Recent Comments

I've taken a standard PC, freeware Audacity, and manually generated both Morse Code and Binary data in a simple .wav file using 20kHz - 22kHz "sound" with some fade in/fade out to clean up 'tics'. When played you cannot hear it (the dog goes nuts though). I then used my iPhone and a sound spectrum analyzer (free app) and monitored the inaudible frequencies.

BINGO...

A partition type virus combined with modem type software (but modified to use inaudible sound) could easily perform communication between PCs.

The ESRI geodatabase format does add a lot of automatic triggering and linking behaviour that gets lost with shapefiles though... I know that the spatialite format was gaining a lot of traction in the opensource GIS world for a portable geodatabase format and ESRI was resisting implementing it as an import/export format as recently as a year ago (I haven't looked into it more recently than that). I am just glad that the ESRI file geodatabase format is now relatively easy to use with ogr, QGIS, and other open source GIS tools.

@WW, Thanks for taking the time to type this thoughtful response... I thought your point about organization of functions in ArcGIS being better than in QGIS is spot on and I hadn't really thought about it before -- this is exactly the kind of insight I was looking for, so thanks. You are right, the ArcGIS Toolbox is a great interface for finding tools and it will be interesting to see how QGIS tackles this as the prebuilt functionality increases... there is also the growing plugin community for ArcGIS which adds great features after the fact as well.

I've always struggled with the subtle differences between the slash-style moderation ratings. I mean, how much difference is there between "Insightful" and "Interesting" anyway - and, since it's the integer score that determines the comments visibility, does it really matter?

TL;DR; Use "Underrated" and "Overrated" - These are the generic "+" and "-" options. Articles will never be tagged with either of these two strings but will increase/decrease its score by one point.

I am currently on disability for a back injury.
Time is something I have plenty of.

My interests range from science, gaming, automotive and computers. However I am not a LINUX user nor am I trained as a professional writer by any stretch of the imagination. I would love to contribute, and I do learn rapidly.

You could look at the one article I submitted on KSP (if you look at the original submission at least) to see where my writing style is weak.

(Don't fret, I certainly would not be butthurt if you say no, I know my single qualification is "I gots me lots O' time on me han's!)

It's only a matter of time before needing to go in the 3rd dimension like they've already started doing with NAND flash. In fact, during the last few years, semiconductor companies have tested out new process nodes with NAND flash before atempting them with complex structures like CPU cores. With rows and rows of identical gates lined up in a perfect grid, this makes sense as it's probably a lot easier to spot defects and implement improvements.

So, if you want a preview of what CPU process nodes will be like in a few years, simply look at what NAND flash is doing today.

Oh, and if you think POSIX is hard to use? You can just go right back to your rubies and pythons, because you obviously don't know C.

I think the people that came up with this didn't know C, and then said POSIX was complicated and hard to use, so they roll their own. Any programmer knows this is a rookie mistake.

This article is like XKCD #927. It will NEVER WORK.

Whatever API/ABI you create right now? You'll have to support it in future operating systems for earlier-written software.

All /they're/ doing is saying "Hey, let's build a unified interface!", it already exists: POSIX.

I don't know if app of the week would work, most are either widely known already or fill a niche that is too specific to have wide interest.

I do like the idea of a book club style feature. Maybe a "featured creator"? Then it could be a developer, artist, author, podcaster, video maker, or anyone else interesting.

ArcGIS does have a proprietary .gdb (geodatabase) format but it really isn't used for data sharing so that doesn't seem to be a huge deal. Shapefiles are an open well documented format and lots of data is shared that way. There are lots of other open ways to share data as well, such as GeoJSON. I really don't feel that proprietary data formats and import/export problems are holding QGIS back. I believe it relies on OGR to do a lot of its data conversions and that can work with just about everything.

If its large amounts of open data you're looking for then head over to OSM.org. They use they're own format that doesn't interact to well with anything else, but it is open.

Cheers,
-WW

Unfortunately, I'm receiving email about this crap every single day. "this stock is ready to blow!!!1111" and the like. I have one email account that is protected by zero spam filtering or equivalent, and the address is posted frequently to public places. Gives me a good idea of what it's like to surf the Internet without a condom on, so to speak.

This penny stock stuff is scum, but it's clearly making someone filthy rich, so it's here to stay.

Interestingly, just spotted this rejoinder from the MIT Technology Review [bit of a paywall here although I read without paying]. I highly recommend reading this article though. Here's a clip.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528921/self-assembly-shows-promise-for-extending-moores-law/

A radical alternative to conventional lithography now looks increasingly viable. Known as directed self-assembly, it involves using solutions of compounds known as block copolymers that assemble themselves into regular structures. Block copolymers are made up of different units (the blocks) that prefer to be separate, like oil and water; left alone, these compounds typically produce swirling, fingerprint-like patterns. But if guided by a "pre-pattern" of chemical guides made with conventional lithography, the block copolymers produce lines and other regular patterns. Crucially, those final patterns can have much smaller details than those of the pre-pattern. A final pattern made in this way can then be used as a template for the chemical processes that etch features into a silicon wafer-the same process that is the end point of conventional lithography.

I used Arcview pretty intensively back in 2000-2001 when my work machine was running Win2000 and my home machine Win98. I remember it being pretty intensive on the hardware, overly complex, and I sensed the company was trying desperately to lean the world towards proprietary data formats a la AutoCAD (how could they resist? AutoCAD's format domination is hard to resist). I also didn't learn it well enough to be able to claim any sort of mastery of it.

Shortly after - I was on SUSE Linux by then, and looking around for counterparts to the apps I'd gotten used to using - I discovered QGIS through something like Freshmeat, I think (which is why I'm still nostalgic for that place). I contacted the lead developer and asked to join as a volunteer document writer guy, and they took me on. Then I got too busy to be of much use, and bailed out. I got a sense the project was extremely well-run and headed for greatness, but was going to bump up against the proprietary data formats and jealously guarded import/export routines that most open source programs face.

Nowadays I'm convinced we desperately need open mapping data. When you have famous peoples' homes disappearing off of Google maps, the writing is on the wall for the limits of corporate-owned data.

Definitely not the first thing. I like the moderation system the way it is and I don't really want non-moderators affecting the display of comments. But closer to the second thing... just a sort of popularity indicator or a way to show your appreciation for what the commenter said. Sometimes it's nice to know your comment is appreciated or agreed with (or the reverse).

Forgot to mention some other things: One of them is I'm going to try to keep up the tradition of getting a new poll up every Monday morning. So there you've got two regular features every week. We could use a regular something for Wednesdays, perhaps: maybe app of the week or something? I'd need contributions for that one, probably.Or we could do an Orwellian "Hour of hate" every Wednesday where we choose some web site/service and flame it to charcoal each Wednesday (this idea is a joke, obviously).

The approve-disapprove thing reminds me of Reddit, where posts and comments can each get voted up or down, and over time the best comments float up to the top of the page, which begins to distort the conversation. Is that what you're thinking of? Or perhaps a system where you can thumbs-up or thumbs-down a post without it affecting anything else, and assign a description (Interesting/Informative) besides?Regarding postjacking, I'm going to generally avoid doing it myself, but interesting posts on other sites are obvious fodder for people to post to the Pipe. Just sayin'.

Agreed. And if I had a "approve" button I would have approved.

I think they're both great programs but they're both flawed, too.

ArcGIS is better organized. The geoprocessing toolbox is well set up, and the search function makes it simple to find what you need quickly even if you don't know where it is. It has more users as well, so when you search for how to do something you're much more likely to find your question already answered. Its the industry standard so pretty much every GIS professional is going to know how to use it. Like I said though, it has its flaws. Its slow. It crashes and freezes way more frequently than any modern program should. This isn't just my install either, everyone I know who uses it feels the same way. Its like an old version of word. Save frequently or risk losing work. The license server bullshit is ridiculous. (I really can't stress enough how much of a pain in the ass that can be. For a program that costs as much as ArcGIS it should be flawless.) It is also absurdly expensive. The base package is expensive, and if you really want to have a fully functioning program you need to have a full license which is really absurdly expensive.

QGIS on the other hand is free, doesn't have that license server overhead, and I feel it is a bit snappier and more responsive than ArcGIS. It also doesn't crash or freeze anywhere near as often. ( I won't say never but I can't think of any time it has crashed on me.) Every new version comes closer and closer to matching ArcGIS in the number of things it can do and its ease of use. 2.2 really took a big leap forward, I think. (I'm still on 2.2, haven't switched to 2.4 yet.) It still isn't organized as well as it could be though. They've got all of the native tools under either raster or vector, which is nice, but they're aren't many native tools. The rest are under processing -> toolbox and then organized by which subprogram they're from (GRASS, SAGA, etc). It would be best if they just put everything under the raster or vector tabs and made which subprogram they're from transparent. That being said, as of 2.2 you no longer have to be able to work with GRASS' absolutely byzantine data model in order to use its tools which is awesome. Its really just how things are organized and documented at this point. If they continue to integrate everything and organize it a bit better they'll really have one hell of a program. I already prefer QGIS over ArcGIS for much of my work.

If you've already got ArcGIS bought and paid for they're is no reason not to run both. QGIS is free, so use it where it works better. If you haven't already paid for ArcGIS, hold off until there is something you're sure you need it to do that you can't do in QGIS. QGIS is really as ready for prime time as ArcGIS at this point and a hell of a lot cheaper to run and setup.

Cheers,
-WW

As a side note, I can login, and I have, but it doesn't seem to recognize that I've logged in on most of the site, which is a pain. I don't know why.

I think that about 5% of the stories on slash or soy are worth paying attention to.

Steal them.

Give 'em full credit - stolen from /. - here's the link. But I would love a combination of heavily filtered slash and soy.

It's not like any of 'em (with almost no exceptions) are original content. And just drop those on the floor.

Probably not a popular idea, but I think it's practical...

Feature Request: I like moderation as it has been implemented on the various *. sites but I think there is room for a general purpose approve/disapprove or like/dislike counter for posts. This should not replace, supplant, or in anyway interact with the existing moderation system but instead it just allows non-moderators to show their support (or lack thereof) for a particular comment. If we had such a system I would have "liked" or "approved" zafiro17 previous comment.

Forgot to mention it: little known fact, but Bryan has been super cool about implementing just about everything I've brought up. That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all, but it seems pretty clear to me that pipecode is destined for greatness and Bryan is totally open to feature requests and ideas. If it makes sense, I think it's a good bet it will happen.

I suggested a Twitter feed would be useful so we could get pipedot articles some publicity on Twitter, and it existed a couple of days later. Bryan mentioned I'm going to "Guinea Pig" Pipecode on the Dictator's Handbook forum. That's not me agreeing to engage in some experiment; that's me deciding pipecode would make the forum at the DH better, and I could use the Twitter integration.

So let's keep the feature requests coming. I think forum software has kind of languished over the past ten years. Web forums like PHPBB and the like kind of ate Usenet's lunch back in the day, and then Facebook ran rough-shod over the web forums. Slashdot was always kind of a refuge, until corporate boneheadedness killed the golden goose. My point is: there's room for innovation - especially now that people are getting sick of/disgusted with/bored with Facebook. This could be the next, big thing - especially if Bryan's vision of some sort of site federation where articles flow among servers becomes a reality. Imagine a system where dictator articles with a tech angle show up automatically on Pipedot, and tech angles that involve autocratic Internet shutdowns etc. showing up automatically over at the Dictator's Handbook. That would be awesome.

This is already awesome :-)
and it keeps on getting better

I was asking for more details about the SN dev frontend skills being lacking... not asking what a frontend is.

What'd be really fun is if you had a chance to find out a bit more about these distros. For the smaller distros, that might mean a short interview with the creator. Some tidbit that isn't available right on distrowatch.

Of course, that is more work. I'd understand if the format remained the same, and the legwork of digging into the distro is left up to the reader. I know we need the content, and this sort of thing most certainly fits in well with the site.

Introducing Gruvbuntu! It's Ubuntu but with a pleasant green theme and multimedia codecs.

wow dude - we really needed those two "innovations" to be packaged as a separate distro!

yeah, AC is totally right.

Keep it up.

I love it.

So much agreement. I recently considered downloading Calibre to manage some audiobooks, but the damned thing is 50-100 MB ! That's as much as full office suites and programming environments.

I just can't imaging how it takes 100 MB (COMPILED/COMPRESSED) of code to manage mostly-text files that are a few hundred KB in size.

I can only guess it's because of packaged libraries and DRM (but this size was BEFORE any Calibre plugins).

In the end I just used Kindle's send-by-mail feature.

Your developers should be mindful of the target systems. If they're not, they're doing it wrong. Your testers should have systems with the target specs. If they don't, they're doing it wrong.

Even if you have all those programs running, most of 'em should be [mostly] swapped out while not being actively used. If they're not, you're running the wrong OS.

Computers are so powerful that I do all my development work on a laptop - and it runs like a dream. Even if I had 100 windows open and they all took 50MB of memory and were all fully active all the time, I'd still have several GIGABYTES to do real work in. I mean - just typing that shit blows my mind, because a decade ago that was hard to imagine, and two decades ago it was unfathomable.

When I started in college, emacs was still jokingly said to stand for Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping. Because 8 meg could easily cause you to swap - and because emacs was so HUGE!

Those days are gone.

The idea is interesting, though I'm not sure how can it fare in the long run. Seeing as I could just click `random distribution` on Distrowatch as you've done. Due to that, I'd suggest you add some information about those random distribution that isn't available quickly. What kind? I am not sure, but something to add value.

What I would suggest to avoid, are *buntu variants that just change the theme or the WM/DE. So maybe focus more on niece distributions that do try to fulfil a some role (Even random should be filtered, just like you'd filter RedHat in case it shows up).

An interesting piece of information would be, whenever the distribution created it's on package manager or is it simply using one from it's forefather and how far did it derive.

Neuro and cognitive science with the ultimate goal of understanding ourselves more fundamentally, and being able to do more effective treatment of mental disorders. Basically, reverse engineering the brain.

I'm not a programmer, so can only venture a guess, but is the idea of having a chromium+node.js system under your fingers the next step in blurring the line between what's a local app and what's a web app? This would seem like a clever step in that direction, although I agree the memory requirements are high. But I'm a console/CLI curmudgeon - a dying breed, I think.

I just bought a Chromebook intending to wipe it and install Linux. I left ChromeOS on for a couple weeks to give it a fair shake and conclude it's cool and useful, but not useful enough for me. Linux will be hitting that hard drive this week, probably. I'm not a web-app fan.

Does this editor require a full-time internet connection, by the way?

but since I've already learned and use vim, I'm not sure the "new" features with atom are sufficient to get me to try it out -- at least not yet... inertia is a powerful thing methinks...

I had hoped that this bacon meme would remain confined to SoylentNews.

subject says it all -- actually analyzing heat transfer and linking that to the design of a pot seems kind of obvious in retrospect.

realizing that it hasn't already been done -- genius...

having a lab to do the tests -- sweet...

This kind of reasoning has been flourishing during the last years, and it would be very fine if one were only using one program. But it does not scale. I have perhaps 30 programs running at the same time: many terminals, many PDF viewers, several text editors, 1 IDE, 1 web browser, 1 mail agent, 1 music player and many more. Just imagine when each of these 30 pieces of software starts requiring 10 or 20 times the memory and power that they should need.

And I do not want to pay n x 20$ to add memory modules, supposing my motherboard supports it, and I do not want to buy a new computer (or MB+proc+new kind of RAM), just to achieve roughly the same functionnalities I could achieve before (sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, generally little more than a fashionable change of appearance or engine, not an astounding improvement). All right, it works fine on the developper's machine which he upgraded, but because of his laziness / lack of care, it will be millions of users that will have to buy more RAM, millions of $ spent for this.

One a side note, I do agree that having a good computers is a lot of comfort for development work, but there is a huge drawback: then developpers totally lose contact with reality, the reality of computers users will (try to) run this program on. If they had average computers, they would be aware, care a bit more about what they do. I do not mean they should ultra-optimise everything; just avoiding bloat would be a start. You cannot produce good quality software if you have a bleeding edge setup, you will not see or feel many of the problems; and a 1 hours test on a small computer at release time is not enough to experience them. The laziness and convenience of the developper is quite opposed to the convenience of the end user.

I had to use recently a program by a major chipmaker that was hardly doing more than just displaying folding lists with checkboxes. The thing took several hundred Mo when lauched and was as slow as can be imagined (click on a checkbox -> wait 3 seconds before the box is checked)! And, to add insult to injury, with such "good" programming, it started leaking memory like hell. I was not a memory leak, it was a memory flood: after 2 hours, it would eat an extra Go of RAM. Oh, on a powerful computer, it could be run. The programmer likely had such a computer and did not even notice these major troubles.

All of these social media engines are already obsolete because they don't interact with each other. I'm questioning if this can continue and when social media, now that people can see its benefits, is set to change to a more standardised model. The day when I can share public keys with the people I (really) want to see my activities, and all others are excluded using engines such as Pump.io, is the only time when social media is controlled by the user as opposed to the advertiser.

I know it seems a long way away now, however things have changed quickly in IT before.

not so worried, although i've never appreciated any noticeable delay in launching an editor for quick edits (laptop). im just intrigued of the laxing of what one subjectively argue should be good programming practices, just due to vast availability of hardware. I guess this has always happened to some extent, but even today people write small code that follows the unix's 'do one thing and do it well', in console and gui space. I am just getting old haha

Oh, I had almost forgot, i've been dabbling with Textadept - http://foicica.com/textadept/ which is similar in concept (weighing in at 27M on windows) multiplatform gtk2 & ncurses enabled, and uses lua... but certainly an upgrade from notepad++, and i was never a fan of sublime. I'll have to give Atom a fair shot, although i have the sneaking suspicion it was developed for a different audience than I.

I figure that almost all of that is the chromium base. nodejs is in there, too - but it can't be all that big.

So I guess I'd chalk it up to "lazy" - but I figure that once you cover the stuff you want to show, you probably don't want to go trying to tear out all the stuff you don't need.

As always, if you're worried about memory on your development machine, you're doing something wrong - gigs are practically free. I don't think I'd try to deploy Atom to an embedded system :-)

as a note, no harsh tone was intended, although as i read now, i may have come across as such...mostly inquisitive

I don't understand how these projects balloon to such sizes - 169M extracted...its just a fancy text editor. and while only a poor comparison, (due to no windowed gui) VIM is 2.1M, and asfaik does way more, learning-curves aside. Or how just opening it with no files, it spawns 6 processes consuming ~35-40M each. I know its alpha, but i doubt you'll see it shrink considerable in size, if not grow larger. I've been seeing more and more of this lately, ginormous programs that offer little in proportion.

its just a text editor. that kind of size says to me that something went wrong in the design process. Have I just missed out too much on modern development realities? or is this just another convoluted/lazy coding project? (no offense to any developers, its not personal - groupthink has its ways....)

Pyramid schemes, pump 'n dump, perpetual motion schemes, and greater fool theory (as in, I'll sell to the greater fools coming in after me) abound.There's one called Global Digital Solutions that was briefly part of the NH race for US Senate, when it was discovered that one of the GOP candidates had accepted a stock grant to be on the "advisory board" of a company that had no products and no sales. Their web site is full of visionary pronouncements and press releases, though, as well as a couple amusing filings with the SEC.

Yeah, fair enough. And that means engaging in the luxury of pissing off people who have submitted stuff (not a show-stopper, but it's harder when you have fewer submitters), as well as a good sense of "what's this site going to be about?" I think we're off to a great start, by the way - hoping to make this into something awesome.

What's the deal with them calling it "freeware"? That's usually code for "not open source".

Hmm, okay, apparently it's under the MPL, but I'm not sure how to take this remark from the FAQ...

"Can I see your mozconfig/build environment/configuration files?
A few people have asked about getting a detailed run-down of my development environment, configuration, .mozconfig file, path details, release engineering tools, etc.; clearly not always with good intentions.

The answer is: No, this is my workstation and you do not need that info.

That being said, Pale Moon is released fully as Open Source, with downloadable source code released under the Mozilla Public License v2.0, and with a Github repository available at https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon
In addition, I've created basic build instructions on the forum that will allow you to build the browser from source."

...who hasn't figured out what the little loop on the back of his tie is for. :)

More seriously, I went through the links and video and I STILL can't tell what the inside of the darned pot looks like! I want to be sure it's smooth and NOT saddled with those deep channels on the interior, because man would that be a pain to clean.

And speaking of cleaning, I see they've done nothing about the rivets, which are the one spot that gets permanently spotty/stained no matter how one scrubs. I would love to see some kind of redesign of that, maybe an integrally cast handle.

Still, this certainly seems like a cute idea that may get adopted by other companies. I wonder if it changes cooking style, requiring more careful stirring now that the sides are piping hot.

Being able to root your tablet or smart watch is often a good thing. You gain more control over the device that the manufacturer greedily stole from you whilst trying to cage you in their walled garden. Of course, these devices almost always act as clients and do not have server-like services "listening" on a network port.

A router or light bulb, however, do listen to a port on the network. Being able to remotely root these types of devices are definitively a bad thing and an obvious security vulnerability that needs to be patched.

It takes a bit of editorial control from the get-go to ensure your site looks good.

And that's where I disagree. I think it takes a LOT of editorial control - rejecting a LOT of articles.

That sounds great and everything (I didn't know for example that Audacity used wxwidgets) until you got to "advanced features like... HTML display".

Huh? HTML display is required of even the most rudimentary applications these days. (Though of course can often be done by calling a default rendering engine.)

Maybe I misunderstand you? I like the general idea that tying one's self to a DE is a bad idea for cross-compatibility. I've tried running KDE and GNOME apps in Windows and it's not pretty (or particularly functional).

Time flies. Just went through the history of articles submitted through the pipe that user Rocks had already submitted a very similar story back in mid-June. Sorry, bud! Six weeks later, I'd forgotten all about it. http://pipedot.org/story/230

Better twice than never? Do I get a prize? (We could call it, "The Timothy").

I have to agree that "just accept everything and let the users filter it out" isn't a great strategy - it means until users join, decide they like it, make an account, learn how to filter and then actually choose their own settings, they're bombarded with a shitstream of randomness. It takes a bit of editorial control from the get-go to ensure your site looks good. Kind of like having a hot wife who doesn't let you wear one of your stupid t-shirts out of the house, just to keep you looking good.

If you come here from a twitter or Google Plus post (I'm posting both place, by the way, to try to get the word out), you should see a (1) well-designed site with (2) an interesting/useful layout and (3) moderation system, and (4) a choice of interesting articles that have led to (5) quality conversation with (6) smart people. Good coding gets you #1, #2, and #3, good editing gets you #4 and hopefully #5, and hopefully that attracts the attention of #6, who help strengthen #5.

If we all provide the good conversation and interesting stream of articles, this place will grow on its own.