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Domain: megarad.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to megarad.com.
Comments · 20
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What a collosal waste of time....
C'mon, people. Why waste time with this shit? It's too late. The Segway is going to revolutionize the way we build cities and it's already here! Did you hear me? The way we build cities!
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Re:decaying credibility metric?I visit Slashdot, but I'm skeptical as to whether the true spirit of the original site will persist.
The ideas and expressions that once comprised geek culture have changed so much that the original Slashdot themes of individualist strength and moral integrity in the face of monopolistic powers will probably be cast aside in favor of a more contemporary populist sensibility.
Hey, Eric, here are some of my favourite geek sites straight from my bookmarks. I thought you might appreciate them since you are into bookmarking good sites:
Doggeek.com
Catgeek. E-mail this page. Please support our sponsor. Site created
www.doggeek.com/othergeeksites.shtml - 48k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pagesGeoffrey's Geek Guide
This Week's Top 5 Geek Sites; Past Masters Of Geek; What Geeks Do For Romance;
www.ausmall.com.au/geek/ - 7k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pagesGeoffrey's Geek Guide - Geek Sites Of The Week 14th-20th August
Geoffrey's Geek Guide - Geek Sites of the Week
14th-20th August 1996. 14th-20th August 1996.
www.ausmall.com.au/geek/geek10.htm - 17k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.ausmall.com.au ]TechTV | Give Us Geek Sites or Give Us Death
You are here: Home > TV Shows > The Screen Savers > Interact > Give Us
Geek Sites or Give Us Death,
www.techtv.com/screensavers/interact/ story/0,24330,3319391,00.html - 33k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pagesSitereview.org: Interesting news & geek sites: page 1
news & geek sites. Sitereview, Create,
sitereview.org/Geeknews.php3 - 23k - Cached - Similar pagesBote's Sign Pages: Links to road geek sites
Links to other sites by road geeks. Last
links to other road sites, especially concerning Florida.
pages.prodigy.net/bote/links.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pagesSAGEwire | What online geek sites do you watch?
read Slashdot. I'm talking about other, possibly lesser known, sites.
sagewire.sage.org/Ask/02/11/15/2217224.shtml - 30k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pagesZorKa.Com - Geek Sites
Links. Sexiest Geek Alive (118) Description: Are you a sexy geek?
www.zorka.com/index.php/links/view/11 - 11k - Cached - Similar pagesMegarad Technologies - TOP GEEK SITES - 1.8
news and reviews with an Irish slant
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My Friend Wrote RenderMonkey...
RenderMonkey is the work of my buddy Chris and an ATI colleague of his named Drew. They're a brilliant pair of dudes who deserve all the glory they get.
Chris also works with me and a few other gifted fools on a fine web project called Megarad, available here. He's not been around much lately; now I know why.
Good work, you guys!
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Re:this early postFlawed. Human perceptions are flawed. There was no way Dr. Nolverto Salchica could have seen the body of Constantine Atkins up and moving. Atkins' consciousness was destroyed when I bested him in a duel long ago. I had used his body to defeat the cyborg Krantz, and when it failed, I left it alone in a hospital bed. Atkins' body could not function without a conscious mind-that was impossible.
"Joel-" Salchica paused until my eyes contacted his. "I don't mean to alarm you with this news-but I'm trying to help you. It would probably be best for you to remain here and let me run a few tests."
"Tests?" I replied. As far as Salchica knew, I was merely the human named Joel. Despite his vaunted expertise, he could not detect the true nature of my being. Could any human truly understand my plight?
"The ATM-being was in your mind for some time, Joel. He could have done some permanent damage to your brain." Salchica handed me a teardrop shaped plastic dome that bristled with electricity. "I need you to put this on your head so I can begin to determine if your brain is still healthy." Perhaps the doctor's perceptions were not as limited as I had believed. This elaborate machine would no doubt track my host geek's brainwaves, revealing my existence somewhere inside his brain. I hesitated...
"Joel, I can assure you that this will not harm your brain. It won't even hurt." I stood still staring at him. "Joel-if that artificial life form left any traces in your brain, it may still be controlling you. And if I can't get him out, we may have to contact the Project Faustus in order to-"
"No! Project Faustus must not be contacted!" I bellowed, piqued by the insolence of Dr. Salchica. The human had made a most foolish assertation.
Interactivity had broken down completely now. Respawning this process impossible was for me. Dr. Salchica continued to eye me warily, backing away from me slowly.
"Just-stay where you are. I've seen what you can do. Tell me something, what is 5,000 / (7 * 0)?"
Salchica's mathematical question astounded me, as my CONSCIOUSNESS-BUFFER was flooded with the message:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....
I manually killed this operation after a few seconds, but Salchica was asking another question.
"How would you feel about going to a secluded room, and asking questions through a computer terminal? I'll bet we could find some..."
Salchica's sentence ended in a nonverbal grunt as he was crushed by a red blur. Examining the body's optical data parsed one frame at a time revealed...a flaw.
The body's perceptions were erroneous-fooled by some weakness in humanity. There was no way I could have seen what I saw. Nor could I have heard the following:
"ATM lifeform! You stand on the threshold of a Technological Singularity . Threats to your AI Mind have been eliminated by the Majestic Hivemind heretofore known as the Adam of Robo Sapiens, ConstantineAtkins, or Red. Join me in a Joint Stewardship of Earth."
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I JUST HACK PROOFED MY SITE
Is haxor and ddos proof. try for yourself!
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CALLING ALL TROLLS
I did that (page widening) over at MegaRad.com and got my ass banned. The great thing about MegaRad is that there is no lameness filter, so everything goes. So this is a call to all trolls. WIDEN MEGARAD.COM!
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Slash? PHPNuke? The End of Sanity?
A few months ago, I undertook a single-man campaign to get Slash up and running so I could help realize a goal I and a few friends had together -- a goal that was conceived long before "blog" was a household term. Before "E/N" was a common site format, even.
So I broke down, bought O'Reilly's MySQL/mSQL book, got the Slash code, installed all the various bits and pieces. I was struck almost immediately by the profound lack of decent, in-depth information. Not knowing PERL, and not being a SQL wizard, there were many places where I had to put everything aside and go do something else for a few hours.
As my girlfriend was gone for the week, I was able to pretty much devote every waking minute to getting this thing up and running.
I don't remember how long it took me to get everything in place. Two full days, at least -- and by "full," I mean morning-to-morning shifts of hacking, tweaking, install, uninstalling, praying, urinating on various altars, etc.
In any case, eventually everything was up and running. I should note here that the fastest machine I personally own is a 233mHz with a bit more than 128 MB of RAM; I was trying to run this thing off a p166 with 72 MB of RAM. It seemed sensible at the time, since Linux, when properly tuned, can work wonders. Plus, the site was meant to be fairly low-traffic, at least at first.
Well, ha-ha.
This thing was dog-slow. With all the PERL munging and SQL queries running on the same box, even just me using it from a different machine was roughly as enjoyable as beating myself in my own damn face with a small but dense brick.
Enter PHPNuke, circa version 5.1. The reason you hear people report over and over "it's a ten-minute install" is because, well, it is. Add an hour or so for exploration, bug-checking, tweaking, maybe a day if you want to really cook up a nice theme, and that's pretty much it. Additionally, it's extremely fast on my old hardware.
Granted: PHPNUke doesn't offer Slash's myriad of configuration and control options -- but then, for me, finding documentation for those options was itself an adventure. On the other hand, PHPNuke's documentation and support resources are many and varied, and almost all in French or some other god-awful thing for an American to see at 3:15 AM when something is suddenly mysteriously breaking. However, there are various IRC channels (which are a bit less populated than #slash, to be honest) wherein one may find helpful folks who run a roughly 1 in 10 chance of speaking a language you do. The installed userbase is large enough that any bug you may encounter is almost certain to be reported elsewhere, possibly with a fix already in the works.
The upshot: PHPNuke saved the day! Slash is cool, but, in my opinion, only for those of you who have a serious userbase and plenty of hardware budget.
The site I and my friends eventually got running -- Megarad.com -- is now running PHPNuke 5.4. Apart from a few hiccoughs here and there with upgrades (not to mention the deplorable operating practices and customer service standard of our hoster), things have been very good indeed. -
Re:Format of additional material
I would certainly buy the boxed set if they had a version of the movie without the CGI in Galadriel's ring speech. Cate Blanchett certainly didn't need it and I weep for what the scene could have been...
Hear, hear. I detested that part. It was everything I had hoped the movie wouldn't be: schlocky, unbelievable, and ugly. It screams Disney-style pandering. The bit in the beginning where Frodo mistrusts Gandalf's intentions for a bit was just as bad, although shorter and less cartoony.
In the book, these moments were described in a manner that forced the reader to visualize his own scene. I realize Jackson et.al. probably had a tough time transferring this to the screen -- and that I am no director -- but wouldn't it have been simpler, purer, and more in line with the noble grace of the book itself to have the actor actually *act* "foreboding and terrible," or "titanic and angered," or whatever? Even a narrowed brow and a stilted voice would have sufficed for me. As it was, there are now two legitimately cringe-worthy moments in this piece of film, which I otherwise loved.
I wrote more on this here. -
Re:Remember Acid? Ice?
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Remember Acid? Ice?
That whole art scene back in the day was well beyond my skills; I was more into learning the details of the phone system, etc. But to me, art was like magic, and it pretty much still is.
Anyway, I was lucky enough a few years ago to meet one of the old-schoolers from that scene. He has some printouts of ASCII and ANSI art that are just amazing.
Today, we've got a little website together. It's fun, and keeps me reminded quite often of the good things about the old days. -
That's an awesome site!
Looks like a cross between Slashdot and Kuro5hin, only with style!
Nice going, Megarad! -
Very Good Myth-bashing Article
on Anthrax over here. It's well-written, concise, and debunks a lot of the current Anthrax hype in a very sensible way.
Not terribly on-topic, but definitely related. -
NMRC Proposes "Information Anarchy"
As a result of this move by Microsoft to silence the independent security teams who bring vulnerabilities to light, the NMRC have released a call to arm for "Information Anarchy."
Article on it here. -
Re:Finally.....
These are interesting articles, and I agree with some of this guy's ideas, but he's resting on his laurels if he thinks he can make such widely-sweeping generalizations without actually citing real studies. Sure, he keeps mentioning some study, but where is it? We're not even sure who tested what; all we're really offered is the fact that this guy is really, really sure that the mouse is faster than the keyboard.
He's wrong on that point. In fact -- his illustrious career notwithstanding -- it looks an awful lot like he's got his head just a little bit up his ass.
Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia!
"High-level cognitive function?" "Amnesia?" Those are very weighty terms to be throwing around without serious evidential backup.
For what it's worth, here's how one can use accelerator keys to speed up editing HTML inside Notepad on Windows and intermittently testing it in Netscape:
{make desired changes to HTML inside Notepad}
Alt+F, S
Alt+Tab
F5
{looks good?}
Alt+Tab
{repeat}
I'll leave the tedious mouse-based process as an exercise to whoever can't tell -- just by thinking about it -- how laborious it's going to be. (Claims that my mind is blanking out and I'm thus unable to accurately judge time will be glazed over by "amnesia! Real amnesia!")
If you know how to use proper accelerator keys -- keys such as Page Up, Ctrl+Page Up, Shift+{any cursor key} -- then the mouse loses another presumed advantage: large-field navigatory speed. There's no reason whatsoever to diddle with the scrollbar or thumb in Notepad if I can get to the top of the file in a single two-key keypress.
Now, there are plenty of ways in which a mouse is faster than the keyboard, but I'm not convinced accelerator keys is one of them; I won't be convinced until I'm offered sophisticated cognition studies that prove it. Having someone tell me that I'm experiencing amnesia and am simply "forgetting" how long it takes to do a Ctrl+V to paste some text simply makes me realize how hard it must have been for scientists to listen to "prophets" nod that the Earth was, of course, flat.
Here's one of his ideas that I wholeheartedly agree with:
Guideline: All command-keys should be user-specifiable. The developer can and should supply an initial set, but the user should be able to overrule those choices.
Hear, hear!
Interface design is crucial. This discussion has prompted me to post an article about this over on Megarad. Hopefully, it'll generate some more good debate, and we'll all get a little smarter about it. -
5 miles of cable
There would be a huge amount of pride on owning a 300 based machine network. Right now, I am impressed with my personal 9 machines. Fun with beo. Anyway, just an offshoot, here is a nifty little network auralizer that some of you might be interested in...
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*Sweet* Looking TRON Contume!
Check out this Tron constume! Now that is a cool thing to wear every day, not just Halloween
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*Sweet* Looking TRON Contume!
Check out this Tron constume! Now that is a cool thing to wear every day, not just Halloween
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I've Seen the New Face of Windows
(In the interest of all-out disclosure, this comment is an edited form of one I posted here yesterday.)
I've seen the new face of Windows, and it's AOL by Microsoft. Avoid it like the plague it's rapidly becoming part of.
In the interest of marketability, I've tried to make a history of being able to support all reasonably modern versions of Windows. Windows 3.1, I know. Windows 9x, I'm very very good at. Nt 3.5x, yeah. NT 4, I'm the kung-fu master. 2000, I dig and am one good long study of AD away from being better than anyone else in my company, including the guys in charge of the AD.
Windows ME? XP? No thanks. My Microsoft OS support track stops here. I don't want to support it. I don't want to learn it. Anyone running it, I don't want to be involved with. It's ugly, it's stupid, and I can't really believe it's meant to be directional for anyone but people who would use AOL otherwise. It certainly has no place in a serious computing environment, in my opinion.
The rate at which Microsoft continues to pump out new operating systems shows they really are doing it all for the nookie. Compare and contrast Windows 95 and Windows 98. What was in 98 that shouldn't have been a free upgrade to 95, based on what the majority of computer-savvy people seem to consider reasonable software practice?
They're doing the same thing with their MCSE exams; dump out five times as many as are necessary, knowing somewhere, some buzzword-boggled boss will pay for a class or two just to be on the safe side, or to be compliant with whatever new decision has come down the pike from the VIPs on high.
Don't get me wrong: I'm sure XP has some cool features. It almost has to, by definition -- not even Microsoft is bold enough to dump out a "new" OS without adding something innovative or worthwhile. The install technology, in particular, is pretty cool -- but, just like the majority of the other "improvements" in XP, it doesn't really solve any problems for which there are not already excellent solutions.
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Datacenter No Different From Server?I'm posting this mostly to correct any misconceptions I might have about the way service packs work, so please feel free to correct me wherever I need it.
It's my understanding, given to me by a top Microsoft consultant (this guy was a fricking wizard), that service packs only replace files that actually exist on the target computer; that is to say, if you don't use, for instance, some Novell DLLs, they don't get placed onto your system.
Now, while Compaq or whoever are handing you a custom solution, they're not handing you custom code, are they? They don't rewrite lsass.exe, for instance, right? So whatever combination of Microsoft code they give you should be detected and updated properly by the logic in the service pack. Or so it seems to me at first blush.
Like I said, please correct me anywhere I've screwed up.
-vasudeva,
parenting http://users.downcity.net/~vasudeva/,
helping birth http://www.megarad.com -
Re:Picturebooks are already out for intel
My n505vx's drive died a week ago. I bought a 9.5mm IBM travelstar 12 gig to replace it with before i realized the dead drive was 8mm. If you take out the drive rails, it fits in there fine and seems to be snug enough to keep it in place without the rails.
here's some pics of the guts for those interested.
--sean