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I fired Shapeshifter (theme util) http://www.unsanity.com/ , got more than perfect windows XP theme by Max Rudenberg http://www.maxthemes.com/themes/?theme=Mac%20OS%20 XP (free) and fake leopard about box http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 30318 (free)

That was a perfect plan including opening a archive.org page with Apple advertising G4 as some supercomputer. (They now say Mactel is 4x faster)

Here is the result which I am not very proud of:
http://img231.imageshack.us/my.php?image=faketestt t0.png

I am not a graphics artist of course and my toolset is limited. That is not an excuse. You know why I gave up and didn't work on menu extras and add the trollish (4x faster) to about box? I could NOT STAND TO XP! Yes, I was surprised that as a guy who used PC until 2003, I get psychologically effected by a theme!

If Apple has more consumers like me, they can switch to anything, any CPU and still win. Note I am one of rare people out there which never had virus infection,worm infection, spyware infection in my life.

Thanks for the story!

Maybe Microsoft should switch to the vacuum cleaner business, where people actually want products that suck. (Quote from a signature) http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5830/suckercx8.jp g

I played Prey on my PC (P4 2.6 @ 2.8, a gig of ram, and a 6600 @ GT speeds). Very smooth at max details and 4xAS in 1024x. From a technical POV, everything's fine, except for savegames. Thankfully they let you save any time you want, but the files take up quite a bit of space (about 300 megs from autosaves only) so enable the NTFS compression if you need/want. The other problem occurred when I ran out of space and it crashed while writing a quicksave. I wasn't able to load it, of course, but after deleting it even the previous saves refused to work for some reason. Maybe it is/will be fixed in the latest patch. Anyway, I'm not gonna write a whole review now, but just go over a few key points.

Maybe calling it revolutionary is a little too much, so I won't, but the game featured a huge amount of refreshing ideas (portals, gravity tricks, immortality, and somewhat the weapons, and some minor stuff) but, as Zonk said, had its weaknesses in enemy variety and behavior. So, after finishing the game, I didn't immediately want to play again through the whole thing, but I did to take a few screenshots and found it hard to stop when I got to the place I wanted.

BTW, did anyone notice the aliens changing the jukebox to JP when you return to the bar? Now a less rhetorical question: under what conditions does the Blue öyster Cult appear on the jukebox? I didn't think it was special when I took the screenshot, but it wasn't there the second time I tried.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1640/1jq5.png
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1937/2yv7.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3663/3fj4.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3041/4ty1.png

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1640/1jq5.png
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1937/2yv7.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3663/3fj4.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3041/4ty1.png

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1640/1jq5.png
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1937/2yv7.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3663/3fj4.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3041/4ty1.png

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1640/1jq5.png
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1937/2yv7.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3663/3fj4.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3041/4ty1.png

When the seperate common and user specific program shortcuts were introduced in NT 3.1, the different types of program groups did in fact have different icons. Fig 1. When the new "Chicago" Win95 shell was created (originally 95 didn't even support multiple profiles) that concept was lost, even when multiple profile support was eventually added and the shell was ported to NT4.

It's inconvenient, but you can find out where the shortcut is located in its general properties (right click).

The .umz file also contains an embedded gif image

Wow people think it is a joke.

It is not people!

Look what happened to my mac without antivirus
http://img153.imageshack.us/my.php?image=faketestp y5.png

(I know it is a shame graphic wise but I couldn't stand to XP theme anymore)

They don't even mention IE's open search which can allow you to add a site's search engine from that site, the search option will change color when on a page that has it. You can then just select it from the drop down, and even add it permanently if you like. Of course it sounded like they just picked up both Firefox and IE and never used them before. Picture Example: http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/9344/searchvv7. gif

Cool. I go to download it and I get this:

http://img416.imageshack.us/img416/5176/virusms0.j pg

I checked McAfee's website and they genuinely think it is a virus. SysInternals swears that it isn't and suggests adding the file to their list of exclusions. Of course, since I don't have access to the administrative side of that software I can't use it.

Microsoft must run McAfee too! Run for teh hillz!

It is a very sad day when slashdot has ads like this. I am now removing slashdot rss feed from my homepage and never comming here again. I have no problem with there being microsoft ads, but an ad that covers up the entire summary. Slashdot really went downhill.

http://img473.imageshack.us/my.php?image=slashdotm v4.jpg

From Wikipedia: "As of July 2006, there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that Slashdot's audience is shrinking not only in relation to other sites, but in absolute terms as well. One graph (originally posted as a comment to a Slashdot story) shows that comment volume has plunged since mid-2005,[1] confirming the instincts of many who have commented on Slashdot's slower pace. Google Trends shows an alarming decline in queries including the word "slashdot," suggestive of a concomitant drop in traffic.[2]"

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/news/ 07/13/tf2_screen001.jpg and mirrored on http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/6384/tf2screen0 018el.jpg

love the new pixar-ish designs. it'll be sure to cause controversy ala wind waker did for zelda.

1. Even the man who DISCOVERED the Belts - Mr. James Van Allen himself - has dismissed this notion given the trajectory of the rockets.

2. However much fuel it took, the engine only had to be "on" for less than 1% of the whole journey. The rest of the time Newton took the drivers seat.

3. The craft is moving in a vacuum. There is no wind-sheer, eddies, or other atmospheric phenomena to buffer it around when the *tiny* manouvering jets fire. The astronauts would indeed feel themselves "pulled" about as the vehicle manouvered, but sound? Vibration? Even by 1969 standards, they weren't flying around in some clunky old Honda Accord with dodgy suspension. Refer to Space Shuttle footage and observe just how small manouvering jets need to be, and how little they affect the vehicle outside of simply shifting it about.

Crater? Charred earth? They're not on the Earth. ;) How can the glass-like composition of the Moon's surface be reasonably expected to react in the same way as setting off a Saturn V in a wheat field? Not only that, but the engines were fired only intermittently on approach, landing and briefly during takeoff from the lunar-surface.

4. The characteristics of a rocket-plume depend on the atmosphere it's burning in and the composition of the fuel. Just watch a Space Shuttle launch and observe not only the difference between the Solid Rocket Boosters and the main Shuttle engines, but the changes they go through as the vehicle climbs up and out of the atmosphere. Sure, the SRBs make a lot of smoke and mess, but the Moon Lander was not using solid-fuel. It was using liquid-fuel like the three main-engines of the Shuttle.

Take a look for yourself:
Compare the three main Shuttle engines to those of the Solid Rocket Boosters. A side-on shot at take-off.

Now, how large a plume do you reasonably expect the much smaller Lunar Module engine to create?

1. Even the man who DISCOVERED the Belts - Mr. James Van Allen himself - has dismissed this notion given the trajectory of the rockets.

2. However much fuel it took, the engine only had to be "on" for less than 1% of the whole journey. The rest of the time Newton took the drivers seat.

3. The craft is moving in a vacuum. There is no wind-sheer, eddies, or other atmospheric phenomena to buffer it around when the *tiny* manouvering jets fire. The astronauts would indeed feel themselves "pulled" about as the vehicle manouvered, but sound? Vibration? Even by 1969 standards, they weren't flying around in some clunky old Honda Accord with dodgy suspension. Refer to Space Shuttle footage and observe just how small manouvering jets need to be, and how little they affect the vehicle outside of simply shifting it about.

Crater? Charred earth? They're not on the Earth. ;) How can the glass-like composition of the Moon's surface be reasonably expected to react in the same way as setting off a Saturn V in a wheat field? Not only that, but the engines were fired only intermittently on approach, landing and briefly during takeoff from the lunar-surface.

4. The characteristics of a rocket-plume depend on the atmosphere it's burning in and the composition of the fuel. Just watch a Space Shuttle launch and observe not only the difference between the Solid Rocket Boosters and the main Shuttle engines, but the changes they go through as the vehicle climbs up and out of the atmosphere. Sure, the SRBs make a lot of smoke and mess, but the Moon Lander was not using solid-fuel. It was using liquid-fuel like the three main-engines of the Shuttle.

Take a look for yourself:
Compare the three main Shuttle engines to those of the Solid Rocket Boosters. A side-on shot at take-off.

Now, how large a plume do you reasonably expect the much smaller Lunar Module engine to create?

according to this chart
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5492/amd724pric elistshort5xu.png

and they overclock easily from 2.0ghz core to 2.5ghz making it 4600+

He's not a whiny anti-Apple troll. He's just angry this girl wouldn't give him her number.

I don't know, I wouldn't admit openly to listening to that.

From an RPG.net thread making up RPG Demotivator posters:
Gaming Humor.
(Credit goes to Opsimath on page 9. Posting AC since I copied it w/o permission.)

There are apocryphal anecdotes that the crew of the Apollo missions were issued poison pins laced with cyanide just in case they could not get into a proper reentry slot and skipped off into space for eternity.

The stories aren't apocryphal.

In the prologue to his autobiography Apollo 13 (formerly titled "Lost Moon"), Jim Lovell writes:

Stories about poison pills always made Jim Lovell laugh. Poison pills! Forget about it! There just weren't any situations in which you'd ever really consider making, well, an early exit. And even if there were, you had lots of easier ways to do it than poison pills. The command module did have a crank for the cabin vent, after all.

So according to him the stories are false.

You can read the book online at Amazon (go to "Search inside", do a search for "Prologue", then click on the only result you get). The first three pages are also available at ImageShack: page 1, page 2, page 3.

There are apocryphal anecdotes that the crew of the Apollo missions were issued poison pins laced with cyanide just in case they could not get into a proper reentry slot and skipped off into space for eternity.

The stories aren't apocryphal.

In the prologue to his autobiography Apollo 13 (formerly titled "Lost Moon"), Jim Lovell writes:

Stories about poison pills always made Jim Lovell laugh. Poison pills! Forget about it! There just weren't any situations in which you'd ever really consider making, well, an early exit. And even if there were, you had lots of easier ways to do it than poison pills. The command module did have a crank for the cabin vent, after all.

So according to him the stories are false.

You can read the book online at Amazon (go to "Search inside", do a search for "Prologue", then click on the only result you get). The first three pages are also available at ImageShack: page 1, page 2, page 3.

There are apocryphal anecdotes that the crew of the Apollo missions were issued poison pins laced with cyanide just in case they could not get into a proper reentry slot and skipped off into space for eternity.

The stories aren't apocryphal.

In the prologue to his autobiography Apollo 13 (formerly titled "Lost Moon"), Jim Lovell writes:

Stories about poison pills always made Jim Lovell laugh. Poison pills! Forget about it! There just weren't any situations in which you'd ever really consider making, well, an early exit. And even if there were, you had lots of easier ways to do it than poison pills. The command module did have a crank for the cabin vent, after all.

So according to him the stories are false.

You can read the book online at Amazon (go to "Search inside", do a search for "Prologue", then click on the only result you get). The first three pages are also available at ImageShack: page 1, page 2, page 3.

I guess the point of my post was to say that toolbars and the like may provide some nice functionality, but the sheer number of them makes for a significant reduction in actually usable screen real estate. My only critisism of Opera in this is that by default, it is worse in this then about any other browser. You can indeed disable most of it, but making it less cluthered by default and possibly moving part of all the functionality into its own module/extension would imho be a serious improvement.

Here's a sample of how it looks (1600x1200 res image, reduced to 16 grays, saved as GIF, filesize ~100k):
http://img210.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myfreakin gscreen3ko.gif

I have.

It's well established that Bush's approval rating got a good upward swing after every terror alert during his first term. After laying off that tactic for a couple of years the Republicans are back at it again, it seems. This "foiled major threat" and the Miami "terrorists" are attempts to get the "Republicans are tough on terror" meme back out. I'm not sure it'll work that well, though. Folks won't fall for the unspecified terror alert stuff anymore, and when they specify it's not that terrible.

I thought they were going to be talking about this ad...

Which someone made a parodied animated gif of that has a little more truth in it...

Overreacting much?

I don't think they wanted my to uninstall it... http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/9899/removewgai nstructions4ew.jpg

P.S - Sorry about the url, no useful examples of it's use in posts are given nor does it follow any usual system used like bbcode, or html...

Funny thing, I just signed up for checkout with my G Account and all I had to do is specify a different country.

I even tried buying something from Buy.com and got the Oops from Google.

That reminds me of this Dilbert strip:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/819/dilbertagil e8bc.jpg

Congradulations on using nearly every cliché joke! As a reward, I present to you this award: http://img418.imageshack.us/img418/7817/rewinner9s f.jpg

I just had an, imo, very 'intrusive' ad here on the frontpage of Slashdot: The reason why I report this is the fact that I am not a subscriber, but also don't use any ad-blockers on Slashdot (nor on other sites), as I think it's a fair deal: I get to read/write for free and they serve me ads which will give them some money in return.

I don't mind the banners, animated or not: But I think this one (have a look at the screengrab ) got a bit too intrusive, or at least very annoying: Once you roll-over the normal banner, it changes in that one shown in the screenshot, taking up almost half of your screen.

Going back to the original banner (by hovering off the big-size banner), I noted that, in smallprint, it warned (?) that, on mouse-over, it would pop-up the bigger one: That, imo, does not justify it though (since the banner is on top, there's a big chance of hitting it by mistake with your mouse pointer).

Again, the reason why I made this post is not that I think (as a non-subscriber) I got any right to 'complaint' about something I receive for free: Just that -because- normally the ads are non-intrusive, I don't bother with blocking them.

I think the DISA made quite a large freudian slip on page 43. Here's a screenshot. Are they trying to tell us something?

No.

Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel.

Shouldn't that say tune in next article?

There's not many slashdot articles without Balmer Bashing.

I am an avid home theater fanatic with a massive front projection screen and a high-end audio system to go with it. (Here's a bad picture of the system. For scale, each one of the front black speaker is 6 feet tall.)

For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.

I'll go through the points quickly...

1. Nobody likes false starts
I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.

This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.

2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players
Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.

Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.

3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te

LOL! http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/1021/ass9sn.jpg

Well, I think the first step in the argument is to get rid of the strawmen.
There are a number of debates that are lumped together as "global warming", which may or may not have validity, and which may be more or less POLITICAL arguments, instead of scientific ones.

1) is the global temperature increasing? As I understand it, the answer seems to be a qualified yes. Qualified becuase:
- it depends on your timescale
- it depends on your measuring device; I understand that air temperature measurements are not entirely consistent with the ground temperature readings.
Not knowing the answer myself (everyone seems to have a political axe to grind) I went and grabbed this raw data from the NOAA paleologic climate site (assuming that's as neutral as I'll find), dropped it briefly into excel to chart it, which confuses the issue even more. This is just RAW data...no smoothing, no 'forcing', no extrapolations, no 'models' (aside from the first-order interpretation that gives us the raw temperature data, of course).
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7956/green8aq.gif
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5454/alps2000yrte mp8zu.gif
IIRC one of them is the Alps tree ring data, going back about 2000 years, the other is Greenland icecore data going back 50,000 years. Links to the source are on the Alps chart. Based on these charts, I have to say, the 'warming' looks fairly mild, and certainly not outside of the range of natural possibilities.
NOTE: it doesn't help people arguing that warming is occuring, that they keep doing a bait'n'switch, flipping back and forth between temperature and CO2 levels interchangeably. That costs credibility.

2) how much of the warming is due to human effects?
Intuitively, my gut says "a lot". Look at the amount of heat put out by a single city - every home has artificial heat (or cooling, generating hear), cars, industry....it just makes SENSE that humans are heating up the planet to some degree.
But then again, the planet is a HUGE system, not easily influenced. And human industry - say since the era of powered machines, is fleetingly recent in climatological timescales. Looking at the charts above, I *don't* see a significant recent impact. I know about dinosaurs in the Antarctic, wood samples in Greenland glaciers, etc. all of which point to a globe which was significantly warmer historically. It's clearly gone through massive heating and cooling cycles, regardless of human activity (or even existence).
Recent temps on Mars have also increased, suggesting that there is a significant extra-systemic input (the Sun) which hardly is even mentioned in most popular debates on the subject.

3) assuming a significant fraction of the effect is anthropogenic, is there something we can do about it? Previous cycles prove that the Earth's climate system has a number of stable 'rest points', with potentially chaotic climate change during transitions, and a bias toward returning to these rest-states. Has anyone proven, for that matter, that warming is an unalloyed BAD thing? Poison ivy will grow faster, but then again, there will also be more arable land than in the past. Ultimately, it seems futile to try to control a system of such staggering scope - it's a waste of money and finite resources to try to 'freeze' the climate in this current anthropophilic setting. The climate is GOING to change, that's a certainty. It also seems a certainty that Kyoto's a ridiculous, hypocritical treaty: if climate change is so imminent, so catastrophic, and so avoidable then why does the treaty OMIT 40% of the world's population, the 40% that is going to be most aggressively industrializing in the next 20 years? I understand that 'fairness' aspect, but one should understand that trivializes the argument: if your house is burning down, you don't stop Betty from getting out because it's Timmy's

Well, I think the first step in the argument is to get rid of the strawmen.
There are a number of debates that are lumped together as "global warming", which may or may not have validity, and which may be more or less POLITICAL arguments, instead of scientific ones.

1) is the global temperature increasing? As I understand it, the answer seems to be a qualified yes. Qualified becuase:
- it depends on your timescale
- it depends on your measuring device; I understand that air temperature measurements are not entirely consistent with the ground temperature readings.
Not knowing the answer myself (everyone seems to have a political axe to grind) I went and grabbed this raw data from the NOAA paleologic climate site (assuming that's as neutral as I'll find), dropped it briefly into excel to chart it, which confuses the issue even more. This is just RAW data...no smoothing, no 'forcing', no extrapolations, no 'models' (aside from the first-order interpretation that gives us the raw temperature data, of course).
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7956/green8aq.gif
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5454/alps2000yrte mp8zu.gif
IIRC one of them is the Alps tree ring data, going back about 2000 years, the other is Greenland icecore data going back 50,000 years. Links to the source are on the Alps chart. Based on these charts, I have to say, the 'warming' looks fairly mild, and certainly not outside of the range of natural possibilities.
NOTE: it doesn't help people arguing that warming is occuring, that they keep doing a bait'n'switch, flipping back and forth between temperature and CO2 levels interchangeably. That costs credibility.

2) how much of the warming is due to human effects?
Intuitively, my gut says "a lot". Look at the amount of heat put out by a single city - every home has artificial heat (or cooling, generating hear), cars, industry....it just makes SENSE that humans are heating up the planet to some degree.
But then again, the planet is a HUGE system, not easily influenced. And human industry - say since the era of powered machines, is fleetingly recent in climatological timescales. Looking at the charts above, I *don't* see a significant recent impact. I know about dinosaurs in the Antarctic, wood samples in Greenland glaciers, etc. all of which point to a globe which was significantly warmer historically. It's clearly gone through massive heating and cooling cycles, regardless of human activity (or even existence).
Recent temps on Mars have also increased, suggesting that there is a significant extra-systemic input (the Sun) which hardly is even mentioned in most popular debates on the subject.

3) assuming a significant fraction of the effect is anthropogenic, is there something we can do about it? Previous cycles prove that the Earth's climate system has a number of stable 'rest points', with potentially chaotic climate change during transitions, and a bias toward returning to these rest-states. Has anyone proven, for that matter, that warming is an unalloyed BAD thing? Poison ivy will grow faster, but then again, there will also be more arable land than in the past. Ultimately, it seems futile to try to control a system of such staggering scope - it's a waste of money and finite resources to try to 'freeze' the climate in this current anthropophilic setting. The climate is GOING to change, that's a certainty. It also seems a certainty that Kyoto's a ridiculous, hypocritical treaty: if climate change is so imminent, so catastrophic, and so avoidable then why does the treaty OMIT 40% of the world's population, the 40% that is going to be most aggressively industrializing in the next 20 years? I understand that 'fairness' aspect, but one should understand that trivializes the argument: if your house is burning down, you don't stop Betty from getting out because it's Timmy's

If they keep swelling and failing, then perhaps they need some supplements. More information readily available in your mail account. But act fast, this offer ends soon!

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060608 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.4

Probably due to a lack of Flash 8... but all I see is this.

First thing it did was BLUE SCREEN on me. Oh teh hilarity! I am not kidding, look here: http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/8862/reactos5ba .png

This would make me leave too!

I wonder what would happen if these MS robots were used to perform surgeries ... Oh, wait, nevermind

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2432/128nc.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4121/111kl.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6319/107tz.jpg

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2432/128nc.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4121/111kl.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6319/107tz.jpg

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2432/128nc.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4121/111kl.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6319/107tz.jpg