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The primary reason why AutoProfile is not prior art is because the IBM patent specifically refers to a: remote controller, suitable for use while viewing media programming and content

I primarily use my computer to "view media programming and content." The remote controller in this context is usually called a computer mouse.

and:

The enhanced remote controller allows the viewer to both communicate with a blogging server, and thus to a blogging service, as well as to display responses to and from other bloggers with whom the viewer is communicating. These blog communications may be accomplished without the viewer having to leave the broadcast receiver of the television.

which AutoProfile is not and has no functionality for.

Sorry, wrong plugin.

If it's the fact the remote can post twitter updates, how is it any different than a nokia tablet with mythetomer? Or a phone that can also be used as a remote control? I use bluetooth to change the channels on my MythTv for example, and could you really say your tivo isn't technically a computer?

I'm aware that Nokia and Motorola didn't specifically design a phone for this purpose, but it probably is already used as such by some users.

Here's a guide that's a little outdated, but should still apply:

http://www.nic.fi/~tapio1/Teaching/UserStyleSheets .php3

That's for IE 5.x and Opera 4.x, so as I said, it's outdated.

I disagree.

What we REALLY need are Cascading Javascript Sheets

First, in NZ (which is what the thread is about), Dec 21 is the *summer* solstice, not the winter.

Second, at 37 degrees south, in the summer the sun rises south of east *and* sets south of west. This is most extreme at the solstice where it rises about 30 degrees south of east, and *also* sets about 30 degrees *south* of west.

Similarly, at a similar latitude in the northern hemisphere (eg San Francisco), at the local summer solstice (eg June 20 or similar, depending on the year) the sun would rise around 30 degrees *north* of east, and set 30 degrees *north* of west.

Third, I don't care about the camera, but I assume your "140 to 280 degrees" is a typo. Anyway, I was just correcting someone who said that in NZ the sun is always to the north. But yes, with a normal camera, even though the sun *isn't* always north in NZ (despite what someone claimed), if you point the camera south the sun is likely to be outside the field of view. So it is "outside" the camera, but not necessarily "behind" the camera.

Anyway, how can the sun be slightly south at sunrise/sunset in Auckland (or many other places)? Well, it is a common misconception that because the sun is always directly above the tropics (between around 23 degrees north or south of the equator), it is believed that it therefore always appears to the north at locations further south (and vice versa in the northern hemisphere).

However, this is false. The apparent paradox is explained by the fact that for a given location the sun's "direction" (azimuth) is on the great circle joining the viewer's location to the point that the sun is above (in the tropics).

So, for example, during summer in Auckland the sun is above a point further north (in the tropics) but the great circle to this point may start off going somewhat south from Auckland (eg heading 120 or heading 240), especially at sunrise and sunset, hence in summer the sun rises and sets south of east/west respectively. Calculate it yourself: Sun calculator

I'm sure you can find a better one at NASA or wherever.

Or if you don't believe that, go outside and have a look! :)

What happens when someone ports it to Windows and someone else releases the PizzaBlaster worm?

A radio tuned to static is used to feed a stream of random data to a soundcard. The data is used to construct an image, and in the incredibly unlikely event that this image matches a predetermined image, you've proven that the universe is infinite! :-)

Don't forget to check out the url of the "What is SIC@HOME?" page.

If it's a pre power version, try out the BasiliskII Mac emulator, it will run your old games like a charm.

-H

Here's a GPL'd one that that seems to work pretty well for those old games: Basilisk II

You'll need an OS, but Apple is giving one away for free use (apparantly): OS 7.5.3

So far, AFAIK, this is all legal (or at least uncontested). The tricky part is finding a ROM that works. The only way to get one is to rip it from your own mac - included is software to do that, though. You might be able to find one on the net if you look hard enough, though. (it won't be legal)

And then, of course, you need to find software for it if you don't already have some.

Another tricky thing is dealing with mac programs you download on the net. The mac filesystem has a concept that FAT/NTFS doesn't really have, which is each file has potentially two parts - resource and binary or something like that. I don't really understand it. But if you download an executable directly, then you probably will only get one part and it won't work, so you need to get them in BINHEX'd (HQX) mode, and then use something like HFVExplorer (Win32) to decode it properly when you copy it into your Mac disk image. It took me a while to figure out that HFVExplorer would do this for me, as I had a binhex'd version of Stuffit Expander, and I had no idea how to decode it once it was on the mac disk image, so I could decode other programs.

Good luck!

-If

For those who are interested: WU2WAV

Search for Incredible Coincidence at home
Determine the structure of the Universe!

Use a program like RPM Wizard. It will give you the option so start the program after installing it and put a shortcut on the desktop.

>Never mind that I wanted the files to be in my home directory.

Most often you don't want your program in the home directory. Non-standard install locations will make the menu items useless and will prevent you from starting the program from the command line with just the program name.

RPM does have some real problems. That doesn't mean that the problems could not be dealt with. The problem with one RPM not working on several distributions can only be handled by adopting standards. LSB is a step in the right direction but it does not seem to work quite yet. There should be standards for where to put specific programs like KDE and all RPM based dists should follow them. The best thing in my opinion is something like United Linux -- several distributions that use the same base system. That would be the only way you can make all distributions really compatible. I'm not saying all distributions should join United Linux, becouse IMHO they still have some serious problems, like not having a totally free (as in speach) base system. As for the problem with dependencies there are a few already existing solutions. One is apt-rpm and another is the GUI based RPM Wizard.

but you'll find a lot more meat on a Peruvian Hairless. A friend had one - he was always putting sunscreen on it!! I wonder if the chickens would need that, too.

if you look here, you'll see the highly successful *cough*liar*cough* earlier version of this...

Exactly--I think emulation has become so big precisely because of the nostalgia associated with those quirky old games we all used to play, or just the quirky old OSes we made do with. After all, some of the first emulators were for things like the Atari 2600, ancient technology with horrid graphics and pitiful resolution by today's standards--but we remember fondly those old games.

No one has mentioned this one yet, so I thought I'd post it right toward the top since I LOVE it so much. It is bar none my favorite piece of software--I use it every day. It's Basilisk II, the open-source project that emulates a 68k-based Macintosh.

And it emulates a 68k Mac perfectly, only faster than the originals on my old K6-2 400. I can't wait to see it speed along when I finally upgrade--AMD, VIA, please hurry up and get dual Athlon solutions out the door, okay? The proggie is even optimized for dual processor machines; you can run it on one particular CPU, and use the other for other tasks.

This brings me to the one drawback: it tries to eat 100% of CPU time, from what I understand even on fast machines--but not a problem if you stay inside the emulated Mac while it's running, like I do, or have a dual-processor machine.

But Basilisk II is superior in most respects to the closed-source, commercial Mac emulators, SoftMac 2000 and Fusion--it's much more stable, crashing less frequently than a real 68k Mac, whereas Fusion and SoftMac crash more often.

I highly recommend that anyone who's ever used an old Mac and liked it or some of its software, check out Basilisk II at its homepage. If you run it under a Windoze platform, the homepage for the Windows port is here.

The great part is that Mac OS versions through 7.5.3 and its update to 7.5.5 are free for download from Apple's own website, so that you can run a real MacOS unlike with the runtime environment Executor some here may have tried. Links to Apple's FTP to get the OS are on each Basilisk II homepage, but the directions for installing MacOS on a HFS partition image file seem a bit more detailed at the Windoze version's homepage.

The only thing you need is a Mac 68k ROM, which you can download from a real Mac you own (instructions are given for how to copy this to a file), or you could pirate it from the Net. A ROM from a Quadra works best, since it's a 32-bit clean ROM unlike some of the older 16-bit "dirty" ROMs. Not that I condone piracy, but...you can easily find quadra.rom with some creative guesswork at Google.

It's been great to have that old Mac I used to use at the college computer lab in '95 back, and better than ever. I've been playing Barrack, one of my favorite games of all time. I've been playing that quaint old classic Risk, simple but addictive as it was in the early 90s. And Basilisk II even allows your virtual Mac to use your PC's internet connection, so grab Netscape 3.04 from the Netscape archives and have deja vu all over again (I still think the rounded look of the old versions of Netscape for the Mac are better than most of today's browsers look).

Sorry for running on so long, but I love it. The only problem has been tracking down older versions of Mac apps and games--I decided I wanted to make my virtual Mac an authentic 1995 beast, not only was it my first year of college, it's the year the Net really exploded into the mainstream. I've been collecting these old apps that were common back then, and eventually, even though it's a copyright violation, I'm going to release a 150MB HFS partition file on the Net containing a snapshot of 1995, with all the common software that's now difficult to find. Much of it I had to find by poring through old FTP mirrors, like this and from here. The olf NCSA Telnet and NCSA Mosaic ftp archives are still there, and have period versions of common utilities.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share something about my favourite emulator. Ciao.

Actually, the other great game for the Jaguar was Tempest 2K.

The system also had, near the end, a CD player (which sat on top of the unit making it look a bit like a toliet). As far as I remember there were really no good CD games - however, it did have a Jeff Minter lightshow (think winamp visual plugin) built in for playing CD's! That's the only reason I still hook mine up at all. It was such a great idea, I can't believe that no system since has included a lightshow of some sort for CD's.