I unintentionally used this pun over the weekend discussing Microsoft with my wife.
Given Microsoft's success rate with Surface, Windows Phone, Zune, and the negative publicity the next Xbox has received, it seems the best way to hurt Microsoft is to leave them to their own devices.
i haven't been as heavy a contributor here on slashdot since i started on facebook/g+. i have considered taking up writing as a hobby again as i now have the time to do so... i learned how to storyboard from movies and haven't taken up a project with a good storyboard yet(since i learned how). i just want to feel important and to do what i enjoy doing and if writing isn't all i thought it would be as a child, well i don't have any better plans for what to do.
it would seem that things are going to be okay for me for a while, i have no worries other than worrying that not progressing on writing fiction will drag me back into feeling worthless cause i could not write a single useful thing in that spare time.
what should i do. i can't game, as i made an iron clad no serious gaming for myself except on weekends rule as i can stay sane if i don't over stimulate my brain. i know how to write, i know what i like to read, i know a few insider secrets to writing the kinds of stories i like... but every time i try to draw myself into writing i just act like i don't want to write more. i don't want to be tldr, i don't want to scour old media hoping to glean some copyright infringement free ideas... basically i just don't know what to do as i want to be important, but i can't figure out what i should do to be important
As perhaps the least secure system in common use today, I've been wondering for about a decade what would replace email. I don't like it, I use it only for automated forms, and I generally think it needs to be superseded. All the efforts to extend or somehow "fix" the system end up optional and thus mostly useless, between the insecure infrastructure making spam extremely easy to send and the lack of compulsory encryption (which would have the advantage of ensuring its support by default in clients/interfaces). It seems like the only way to fix it is a fully incompatible replacement, with the unfortunate likelihood that some form of bridging would end up existing even then, opening up any new system to the problems of the old.
first off, everything is broken -- you load all apps as limited user privaleges so called windows mode. great for a tablet which doesn't matter, but broken on a laptop where they invented new ways to emulate touch screen with a mouse if i hadn't found that out while installing i would have had to scour youtube for directions. needless to say window mode doesn't work with pogo, which uses flash, java, and popups. once i got ie to run in desktop mode i could find the ways to enable/update things but despite being preloaded with all three they didn't work in desktop mode without updating which took a good 20 minutes to even try to find, and of course mega download updates for the os. i don't know if flash updated i don't know if my mom is going to be able to keep them updated either, since i was confused as to how to get it done. still in progress of making it work, dumb website that makes people use the latest software even when that is broken in windows 8. sigh. if anyone has any ideas of ways to make windows tile screen have a simple link to desktop mode ie, it would be helpful though i will probabally scour youtube for that. then i need an app that makes updating flash and java painless. not sure what to do there, i can't be there every time there is an update to flash because they go on vacations and remote desktop is too insecure for me to trust it running on moms laptop.
so, my mom wants a laptop to play 'pogo.com' games she pays for membership there, and plays games (mostly java with some flash since EA acquired pogo.) so i checked her desktop screen size on her desktop and it is 1680x1050, in laptops i only found 900p in her price range (450-550usd) at dell http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-17-3721/pd?oc=fncwd25s7&model_id=inspiron-17-3721 which if you look at the tech specs is a dual core 1.9ghz cpu she currently has a dual core 2.8ghz desktop. so i tried shopping other sites but could only find 1366x768 resolution hardware in her price range, i didn't search everywhere and 'dad's' laptop is a dual core 2.0 ghz computer. whats wrong with dad's laptop? it won't run java or flash very well it is old and i formatted it twice since he owned it. should i stick with the i3? or should i try to talk her into an i5 dual core at 2.7 ghz? even though it it is $100 over the price range i suggested for her. any better sites to get at least a 900p laptop or better on the cheap that will only run an av and a browser, using java heavily? the dell has a 17.3" screen fwiw and she needs one at least as large. is it okay to not have it faster than their existing hardware? these are tough questions to me.
well isn't this fun, http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=14139 first we have windows take 45 minutes to start, though i cheated and used taskman to start things cause i wasn't gonna wait for windows... http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=14140 then we have windows load but norton complains because i attempted to run norton while windows was booting. http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=14141 finally we have nav refusing to scan while hijackthis fails to work. i have tried in the past to get my parents onto linux but they didn't like it.
internet explorer fails firefox runs, but ugh it is not pretty, also i can't get my dad to use anything for browser script stopping, and my mom won't run popup blockers. sigh. i want to format and reinstall and of course use linux to backup and restore important files but that also involves finding the install dvds.
Coming up on a month into a new job. One of the worst things about it? My predecessor's documentation consisted of a few outdated spreadsheets hidden in a directory on one of the servers, a list of passwords, a couple folders with license keys, and a file cabinet filled with printouts of howto documents from the Internet with no clue what he used them for (including countless ones for functions and features I have discovered we do not use, as well as software we do not use.)
One recent fun discovery? He assigned an unknown number of undocumented and unreserved IPs within our DHCP block to desktops, with no clues as to specifically why. I discovered this when I installed a virtual machine to test with and clobbered my boss's (the owner's) static IP. He was gone for almost a month before I came on. So far, the static IPs seem related to our copier's scan function, but I can't guarantee that is the only reason, and I see no reason to meddle with the systems that are working. DHCP reservations, here we come!
Now to see if I can get the desktop hubs replaced with switches...
Intro: I was complaining on social networks that the LuxTrust hardware tokens are forced upon all teachers in my country. That's a huge problem because I got my mother in law on Linux and this thing is very very badly supported. Officially the website say "Ubuntu 10.04" supported. Funnily enough, their website also doesn't mention Windows 8 as supported. Anyway, they're a useless company in my eyes... I wish them the most ill possible.
Here is my little test run:
So, I decided to test the LuxTrust support under Ubuntu GNU/Linux 12.04 LTS i686[1]. I installed a virtual machine from the ISO, and from that blank slate, I wanted to try how "easy" this is. Well, there you go, I downloaded their "middleware".
The good news: Ubuntu Software center presented it as installable and it installed it without apparently problems after clicking the Install. Good! If this were enough, I'd say "it's supported"[2]. Let's test it. So, I go to CCP-Connect, one of the few banks known to work well with LuxTrust under Linux. The thing needs Java[3], and I as expected, and I don't have it installed. I get redirected, at once to http://www.oracle.com/java. The sheer number of options is intimidating. If I weren't very familiar with Java, I wouldn't have a clue what to select. Now, this might be P&T Luxembourg doing it wrong, but the site you should send end-users to is http://www.java.com/. Never send an end-user to a developer site, it's a horrible mistake.
Anyway, I do what is needed and surprise[4], there is no Oracle Java for Ubuntu. A RPM and a tar.gz. Now, if I weren't who I am, I would be blocked again. So, I download the tar.gz and I'll be honest to you, dropped right to the command line, tar zxvf later to
Now, going back to the banking site, it seems to run. I get to the point where I have to select their product and then a screen saying there is no signing stick. (Obviously, I don't have one.)
For kicks 'n giggles, I tried OpenJDK/JRE with the icedtea plugin. No surprise, but that doesn't work: gray pane instead of the applet, but other java applets works fine. So, Oracle Java mandatory. Heck, even Minecraft runs op OpenJDK for crying out loud!
At least their middleware didn't install some kind of daemon, which I what I would have expected with something called "Middleware".
Funny also: The Oracle Java VM warns you from running applets all the time, even the test applet on the java.com site. Scary. Well, not to me, but to a normal end user.
[1] i686 for a good reason, from what I read getting it to run is significantly harder on amd64.
[2] I knew that it wasn't going to work
[3] Wait, isn't that what dependencies are for... Naaaah, dependencies. Who uses that?
[4] Not really, I've been here before
[5] Probably better use update-alternatives for that one too!
Does anything around here work anymore? I go to the zoo.pl page (uid changed to mine to protect the guilty) to try to change friend/foe/neutral status, and I get:
OK
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, admin@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at slashdot.org Port 80
I have to click in three different places to find the right link to let me do a JE.
I was gonna give a laundry list, but fuck it, it's just pissing in the wind. I figure Dice was able to buy it for, what, the price of one week of coffee at Starbucks?
Unable to help on that front, he asked if he could read his email. Naively, I said, of course you can! So, I set up his (national, very standard) ISP email address. Well, I followed the wizard. Big mistake, I ended up on POP3, which of course is a standard that should have been banned years ago. Damn, I hope you didn't have important emails. I set it up again as IMAP. Works fine, really... Except it doesn't show any email. None... I specifically sent email to him. Shows nothing... I assure you, the settings are correct. I used the same as those, I used on his iPhone. Besides, they do show on his iPhone
No way to make it work. On a related note: the POP3 did not delete his email from server. At least that was good.
Then, I want to show him to install apps (Despite me hating the word). Choice between the Samsung App Store, which most likely works but you want the Google store. So, Google Play. Okay, do you have a Google account? No... Ah, no problem, let's set one up. I follow the wizard, up until it asks for a secondary email for "lost password" situations. I could type in whatever I wanted, but the "Next" button never got enabled, stopping me right in the track to create the account.
Yes, I know, I could just go to a computer, create him a Google account and be done with it. Still, isn't this simply a scandalous bug?
So, I try to help and end up having I to explain that tablet browsers are second-class internet citizens (a site he uses failed to work. How do you explain that to a non tech, eh? Nothing I did worked as expected and I'm supposed to know what I do.
Okay, I might simply have become obsolete and have become unable to troubleshoot modern devices. Perhaps it's a hint I should stay in my basement with my servers and "real" computers. I don't know... It must be me. Everyone loves their Android tablets....
So I haven't written a journal entry for a while (9 years) so I thought I'd update it.
I'm currently looking forward to the 7DRL event in March. I wanted to enter the 2012 one but my programming skills had become rusty. I therefore spent the last year getting back up to full strength in preparation for this year's event. A year of fun, spent on #rgrd on quakenet, programming roguelikes and other experiments in ruby, scheme, c++, SDL, irrlicht, libtcod, gosu...
I haven't managed to actually write anything that you could call "finished" or even really "playable" in the last year, but my skills are as good as they used to be I think. I hope. Sometimes I worry about the ageing brain. I'm often lying on my bed with a pen and paper, getting confused about how to implement something. I know I used to do this in my "prime" too but maybe the problems were harder. I'm 43 now. How long before I can't program any more, or before what I'm capable of programming is too boring to be worthwhile? There are programmers of myth and legend who are still programming in their sixties and seventies, but they were amazing programmers before. Maybe they too have lost their edge and are programming at a reduced skill level.
Pangolins for ever! Through Space and Time!
i just randomly picked parts based on what newegg had available. i reused a hdd and a bluray burner.
it is an AMD 8 core 125w cpu with ATI hd7770 gpu. windows 7 because it is for gaming, the games from gamefly instead of tpb. it will run steam because the free game is a steam code. if i do dvds or blurays it will be of legal content like from the internet archive. i tried using bluray in linux, and it was shoddy coding at best, not giving features of the command line strings the guis were interfacing for. and i like command line only where it is needed. not everywhere because it is too memory intensive learning a skill set and then not use it enough. computers make my life better, or they find the bin. i went overboard on the power supply thinking i might need crossfire, but it's energy efficent, and 80gold certified psu. oh well, it has a single stick of 8gb ram i might buy more if i ever learn virtual machines. it's tco sofar is $800. that includes windows 7, because i don't quite trust the desktop to linux when i just lost my second open source machine and my first linux one. i lost a freebsd running from a 486 once, sigh. i've had various backup devices and schemes, but the one that works best is always have a removable media source that can not be overwritten easily.
with only a few foriegn spams. i wonder if the wow spammer realized i was posting about the spam here on slashdot... seasons greetings as well, having a safe and quiet holiday season so far here.
I'm writing this from Rose Barracks in Vilseck Germany. I'm Stationed here as a Scout in US Army. I'm also married with kid on the way. Those two sentences do a poor job of summarizing the last few years of my life if anybody is still active in this Journal clique I'll let you know the rest.
Miss you guys
-red5
Are you having fun yet?
