In FFXI, GMs can take the form of standard PCs, albeit wearing custom armor with cool fiery effects and massive amounts of defense. They can sit in an area, invisible, if a player calls them to watch TOS violations taking place. They can teleport players to jail, which is an area called Mordion Gaol. They can also free players who have accidentally become stuck in the landscape. The only difference is that they don't walk a beat; they only appear when called. My understanding is that they have enough to deal with that they don't have time to simply walk around, and of course, raising player fees to provide more GMs probably wouldn't go down too well.
That's the worst part about this "upgrade". Whether they use IE or not, everyone who is a Web developer (unless what you write is restricted to a company intranet with forced 3rd-party browser usage) has to think about it, and it looks like we'll continue to get the shaft as far as standards support. That's just terrible, and I can't help but think that it has to be on purpose. You have that much money to pour into a product, and this is the result?
> I can place my browser on the seperate virtual > desktop to avoid clutter.
In Windows? Which software are you using to create decent virtual desktops? The one Microsoft provides is terrible, and I wasn't able to find a 3rd-party one I liked either. Admittedly, this was some time ago, so I'd be really interested to see if something good has come along. I still use XP at work for stuff like AutoCAD.
Also, there's no reason why you can't use all 3. Desktop > window > tab. I group my windows into desktops by functionality, and any given window might have several browser tabs, especially if it's a complex information database (e.g. ffxi.somepage.com). Tabs just give me one more level of organization; I can leave many things open and once, and they're encapsulated by windows so that I can easily set them aside for later (I often windowshade them).
It's too bad you're on Windows, because instead of having one hard-to-use taskbar with more items than it was really designed to handle, you could logically separate things into multiple desktops. And no, every implementation of multiple desktops I've ever tried for Windows has totally sucked, even on a modern machine.
I didn't like browser tabs at first...until I started to really use them. Now I use them as a lower level organizational unit. Desktop > window > tab. It's a really nice way to keep things organized. If you read sites with a lot of links (discussion boards, blogs, whatevah), you can just go through a page at a time and middle-click on whatever you find interesting. The tab opens in the background, and you can get to it when you're done with whatever you're reading (or not, if you like).
Don't have time to finish reading all of that, but want to get back to working on something? I can just go over to the "development" desktop, or the "personal" one (with email, finances, etc. That means I can easily leave things, not be distracted by them, and get back to them as I want. It helps me to focus, and cuts down on the clutter. Even at 1600x1200, I only like to deal with a certain number of windows at a time. Though I will say that said number is far greater under Enlightenment than it is under XP.
(I admit that XP's collapsing of related windows into a single taskbar entity is interesting, although it's not always helpful, and I'm not a huge fan of taskbars anyway.)
He may be refering to the "placeholder" man pages for some programs for which man pages are not available, but you're right; apt and dpkg have extensive man pages.
None of his experiences with Debian sound remotely similar to mine, and I've been using it for around 5 years (switched after 2 years of Red Hat). It's possible the whole rant was made up, but I try to give people more credit than that. Perhaps it can just be put down to different experience levels, expectations, etc. Obviously, Debian won't be for everyone.
(and yes, I run it on every machine, including both my desktops, the firewall [previously OpenBSD], servers that have been in use for years, etc.)
emusic.com is one. You pay for a certain amount per month (one model is $10 for 40 songs), and you get VBR MP3s. You get your first 100 free, and you can preview before you buy. You have to get specific (Java) software, but that's just to download, not play. They are really MP3s.
Now...the thing about emusic.com is that they have always focused on stuff outside of Top 40. If Top 40 is all you're interested in, then you probably don't want emusic. On the other hand, if you ignore everything but Top 40, I think you're really depriving yourself by being unwilling to find new music, and are almost certainly paying too much for most music (and music-related things like shows and merchandise) you do purchase.
Another poster mentioned Warp Records, and Warp has some pretty amazing stuff (again, you won't hear most of it on "the dial" unless you have a cool local independent radio station.)
> When *I* use a word, it's an American word *now*.
Sorry, Humpty-Dumpty. It's just as wrong for you to say "otakus" or "samurais" or "kois" as it is for a person of Asian descent to say "I need 8 box of that." English has plenty of instances where words are both plural and singular (shrimp, sheep, etc.), and millions of exceptions for you to memorize already. It won't kill you to get this one right too.
And of course, those implanted RFID chips would be deactivated once the child reached 18 years of age. No one would dream of continuing to use them to track adults.
This reminds me: when I had my cats sterilized, the vet offered the option of implanting a small ID tag under the skin (while they were knocked out anyway) so that they could be identified if picked up by animal control. $40 parts and labor. It seemed like a good idea for cats, but for some reason I just couldn't go for it. But it sounds like this sort of thing is pretty cheaply available.
I don't really see how that stacks up. First of all, I'm not looking for God to explain anything, and while some people might be, I think that many see it in quite the opposite way. There are things that we don't understand yet, and also things that are impossible for us to understand as we are now. And that's OK.
If you're talking about philosophy, guides to life, etc., this can certainly be separated from theology. Look no further than Jefferson's Bible.
I also don't understand how you take a complex system as an argument against intelligent design; I would tend to see it the other way. Or, as someone else said it: "It's unbelievable that something so mind-bogglingly useful evolved all by itself." In other words, it would take something incredible to set such systems in motion.
Do I believe with absolute certainty in a quantifiable vision of the Almighty? No, and I think that's how it was meant to be. I don't think that any one religion is supposed to get it completely right, and I think we're supposed to be responsible for living our own lives (but I don't fully agree with the Deists either). Based on the things I've encountered in my life, adamant total disbelief seems...unbelievable.
So in other words, you like the classic works done by the master artists, but don't really care for the legions of generic clones that only fanboys keep buying?
Anime is a medium, not a genre. You have the great stuff, like anything by Miyazaki, and then you have the 100th bloody movie about robot ninjas with a metal soundtrack and cheap production.
I would not say that I "hated cartoons" just because the most visible purveyor of them in the US is Disney. Crap is everyone, in many forms, and anime is no exception. There are a lot of books that suck, too.
I'm no fan of Microsoft (everything at home is currently Debian), but that sounds like hardware problems to me. Have you tried something like Knoppix on the same system?
And yes, "durable" is not a word that I would generally ascribe to Microsoft operating systems, and I agree that XP (even when disabling as much as possible) isn't as stable as 2k.
I would argue that the US school system does a rather poor job of "(preparing) kids for life." The major problem I have is that it teaches almost nothing about finances whatsoever. Barely anything about investing, probably nothing about balancing a checkbook, doing your taxes, budgeting, etc. Finances are (IIRC) the number one cause of relationship issues in this country, and we've got plenty of those.
In "home economics" class, I learned how to make a tote bag, but not how to reattach a button. In "tech ed", I learned how to make a tic-tac-toe board, but not how to check the fluids on my car, change a washer in a faucet, or fix a light switch.
Yes, and Mutt is a terrible Web browser. I guess I'll have to stop using it.
If you're going to use the hack that turned usenet into a file distribution channel, then you should actually get a tool that was meant to support that. Agent/Free Agent/Gravity is what most people used under Windows back when I used NNTP. IMHO, none of them compare to Pan, which also claims to run on Windows (though I've never used it there).
As for Outlook, I distinctly remember that as a pet peeve of many people on the groups I frequented. They didn't even want to hear about problems from anyone who was using it for NNTP.
Like the AC said, just tell XP that you're going to do it yourself. FWIW, I haven't been able to get it to recognize McAfee either (UMBC has a version that's available to all students, staff, faculty, etc., so it might be a bit different than the standard consumer build).
If I were installing Mozilla/Firefox in a case like that, I'd just rename the icon to "Internet" or "Netscape". They don't know any better anyway. Oh, and get rid of all the "bad" icons like IE, so they have no choice. This is the Internet (well, Web, but don't open THAT can) now. The nice one that won't screw up your computer.
My dad fixes cars, and my mom fixes people. I fix their computer. Neither of us tell the other ones how to do what they do best when we're helping each other; we just tell it like it is. I do explain to my parents what's going on when they want to know, but you don't have to if that's going to be a problem.
What you say about 80 hour weeks is interesting. My mom's been a physician's assistant for years, and just recently got out of emergency medicine and into something a lot slower paced. When she was working in the ER, 30 hours a week was considered to be "full time" for the purpose of benefits, etc. due to the fact that the job was so stressful.
If you've compiled PHP yourself, it has many modules for supporting various things, including different databases. If you've only compiled in MySQL support, it won't support PostgreSQL unless you've also compiled that module.
If you're fortunate enough to be using, say, Debian, you can just apt-get install the appropriate module, watch dpkg update your configuration, and restart Apache:)
That said, the code will likely still require some changes. I've used the PHP MySQL and PostgreSQL functions quite a bit, and the way they work can definitely produce differences in the code. If you're moving from PostgreSQL to MySQL (why!?), you may also have to deal with the limitations of MySQL's query syntax, which may require more code on the PHP side, etc.
"He was most notably known for his bestiality-porn spam and the alleged footage of adult film star Jenna Jameson and pop icon Britney Spears making out. This alleged footage was used to lure traffic to an adult Web site * via his spam operation."
The * denotes a little box icon, which has the following mouse-over text:
"Relevant Products/Services from Verisign -- FREE Guide to Secure Transactions"
Sadly, it only seems to lead to a form for Verizon's e-commerce stuff. Alas.
Bah. Neither list seems to include Sprecher, a tiny brewery in Milwaukee that ships less beer than the folks down the street at Miller spill. They also do soda (all of which is sweetened with honey instead of sugar). They brew the beer according to the German brewing laws (only water, yeast, grain, and hops). You can get a tour of the place, taste 4 beers and unlimited sodas, and keep the glass, all for $3. I went with another person, so I tried 8 beer types and all the sodas. Tasty to the last.
I got back to Baltimore and haven't been able to find Sprecher in this area yet, but they do ship around. See if you're lucky enough to have some. We have a great little bar in Baltimore (Brewer's Art) that specializes in Belgian beer, so I guess I can't complain too much.
How do you suppose the "file" utility works under Unix? The Psychic Friends' Network?
There are problems with both extensions and storing metadata in separate bits of the filesystem ("forks" in Mac OS). Extensions can get changed around, and of course we all know about foo.bmp.pif. Also, you *can't* tell Windows to always open files like README and CHANGELOG with Wordpad. These files don't have extensions, so Windows is utterly unable to classify them.
With writing metadata to the filesystem, you have a problem when something else accesses those files that doesn't know how to deal with the metadata. This was a problem for years when using a Unix server (with Samba and Netatalk) to access the same set of files; the Windows (or Unix) users would move around a file, the metadata wouldn't get moved around with it, and...ick.
I personally like the Unix way, which is not "remember what everything is", but "we can figure out what kind of file it is by looking at how the first part of it is written". Of course, there will be cases where the file is some obscure, unsupported type, written in an unusual way, etc., so I think a hybrid approach may be best.
Re:Do your groceries walk to the city by themselve
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
In addition to the other reply, it's going to be easier (for certain values of "easy") to convert a central power plant to use non-petroleum than it is to convert every single car in the city (and suburb, and country). Maryland already has Calvert Cliffs (nuclear), and I'm sure that we wouldn't suddenly be out of fuel one day. We'd have time to convert the power plants. It might be tough for a while, but it's going to be a heck of a lot easier for cyclists. I have 3 spare tubes hanging around right now (plus patches); how many spare tires do you have? Can you inflate yours with a hand pump?
We also have plenty of local farmers, and again, it's not going to be like flipping off a switch. Produce companies will see the rising costs and seek out an alternative before SUV drivers do. People need food, so someone will figure out a way to transport the food so that it can be sold. You're responsible for figuring out how to get to work.
(Speaking of which, the thing about being in better shape in case of a massive job shift is also an excellent point.)
Slashdot Mirror
In FFXI, GMs can take the form of standard PCs, albeit wearing custom armor with cool fiery effects and massive amounts of defense. They can sit in an area, invisible, if a player calls them to watch TOS violations taking place. They can teleport players to jail, which is an area called Mordion Gaol. They can also free players who have accidentally become stuck in the landscape. The only difference is that they don't walk a beat; they only appear when called. My understanding is that they have enough to deal with that they don't have time to simply walk around, and of course, raising player fees to provide more GMs probably wouldn't go down too well.
And in Mozilla (and probably Firefox), it IS a preference.
Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Images
Animated images should loop
* As many times as the image specifies
* Once
* Never
That's the worst part about this "upgrade". Whether they use IE or not, everyone who is a Web developer (unless what you write is restricted to a company intranet with forced 3rd-party browser usage) has to think about it, and it looks like we'll continue to get the shaft as far as standards support. That's just terrible, and I can't help but think that it has to be on purpose. You have that much money to pour into a product, and this is the result?
> I can place my browser on the seperate virtual
> desktop to avoid clutter.
In Windows? Which software are you using to create decent virtual desktops? The one Microsoft provides is terrible, and I wasn't able to find a 3rd-party one I liked either. Admittedly, this was some time ago, so I'd be really interested to see if something good has come along. I still use XP at work for stuff like AutoCAD.
Also, there's no reason why you can't use all 3. Desktop > window > tab. I group my windows into desktops by functionality, and any given window might have several browser tabs, especially if it's a complex information database (e.g. ffxi.somepage.com). Tabs just give me one more level of organization; I can leave many things open and once, and they're encapsulated by windows so that I can easily set them aside for later (I often windowshade them).
It's too bad you're on Windows, because instead of having one hard-to-use taskbar with more items than it was really designed to handle, you could logically separate things into multiple desktops. And no, every implementation of multiple desktops I've ever tried for Windows has totally sucked, even on a modern machine.
I didn't like browser tabs at first...until I started to really use them. Now I use them as a lower level organizational unit. Desktop > window > tab. It's a really nice way to keep things organized. If you read sites with a lot of links (discussion boards, blogs, whatevah), you can just go through a page at a time and middle-click on whatever you find interesting. The tab opens in the background, and you can get to it when you're done with whatever you're reading (or not, if you like).
Don't have time to finish reading all of that, but want to get back to working on something? I can just go over to the "development" desktop, or the "personal" one (with email, finances, etc. That means I can easily leave things, not be distracted by them, and get back to them as I want. It helps me to focus, and cuts down on the clutter. Even at 1600x1200, I only like to deal with a certain number of windows at a time. Though I will say that said number is far greater under Enlightenment than it is under XP.
(I admit that XP's collapsing of related windows into a single taskbar entity is interesting, although it's not always helpful, and I'm not a huge fan of taskbars anyway.)
He may be refering to the "placeholder" man pages for some programs for which man pages are not available, but you're right; apt and dpkg have extensive man pages.
None of his experiences with Debian sound remotely similar to mine, and I've been using it for around 5 years (switched after 2 years of Red Hat). It's possible the whole rant was made up, but I try to give people more credit than that. Perhaps it can just be put down to different experience levels, expectations, etc. Obviously, Debian won't be for everyone.
(and yes, I run it on every machine, including both my desktops, the firewall [previously OpenBSD], servers that have been in use for years, etc.)
emusic.com is one. You pay for a certain amount per month (one model is $10 for 40 songs), and you get VBR MP3s. You get your first 100 free, and you can preview before you buy. You have to get specific (Java) software, but that's just to download, not play. They are really MP3s.
Now...the thing about emusic.com is that they have always focused on stuff outside of Top 40. If Top 40 is all you're interested in, then you probably don't want emusic. On the other hand, if you ignore everything but Top 40, I think you're really depriving yourself by being unwilling to find new music, and are almost certainly paying too much for most music (and music-related things like shows and merchandise) you do purchase.
Another poster mentioned Warp Records, and Warp has some pretty amazing stuff (again, you won't hear most of it on "the dial" unless you have a cool local independent radio station.)
> When *I* use a word, it's an American word *now*.
Sorry, Humpty-Dumpty. It's just as wrong for you to say "otakus" or "samurais" or "kois" as it is for a person of Asian descent to say "I need 8 box of that." English has plenty of instances where words are both plural and singular (shrimp, sheep, etc.), and millions of exceptions for you to memorize already. It won't kill you to get this one right too.
This is a great answer to the grandparent post, and I'd hate to see it lost due to being AC (default score 0).
They did:
c igarettes
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html#
And the main site (framed):
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
And of course, those implanted RFID chips would be deactivated once the child reached 18 years of age. No one would dream of continuing to use them to track adults.
This reminds me: when I had my cats sterilized, the vet offered the option of implanting a small ID tag under the skin (while they were knocked out anyway) so that they could be identified if picked up by animal control. $40 parts and labor. It seemed like a good idea for cats, but for some reason I just couldn't go for it. But it sounds like this sort of thing is pretty cheaply available.
It may only be 12:25, but I'm prepared to say that that was the best post I'll read today.
I don't really see how that stacks up. First of all, I'm not looking for God to explain anything, and while some people might be, I think that many see it in quite the opposite way. There are things that we don't understand yet, and also things that are impossible for us to understand as we are now. And that's OK.
If you're talking about philosophy, guides to life, etc., this can certainly be separated from theology. Look no further than Jefferson's Bible.
I also don't understand how you take a complex system as an argument against intelligent design; I would tend to see it the other way. Or, as someone else said it: "It's unbelievable that something so mind-bogglingly useful evolved all by itself." In other words, it would take something incredible to set such systems in motion.
Do I believe with absolute certainty in a quantifiable vision of the Almighty? No, and I think that's how it was meant to be. I don't think that any one religion is supposed to get it completely right, and I think we're supposed to be responsible for living our own lives (but I don't fully agree with the Deists either). Based on the things I've encountered in my life, adamant total disbelief seems...unbelievable.
So in other words, you like the classic works done by the master artists, but don't really care for the legions of generic clones that only fanboys keep buying?
Anime is a medium, not a genre. You have the great stuff, like anything by Miyazaki, and then you have the 100th bloody movie about robot ninjas with a metal soundtrack and cheap production.
I would not say that I "hated cartoons" just because the most visible purveyor of them in the US is Disney. Crap is everyone, in many forms, and anime is no exception. There are a lot of books that suck, too.
I'm no fan of Microsoft (everything at home is currently Debian), but that sounds like hardware problems to me. Have you tried something like Knoppix on the same system?
And yes, "durable" is not a word that I would generally ascribe to Microsoft operating systems, and I agree that XP (even when disabling as much as possible) isn't as stable as 2k.
I would argue that the US school system does a rather poor job of "(preparing) kids for life." The major problem I have is that it teaches almost nothing about finances whatsoever. Barely anything about investing, probably nothing about balancing a checkbook, doing your taxes, budgeting, etc. Finances are (IIRC) the number one cause of relationship issues in this country, and we've got plenty of those.
In "home economics" class, I learned how to make a tote bag, but not how to reattach a button. In "tech ed", I learned how to make a tic-tac-toe board, but not how to check the fluids on my car, change a washer in a faucet, or fix a light switch.
Yes, and Mutt is a terrible Web browser. I guess I'll have to stop using it.
If you're going to use the hack that turned usenet into a file distribution channel, then you should actually get a tool that was meant to support that. Agent/Free Agent/Gravity is what most people used under Windows back when I used NNTP. IMHO, none of them compare to Pan, which also claims to run on Windows (though I've never used it there).
As for Outlook, I distinctly remember that as a pet peeve of many people on the groups I frequented. They didn't even want to hear about problems from anyone who was using it for NNTP.
Like the AC said, just tell XP that you're going to do it yourself. FWIW, I haven't been able to get it to recognize McAfee either (UMBC has a version that's available to all students, staff, faculty, etc., so it might be a bit different than the standard consumer build).
If I were installing Mozilla/Firefox in a case like that, I'd just rename the icon to "Internet" or "Netscape". They don't know any better anyway. Oh, and get rid of all the "bad" icons like IE, so they have no choice. This is the Internet (well, Web, but don't open THAT can) now. The nice one that won't screw up your computer.
My dad fixes cars, and my mom fixes people. I fix their computer. Neither of us tell the other ones how to do what they do best when we're helping each other; we just tell it like it is. I do explain to my parents what's going on when they want to know, but you don't have to if that's going to be a problem.
What you say about 80 hour weeks is interesting. My mom's been a physician's assistant for years, and just recently got out of emergency medicine and into something a lot slower paced. When she was working in the ER, 30 hours a week was considered to be "full time" for the purpose of benefits, etc. due to the fact that the job was so stressful.
If you've compiled PHP yourself, it has many modules for supporting various things, including different databases. If you've only compiled in MySQL support, it won't support PostgreSQL unless you've also compiled that module.
:)
If you're fortunate enough to be using, say, Debian, you can just apt-get install the appropriate module, watch dpkg update your configuration, and restart Apache
That said, the code will likely still require some changes. I've used the PHP MySQL and PostgreSQL functions quite a bit, and the way they work can definitely produce differences in the code. If you're moving from PostgreSQL to MySQL (why!?), you may also have to deal with the limitations of MySQL's query syntax, which may require more code on the PHP side, etc.
From the article:
"He was most notably known for his bestiality-porn spam and the alleged footage of adult film star Jenna Jameson and pop icon Britney Spears making out. This alleged footage was used to lure traffic to an adult Web site * via his spam operation."
The * denotes a little box icon, which has the following mouse-over text:
"Relevant Products/Services from Verisign -- FREE Guide to Secure Transactions"
Sadly, it only seems to lead to a form for Verizon's e-commerce stuff. Alas.
Bah. Neither list seems to include Sprecher, a tiny brewery in Milwaukee that ships less beer than the folks down the street at Miller spill. They also do soda (all of which is sweetened with honey instead of sugar). They brew the beer according to the German brewing laws (only water, yeast, grain, and hops). You can get a tour of the place, taste 4 beers and unlimited sodas, and keep the glass, all for $3. I went with another person, so I tried 8 beer types and all the sodas. Tasty to the last.
I got back to Baltimore and haven't been able to find Sprecher in this area yet, but they do ship around. See if you're lucky enough to have some. We have a great little bar in Baltimore (Brewer's Art) that specializes in Belgian beer, so I guess I can't complain too much.
How do you suppose the "file" utility works under Unix? The Psychic Friends' Network?
There are problems with both extensions and storing metadata in separate bits of the filesystem ("forks" in Mac OS). Extensions can get changed around, and of course we all know about foo.bmp.pif. Also, you *can't* tell Windows to always open files like README and CHANGELOG with Wordpad. These files don't have extensions, so Windows is utterly unable to classify them.
With writing metadata to the filesystem, you have a problem when something else accesses those files that doesn't know how to deal with the metadata. This was a problem for years when using a Unix server (with Samba and Netatalk) to access the same set of files; the Windows (or Unix) users would move around a file, the metadata wouldn't get moved around with it, and...ick.
I personally like the Unix way, which is not "remember what everything is", but "we can figure out what kind of file it is by looking at how the first part of it is written". Of course, there will be cases where the file is some obscure, unsupported type, written in an unusual way, etc., so I think a hybrid approach may be best.
In addition to the other reply, it's going to be easier (for certain values of "easy") to convert a central power plant to use non-petroleum than it is to convert every single car in the city (and suburb, and country). Maryland already has Calvert Cliffs (nuclear), and I'm sure that we wouldn't suddenly be out of fuel one day. We'd have time to convert the power plants. It might be tough for a while, but it's going to be a heck of a lot easier for cyclists. I have 3 spare tubes hanging around right now (plus patches); how many spare tires do you have? Can you inflate yours with a hand pump?
We also have plenty of local farmers, and again, it's not going to be like flipping off a switch. Produce companies will see the rising costs and seek out an alternative before SUV drivers do. People need food, so someone will figure out a way to transport the food so that it can be sold. You're responsible for figuring out how to get to work.
(Speaking of which, the thing about being in better shape in case of a massive job shift is also an excellent point.)