that I PURCHASED a while ago in PDF format... Grrr... 

I've been able to open it in the past (of course) but get directed here:

http://www.adobe.com...ons/?source=acrofile

They want me to download and install and activate things again!

And what if I'm not connected to the Internet? Like on my laptop out somewhere?

Geez... I don't know if this is just me, but I really hate being forced to jump through hoops to do simple stuff like open a file that I've already paid for. I can walk to my shelf and open a book without this hassle.

Really makes me want to rethink buying any more of Adobe's "Digital Editions."

Grrr... Grumble... 

Ok. I'm done.

9948

Living Room / Re: The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet

« Last post by Renegade on June 03, 2008, 02:11 PM »

What ticks me off about AR is that it won't print ' characters properly... I always get random crap. Most annoying.

9949

Living Room / Re: Free PhotoShop book

« Last post by Renegade on June 03, 2008, 02:05 PM »

Nice! Thanks for posting that.

What is kind of funny though is the banner there:



It's pretty bad. Rough and ugly. Rather ironic really.

9950

Living Room / Re: Hosting options for new website

« Last post by Renegade on June 02, 2008, 01:23 PM »

If you're going to go for $500, would it be a stretch to $1,000 or so? If you can, I'd honestly strongly recommend going with a dedicated server. There's just NO comparison with any kind of hosted account to virtual server. They just aren't in the same universe much less the same ballpark.

It would be a bit of a stretch (almost a car payment to be exact ) but from what I'm hearing in other places, a dedicated server is definitely something I'll have to consider. Thanks for bringing it up.

-40hz (June 02, 2008, 12:59 PM)

Think about it this way...

How much is your time worth? Do you want the pain and hassles of dealing with support staff that are total morons and should probably have been flunked out of kindergarten?

How much is downtime worth? How much will it cost to get things up again?

Can you afford for some other jerk on a server to hog all the resources with a crappy script?

On my own personal server I have had ZERO downtime because I control everything and make sure things work. (OS reboots excepted... )

But you can still get dedicated Linux servers for under $50 a month (I can't speak to the reliability there). But there are cheap ones out there. There are lots available for $80~90 a month too that will do a fantastic job.

However, you need to administer them yourself for best results.

Years ago I used only dedicated servers and had no problems. Then for some smaller sites I went with hosting... I very soon learned that hosting doesn't work for sites that grow.