Latest postings for The Lounge

Microsoft and CP have been kind.

Brady Kelly — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:00:00 GMT

The Azure competition is now open to anyone, in any country in the world.

Anyone in any country that has Azure, that is.

Surprise surprise

Mycroft Holmes — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:45:00 GMT

I recently posted a rant[^]about hiring a car from an airport and the premium that is charged when you bend their nice new car. Well I just got a $1500 refund from Europcar, We often, alright I often, bitch about the lousy service/deals we get so I thought I'd try and add a little balance.

And just to prove I'm still a cynic, I did send an email with an itinerary for driving from Vienna to Amsterdam with the inquiry about the refund

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH

I have never said...

Dalek Dave — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:06:00 GMT

I do not have cancer

I stood in tears tonight, all the tests proved negative.

My wife is not understanding

------------------------------------

I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave

Home Insurance Question for Aussies [modified]

Christian Graus — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:47:00 GMT

My house is insured for $500k, my contents for $315k. The bill is $2400. Does that seem reasonable to you ? My house is 27 square. I DID just spend $100k on renovations throughout, but, does that seem a little high to replace the house ? I just called Real Insurance, they won't quote because we live on 11 acres, but the bill I have seems too high to me.

AAMI says they won't insure as we have sheep.

Allianz says:

Unfortunately we are unable to offer you insurance :
unless you have a back to base alarm and key operated deadlocks on all external doors, and key operated window locks or window security grills on all windows & sliding doors up to 3 metres from ground level fitted to your property.

Real Insurance are the ones who will not quote unless I have less than 10 acres.

This is ridiculous. I am scared to call RACT to ammend my policy in case they refuse to insure me also.

Christian Graus

Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.

modified on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 7:08 PM

Interview Tomorrow

John Simmons / outlaw programmer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:53:00 GMT

At General Dynamics.

The job is supposed to be converted to civil service in August. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing....

.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001

Buzz Anyone?

Rama Krishna Vavilala — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Saw this one http://www.google.com/buzz[^], I missed the Buzz on this one.

Has anyone seen the Buzz link appear in their Gmail home page yet? It seems to be facebook, twitter, wave combined.

Click here to get a Google Wave Invite.

Chuck Norris on the can.

LunaticFringe — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:19:00 GMT

NY Times - Chuck Norris and Henry V in Port-a-Johns. With Armored Penguins.[^]

Two that I have often seen blended in graffiti form are unit pride and the American soldier’s abiding love for Chuck Norris.

Invariably, if a soldier from one unit has left a message or insignia-themed image on latrine walls, a soldier from some other unit will have altered it. I have noticed more than once, for example, the phrase “If you ain’t cav, you ain’t [VULGARITY]…” appended with, “So if you are cav, you are [VULGARITY]…” When this blends with the ubiquitous Chuck Norris facts (e.g., Chuck Norris killed Zarqawi), the following effect appears:

Chuck Norris was in 1-9 CAV!!!!!
~~2-69 Armor~~
~~Bravo 3/7~~
E/52 Inf HOOAH

Esprit de corps, bathroom style.

L u n a t i c F r i n g e

Windows Azure Contest prize..

Rocky Moore — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:10:00 GMT

Okay, so is this first place prize just Chris's computer he received a while back that he does not use? Come on now, it is regifting, right?

Rocky <><
Recent Blog Post: Visual Studio 2010 RC Install Error Fix

Try Windows Azure and you could win a laptop or win 7 (worldwide this time)!

Jeff Hadfield — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:43:00 GMT

After our US-only test with Microsoft in December, we've convinced them to raise the stakes for the prize AND open it to anyone, worldwide. Use our sample app to try Windows Azure and you could win an HP TouchSmart laptop or a copy of Win 7 ultimate (see the info page[^] terms and conditions for full info). You have to enter in February, so the earlier, the better!

Enter today and tell a friend![^]

jeff

Why Windows Security Sucks Today

Richard Andrew x64 — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:55:00 GMT

I copied a file from another computer onto my Windows 7 machine.

Now I can't delete it no matter what I do. It shows the UAC prompt, but when I enter the password, it just says "Try again."

Also, it won't allow me to take ownership of the file!

Does anyone know how I can take ownership of the file so I can delete it?

VS2010 RC seems to be good so far

Rama Krishna Vavilala — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:55:00 GMT

I had a glitch in the installation but after that I installed it on another machine where it was completely successful. The performance seems to have improved: it starts up almost as fast as VS 2008, build times for a large project where comparable and the C++ intellisense seems good.

Click here to get a Google Wave Invite.

Nividia call for papers on Parallel Computing

TheArchitectmc∞ — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:31:00 GMT

The entries and research will be used in a new book they are publishing on parallel computing:

Nividia's call for papers[^]

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
-- Albert Einstein

"It didn't matter to us whether people believed in us. We believed in ourselves. We had the courage to follow our own path."
~~Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang

Anybody familiar with MQ?

Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:09:00 GMT

What is the advantage of using MQ? We have a web application that needs to save data into an external sql server database. If it is up to me, I will write a simple web service and the web application will call this web service to do the job. But I was told that I must use MQ, the people who insisted on MQ have been working on this project for more than a year with no real progress (still in requiremetns gathering stage). I promised my manager to get the web service done in two weeks, may be that alone makes someone look extremely bad, therefore I must be stopped?

My .NET Business Application Framework
My Younger Son & His "PET"

The Ultimate Event

thrakazog — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:06:00 GMT

Microsoft is doing The Ultimate Event[^] for Visual Studio 2010. Has anyone been to one of these? Is this what they are passing off as a launch event now days?

Quantum Computers My Latest Brainstorm

TheArchitectmc∞ — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:45:00 GMT

I have recently read the Princeton definition in their book on Mathematics, I describes that all that is needed is the correct quantum field to be produced to create a quantum computer. Shortly after my mind was racing and became full of thoughts. My background is in photonics and I have always disregarded quantum computing because I believed optical based computers would out perform them, well they do, but for certain things like calculating a Fast Fourer Transform quantum computers are really fast. So my mind came up with a new novel idea of creating a quantum computer device not much different then regular computer chips. Here is the design and it's an optical system that relies on interference:

The base sub-straight is composed of a matrix of white light micro lasers the laser array is build like a city of pyramids that allow each step of teh pyramid to create a distinct beam of laser light, this like in the array can be activated and varied in intensity or digitally.

next the light from the array is passed through a thin convex optic to create positive and negative interference between the beams of light, since all the lasers are made from the same sub-straight the will in facf interfere unlike normal lasers which will not interfere because they come from a material which is not directly quantumly entangled with each other. Nice thing about this stage of the device is that different optic components can be used to create the interference pattern, this becomes important in the next two steps.

next an array of prism like pezio-electric devices are created which refract a portion of the light. The pezio crystal array can be designed so that many vectors can be refracted producing multicolor interference, which is actually a map to the quantum state of the lasers that emitted the light, don't ask me to explain how I now this just trust me. So you could have prisms that expand on the quadrants of each bit of the matrix allowing for even further computational freedom.

Next a highly sensitive CCD like a 12 mega pixel camera array is created in the same way the lasers are created in a pyramid step matrix, this is where the quantum field will collapse and we measure the results of a frame of the computation.

Last an x,y oscillator is merged between the pezio array and the lasers, this allows for scanning the quantum field. The quantum field is really nothing more then an active hologram with a little refractive magic to disassemble the quantum field.

Vola' you have a powerful quantum computer chip which is ready to have data fed into it. Don't ask me how to feed it the correct coordinates for doing an FFT or any other computation, that would take much research in number theory which is beyond the scope of this abstract.

Anyone know of a forum where I could talk to researchers about this? I have not found one on quantum computing, some related...

[Cricket] So much for India's #1 test ranking

Nishant Sivakumar — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:16:00 GMT

Got beaten by an innings at home on day-4! Enough said.

Regards,
Nish

Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link

It's squeaky bum time...

1.21 Gigawatts — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:06:00 GMT

Looks like my first offshore trip is penned in for week after next!

I'm only here at work until Monday, so now I'm taking a couple of on-line courses regarding safety/permits etc, tomorrow I've got an all day course at the oil company regarding working in live cabinets, Thursday do some swatting up for the FAT on Friday, and then a visit to the doctor on Monday for a health check before I fly home that afternoon.

At least I've got the weekend to get some actual work done.

It wouldn't be soo bad if I had written the stuff I'm installing/testing, but someone else has done it. Me thinks it'll take a while before I feel fully at home with it.

Perfect first time to go offshore then!

Oh well, if you hear a big bang and then a big plume of smoke over the North Sea...yeap, it's me...

It's been nice knowing you all.

Apart from Dalek Dave.
I don't like him at all.
Bloody CCC's, thinks he's soo clever.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" ~ Albert Einstein
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." ~ Paul Neal "Red" Adair

Now reading: 'The Third Reich', by Michael Burleigh

I feel a great disturbance in The Force...

Dalek Dave — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:21:00 GMT

see here[^]

I think I'll pass, it is just too sad for words.

------------------------------------

I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave

Cheesy

Jacquers — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:18:00 GMT

I received this in an email... thought I'd share

Happy 09.02.10 Day[^]

Someone waited a long time to send this!

House of Suns...

Hans Dietrich — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:13:00 GMT

by Alastair Reynolds, here on Amazon. The best hard-SF book I've read for quite a while. Lots of action, good story, writing is excellent; just a notch below Asimov's, IMHO. Highly recommended.

Best wishes,
Hans

[Hans Dietrich Software]