Tag Archives: tech

A physicist, an engineer and a programmer were in a car…

By probabilityZero | August 15, 2009

A physicist, an engineer and a programmer were in a car driving over a steep alpine pass when the brakes failed. The car was getting faster and faster, they were struggling to get round the corners and once or twice only the feeble crash barrier saved them from crashing down the side of the mountain. [...]

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AP’s impossible text DRM dreams

By probabilityZero | July 24, 2009

So, it’s just text content, but it can call home, track where it has been, and secure digital rights. Good luck with that.

Posted in Current events, Other, Tech and games | Also tagged , | 4 Comments

I hate Internet Explorer 6

By probabilityZero | June 1, 2009

Pretty much every designer says this, and with good reason. IE6 is around 8 years old now, and severely out of date. Designing around its bugs is a royal pain in the ass, and it’s necessary to do so because IE6 still has such a large userbase; 33%, by this source, as of March of [...]

Posted in Opinion, Tech and games | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

Is Twitter really good for anything?

By probabilityZero | May 28, 2009

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, I still use it.
Everyone’s heard of Twitter. Senators use it, newscasters blabber about it, but what is it? This is as simple as I can state it: Twitter is a service where you (the user) post 140 character messages, which are meant to update people following you (subscribed to your updates, [...]

Posted in Noteworthy, Opinion, Tech and games | Also tagged | 3 Comments

Windows 7 is actually pretty good

By probabilityZero | March 30, 2009

Seriously.
First, I’ll explain my bias: I’m primarily a Linux user, and I’d love to write a blog post trashing Windows. My experience with it so far, however, tells me that Windows 7 (only the beta, no less) is a big improvement and overall an excellent operating system. Now, I still prefer Linux, and I have [...]

Posted in Opinion, Tech and games | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

“VB GUI Interface” in CSI

By probabilityZero | October 6, 2008

I’m having trouble imagining the chain of events that would lead to this being in the final script. The most likely explanation I can think of is that their local “tech” guy either was a moron that threw together random buzzwords, or (IMO more likely) wanted to mess with them by getting them to put [...]

Posted in Tech and games, Videos | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

Ad blocking in Google Chrome

By probabilityZero | September 5, 2008

I’ve been using Chrome for days now as my main browser in Windows, and I’m very happy with it. It’s ridiculously fast (around 3x faster according to this test). One thing it lacks, however, is an ad blocker. Luckily, I have been using Privoxy for a while, and it blocks ads regardless of what browser you’re [...]

Posted in Tech and games | Also tagged , | 1 Comment

I got a USB Tablet

By probabilityZero | June 14, 2008

Yup, a Genius “MousePen 8×6.” I played with it for an hour or so in Photoshop. My first thought was that I wasted my money — the pen and tablet didn’t change the fact that I’m a crappy artist — but after I got the hang of it I began to like it. Sure, I [...]

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Thoughts on TinyXP

By probabilityZero | June 9, 2008

I just installed TinyXP on a system I’m building for a friend, and I was amazed. I chose the “BARE” install without IE/OE/WMP, and it worked like a charm. It booted very quickly, and the ram usage was just above 70mb total!
The idea behind TinyXP is that most of the useless junk that comes with [...]

Posted in Tech and games | Also tagged | 24 Comments

How to make Windows XP look and act like Fluxbox

By probabilityZero | May 19, 2008

Fluxbox is a minimalistic window manager for *nix systems, based on Blackbox. You can replicate its look and feel somewhat well with complex shell replacements like Litestep, but there’s no reason to settle for that. Blackbox itself was actually ported to Windows, and there are several projects now in development based on that code. The [...]

Posted in Other | Also tagged | 6 Comments

The good and bad of CAPTCHAs

By probabilityZero | May 18, 2008

I run several websites, a few of which have user-generated content and have to deal with spam. Because of this, I’ve occasionally had to use CAPTCHAs. If you don’t know what they are, they’re the little images with letters/numbers in them that you need to reproduce to prove you aren’t a bot. They’re generally thought [...]

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First impression of “[true knowledge]“

By probabilityZero | May 14, 2008

I got my invitation to be a beta tester for [true knowledge], and I’ve been playing around with it. Basially, it’s a search engine that can handle natural language search queries, and find relevant information even if the specific terms used in the search query aren’t found. This is a fascinating technology that I wish [...]

Posted in Tech and games | Tagged | 2 Comments