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Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 4 (view)

C++ Developers? Posted: 11/22/2009 9:11:30 PM
Each language has it's place. In general, a lot of stuff is moving towards C#/.NET/Java and a few others. This is especially the case for web development. Each mobile platform has it's language that it prefers to use. Operating systems are still written in C or C++, and no, that's not likely to change. I work on embedded systems (vehicle controls for industrial equipment), and we are still using C for the majority of our development, though there are a few pockets of C++ on certain platforms, and there is a push to start using model-based development. If you're interested in that kind of work, C++ (and actually straight C) would be good things to know. If you're more interested in web development, I would suggest learning ASP.NET (and either C# or VB.NET, or both), PHP, Javascript and maybe Java servlets. Desktop applications are probably going to use either C++, C#, Java, or sometimes you see Python. However, I don't do that work daily, so I'm not exactly sure what the normal expectations are, I just know what I've seen places using.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 13 (view)

Difference between Dual-Core and Dual-Processor? Posted: 11/8/2009 7:30:06 PM
Do they both use the same RAM? On both dual core and dual processor, RAM is shared. Do they both use the same cache? In general, dual processor systems will have dedicated cache for each chip. Some motherboards do have cache that is external to the CPU (especially older ones - pentium era), which may be shared, not sure about that level, since I don't think it's too common anymore. Dual core systems, on the other hand, may or may not share cache. Level 1 cache is pretty much always dedicated to each core. Level 2 cache I think is usually dedicated per core as well. Level 3 cache varies. Most newer chips tend to share it between cores - many of the Core 2 CPUs have 3MB or 6MB shared L3 cache. This lets the CPU decide which core gets how much of it. Do the use different pipelines? A pipeline is pretty much a core component of a CPU core, so no, there is a pipeline per core. Actually, if I'm remembering correctly, most modern CPU cores have more than 1 pipeline. Most of this is from memory, so someone else chime in if I'm off anywhere, but I'm pretty sure it's right. As far as designing for multithreaded applications - unless it's a processor-intensive application such as video encoding or something like MATLAB or Mathmatica, multithreading has limited value. Having the UI run seperate from the core logic is good for responsiveness, but as long as you can keep the blocking sections short enough, there's little harm in blocking one thread while you update enough. Now blocking the UI while you wait for the network isn't such a good idea. AFAIK, .NET and Java both run the UI in a seperate thread by default, and do provide several components designed to make it easy to create a thread to complete some long-running task without blocking the UI. You just need to be careful how you pass data back to the UI. (Invoke and BeginInvoke are great functions)

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 7 (view)

Do I need to replace my power strips every few years??? Posted: 11/6/2009 11:03:03 PM
I doubt very much that power strips wear out, that's probably mostly a CYA thing that companies do. Though, if there are capaciters inside (last strip I took apart did) they can wear out over time and start to leak. My opinion is that a good surge protector will no longer work if it's not capable of protecting equipment - when it's dead, it no longer provides power. Sometime similar to a surge strip that does go bad is an uninteruptable power supply. These have batteries in them so they can provide power for a period of time in the case of a brown-out or black-out. Since batteries are chemical, they do eventually decay and wear out. As far as not needing high quality cables to get the full quality of a digital signal, that's mostly accurate. The majority of people have a 3 or 6 foot cable connecting the blue-ray player and the TV. Over this distance the cable matters very little. However, when you run cable for 30 or 50 feet, there is enough wire to affect the signal. Depending on the quality of the metal, the cable has a different capacitance, and so has varying effects on high-speed signals. The end result is that a device has a hard time telling a 0 from a 1 in the signal, so then the quality does degrade. It's possible to calculate the maximum length based on signal frequency, metal type (impendance), and a couple other things, but I forgot how to shortly after I learned in college.

tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 56 (view)

Eagle Scout/Soldier Suspended from High School Posted: 10/18/2009 2:12:35 PM
Through a good portion of high school I had a leatherman that was a scissors instead of a pliers that I kept on my keyring. Some of my teachers knew, but no one really cared that much. I had it because every so often it was useful to have around. It actually had more than a knife on it - screwdriver, scissors, can opener, tweezers - but it did have a small (about 1.5") knife blade in it. I lost it several years ago, and since then have had various other knifes and similar things, but I still tend to carry a pocketknife on me because I find it useful. (I know better than to try and take it as a carry-on on a plane though) The long and the short of it is... This kids knife served NO LEGITIMATE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF HIS SCHOOL ATTENDANCE. Here's an example - in theatre when rigging lights, or hanging a backdrop, or a few other things, you sometimes need short pieces of cord to tie something off. Since cord doesn't usually come in convenient 8" lengths, often it is needed to cut a piece off the spool. A pocketknife works great for this, and if you already have one, you don't need to go hunt down the scissors or utility knife whenever you need a piece. Knives like the one the scout had are especially nice, since they are designed to be opened one-handed, so you can easily get them open if you are already holding on to whatever needs to be cut or trimmed.

tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 13 (view)

Man to be executed after jury consulted bible to decide fate Posted: 10/18/2009 1:47:04 PM
Separation of Church and State is a good idea that has had varying degrees of success over time. If the jurors allowed the Bible to cause them to look past evidence and sentence the guy to death simply because there is suspicion that he killed someone, then that's incorrect. However, to say that they should have completely ignored any scripture, I'm not sure. What we believe is right and wrong is influenced by our spiritual beliefs - like it or not, the country is still mostly Christian, and so does treat the Bible as a good source of teachings. Also, when giving testimony, you raise your right hand, and place your left hand on a Bible (well, at least last time I checked that was the case). So we're saying that people's reverence for the Bible is good for keeping them honest, but it's not a valid place to derive guidance on the appropriate punishment for a crime? Though, on the other hand, I think the Bible says that stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultry, so maybe not everything it says is a good idea. Would probably help cut down on the number of divorces because someone what cheating though.

tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 7 (view)

Microsoft working on 128-bit version of Windows 8 Posted: 10/11/2009 6:53:45 PM
I agree, sounds like they're trying to extend IA-64 with IA-128 as they did to IA-32 with AMD64. One slight correction though - IA-32 does exist, it's the same as x86. IA-32: 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium-II, Pentium-III, Pentium-4, Pentium-M, some Pentium-D, K6, K7 (Athlon), the 32-bit mode on any x64. x64/AMD64/EM64T: K8 (Athlon 64), Core, Core 2, later Pentium-E, later Pentium-4, later Xeon. AMD's extensions on the IA-32 architecture, larger address space, more registers, larger registers. The original name was AMD64, there actually is a difference between EM64T and AMD64 in terms of implementation and speed, but the two run the exact same programs. IA-64: Itanium (sp?) architecture. Pretty much only used for high-end servers. I think the ability to run IA-32 programs was done purely in software, but I'm not certain on that. It is still alive, though not seen in the consumer markets. Also, I doubt they would try to run 32, 64, and 128 bit apps all on the hardware. 64bit Windows actually removes the ability to run 16-bit applications, only supports 32bit and 64bit, while 32bit windows can run 16bit applications.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 23 (view)

Automatic partition of hard drive from MicroSoft / Apple Posted: 9/26/2009 1:46:16 PM
Multiple hard drives are useful in a desktop, both for keeping data safe and for performance reasons. However, in a laptop they are of limited value. There is some value in seperate partitions in a laptop in order to be able reinstall the operating system without messing with the data. However, since most people will never reinstall their OS, this has little value. There is also some complication in this since the identifiers used for the permisisons on the file system are unique to the computer - so reinstalling the operating system will usually cause them the change. This happens less on Linux (and I would suspect OSX too, but I don't know for certain) since the identifiers are just numbers instead of the GUIDs used in Windows. In general, I only use multiple partitions if the computer has multiple hard drives. If windows was capable of nicely setting up multiple partitions at install, then I maybe would use it, but in general I prefer not to since I don't know how much space I'll need for applications vs. data.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 16 (view)

Were the police's action's justified in this case? Posted: 8/8/2009 8:49:00 PM
Unfortunately, the camera was bouncing around too much while the guys ran forward for a better view to see the actual takedown very well. I looks like the only part of the women the officer actually had hold of is her arm though. She didn't so much slam the women into the ground as she didn't keep the women from hitting the ground too hard. While it's unfortunate that the women did hit her head, it's hard to tell if the officer was out of line or not. From what I can see, I suspect that what she did was correct for the situation. On another note, what's with all of the hate for police around here? There are two threads alone on the first page of the forum right now, and there have been plenty of other threads in the past as well.

tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 6 (view)

crappy gateway.... Posted: 7/18/2009 8:35:18 AM
Replacing the wireless card isn't likely to solve any problems - Limited connection in windows has little to do with the signal strength, it's caused when the computer can't get an IP address. You are connecting to the access point, but windows can't find a way to connect to the internet. This can be caused by a weak signal, but I would suspect that is not the case. An invalid password for WEP/WPA or MAC filter settings on the router would both cause issues similar to this. don's post above may help, otherwise it's probably something with the settings at the other end of the connection.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 128 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/12/2009 7:42:43 PM
1 in 4 women are raped. There's a center here that is trying to raise awareness of sexual assault and violence towards women - their current ads say 1 in every 3 women right now. Unfortunately, I can't find anything to back that up, just the video ad. However, I did find this: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims It says 1 in every 6, which while lower is still pretty alarming. Looks like their data is from the late 90's/early 2000's, so a little out of date. However, several other places make references to rate increasing, so 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 may not be too unreasonable by now. Interesting thing - one of the ads that I first heard for the riverview center was actually targeted towards men - asking them to teach younger generations how to be men without degrading or abusing women. Another one says that to fight violence we must make it a man's issue, not just a women's issue. Women make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes. Well, I'm not going to quibble over the exact amount, but women typically do make less than men for the same job. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Careers/10/22/equal.pay/index.html I found several places that show this, this is just the first one. The numbers vary, and have been getting better, but looks like women currently make around 80% of men on average. Interesting part, I also found this: http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/28/commentary/everyday/sahadi_paytable/index.htm Apparently the pay descrepancies may not be completely accurate. I also saw something that said that women may be more likely to take less pay in order to have a more flexible job - possibly giving them a better work/home balance. Silly question, does you census bureau statistic take into account those who actually can or can't afford to pay child support? And what's the level of poverty in both groups? And your stats are just as bad as some of the one's you're disparaging - where's the source? For some real interesting reading, look up the case Dubay v. Wells - looks like this issue has actually hit the courts before, and the guy lost. It's being taken up again in California, guess we'll see what happens.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 7 (view)

anybody have a job? Posted: 7/12/2009 7:04:37 PM
The factory here has been slowing down about as much as they can, and has had to lay off some of the production line workers. I think it's been a few hundred total, but I don't remember. Thankfully, the engineering departments haven't been affected too badly. They've mostly just quit hiring new people, so no positions are getting filled if someone leaves. We have enough work to do just trying to meet the next set of emissions standards, so I'm not too worried yet.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 114 (view)

What operating system are you using? Posted: 7/12/2009 6:47:55 PM
Besides, from a programmer's stand point, which would you rather target? A large audience? or a small one? Well, if you use something like Java or Qt, then you don't have to choose. By and large, I think Windows is easier if you don't want to mess with things much (OSX too, but then I have to spend extra just to get hardware that doesn't quite meet my requirements). Right now most of my computers have Windows 7 on them because I didn't want to mess with Linux, and it works well. Also, I've been using part of the Live services lately, and the software that works with them is pretty much Windows-specific. However, sometimes I do like to play with my computer and dink around on things, so then I tend to install Linux. I have been thinking about installing it on one since I have a programming project I want to work on, and I do think that some of the tools (at least for this project) are better on Linux than Windows - just depends what you're doing.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 8 (view)

What Men Know That Women Don't Posted: 7/12/2009 12:00:11 PM
The foolish games we're expected to play in the name of love! How sad. Blame it on genetics: Love is a trick our genes play on us to get us to reproduce. - Rhade (I can't find the exact quote, but it's pretty close) Or there's always this one: How do they mate? How do they date? I mean, come on, love is just a bunch of exaggerations and lies, all dolled up in pseudo-poetic language, uttered preferably while intoxicated, and all for the singular, universal purpose of... uh, you know. - Seamus Harper talking about a planet of people that never lie

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 122 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/12/2009 11:52:04 AM
I see by your profile that you are a young man that has no children. Yep, that pretty much describes me - young, clueless and idealistic. (The last part gets me in minor trouble at work every so often, but whatever.) Most of the people that I know who had kids outside of marriage ended up getting together, or were together and split for reasons other than the child(ren). Even them make up a small minority - the majority of the people I know are in families where the parents are still married. While my thoughts probably will be different 10 years from now, I very much believe that I will always have certain things - like my sense of responsibility. It's one thing that was always told to us by our scoutmaster: The 3 R's - Respect, Resources, and Responsibility. I know being a father isn't easy, and I can't really understand it. A person I know told me a few months ago that part of the reason he moved back to Dubuque was because his girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and he wanted to be there to support the child. He had grown up without his father, and didn't want any kids he had to go through the same thing.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 17 (view)

Mothers: would you let your 15 year-old daughter stay home alone overnight? Posted: 7/12/2009 7:30:14 AM
My parents are the same way. Overnight if both of my younger siblings were there they were maybe ok with (neighbors keep a pretty good eye on the place). Anything beyond that, either my sister or I would stay with them. Well, if I was the one keeping an eye on them, usually they came and stayed at my place (I live across town). But yes, I think that it's reasonable for a parent not to want to leave a high-school age kid (boy or girl) at home by themselves for very long. No telling what kind of mischief they can get up to in that short period of time.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 114 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/12/2009 7:11:34 AM
the terminology should be changed for the most recent movement. I suspect that's about the only thing everyone here will agree on. Kudos to the men who have the courage to post in favour of men taking responsibility for another human who they helped bring into this world. You might not be in the majority on this site, but you represent the type of man I've come to know and respect in my life. <sarcasm> Yeah, for all the good it seems to do. Maybe we should give up our ways of equality and fairness. Seems like the other guys are the ones having all the fun... Nope, I don't think I want to spend christmas eve being visited by ghosts </sarcasm> Who do you think is going to want to have a relationship or sex with you now? Well, apparently it's worked in the past for them. (Though, what's that rule? Take the number and divide it by 3?) I mean, when women do the same thing, they have a bunch of options open to them: Didn't want it to happen? Take the morning after pill. Didn't want it to happen, but waited too long? Have an abortion. You want those options? Then go ahead and carry the baby for 9 months. For some people, those aren't considered to be options anyways, so they're 'stuck' in the same situation as you.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 109 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/11/2009 8:37:43 PM
What if I don't bloody want to "man up"? Isn't the whole point of this little cluster**** of a discussion, that men don't get the choice? Women do, but we don't. You both made the same choice - to have sex with someone. While there may be women out there who are trying to get pregnant and pull child support from you (and I have no doubt they exist, although very few), that's the risk you run by making that choice. Above all else, sex exists for the purpose of procreation. If you choose to have sex, then you are choosing to have responsibility for anything that may happen as a result of that. See, that's the problem. When women have a problem with social fairness, they are told to fight for their rights - when men do, we are told to "man up." That's wrong. Yes, that thought taken alone is wrong. But the other half is that you seem to want to have the right to be irresponsible. How is that right? We have rights as people, but along with those rights we have responsibilities. You can't just take one and not expect to give the other - at least not if you want to be a functional member of society. If you want to fight for your right to screw women and not care about the results, go ahead, but I suspect more than a few people might try to compare that to legalizing rape.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 17 (view)

Upside Down Flag Cntroversy Posted: 7/11/2009 11:47:24 AM
Well, if you can convince the courts that burning leaves is a form of protest (only want to allow evergreens to be planted maybe?), then you probably could get them to strike down that law too. I'm not sure what you would protest where leaf burning makes sense, but if you want to try... Burning the flag is legal as a form of public protest. Granted, it's pretty easy to come up with something to protest (especially in this day and age), so pretty much it's legal to burn a flag.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 11 (view)

Query concerning POF meets Posted: 7/11/2009 11:38:35 AM
I have an easier time with songs that have a set dance for them - everyone's doing the same thing, so it's harder to screw up and make a fool of yourself. Now, I don't know that ballroom dancing is really my thing, I prefer stuff that falls more along the lines of a line dance, but whatever. I suspect that it's not that there aren't people who are willing to, but no one wants to be the first one to do so. It's kind of like the guy holding a crowd at bay with a shotgun - no he can't get all of them, but he will get the first couple of people. No one wants to be the first one to get ridiculed, but if there's a few other people who have already taken that, then they're fine joining in. I'd probably come along, except you seem to be on the other side of the pond, so that may be challenging.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 20 (view)

Funny vasectomy story... Posted: 7/11/2009 11:27:21 AM
Well, I doubt it ever would, but let's assume for arguements sake that it did. Probably one of two things: 1) Scared half to death - something went wrong. But I'm also the type of person who if I screwed up, takes responsiblity for it. If the kid's mine (and maybe even if he isn't depending on the circumstances) I'm not going to run away and hide. Though I might have issues with marrying her after she pulls this kind of stunt. 2) Likely to confront her about it right away, not wait and play with her emotions like that. I'll admit that I enjoy playing mind games sometimes, but I do it to mess with people's heads, not their emotions. One is just annoying or funny, the other is cruel. Nevermind. You're hopeless. Yeah, you're probably right, but I don't know that it's for the reason you think. I have plenty of friends (male and female) and can get along with almost anyone. Oh well, at least I'm enjoying life. While we're playing with hypotheticals, what would you do? And, let's assume that she was only fooling around with you and so was willing to have the DNA test, and it came back positive, then what?

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 12 (view)

Upside Down Flag Cntroversy Posted: 7/11/2009 10:56:09 AM
Ok, so it's not illegal, I haven't actually read that document before, so I just knew what other people told me. I had heard that you aren't supposed to fly the flag at night without a light, and typically flying the flag upside down is reserved for when you're in distress. While it may not have been illegal for the guy to fly the flag upside down, doing it over not receiving a liquor license is a bit petty and poor taste I think. The police probably shouldn't have removed the flag because of, doesn't look like they were in the right there either, but to sue them over it? That's just pointless. What's he going to sue for, a public apology? It's not like he lost any money over it. Now, why he was denied a liquor license may provide him something to sue over, but I don't know enough about what happened there to have a clue either way.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 15 (view)

Funny vasectomy story... Posted: 7/11/2009 10:43:42 AM
He didn't do anything wrong. Ok, if you define wrong as illegal, then you're right. But most people tend to add some things like basic decency in there, and he was way over the line on that. So he had a vasectomy, good for him, he's being responsible since he wants to play around. No, there was little reason to tell her up front about it. But to string her along, saying he wants her to get an abortion and getting a letter from his lawyer threating legal action - that's the behavior of someone who the term a-hole doesn't even completely describe. Oh, and technically you can still get someone pregnant with a vasectomy. I've heard a story about a couple who he had a vasectomy, she had her tubes tied, and they still ended up having another child. You have no sense of logic, reason, or justice. Um, based on the other posts I've seen from you, you're the one with no logic, reason or justice. The girl in this story isn't exactly a decent person either, she tried to spring this on him, which is a bit manipulative. She does sound like the kind of woman men are complaining about in one of the other topics here. Based on the people I know though, I strongly suspect she is in the minority for women. Both people handled this poorly, though not hearing why she chose him to claim as the father makes it difficult to know exactly what to think about her. My first guess would be that out of the guys she was messing around with, he made the most, but that's purely speculative. Two wrongs make a right? Nope, but three lefts do.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 12 (view)

Isn't it rude to ignore, ladies? Posted: 7/10/2009 6:15:05 PM
"You're fuc kin hot, we should hook up" YOu think that deserves a reply as well? What about the ''nice tits'' or the ''my nine inch****would love to meet you." Yeah, if we (meaning the guys) write messages like that, I don't blame you for not replying. But when a person spends 5-10 minutes writing the message and actually mentions things from your profile in it, it gets a little frustrating (and eventually depressing) to not have any idea why he keeps get Read, Read, Read Deleted on all of his sent mail. And that inbox starts to get really lonely too. I don't know, on one hand it would be nice to have some idea why we didn't meet the cut-off. On the other I can understand why a girl that gets 20 messages a day wouldn't want to take the time to reply to each one. That button that says "You're nice, but not for me" would be a nice little addition. At least then we know that you didn't just get distracted and forgot to write back.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 56 (view)

Are there any programmers here? Posted: 7/10/2009 4:23:50 PM
School teaches you two things: 1) How to think your way through a problem, though I suspect a lot of people who are programmers already knew this part. 2) How to read technical documentation. This is really important in the embedded world, everything you need to know about how something works is in the datasheet. Yeah, you may have learned C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, Python, SQL, VB, Perl, LISP, Ruby, Ada, VHDL, Verilog, Javascript, etc... (I ran out) in school, but it was all for the purpose of teaching you #1 above. If you know how to THINK like a programmer, you can write any program you want to, in any language you want. The hardest part is being able to understand basic constructs (loops, decisions, operators) and how to think logically through a problem. Once you have that part down, actually making the program is easy.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 2 (view)

Ha ha, WTF Emachines Posted: 7/10/2009 2:40:18 PM
You sure they were cutting corners? Several years ago not all motherboards required a 24-pin connector. If the computer doesn't need the extra pins, why bother to pay for them? Now, if they had the 20 -> 24-pin adapter in there too, then I would agree, what were they up to. Without knowing more though, I would suspect that the motherboard didn't need a 24-pin power connection, so they decided not to use a power supply that had one. Another possibility is that they had a lot of those left, so they were just trying to use them up to avoid having to dump a bunch of inventory. This is why I build my own desktops - then I know exactly what components are in there and if any special connections or adapters were needed.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 94 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/10/2009 1:54:28 PM
How about sluts like you close their legs and take their responsibility as the gate keepers of their own vaginas? You have the final say who sticks their pecker into your twat. Therefore it is ultimately YOUR responsibility the resulting pregnancy. Isn't it? Yes, it probably is. But maybe she didn't have an issue with getting pregnant, and thought that you, the almightly MAN (not sure I'd actually call you that, but you seem to think you are), would do the responsible thing if that happened and help to provide for the child. If you aren't willing to take appropriate measures to make sure you don't get a woman pregnant, or be responsible if you do, then DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. Frankly, I get the impression that some of you would deserve a woman who would try to 'trap' you with a child, as you think they do. You, love, are apparently a few rungs below... I think you mean a few rungs above. This thread is starting to go a bit crazy. Yes, a woman is responsible if she gets pregnant, but yes, so is the man who was involved. Things have definitely started to swing past level and in the favor of women in some places. Unfortunately it's going to be hard to level it back out, but it can be done.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 26 (view)

Finally a Country with some balls Posted: 7/9/2009 6:27:29 PM
Here's some barstool economics for you, see if it makes sense. A group of 10 guys go out every day after work for some drinks. They have different jobs, and some make more than the others. At the end of the evening, they've spent $100 on drinks. The tab gets split up based on how much each guy makes. The one who makes the most pays $40, the next one pays $20, the next two each pay $10, the next 4 $5, and the last 2 don't pay anything. After a while of going to the same place each day after work, the bar owner decides since they're such good customers, he's going to give them a discount. So now their drinks only cost $80. So now they pay $30, $16, $9, $4, and still $0. The guys that now pay $4 start to complain that they didn't get as much of a discount as the guy who pays $30. So, getting tired of this, he decides to quit drinking with them. Now, when they go out, they only spend $72, but when they add up what each one usually pays, they only have $50 - $22 short. Apparently the rich guy was still paying for more than his share, even after getting the biggest discount. Besides the concept of people paying more or less than their share, our tax system is so convoluted that the only people that understand it are maybe the CPA's. (I suspect there may be a conspiracy going one between CPA's and the IRS so they can maintain job security.) A flat tax does make sense in that everyone does pay the same share. The one thing I'm not sure about is in order to keep the same amount of money available, the people that pay minimal taxes ($4), will now be paying more ($8 - double), and the people who don't pay, which are often people who can barely make ends meet as it is, will suddenly be paying a large chunk of what they already don't have.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 74 (view)

Young woman hates feminists... Posted: 7/9/2009 4:16:28 PM
What if the man expressed an absolute lack of desire to have children before the intimate act? Do his desires mean nothing? Well, since pretty much the main reason the intimate act exists is to produce children, why is he involved in it? A woman can't get pregnant by herself (well, there was one case...), though I suppose rape could be considered by herself since the man isn't a willing participant. Anyways, likely as not he was a willing participant, so YES, he should take responsibility for any consequences that occur as a part of that. Other people have said this, and I agree. Women should be considered EQUAL to men. By all means, let them be firefighters, but only if they can pass the same physical and such tests as men. Either they need to be held to the same high standard, or the standards need to be lowered for all (though I hope that doesn't happen in some cases). Unfortunately, things have started to get to the point where the pendulum has swung too far. This always seems to happen when the law tries to make up for an inequality of the past, they go a little too overboard and those people who were a part of the status quo start to suffer as a result.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 72 (view)

What operating system are you using? Posted: 6/30/2009 2:50:04 PM
Even if the OS is 64-bit, that doesn't magically give all your programs more memory. A lot of programs are still 32-bit only (games typically fall into that category), and so still only have the ability to address 3GB of RAM. In order to access the higher RAM, you need to actually be running 64-bit programs. This might (should) work: install 64bit virtual pc, and create a few virtual machines, use 2GB or so each for memory. If you run all of them at once, it should be able to assign each one memory past the 3GB boundary, and show up as using a lot more of your RAM. Also, easy way to check for 32-bit processes is in task manager - they have a *32 after the process name on an x64 system.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 4 (view)

Profile Help Please Posted: 6/27/2009 11:22:43 PM
Well, that might explain why I wasn't getting any messages in the first place. I guess I picked that since I thought is was a better place to start than just dating someone right away. Those two pictures were ones I took because I didn't have anything very recent at the time. I never seem to take good pictures for the camera - most of the rest I wasn't aware of the camera or wasn't paying any attention to it. I tried to make other changes based on what you said, hopefully it helps.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 17 (view)

Looking for me Geek.. here is why!! Posted: 6/27/2009 6:32:28 PM
Here I am, but unfortunately I don't think either of you are anywhere near where I live. Figures, the two ladies on the site looking for geeks are 1000+ miles away. If you suddenly see the homes for sale/rent section of the classifieds get smaller, I would suggest taking a very long vacation.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 1 (view)

Profile Help Please Posted: 6/27/2009 6:29:23 PM
I don't know if it's my profile, my messages or just me, so I figure I may as well try to elimnate one possibility. Can people please look and my profile and tell me what they think? I promise to be a big boy and not be too heartbroken when you tell me it's horrible.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 43 (view)

Are there any programmers here? Posted: 1/21/2009 4:17:58 PM
There is no language that actually runs on every platform. C# doesn't have an interpreter for the PS3 or Wii - but I'd like to see you compile and run something written for those on a Windows PC too. Once you leave the console world, platform portability becomes a serious lacking in many languages - even the standardized stuff like C/C++ have to have different code to support GUIs on different environments. The only cross-platform GUI-capable stuff I know of is Java and several scripting languages - Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk, etc... C# fills a need - which is an easy, powerful language for Windows. It's great for writing ASP.NET web applications as well, which could be considered cross-platform since the only client requirement is a browser. Or would you rather be writing ISAPI filters for all of your web-based stuff yet? Yes, Mono is noble and probably over-used as an example. While it is getting better, it still isn't quite as good as the real .NET runtime. If I'm going to do something is C#, I pretty much assume that it's Windows-only. However, I'll still use the language because it is a good language. Sometimes you don't care as much about other platforms because they already have a good solution but there is no 'good' solution on Windows, or the app you're working on is targeted towards a specific group (say an internal app at work) that only uses a single platform anyways. And yes, C# does work on embedded systems - Windows CE (pocket PC, smartphones, Zune, etc...) are all capable of running .NET applications on them. Maybe not the embedded systems you were thinking of, but it is an embedded environment that can be targeted by .NET. Though, for a hard real-time embedded system, I wouldn't touch any garbage collected language.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 22 (view)

Windows 7 Posted: 1/11/2009 7:37:34 AM
I have a 4.5 year old laptop - 1.6GHz Pentium-M, 1GB DDR RAM, 32MB Radeon 9000 - that I installed Windows 7 Beta on. Other than some initial issues with graphics because it was trying to use an XP driver, and apparently the XP video drivers are stable in the beta yet, I haven't really had any trouble with it. Things are a little slow, especially if it has to hit the hard drive, but it is well within the field of being usable. Idle state was around 440-480MB RAM used if I remember right (the machine isn't on right now). Granted, it was also possible to run Vista on this computer too. As far as people saying it isn't any different - have you looked at the desktop? Yes, some behaviors come from KDE, some come from OSX, etc... but they have put things together in a way that I've not seen before. I like the dock-type functionality that they use, though it is bit confusing at first, it does help to keep your taskbar from becoming cluttered like what currently happens on XP and Vista. Also, it's cool that besides just showing the IE windows, it actually can identify which tabs are in each window and show that in the list for IE - I don't know if any other browser will be able to do this or not, but I hope so. You say VMWare thinks it's Vista - well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't know about 7, so what do you expect? As for stuff being the same, so what, did you expect to boot it up and see the OSX installer? You guys are complaining that Microsoft is still doing some stuff the same as how they did it in XP and Vista - well, would you rather that you have to buy new versions of all of the other software you use? MS is stuck with a certain architecture because that's how everything is written. The could redesign stuff from the ground up, but that would probably break 90% of the applications out there today. Apple got away with it 6 years ago, although it was a pain when some apps and hardware wouldn't work anymore, but they maybe had a couple percent of the market then. Microsoft has such a huge market share, if they tried to really fix everything the right way, they would get more complaints than they do about Vista - and 90% of it would be you guys moaning about how you can't play your games anymore.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 2 (view)

connecting laptop to pc HELP. Posted: 12/31/2008 6:38:45 AM
If you want the desktop with icons, taskbar, start menu, etc... to appear on the TV, then you need to make the TV the primary monitor. I'm not really sure why you're trying to do this though - most TV's are lower resolution than computer monitors, unless you have a 1080p TV, and even then, TV's are designed for video, not for text. Converting VGA to HDMI isn't really that simple, DVI and HDMI are compatible, but VGA requires an actual signal conversion, not just a pin change, so I won't bother with it. Most likely the border is caused by you not outputting the resolution that your TV would like to see - you probably have it set to 1024x768 or 800x600. The TV really wants to see 1280x720 (for a 720p) or 1920x1080 (for a 1080p). If you can set the resolution to one of those, it should help some. However, unless you're actually trying to watch movies on the TV, or use it as a presentation device (the smaller conference rooms at work have LCD tv's instead of projectors), I wouldn't bother too much. TV's were not designed to be used as a primary computer monitor, they are fine for media centers, but lots of text, such as what a web browser usually has, is what computer monitors are designed for - each one has its purpose.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 12 (view)

HDTVs Posted: 12/30/2008 5:46:54 PM
Progressive is better than interlaced. Interlaced video only draws every other line each time - if you step frame-by-frame through interlaced video, this is easy to notice. Progressive video will redraw the entire screen every time. For the most part, I think you will only see progressive/interlaced really listed for sources - over the air HD broadcasts don't have enough bandwidth to do 1080p, the highest it can do is 1080i. Response time is a weird thing - Plasma is definitely better - 180Hz or so. The best LCDs have 120Hz, which is better than cheaper ones, but I'm not really sure why. As far as noticing ghosting and such, I had an LCD monitor that is around 7 years old that I could play games on without much for video problems, so unless you're really picky, I'm not sure that it will matter which kind of TV you have.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 3 (view)

Linux is driving me nuts! Posted: 12/18/2008 9:40:52 PM
Well, this is kind of crazy, but according to the information I can find, I'm not surprised it's not working. The Linux EEE PC using Xandros as the base distro (as far as I can tell at least, I don't have one to play with). According to the CNR website, Xandros is not a supported distro (yet I'm guessing), and they even have asus listed seperately, but it doesn't appear to be supported either. Since Ubuntu and Xandros are both Debian based, those packages could in theory work, but that's not something that you probably want to try and make happen. Looks like Asus screwed up and started offering a service before they actually had the support for it in their products.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 13 (view)

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL ? Posted: 12/9/2008 5:06:10 PM
It's very likely that it's the USB dongle - USB for network interfaces just never did make sense to me. I would suspect that the gt76ubus.sys file is the actual driver for your dongle. I did a little bit of hunting and couldn't really find out anything useful, and finding a driver for that thing online is near impossible. However, it is claimed to be compatible with Windows Vista, so maybe you would have some luck if you tried talking to the tech support people for orange? If they give you too much trouble about it's not caused by their device and want to you do a bunch of stuff like system restore and reinstalling windows, then just try asking for updated drivers, hopefully they'll have some. Worst case, you should just be where you started with a very flaky computer.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 10 (view)

IP ADDRESS QUESTION Posted: 12/8/2008 4:49:45 PM
Even using Hotmail or Yahoo is not a guarantee that no one can track it back to a IP address. I have traced email sent from a Yahoo account to a specific computer - at the time Yahoo was putting the initial HTTP form submit as one of the hops in the header, but that was several years ago, so maybe they've stopped (I doubt it). Also, while power cycling can cause you to get a new IP, unless you're off for several days, you are very likely to get the same IP again, it all depends on how the ISP has things configured. Typically a person needs either to have an email that actually records the hops - most stand alone systems do that, but messaging inside POF does not - least not that the other user should be able to see, or have a direct connection (usually caused by file transfers, I don't know about the POF chat system, but doubt that it does) to the other computer to get the IP address of it. There are a couple other things that can sometimes show them (IRC), but they are typically only used for certain things. However, even if someone has an IP, that shouldn't tell them much - they can pretty much definitely find the ISP, but location is iffy - my IP usually has me appearing to be 60 miles south of where I really am - the nearest city that's larger. Beyond this, they really shouldn't be able to get anywhere else, since your ISP better be doing a good job of protecting any other information. There are ways of hijacking information you send when they have an IP, but I'm not sure how well they work, or what else is needed to make them work.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 12 (view)

Blue Screen..... Go Away!!! Posted: 11/11/2008 7:06:36 PM
I don't know much about the details, but certain version of iTunes did cause Vista to crash when they initially came out, so that is a possibility, though it seems like it would have crashed immediately after you installed it if that was the case. In general, Vista crashes are usually related to driver issues. Were you doing anything else when the ads occurred, like trying to connect something to the computer? If that's the case, then I'd start with the drivers for that device, beyond that, spyware/malware is the most likely culprit, but defender should be crying about something if that was the case.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 2 (view)

Terminal Server Printing for Vista Posted: 11/10/2008 8:09:04 PM
When you connect remote desktop to another computer, one of the options under local resources is to forward printer connections. I don't know that you can set any of those printers to be default or not, but it should be possible to print to it at least. I'm assuming that the printer is connected to the local computer via USB or Parrallel port, so that's why you can't just set up the network printers on the remote computer. Other option (bad one I think) would be to share the local printer over the network and then connect to it as a network printer, but I wouldn't suggest doing that.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 4 (view)

Compiz Fusion Is It Worth It? Your Favourite DE Is? Posted: 11/1/2008 11:51:43 AM
Desktop Environments have little to do with document writing or video editing. What apps you use control that. Now, if most of your apps are intended for a specific DE, then you may want to use that DE with them. For example, if all of your programs are GTK-based, then you may be better off with GNOME or another GTK-based DE. If your apps are a QT-based, then KDE may be a good choice. While it is possible to mix QT, GTK, and other apps together, sometimes it means that things don't work together quite the way they're supposed to. One the other hand, if your doing a lot of high-performance work (like video editing usually is) then a minimal manager like fluxbox or e17 may be more useful. Or, you may be better off on another OS altogether, such as OSX. It all depends on what you want out of the computer, and what your needs are. As far as compiz goes, it's ok, and a few effects are actually helpful, but I think that for the most part it is just eye-candy. If you can turn them on without any trouble and like them, use them, otherwise if you don't want it, don't use it.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 7 (view)

web-based email questions Posted: 10/27/2008 4:52:58 PM
now I have MailWasher Pro witch is a good one too. I checked it out and it doesn't seem to work with web-based programs. Only stand-alones like Outlook, Outlook Express etc. Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, there probably aren't any programs out there that will clean your web-based email for you unless you can download it to the computer first. When reading email in a browser, it's hard to identify what on the page is email and what is ads on the page. As far as I know, there aren't any filtering programs that can work directly with a web-based client. However, if you set up Outlook or Outlook Express to read your online mail (most web-based accounts allow this), then you can apply a filter like Spam Assassin or MailWasher Pro within that program.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 7 (view)

Need help connecting 3 computers to same modem and router Posted: 10/18/2008 9:05:51 PM
Yes, that's correct. You need a CAT5 cable, and it goes from one of the LAN ports on the router to the Ethernet port on your computer. It's not possible to actually damage anything, worst case if you screw up should be that your second desktop doesn't get online, but the chances of messing up all the computers are pretty slim. That's assuming that you don't unplug anything else. 4 more empty ports on the router? How is desktop 1 plugged in then? Most consumers routers that I know of should have 5 ports total - one for the modem and 4 for computers. It sounds like you maybe have stuff hooked up a little differently than I thought. Plugging the new computer into the router should still work fine, but I'm just curious on how else you have things connected.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 2 (view)

Need help connecting 3 computers to same modem and router Posted: 10/18/2008 5:49:24 PM
If you can avoid using the USB port of the modem, do so. If I understand correctly, it sounds like the laptop uses a wireless connection, which is why you have the router. I'm going to guess that desktop 1 also is plugged into the router. If that's the case, you should still have another empty LAN port on the router that you can use for desktop 2. What kind of router do you have? Most that I know of have a WAN connection that should be used to connect to the modem, and then usually 4 LAN ports that computers, printers, etc... can connect to. If your doesn't, then you may be best off getting a router than does have multiple LAN connections and replacing your existing router with that. The router connects to the modem, and then both desktops connect to the router, and the laptop either gets plugged into the router or uses a wireless connection.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 50 (view)

Apple products worth their high price? Posted: 10/13/2008 7:27:36 PM
Apple does make some great hardware, and OS X is definitely a very good system, aside from some shortcomings in the server market. However, despite all of that, there are still times when Windows is a better system than OS X, and if you're going to be running Windows anyways, spending the extra money on the hardware probably isn't worth it. Probably around 3/4 of the software I use at work is Windows only (part of that is because it's internal stuff, but some of the other stuff is Windows-only too). We have Windows computers there, and while it maybe would be nice to have Macs instead, it's just not worth it since I would still have to spend 90% of my time under Windows anyways.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 5 (view)

suggestion: Windows Vista Gadget Posted: 10/12/2008 4:55:49 PM
Whether or not the gadget can actually show emails, it still needs to ask the site if there are any - once you get past that hurdle of showing any information, then what you show is simple. The reason I suspected that it would reduce traffic (which could be a good thing too) is that some people may only want to log in when they have email, so if they know that from their desktop, why should they bother logging in at all? It's a toss-up. It would be useful to some people, but it would take time to implement, and it likely wouldn't be used by all that many people on here, so the time to implement it may not be worth it. One the other hand, once it was implemented for vista gadgets, it wouldn't be a huge step to also implement a OSX dashboard applet, and a system tray app for XP, etc...

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 3 (view)

suggestion: Windows Vista Gadget Posted: 10/11/2008 12:21:25 PM
Gadgets aren't too complex I don't think, mostly just a javascript applet or something similar. I've never actually tried to make one though, so I'm not certain about that. However, you need a good way to find out from the site if there is mail or not - while parsing web pages is supposedly possible, it's not a very good way to try and do things. Best way would be if there is a web service interface that you could submit username and password to and get number of messages back in return. That would mean that you wouldn't have to log into the site though, which means you wouldn't see the ads that keep showing up, so there's not a huge incentive for the admin to want to create something like that. Plus, it's an additional interface to the system that would need to be secured. It wouldn't be too hard to do I'm pretty sure, but to do it very well would require support from Admin, so I'm not sure that it's likely to happen any time in the near future.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 30 (view)

Apple products worth their high price? Posted: 9/14/2008 1:55:32 PM
Not to split hairs, but AAC is both an MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standard. It was originally introduced as part of MPEG-2 (Part 7) as an improvement on MP3, and then updated for MPEG-4 (Part 3). The version used in most modern players - iPods, Zune, others... is the MPEG-4 spec. I can't find any mention of AC4 or AAC Pro other than a tool that used to bypass CAPTCHA for account creations.

Tridigee

Joined: 3/2/2008

Msg: 11 (view)

website audio player Posted: 9/8/2008 4:12:53 AM
Here's a website that will tell you the connection string for pretty much any data source - www.connectionstrings.com. Simpliest way to have the file be playable is to just put the link on the page - then you can download it and play it directly from there. As far as embedding a player in the page, you'll want to look at see how sites that stream media do it - most sites use an embedded flash player now, all you probably need to do is embed windows media player or quicktime in the page.

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