2181

Status Notices / Scheduled maintenance, 2014-03-10

« on: March 09, 2014, 05:29:15 AM »

The forum and wiki will be going offline for about five minutes on 2014-03-10, between 08:00 and 08:15 UTC.

For convenience, this means:

EST (USA east coast):
2014-03-10, 03:00-03:15

UTC (UK):
2014-03-10, 08:00-08:15

AEDT (Australia east coast):
2014-03-10, 19:00-19:15


The intent is to install security updates on the server which hosts the forum and wiki. These will be non-disruptive to functionality, as the server is running a stable OS release that gets critical fixes only.

2182

Announcements / Re: Status update, March 2014

« on: March 09, 2014, 04:50:01 AM »

The forum has bugs?!

All software has bugs. SMF is noteworthy for being on the buggier end of the software scale.

Daniel 2.0

Here's a sneak preview:

http://bugs.tfes.org/

I just need time to set access rights appropriately, both for people to browse the current bugs and to take and work on them, then move all the current issues in S&C into the tracker. Shouldn't be more than a day's work, but that's a day I don't have right now.

Oh, and HTTPS for the bug tracker, the forum and the wiki is coming soon (probably this month), now that I've found my passport and can prove my identity to my SSL certificate provider.

2183

Announcements / Status update, March 2014

« on: March 08, 2014, 03:37:41 AM »

I know it's been a while since we talked about where this forum is going. The Zetetic Council and Tintagel have been doing a nice job of driving the Society forward, but due to time constraints from work (for me) and study (for pizaaplanet), fixing and improving the forum has largely stagnated recently.

For this month, this is unlikely to change for me. I'm moving house in a couple of days, which means I'll have very little time to spend on FES, and then it's back to work which is going to be very hectic for the rest of the month. However, I'm hoping for some time off in April, at least some of which will be spent improving the site.

The first order of business will be to get a bug tracker up and running, because that will allow more efficient tracking of problems, including allocation to specific people, setting of priorities and more granular updates on individual issues. I'm probably going to use RT for this, due to a combination of familiarity on my part, and simplicity of the software itself (most bug trackers out there try and fail to be comprehensive project management suites).

From there, I'll put all the current issues in S&C into RT and assign priorities. The bug tracker will have unrestricted public read access, so everyone will be able to see what's being worked on and what priorities have been assigned to which issues. Then, based on that, we'll start picking other tasks to work on in order to improve FES for everyone.

This will also make it easier for any of you to get involved with the technical side of things, as it will be clear which issues haven't been assigned to anyone yet.

As always, if you have any suggestions on how we can better move forward, feel free to raise them in S&C.

2184

Technology & Information / Re: Ask Rushy about Bitcoins.

« on: March 05, 2014, 12:58:22 AM »

Hey Rushy, is Flexcoin a safe place to stash my bitcoins?

God damn it, how many times does this need to be said? If you stash your BTC online, you take a risk. If you store them with a 3rd party, you take a risk. No, Flexcoin is not a safe place to stash your BTC. This is elementary knowledge.

You just got markjo'd.

2185

Technology & Information / Re: Windows 8 phone

« on: March 01, 2014, 08:06:44 PM »

Though to be fair, Vikings don't exist anymore. 

Sez who?

Sez me.

2186

Technology & Information / Re: VM problems

« on: February 28, 2014, 11:42:27 PM »

I want to code windows phone. Not spend my life begging you for advice on how to unzip a file or use my printer.

I wish you the best of luck. Maybe soon you'll figure out how to make Windows's networking stack usable.

2187

Technology & Information / Re: VM problems

« on: February 28, 2014, 11:35:16 PM »

So run windows in a VM, and then run a VM for the emulator as well as running visual studio and the windows sdk. My 4gb Ram will have a fit.

Why? It's exactly the same as what you currently run, plus a Linux system that takes up maybe 200 MB of RAM tops, since all you need is a lightweight desktop, libvirt, QEMU and (optionally, if you don't like writing XML) some graphical VM manager.

2188

Technology & Information / Re: VM problems

« on: February 28, 2014, 10:55:10 PM »

Install Linux and use libvirt with QEMU instead of Hyper-V. It works.

And you don't think I will have further issues regarding the fact I'm trying to use Express Visual Studio 2012 with Linux?

Why not run that in a Windows VM?

2189

Technology & Information / Re: VM problems

« on: February 28, 2014, 12:04:54 AM »

Install Linux and use libvirt with QEMU instead of Hyper-V. It works.

2190

Technology & Information / Re: Windows 8 phone

« on: February 22, 2014, 06:12:20 AM »

Except for the fact that Google develops and maintains Android.

Irrelevant.

Isn't Android open source?

I suppose that depends on your definition of open source.

No, it doesn't. You're just wrong.

2191

Technology & Information / Re: Windows 8 phone

« on: February 22, 2014, 01:34:43 AM »

I'm not a huge fan of Android either. Too google dependant and it looks like shit as well.

Android is not at all dependent on Google. My phone runs Android with no Google apps installed, and the only Google service I use it with is Google Maps (via Firefox).

There are plenty of good reasons to hate Android, but Google isn't one of them.

2192

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: On the notion of ban triggers but on not triggering bans

« on: February 17, 2014, 09:24:27 AM »

Sorry, I garbled the last sentence in an orgy of iPhone crappiness. I meant to say that I think IPs should be banned.

IP addresses can (and often do) have multiple people using them, though. Do you think it's worth the possible (and sometimes very real, as happened more than once on the old FES) false positive to always use an IP address ban trigger?

2193

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: On the notion of ban triggers but on not triggering bans

« on: February 16, 2014, 02:49:02 PM »

I appreciate the sophistication in the distinctions you are making, but I think it is always the person at the keyboard that needs to receive the message or lesson. I think it should be banned.

There is no way to ban based on the person behind the keyboard. If we could do that, this thread would be redundant. Instead, we have certain pieces of information available to us, such as username, e-mail address and IP address, and we need to work out what to do with those.

I appreciate your input, but what I'm most interested in is how we can reach a documentable, repeatable process for issuing bans. Do you have suggestions on how we can best approximate banning a person?

2194

Suggestions & Concerns / On the notion of ban triggers but on not triggering bans

« on: February 16, 2014, 04:46:26 AM »

We need some consensus on what it means to ban someone, and which triggers should be applied. SMF allows us to ban based on username, e-mail address, IP address and/or hostname.

When a ban is issued, we wish to limit or restrict forum access for some identity. The subject for discussion in this thread is how we define the identity that is to be banned; for example, is a username sufficient? Is an IP address part of the identity we are banning? Once we have clearly defined an identity, we can apply ban triggers appropriately.

I am raising this in S&C because I think all members should have a say in how bans are orchestrated.


My view on this matter stems from the belief that a ban is always intended as a means of rehabilitation, not retribution. The purpose of a ban is to, where prior warnings have failed, discourage violation of the rules and encourage contributive posting. It is never to punish someone for past actions; nothing is to be gained by punishing someone for an offence they are no longer committing.

I propose that, for a first offence, an identity is always limited to the user account, not the IP address. That account is the thing that has been causing trouble, and it may be uniquely associated with a username and an e-mail address, but not necessarily an IP address. Therefore, a first ban should always make use of only the username and e-mail address triggers.

Suppose, then, that the user makes another account. There are two possibilities; one, that they use the same IP address as before; two, that they use a different IP address. In the latter case, an IP address trigger would have been useless anyway, so we shall only consider the former case. We can subdivide this into two further possibilities; either they create an account and continue to violate the rules as before, or they start posting in a contributive fashion and adhering to the rules.

If they are continuing to violate the rules, then we can consider the IP address as an identity that is causing trouble, as it is now creating multiple troublesome accounts. We may then apply an IP address trigger to resolve that problem.

The final possibility is that the user creates an account and starts contributing to the forum. It follows from the belief that bans are not for retribution that we do not care what the user has done previously; they are contributing now, so we don't need to restrict their forum access. On the other hand, if we had applied an IP address ban earlier, we would have prevented them from taking this positive step to recovery and lost a contributing member.

I conclude that, if you agree with my statement that bans are never for the purpose of retribution, using IP address triggers on the first offence is harmful rather than beneficial to the forum. I therefore propose that IP address (and hostname, which is almost the same thing) bans are never used unless it can be shown that they are chronically associated with troublemaking accounts.


Thoughts and comments welcome.

2195

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Cazazza Dan

« on: February 15, 2014, 03:42:13 PM »

I will probably be sampling parts of this release whenever I get around to making some of my own music again.

Did you ask permission?

Irrelevant.

2196

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Cazazza Dan

« on: February 15, 2014, 03:23:55 PM »

I just listened to Urgynes. It is great, especially parts 2 and 5. It exceeded even my high expectations of Crudblud's work; my only wish is that he had sent it to me for application of sea prior to release.

I will probably be sampling parts of this release whenever I get around to making some of my own music again. You should listen to it.

2197

Technology & Information / Re: The Flat Earth Society official IRC chat

« on: February 15, 2014, 03:55:16 AM »

Try reconnecting now, seems to be fine. Failing that, connect to critical.relic.net instead of irc.relic.net.

2198

Technology & Information / Re: Ask Rushy about Bitcoins.

« on: February 13, 2014, 05:06:20 AM »

Everyone knows that Microsoft only contributed in order to fix compatibility problems for its own products, not to actually make the kernel better. 

Irrelevant.

2199

Technology & Information / Re: Ask Rushy about Bitcoins.

« on: February 13, 2014, 03:13:14 AM »

I'm just assuming that Microsoft is seen as a bad thing due to the fact that just about everything they put on the market it highly criticized.

Microsoft has contributed code to Linux, but that hasn't stopped it from being the most popular base for open-source OSes in the world.

2200

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Frank Zappa 1979 tour 35th anniversary extravaganza

« on: February 12, 2014, 10:04:43 AM »

Saturday-Sunday, 10th-11th February, 1979
Odeon Theatre, Birmingham, United Kingdom

(No known unofficial recordings exist for this show)


Comments:

Sadly, the first two concerts of 1979 were never known to be committed to tape (apart, undoubtedly, from Frank's own copy in the vault), so we can only speculate as to how this tour started out. Given the general monotony of the set lists this year, though, you can read the review I'm about to post for the first recorded show and probably end up with a pretty good idea of how these two sounded.