ElfQT

Devour Magnetic

2008-09-17T18:11:00.004+02:00

Metallica put up their whole new album, Death Magnetic to their website.

Devour Magnetic

Interesting though that there is no link through media or other menu, only if you open the link to the news item Devour Magnetic.

Allergy - strange future awaits?

2008-08-31T14:45:00.003+02:00

Greenspun reproduces an interesting note, sent in advance in case of dinner invitation.

The family dinner in an allergic world

Therion - Dark Venus Persephone

2007-07-29T20:54:00.000+02:00

Why nobody else noticed that the opening tune in 'Dark Venus Persephone' by Therion is borrowed from 'One Way Ticket To The Blues' by Neil Sedaka?

Identity - what's protecting?

2006-02-19T16:13:00.000+01:00

Scoble says you'd better put your email address onto your page. He even puts out his cell phone number.

Why would that be necessary on an average blog? The difference is personal vs business purpose. For a business it is absolutely neccessary to be accessible. For a person it is not, and easily can be unwanted.

For example, Scoble has his company behind him to protect him against spam. Great quantity of spam. But what can he do against harassment not coming in mail, but ways that affect your personal life - you cannot filter phone calls, and you cannot filter malice...

Everyone on the net, so any blogger, who is a face of his company, will make sure that you can reach them...
And just keep on pretending we don't know how easy it would be to misuse personal info... (This is the internet or what... You can get into trouble even when you think you are safe behind your isp and firewall and desktop... Don't test your fate.)

So, I advice not to publish your identity if you don't get business from that...
I represent my email address like this:

Categories:RantingCAT

Posting Habits and Genocide

2006-02-03T13:08:00.000+01:00

Do you like first-posters?
Ytram has his opinion:

By the way, the original post can be interesting also:
The Specialist on TheDailyWTF

What my answer would be?

Not funny, not cute - and a post without real content

2006-02-03T00:10:00.000+01:00

This post has no real information content. You can stop without losing anything...
To make a short story shorter: Microsoft made a lame promo video for the new version of a product called CRM, i.e. Customer Relationship Management.

Funny CRM 3.0 promo video?

It's really short, but watching it still feels like watching those strange but, in fact, bad movies: the question is, for how long you have to watch this to figure out, you should not.

Romantically funny?
Idiotically funny?
Classically funny?
Short and strikingly funny?

The promo video was neither funny nor cute...

Source: Bink.nu

Brave New World

2006-01-29T15:23:00.000+01:00

OK, "Brave New World" Title is a little exaggerating; but the thing is, I can't stand the glitches in modern technology. Or at least some of the glitches.

Starting in my own backyard (see it on the right):

My Blog layout is broken in IE6. It is a standard, choosable layout at this host. Guess what, it is not broken in FireFox.

Have you ever wondered why you cannot "upload" an image to a website (like images to this weblog), really simply? No, doing it through "normal" file upload is not simple, not simple enough for me. You cannot drag and drop images. You cannot paste. Even if you could, for the web, it is neccessary to format the image (make it smaller). And create a thumbnail maybe. All these functions are "missing" from the everyday workings of the net. So what do you need to do? Screenshot something. Save it into a file, and convert it, make it small. Upload it (ftp or http). Also, if not supported, you have to make a thumbnail, with a tool or manually.

Joel tries to solve this glitch (which has security, copyright, and historical reasons, why it is not simple - but if I position myself as a simple user, heck, I don't care, handling images on the net is dumb, which is ridiculous) in his software FogBugz.

(Sidenote: Why this thing doesn't check a given link for me? When I type a http link, I have to check manually in my post to see if it links to a valid address.)

While browsers use adaptive UI, there are sites, which are trying to lock into a given font size. They are unreadable for me on my big flat panel. IE sticks to the spec of the page, and does not change the directly given font size. FireFox is better, it changes the font size, and also, IE's font sizes is a five-list, FireFox can increase font size over that.

Today's brand new gadget site, recommended by Scoble, Skobee, starts with a broken submit button on the opening page in IE6. And after I type into the textbox (which is a standard html text button, only with custom style) I cannot mark text with the mouse... WTF? (And the funny thing is: they are recommended by Scoble, whose job is... well go and let's find it for yourself.)

Verdict? Html is flawed, net is flawed, all this technology is a bloody mess sometimes.

Microsoft SQL 2000 - Profiler Help

2006-01-20T10:52:00.000+01:00

I am trying to trace down some connection related issues on MS SQL 2000 Server. I am using SQL Profiler. I try to figure out how to monitor opening and closing connections.

At the "Trace Properties", you get the following "Available event classes":

Cursors, Database, Errors and Warning, Locks, Objects, Performance, Scans, Security Audit, Server, Stored Procedures, Transactions, TSQL, User Configurable

As I try to find values (events) regarding connection handling, I press F1 and look at the possible event classes and their Descriptions (same is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/adminsql/ad_mon_perf_6koi.asp)

Possible categories:

Cursors, Database, Errors and Warnings, Locks, Objects, Performance, Scans, Security Audit, Sessions, Stored Procedures, Transactions, TSQL, User Configurable

Help says Sessions, reality shows Server... Description of Sessions: "Collection of event classes produced by clients connecting to and disconnecting from an instance of SQL Server."

(And Server category has only one element in it: Server Memory Change.)

Just so great ;)

Tools for .Net development and Visual Studio

2005-12-12T21:43:00.000+01:00

Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/12/VisualStudioAddins/
default.aspx

.NET Tools: Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/07/MustHaveTools/

And One "Tool" I miss like hell:
- I would really like to be able to call out to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library in a context sensitive way. Just like the "normal" help locale MSDN library does.

Color Palette Generator

2005-12-12T21:40:00.000+01:00

http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

Coming from here: Web Developer's Handbook, which is a link collection.

Little Shop of Horrific PC Game Practices

2005-11-27T21:17:00.000+01:00

Last time I ranted about the fact that I cannot use my game controller in NFSU:MW.
This time my frustration is about why 512 MB of RAM is not enough for Black and White 2? With this amount, at the third level (island, in fact) the game starts continuously using the hard disk.
Oh yeah, this is not the fault of the game itself: why there is no such a hw and sw solution, which does not slow down, even to a halt sometimes, when something happens on the hard disk?
So the game starts poking at the hard disk, so, the game flow starts clogging in the same rhythm.
Disappointing.

You may think I am really just ranting and complaining... I'm telling you, I will get to a conclusion... keep tuned.

Controller Challenge

2005-11-24T22:15:00.000+01:00

I've tried Need For Speed: Most Wanted PC game. I'm really disappointed by the detailed settings of the game controller - the controller is a Logitech WingMan Rumblepad, and the possible settings are: none (besides assigning buttons and axes).
No "Dead Zone", no sensitivity. Which is really disturbing in the light of the unrealistic sensitivity in the game - a stir on the analogue joystick turns the car at a greater rate than you can call fine. Also without "Dead Zone" (how far you have to move the joystick from its center position before it reports to the game that it's not centered), my car always steers a bit to the left. Combined with the rough sensitivity, I simply cannot keep it real straight.

(Advanced: Dead Zone may include a maximum range too, the "Range of Motion", which adjusts how far the joystick moves away from the center position, which the application will sense as the greatest possible value.)

Seriously, how can a car driving game, even a really arcade type like this, come out without settings for analogue controllers? What is the Cause of this situation? Besides the obvious, "buy a brand new controller". And I suspect that on PC the keyboard is the main goal for the developers, which also must be a challenge, to achieve maneuverability with a non-analogue control method.
Why isn't there a tool by the manufacturer (Logitech) to adjust the settings of the controller? It should communicate to the game a set of values, and it should modify this data regarding the settings.
Or, step one level up, why isn't there such an option for any game controller (and human interface) in a more abstract layer, like DirectX or the operating system?
Wait, thinking of it, that is not a good idea, that would be a leaky abstraction.

This is just one of the few reasons, why gaming industry is and will moving to the less difficult platforms.

Language Challenge

2005-11-21T21:18:00.000+01:00

I tried to check out something concerning the game Black and White 2. I went to a browser and typed: www.blackandwhite2.com.

It automatically transferred me to http://lionsource.planet-multiplayer.de/. In case you didn’t know, .de is for Deutschland, that is Germany.

Yes, I haven’t told you: I am from Hungary. I’ve already met this strange premise (all right, at least it’s strange for us), that Hungarians happens to speak German, at least speak better than English. (Which is a historical misconception, from which I will spare you.) Well, we don’t.

If I browsed to a probably-English site, I wouldn't want to be transferred to a German speaking page. Or if that happened by mistake, I would like to switch back to English. But I can’t find the words “English”, “Language”, or even “Englisch” on the page. No way to switch, no way to understand.

(Well, to the end of this post, the right address googled out is http://www.lionhead.com/bw2/.)

Did Mark won over Sony?

2005-11-21T00:56:00.000+01:00

Is it possible to “win” “against” such a mulitcorp? Did Mark Russinovich raised into the rank of a cyberpunk? Sociohacker?

I'm pretty sure he's one of the few productive hacker-type with a positive attitude. You can see and try at their site all the great tools.

Also, this is my first post here, and I’d like to test a few thing with it.

I do welcome myself at least :)