I bought all the 3rd ed books already after all... it seems stingy to charge users twice.
Um, I think you're missing a point, Taco. With all the data files, many gamers can get away with not having the Player's Handbook at all. Character creation and updating is the most book-necessary part of the game.
Check out EN World, one of the best D&D sites on the net. They have a bunch of the loser settings available for download, and they're thinking of publishing their "best loser" (by some kind of voting process) under their Natural 20 Press PDF product label.
Actually, that particular announcement is probably off the front page now, so try this link:
Setting Proposals.
Station call letters need to be read on the hour, immediately followed by the name of the city in which their licence is registered. After that, most usually announce the city they primarily serve.
For instance, my local modern rock station, WWDX has a recording that at the beginning of every hour says "92.1 The Edge, WWDX, St. Johns, Lansing" in a 'edgy' radio voice. Where's St. Johns? I don't even know. But Lansing's definitely the market.
I used to read B&G, and while I thought it was amusing for about the first six months, it really started to suck (my opinion only, of course). It's dumb multiple-timeline-plots weren't good and they were convoluted to the point where I wasn't sure what was going on, and furthermore, I didn't care. So I stopped reading it.
But I still got to give it props, because (if I remember right) B&G pointed me to 8-Bit Theatre.
Another one that's pretty funny sometimes is Oldskooled ("THEN you were playing with power!"), though he updates pretty infrequently (sometimes stretching to 3 or 4 weeks).
The guy who does 8-Bit Theatre just started attempting to do the webcomic thing full-time. He's only around 20 years old, so no great risk if he fails, but I certainly expect his non-comic updates to get more amusing.
Of course, given the nature of the comic (8BT is a webcomic that uses Final Fantasy 1 sprites), I expect Square to sue him if he starts to do okay.
...or am I going to have to listen to the same 75 songs programmed by mindless
corporate drones over and over like I have to do on FM today?"
It doesn't seem like that many. I'd venture 40 songs, tops, are on the active playlists of modern rock stations, of which 10 are on the heaviest rotation.
What browser are you using? I just ask because I'm stuck with Netscape 4.7 on my Sun at work, and it loads lots of pages very slowly because its HTML rendering engine is super slow (and sucks especially with tables). But I know that if I move to a Windows machine elsewhere in our T1-connected lab, it won't have a problem at all.
On your concern of page fonts being small, have you ever used the Opera web browser?
There's a little pull-down menu in the toolbar that lets you resize pages. It's similar to the zoom pull-down that you'll find in Word or any modern word processor. It's really convenient. Opera also carries many other little features that can make reading poorly-designed pages more pleasant, like buttons to toggle images or page formatting on/off.
Granted, this doesn't fix the problem of dumb webmasters, but it does help in reading poor pages.
I like when I can plug my favorite underused web browser.
Frankly, I like having the bugs on cable networks, as long as they're translucent, and limited to one (1).
With most cable systems now carrying upwards of 50 channels, I think they're pretty handy when I'm looking for a channel on a unknown system.
On the flipside, I don't think networks need them at all. Most cable systems (to my knowledge) follow the convention that the local networks are on the lower-numbered channels (except for maybe UPN or WB), and even then most of us have associated the big shows with the networks, if we even bother to pay attention. Aside from evening shows or soaps, why would I look for someone's NBC anyway? They all schedule the off-hours independently.
Of course, I should kick in here that associating shows with networks is pretty dumb for viewers anyway. As if Simpsons made the rest of FOX's shows good...
It seems like the only channels that can really benefit from branding are theme-targetted cable channels. You want some interesting non-fiction? You might need a bug to tell you quickly if you're learning about guns (Discovery) or a specific war (History). Looking for an abused woman triumphing over adversity? You might need a bug to tell if you're watching a drama (Lifetime) or an opening to a bad sci-fi movie (Sci-fi).
As long as bugs are translucent and don't distort/cover text, I don't mind them. But does Friends need it? Not really. I doubt the Friends viewer cares.
(Note: CDE is not a distribution, but rather a standard)
Oh christ, then I have no idea what I'm talking about. I was under the impression that CDE was some product. There are multiple CDE implementations? I probably just have a not-so-good one then.
And on further reflection, I think that the setup I have does use xscreen-saver, but wraps it so you have a prettier password-entry box. That wrapper has some flaw in it somewhere that crashes the winmgr about 1/10 times.
Well, thanks for telling me something I didn't know.
Man, I can't stand it. When I'm reading or typing, I want that pointer out of the frickin' way!
One reason I do keep using CDE is that I can have an active window in the background. There's a nice setting so that you can make the window active by clicking in the window, but only if you click somewhere on the frame does it jump to the foreground.
Don't know if Gnome can do it this way, but I couldn't find a similar setting in WindowMaker. They all seem to go all-the-way in either direction, but I've only found the happy medium in CDE.
I use CDE because the window behavior is like Windows (right-click makes menu, etc). It's the other managers that have behavior I don't like, like that x-windows mouse-pointer focus thing.
To give CDE credit, it is the most configurable of the Unix winmgrs available on this system, but it could be better.
I tried making Actions, but I didn't like the way it was implemented. There's an error in your post... the "what" is a program that should be in my desktop apps folder? OK, you got me here, I'm not so qualified on this point; I don't care enough.
wacking off in front of it... Very civil.
The "CDE is ugly" comment... I meant visually ugly. That's all. Many programs look better on my lab neighbor's Linux box with WindowMaker. Obviously, cosmetics is trivial.
I would assume that the functionally in this respect is roughly indistinguishable.
BTW: I specifically said not xlock. I was complaining specifically about CDE (whether it's an xlock wrapper or a wholly new screen lock prog, I don't care, it still crashes 1 out of 10 times when I login to it). Even though you're pissed that I'm ranting about CDE, you should still read all the words.
Maybe I don't know CDE very well. I do know that I've used Gnome and WindowMaker for a lot less time, but I'm much happier with each than I am with CDE, and I can't figure out why I'm not offered a port of either instead/alongside of CDE.
Being raised on Windows, I've found CDE is the only window manager on my university's Unix network that I can stand. It behaves the closest to the Windows 95 environment I cut my teeth on. (that X-windows-style thing where the window with the mouse pointer in it gets the focus? Gah, I'd rather die!)
Even though I use it every day, I'm gonna bitch about it. I'm really astounded that it hasn't been trumped by something better! My favorite bug is the screen lock: I'd say, maybe, 1 out of every ten times I'd enter my password to the CDE-screen-lock program (not xlock), the session would completely die and go back to the login screen the second after I pushed enter.
As far as I can tell, there are two versions of the Style manager program: one that works like you'd expect, and one that doesn't seem to save any changes after you've logged out. Which one depends on which menu you access it from.
X-windows programs like xfig look butt-ugly in CDE as compared to how they look in other window managers.
Nothing is intuitive. At all. Try making a shortcut or desktop icon or whatever, without looking it up. I gave up; it wasn't worth the trouble. And the hot-keys are not documented in the help. The help documention sucks. And you can't set hot-keys.
It's not so much any major problems, just a bunch of little problems that are each individually ignorable or workaround-able.
Maybe some of this is just bad Unix administration/program setup; I don't know much about admin'ing a *nix system. But I know buggy or incomplete software when I see it. Yeah, Windows (at least, pre-2000/ME) is just as buggy, but at least it was intuitive (shutdown-via-start-menu notwithstanding).
I thought others would appreciate a definition, so they wouldn't have to look it up, like I just did.
Taken from Everything2.com:
(thing) by daglo (print)
RFP: Request for proposal. A long boring document filled with legalese which is supposed to be the equivalent of asking a vendor for a bid for service. In actuallity it is a demand for a bid which requires that said bid include and be subject to
certain requirements. One could say it is akin to Satan's "Proposal for Bennefit in Exchange for Soul" which is hailed as a great masterpiece of legalese.
This is a copy/paste; all typos are property of the author.
It's probably not the best definition, but it answered all I wanted to know.
I'm not the AC, but I'll second his motion. Have you seenKiss The Girls? While not a bad movie in itself, it was not a great performance on her part. Yes, she is attractive, but so's Britney Spears. That doesn't make either of them talented.
-Grant
PS Hey mods, this, and all parent threads are not off-topic! Maybe they do drift from the Wil Wheaton story, but there's still a logical progression. It's mods like that that make me metamod frequently.
Maybe my thinking is a little too utilitarian or Darwinistic, but was adoption ever considered? If I knew that my future children would have a good chance (your use of "usually" implies to me that the chances are greater than %50) of the carrying on the condition, I'd want to stop propagating the condition.
There are many unfortunate children (not just babies) without a quality home, why not take that route? Was it considered?
The above post was why one should always wait 5 minutes between composing and submitting.
I apologize partially. I saw the lame headline, and then skimmed, and only really read the last two paragraphs, which were exceedingly lame (YMMV).
The first 2/3s of the article had much substance. It is a first-person account from someone who has a unique perspective of the incident. I hope you find that your friend is okay.
I'm sorry I tore into you a minute ago. I may not always respect your journalism, but I should remember to always give it full attention when I intend to reply.
Step off the drama, Katz. You haven't said anything particularly important or notable here; it's just the same "Pearl Harbor" hype that the established news outlets are pushing. That might work for the TV masses, but it's not appropriate here.
If you can't post substance, then please don't post. I just get the impression that you only posted because you've got this delusion of yourself as an insightful person who has insightful things to say, and you thought there would be a hole here if your name could not be found.
This article was not insightful. It was a rehash of every other "insightful" thing that has already been on the news today.
-Grant/"JimTheta"
(I know I'm gonna get troll-modded for this, but I need to say it. At least I used my real name, instead of AC'ing it, like so many others.)
<P>No, they don't. They <i>get paid</i> for every song they play. Independant promoters get paid by record companies, and stations get paid by independant promoters. That's oversimplifying, but basically how it is. Why would a record company charge money for radio play, when radio play is the main thing that makes the records sell and thus give the record company profit?</P>
<P>You obviously didn't read Jamie's article yesterday (which was part 1 of 3). Also try the articles "Pay for Play" and "Pay for Play II" (not sure if the second article name is quite right) at Salon.</p>
Slashdot Mirror
I bought all the 3rd ed books already after all... it seems stingy to charge users twice.
Um, I think you're missing a point, Taco. With all the data files, many gamers can get away with not having the Player's Handbook at all. Character creation and updating is the most book-necessary part of the game.
I've got no problem with WotC on this front.
-Grant
Adult IMAX
In 3D?
"Wow, this 3D theatre is amazing! It's like I'm really getting splattered with jizz!"
"Hey, wait a minute..."
-GrantCheck out EN World, one of the best D&D sites on the net. They have a bunch of the loser settings available for download, and they're thinking of publishing their "best loser" (by some kind of voting process) under their Natural 20 Press PDF product label.
Actually, that particular announcement is probably off the front page now, so try this link: Setting Proposals.
-Grant
You're "0 for Who"?
-Grant
Yes. W is where we put the New Country Hits stations. K is for Pop Music and Alternative.
I probably don't need to say this, but just to keep any non-United Staters from being ill-informed, the parent comment is extreme bullshit.
-Grant
Station call letters need to be read on the hour, immediately followed by the name of the city in which their licence is registered. After that, most usually announce the city they primarily serve.
For instance, my local modern rock station, WWDX has a recording that at the beginning of every hour says "92.1 The Edge, WWDX, St. Johns, Lansing" in a 'edgy' radio voice. Where's St. Johns? I don't even know. But Lansing's definitely the market.
-Grant
That would be "Yo! Noid". Featuring the Noid guy from the Domino's Pizza commercials.
-Grant/JimTheta[...] Otherwise, we'll eventually end up watching really long commercials with a hidden movie plot!
Uh... We're already 1 for 2 most of the time anyway, aren't we?
-Grant/JimThetaI used to read B&G, and while I thought it was amusing for about the first six months, it really started to suck (my opinion only, of course). It's dumb multiple-timeline-plots weren't good and they were convoluted to the point where I wasn't sure what was going on, and furthermore, I didn't care. So I stopped reading it.
But I still got to give it props, because (if I remember right) B&G pointed me to 8-Bit Theatre.
Another one that's pretty funny sometimes is Oldskooled ("THEN you were playing with power!"), though he updates pretty infrequently (sometimes stretching to 3 or 4 weeks).
-Grant
The guy who does 8-Bit Theatre just started attempting to do the webcomic thing full-time. He's only around 20 years old, so no great risk if he fails, but I certainly expect his non-comic updates to get more amusing.
Of course, given the nature of the comic (8BT is a webcomic that uses Final Fantasy 1 sprites), I expect Square to sue him if he starts to do okay.
-Grant/JimTheta
It doesn't seem like that many. I'd venture 40 songs, tops, are on the active playlists of modern rock stations, of which 10 are on the heaviest rotation.
-Grant
What browser are you using? I just ask because I'm stuck with Netscape 4.7 on my Sun at work, and it loads lots of pages very slowly because its HTML rendering engine is super slow (and sucks especially with tables). But I know that if I move to a Windows machine elsewhere in our T1-connected lab, it won't have a problem at all.
-Grant/JimTheta
On your concern of page fonts being small, have you ever used the Opera web browser?
There's a little pull-down menu in the toolbar that lets you resize pages. It's similar to the zoom pull-down that you'll find in Word or any modern word processor. It's really convenient. Opera also carries many other little features that can make reading poorly-designed pages more pleasant, like buttons to toggle images or page formatting on/off.
Granted, this doesn't fix the problem of dumb webmasters, but it does help in reading poor pages.
I like when I can plug my favorite underused web browser.
-Grant/JimTheta
Frankly, I like having the bugs on cable networks, as long as they're translucent, and limited to one (1).
With most cable systems now carrying upwards of 50 channels, I think they're pretty handy when I'm looking for a channel on a unknown system.
On the flipside, I don't think networks need them at all. Most cable systems (to my knowledge) follow the convention that the local networks are on the lower-numbered channels (except for maybe UPN or WB), and even then most of us have associated the big shows with the networks, if we even bother to pay attention. Aside from evening shows or soaps, why would I look for someone's NBC anyway? They all schedule the off-hours independently.
Of course, I should kick in here that associating shows with networks is pretty dumb for viewers anyway. As if Simpsons made the rest of FOX's shows good...
It seems like the only channels that can really benefit from branding are theme-targetted cable channels. You want some interesting non-fiction? You might need a bug to tell you quickly if you're learning about guns (Discovery) or a specific war (History). Looking for an abused woman triumphing over adversity? You might need a bug to tell if you're watching a drama (Lifetime) or an opening to a bad sci-fi movie (Sci-fi).
As long as bugs are translucent and don't distort/cover text, I don't mind them. But does Friends need it? Not really. I doubt the Friends viewer cares.
-Grant/JimTheta
Well, we know you haven't associated shows with channels.
Pop-up Video is a VH1 program.
-Grant/JimTheta
(Note: CDE is not a distribution, but rather a standard)
Oh christ, then I have no idea what I'm talking about. I was under the impression that CDE was some product. There are multiple CDE implementations? I probably just have a not-so-good one then.
And on further reflection, I think that the setup I have does use xscreen-saver, but wraps it so you have a prettier password-entry box. That wrapper has some flaw in it somewhere that crashes the winmgr about 1/10 times.
Well, thanks for telling me something I didn't know.
-Grant/JimTheta
Man, I can't stand it. When I'm reading or typing, I want that pointer out of the frickin' way!
One reason I do keep using CDE is that I can have an active window in the background. There's a nice setting so that you can make the window active by clicking in the window, but only if you click somewhere on the frame does it jump to the foreground.
Don't know if Gnome can do it this way, but I couldn't find a similar setting in WindowMaker. They all seem to go all-the-way in either direction, but I've only found the happy medium in CDE.
-Grant/JimTheta
I use CDE because the window behavior is like Windows (right-click makes menu, etc). It's the other managers that have behavior I don't like, like that x-windows mouse-pointer focus thing.
To give CDE credit, it is the most configurable of the Unix winmgrs available on this system, but it could be better.
I tried making Actions, but I didn't like the way it was implemented. There's an error in your post... the "what" is a program that should be in my desktop apps folder? OK, you got me here, I'm not so qualified on this point; I don't care enough.
wacking off in front of it... Very civil.
The "CDE is ugly" comment... I meant visually ugly. That's all. Many programs look better on my lab neighbor's Linux box with WindowMaker. Obviously, cosmetics is trivial. I would assume that the functionally in this respect is roughly indistinguishable.
BTW: I specifically said not xlock. I was complaining specifically about CDE (whether it's an xlock wrapper or a wholly new screen lock prog, I don't care, it still crashes 1 out of 10 times when I login to it). Even though you're pissed that I'm ranting about CDE, you should still read all the words.
Maybe I don't know CDE very well. I do know that I've used Gnome and WindowMaker for a lot less time, but I'm much happier with each than I am with CDE, and I can't figure out why I'm not offered a port of either instead/alongside of CDE.
-Grant/"JimTheta"
Being raised on Windows, I've found CDE is the only window manager on my university's Unix network that I can stand. It behaves the closest to the Windows 95 environment I cut my teeth on. (that X-windows-style thing where the window with the mouse pointer in it gets the focus? Gah, I'd rather die!)
Even though I use it every day, I'm gonna bitch about it. I'm really astounded that it hasn't been trumped by something better! My favorite bug is the screen lock: I'd say, maybe, 1 out of every ten times I'd enter my password to the CDE-screen-lock program (not xlock), the session would completely die and go back to the login screen the second after I pushed enter.
As far as I can tell, there are two versions of the Style manager program: one that works like you'd expect, and one that doesn't seem to save any changes after you've logged out. Which one depends on which menu you access it from.
X-windows programs like xfig look butt-ugly in CDE as compared to how they look in other window managers.
Nothing is intuitive. At all. Try making a shortcut or desktop icon or whatever, without looking it up. I gave up; it wasn't worth the trouble. And the hot-keys are not documented in the help. The help documention sucks. And you can't set hot-keys.
It's not so much any major problems, just a bunch of little problems that are each individually ignorable or workaround-able.
Maybe some of this is just bad Unix administration/program setup; I don't know much about admin'ing a *nix system. But I know buggy or incomplete software when I see it. Yeah, Windows (at least, pre-2000/ME) is just as buggy, but at least it was intuitive (shutdown-via-start-menu notwithstanding).
-Grant/JimTheta
I thought others would appreciate a definition, so they wouldn't have to look it up, like I just did.
Taken from Everything2.com:
This is a copy/paste; all typos are property of the author.
It's probably not the best definition, but it answered all I wanted to know.
-Grant/JimTheta
I'm not the AC, but I'll second his motion. Have you seen Kiss The Girls? While not a bad movie in itself, it was not a great performance on her part. Yes, she is attractive, but so's Britney Spears. That doesn't make either of them talented.
-Grant
PS Hey mods, this, and all parent threads are not off-topic! Maybe they do drift from the Wil Wheaton story, but there's still a logical progression. It's mods like that that make me metamod frequently.
Maybe my thinking is a little too utilitarian or Darwinistic, but was adoption ever considered? If I knew that my future children would have a good chance (your use of "usually" implies to me that the chances are greater than %50) of the carrying on the condition, I'd want to stop propagating the condition.
There are many unfortunate children (not just babies) without a quality home, why not take that route? Was it considered?
-Grant/"JimTheta
The above post was why one should always wait 5 minutes between composing and submitting.
I apologize partially. I saw the lame headline, and then skimmed, and only really read the last two paragraphs, which were exceedingly lame (YMMV).
The first 2/3s of the article had much substance. It is a first-person account from someone who has a unique perspective of the incident. I hope you find that your friend is okay.
I'm sorry I tore into you a minute ago. I may not always respect your journalism, but I should remember to always give it full attention when I intend to reply.
-Grant/"JimTheta"
Step off the drama, Katz. You haven't said anything particularly important or notable here; it's just the same "Pearl Harbor" hype that the established news outlets are pushing. That might work for the TV masses, but it's not appropriate here.
If you can't post substance, then please don't post. I just get the impression that you only posted because you've got this delusion of yourself as an insightful person who has insightful things to say, and you thought there would be a hole here if your name could not be found.
This article was not insightful. It was a rehash of every other "insightful" thing that has already been on the news today.
-Grant/"JimTheta"
(I know I'm gonna get troll-modded for this, but I need to say it. At least I used my real name, instead of AC'ing it, like so many others.)
Radio has to pay for every damn song they play.
<P>No, they don't. They <i>get paid</i> for every song they play. Independant promoters get paid by record companies, and stations get paid by independant promoters. That's oversimplifying, but basically how it is. Why would a record company charge money for radio play, when radio play is the main thing that makes the records sell and thus give the record company profit?</P>
<P>You obviously didn't read Jamie's article yesterday (which was part 1 of 3). Also try the articles "Pay for Play" and "Pay for Play II" (not sure if the second article name is quite right) at Salon.</p>
-Grant
---