Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Bugfixed, Attribution, Atkins
Go ahead and get this one out of the way. Seth Scali writes: "The decision last week that ruled the Greek ban on video games as unconstitutional has been overturned, and a new trial has been ordered. Story from TheRegister is here. Don't take your GBA on that trip to Athens just yet ..."
It takes a strong man. Reader edrock200 submitted the story about a TiVO mod which could expand system capacity to more than 1000 hours of recording. The story as shown says that 9thTee is the card's developer; edrock200 corrects this "'The QuadCard, like the AirNet and TurboNet adapters also sold through 9thTee, were developed by a TiVo user named Nick Kelsey (known as 'jafa' on the TiVo Community Forum.) 9thTee is the distributor - though I don't want to take anything away from them, they have been remarkably supportive of the TiVo community and they deserve kudos for taking the financial risks of selling these add-ons.'
'It is truly amazing what Nick has been able to do with his electronics expertise.'"
Thanks for the clarification!
The Lizard sleeps with one eye open. An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine have updated their article on the recently reported minor security bug in Mozilla [Note Slashdot posting]with the news that a fix has been completed. The bug allowed the webmaster of a site to find out where a user went after their site. The fix means that there are again no known security bugs in Mozilla. Presumably, updates to Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape, Galeon, Chimera etc.) will follow."
What about the all-shrimp-and-chili-paste diet? Schlemphfer writes "A few months back, Slashdot featured a NY Times story that talked about the Atkins diet in glowing terms. This week, the Times has published a Jane Brody article raising serious questions about whether Atkins-style diets are dangerous and unsustainable. Brody is one of the most prominent and respected nutrition journalists, so it's worthwhile to read her take on the matter. Brody's article, which cites some important new research, may be an eye-opening read for Slashdot readers who took the plunge with Atkins back in July." (The NYT requires free registration.)
Suddenly everyone is in deadly earnest. Ian Cumming was one of several people to write with evidence of smileys predating the smileys unearthed by Mike Jones of Microsoft Research. He forwarded an informative message from Brian Dear of Birdrock Ventures, which reads in part:
"On the PLATO system, emoticons were much richer -- made using multiple characters displayed on top of each other. It was possible to type, say, a single character, then press SHIFT-space (which moved the cursor exactly one space backwards), then type another character. The second would display on top of the first. You could keep doing this for multiple characters and create many different faces, beer glasses, martini glasses, all kinds of things. And people peppered their emails and notesfile (PLATO's newsgroups) postings with them all the time."
And what is the PLATO system? The short version is this: PLATO was (is) an education-centered computer system developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Luckily for you, Dear is writing a book about PLATO. His site is fascinating, and the book promises to be as well. Here is a page showing the richness of PLATO emoticons.
Reader Grant Barrett also writes: "The earliest (not first: you can never precisely say which was first) recorded smiley in print discovered so far was found by etymologist and word researcher Barry Popik who posted this message to the email list of the American Dialect Society. He discusses the yellow smiley face which everyone knows, but this particular smiley is the familiar punctuation-based emoticon. (On a side note, he has uncovered some evidence that Harvey Ball *did not* invent the familiar yellow-faced smiley.)"
That reference puts the typographic smiley all the way back to 1953, and as Barrett mentions, was in print rather than online. He also points out that "ESR's Jargon File cites a 'rival claim by Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979.'"
But there's only one groove per side ... To all those who thought that the optical-scanning method for playing vinyl was an elaborate joke, note that you can download the creator's code if you'd like. This is not the easy way to do things, but is one way.
I wish I had something to say, but I saw there weren't any posts and I just had to...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I know I'm going to get modding down for this. :) Farscape chat with a producer, writer, and Ben Browder the main actor in the show is hosted at scifi.com.
irc.chorn.com or irc.scifi.com
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
I could have been that woman. But after using an Apple iMac for two months, I'm not. And that's what this column is about. I know there are people out there struggling with Windows. Computers are complicated machines. I get more than 50,000 call attempts per hour on my national talk-radio show, the majority of which are questions from Windows users.
Actually, I considered not writing this column, regardless of the test results. Writing about Windows versus Apple is a no-win situation.
But if you disagree with my conclusions, please think twice before flaming me. My opinions are honest, I promise. I tried hard to be very fair to both sides. And just to set the record straight, I was not influenced one bit by the fact this column runs on a Microsoft-owned site. In fact, I started my testing months before I began contributing weekly columns to Microsoft bCentral.
Let's get started
My odyssey with the iMac started back in May, when I was asked by Apple Computer if I would like a three-month loaner. Well, what the heck? Send it on, I said.
The big test started in June, when I hauled it out of its box. Hmmm, I thought, this is one cute little guy. I was immediately reminded of the TV commercial where the man on the sidewalk strikes poses, and an iMac in the store window mimics him.
If you haven't seen the iMac, let me describe it. The computer itself is inside a round base. Attached to that is an arm, and a 15-inch flat-panel screen sits on the arm's end. The screen is easily adjustable, so you can always look at it head-on.
The keyboard is encased in clear plastic, as is the mouse. Even the speakers are clear plastic. The iMac is very, very stylish. Surrounded by Windows machines in my offices, it looked like a debutante at a frumps' convention.
Time to do some work
I was determined to do all my work on this machine. I wanted to give it a thorough test drive. We have a building full of Windows computers, networked via cable. The first test was getting the iMac on the network. That was a piece of cake. Just a few entries were needed in System Preferences.
The computer came with Internet Explorer, and I installed Netscape for e-mail. Apple has a native e-mail application, but I couldn't get it to work. That was no big deal, really.
I have had some experience with Macs, but it had been a while. So I had to learn the iMac, which was running the OS X operating system. My productivity immediately plunged. The iMac will do most of what Windows does, but it often does things differently. The Help system was somewhat sketchy, similar to Windows.
But once I got to know the iMac, I found more similarities between Windows and OS X than differences. The filing systems are alike, to a great degree. Windows Explorer's counterpart is Macintosh HD. There are differences in the ways files and folders are manipulated, but they are minor.
One of the great things about Windows is "Alt+Tab," with which you can jump from window to window. On the iMac, it's "Cmd+Tab." Instead of showing the selection of windows in the middle of the screen, the selector moves through them at the bottom of the screen. The thing at the bottom is the Dock. It took me a little while to figure out what was happening. But it's actually very similar to Windows.
We do lots of writing here at Komando Town, and Microsoft Word is the preferred application. Swapping the Mac files with my staff on Windows machines was no problem.
Word files opened easily in either system. Things seemed seamless, whether we were writing on the iMac or the Windows machines. We did little with Excel and nothing with PowerPoint, but I'll bet they would have been equally flawless. So if you're using Microsoft's Office package, you should have no trouble swapping files.
The iMac came with ClarisWorks, a less capable office package. I didn't use that, although I have ClarisWorks for Windows on an old machine. I always liked that old version of ClarisWorks.
Speed can be an issue
The only disappointing aspect of the iMac was its lack of speed. Don't get me wrong: It wasn't that it was particularly slow -- in general, it was just a few seconds slower than my Windows machine. But when you're used to instantaneous response, any lag can be aggravating.
The most irritating drag came when jumping between Internet Explorer and Word. The iMac would sometimes take a couple seconds to make the switch. Netscape also was slow. Moving between folders or opening the New Message window seemed sooo slow. However, that may have been a Netscape problem.
The most startling difference was in the application of Adobe Photoshop filters. I used an 11-megabyte TIFF (uncompressed) file on both machines. The Windows machine was much faster.
My Windows machine is not the latest and greatest. This particular machine has a 1.533-gigahertz chip from Advanced Micro Devices. With Intel chips approaching 3 gigahertz, my AMD machine is at the bottom of the Windows heap. Nonetheless, it is nearly twice as fast as the iMac's 800-megahertz Motorola chip.
Apple buffs argue that chip speed is a misleading measure. AMD, which trails Intel in chip speed, makes the same argument. I agree, up to a point.
The quality of the hard drive, memory, bus, video card, etc., also affects a computer's speed. But, golly, 800 MHz just isn't very fast today. Given the difference in chip speeds, though, the iMac did pretty well. My hat's off to Apple's engineers.
A few other issues with the iMac:
A one-button mouse. Actually, the entire mouse is the button. I'm used to using the right button and scroll wheel on my Windows mouse. Really, Apple, you could do better than this.
The 15-inch monitor. Apple has begun shipping iMacs with 17-inch screens. I'm used to using a 21-inch CRT monitor, and the 15-incher was just too small.
No floppy drive. I know 3.5-inch floppies aren't used much anymore. But the need does arise occasionally. The iMac should have a floppy drive.
But the biggest setback is the iMac's price. Depending on the configuration, you'll pay anywhere from $800 to $2,000 for one. You're going to pay hundreds less for a comparable Windows machine. This has always been a problem for Apple. For the extra cost, you get a lot more style. Only you can decide what that's worth.
The iMac comes with some highly touted multimedia software. That wasn't important to me -- I used the iMac as a business computer. There is a great deal of multimedia software available for Windows, too. I doubt that the iMac software is a great advantage.
The bottom line
So, if you're struggling with Windows and you think that an iMac will allow you to focus more on your business and not on computer issues, should you switch? I vote no.
Don't get me wrong. The iMac does its job well. But it is no more intuitive than Windows XP.
OS X crashed just once during the test. I've been running Windows XP Professional for almost a year, and it is equally reliable. As I said, computers are complicated machines. You have to make the effort to learn them, whether Apple or Windows.
As I packed the iMac back into its box, I felt a pang of regret. I had grown fond of the little guy. But, frankly, I'm more impressed with the quickness of my Windows computer. As for me, I was happy to get back to my "horrid little machine." I missed him.
but the fucking lameness filter blocked me again. Damn you Jamie!
hahaha, you're very funny. Make me laugh some more. :)
The album "The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief" is supposed to be the first three-sided record. One of the sides has two grooves. I wonder what that would do to the optical scanner....
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
Well, it's nice that they've fixed a security hole in Mozilla, but when are they going to come out with a new Debian package release? I've never had very good luck with trying to compile Mozilla myself, and I prefer to have as many as possible of the programs running on my system managed automatically by dpkg--and as of this moment, the newest Debian Mozilla even in Unstable is still 1.00-3. (I've tried the snapshot version, and found it too buggy to use.)
I've emailed the package maintainer asking when a new version would be out; I've posted about it to the Mozilla newsgroups; I have yet to get a satisfactory answer as to why the Debian release is one and a half versions behind the times. During the pre-1.0 phase, they could usually be counted on to update to the most recent build within a few days of its release; 1.1 has been out for weeks now and still no sign of improvement!
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
You need to get on the Jimmy Tango weight-loss system. Lose a hundred pounds in just 4 days with a combination of regular exercise and powerful amphetamines!
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Atkin's has nothing to do with less of an appettite. I have several close friends on the Atkins diet, one of which eat huge ammounts of bacon and close to 6 eggs per breajfast. And yet he is LOSING WEIGHT.
Why don't you do a little better research instead of whoring for karma with false facts and weak opinions.
Who is Karma whoring? If I was a karma whore, I would probably not flame so many people...
Anyhow, your friend is probably losing just as much lean tissue and water as fat. See my message above.
What you are professing is called anecdotal evidence (look it up). Maybe your friend is losing only fat. Maybe your friend is a freak of nature. Not likely though - likely your friend is losing mostly water.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
What I really hate about Slashback is the "and more" part, it forces me to read on just to be sure I'm not loosing anything... Please post the full abstract!
Taco is a whore!
There's a bit of nazi moderation if I've ever seen it. Disagree with it, mod it to -1.
That's funny, really.. bugger a boy and you're normal in Greece - but you play a lousy game and all of a sudden jail's almost too good for you. Fscking Greek retards.