What I don't get is that there are always some who need to understand everything. Who cares what the appeal is. The people who do stuff like that seem to find it and in my opinion that is all there is to it.
This is still a site about News for Nerds, and it doesn't get much nerdier than that. There are people who have more interests than just Linux and SCO.
I refrained from taking sides in the whole debate. I just wanted to show off my intimate knowledge of superfluous pop-culture. And the last couple of times I have seen the three movies it was always back to back, so they form an unit in my mind. It's just one film and I judge the whole, not the single acts.
The whole Empire vs. Jedi debate warrants a Clerks quote. You guys like Kevin Smith, right. Anyway when asked which of the both films he preferred Dante spoke thus:
"Empire's got the better ending. Luke loses his arm, finds out Vader is his father. All that Jedi had was a bunch of muppets."
Enough with the "rape-of-childhood-memories" bullshit already! I am so fucking sick of all the drama queens pretending that somehow a film they saw at the age of x+20 has the power to erase both the joy experienced at the age of x and the times spent pretending to be Han Solo.
That has already happened and unless George Lucas goes around lobotomising his audience there is no way it can un-happen. If you feel that your wallet has been raped then maybe you shouldn't have bought the DVD or the action figures. Spending money on a movie ticket is like forced sex to you? Someone has to get their sense of perspective checked and it is not me.
Needed to get this off my chest. So much in fact that I will throw in an extra point for the moderators to take away from me.
No need for screenshots. It's not that I don't believe you when you say you are running 10.3. About the "launch in background" issue: After following a link to macosxhints elsewhere in this thread I found out that basically this depends on a fixed double-click speed. 1.5 clicks (for those who don't know what that is: click+click and hold) makes the behaviour work for me. My double-click habits are either to fast or to slow but way beyond changing. Yours seem to be just right. My guess is that this is a bit of a bug. Maybe 1.5 clicks are supposed to have this behaviour but if you time the second click just right it registers as 1.5. If this were a match I'd call this a draw because both of us said the truth in their original statements: It works for you and doesn't/didn't for me.
Regarding resizing of the Dock: Seems like there are two different definitions of the word "border" when it comes to the dock. If you call the little black bar between trash (plus minimised windows) and applications the border then yes, dragging the mouse there will resize the dock. If you call the circumference of the entire milky white rectangle of the dock border then no, dragging won't do anything. Now I will make a really corny comment about how borders for me are on the outside of things and not on the inside and what that has to do with me living in the EU. Then you will come to my house and beat me up.
No it doesn't. When you click on an application icon in the dock (and it doesn't distinguish whether you click once or twice) the current application loses focus. You might have clicked in the topmost window (in my case that would be Safari right now) while the other application is just starting up thus returning focus and making the other app start up in the background.
To resize the dock you might have been looking for an area that was free so no app/document name hovered over it. The only area of the Dock where that happens is at the separator between documents and applications--the exact place where you can find the separator bar that has always been the target for resizing the dock. This is where the mouse-pointer changes to indicate this. It doesn't matter if you "touch" that area at the very top or anywhere else, but you can only resize the dock from the separator (unless you open dock options, of course). Sorry to disagree and all that, but vanilla OS X 10.3 does not "work as advertised"
Since the piece originated in Edge magazine I suppose that little factoid is meaningless. In case you have never read it: Edge is by far the best computer and video gaming magazine in existence. They writers are not always objective--they are fans after all--but they are independent. They might praise one system and condemn another, but it feels like they are doing it because they believe and not because someone paid them off. It also is, as far as I know, the only one you can safely read in public because of the fantastic art-direction.
Their web-presence is not really representative so I urge you to check it out on a news-stand if you ever have the chance. In the recent tenth anniversary issue they had a story on the origins of the magazine. According to official gospel it was not launched to make money, but to simply be the best gaming mag in existence. I cannot judge whether or not this is true, but it certainly feels that way. And yes, I am a fanboy, but a truly well done magazine is such a rare thing that I simply have to cherish it.
We all know how important low wind-resistance is in space-ships. Because otherwise the saucer-section of the Enterprise might not have crashed quite as spectacularly in that one film where it did.
As a DJ and audiophile I've archived my CD collection with Ogg Vorbis, [...]
May I enquire what you, as a DJ, do with these Ogg files? Traktor doesn't seem to support it and as far as I know there aren't any other viable computer-DJ-solutions out there. Traktor does support the iPod, incidentally, but maybe it will support that Dell thingy (or other players) at some point in the future.
While it doesn't say so explicitly after reading this article I am under the impression that they will install the things in the purely pedestrian areas at the centre of the participating cities. It seems like the boss of the company hinted on a possible placement in front of Vienna's Stephansdom. That placement would be perfect for traffic, but maybe not that ideal for unifying Europe. The Stephansplatz is where you will always find more tourists than natives (expect maybe at new years eve) anyway, but I couldn't think of a better place myself.
And about the flashing: That will definitely come from the brits. They seem to be really crazy about the sport. Definitely more so than other countries.
Considering that a lot of British people don't speak Austrian German, I would suggest most people, hearing or deaf, would resort to the internationally understood language of giving them the finger.
A lot of Austrian people speak English, though. Or they are at least faking it on Slashdot. Look at me for a perfect example. And English people quite frequently give two fingers instead of just the one.
They plan to install two pretty big cylinders. One in Vienna, one in London. They are linked via a 100 MBit network connection. One will film a panorama in London and project it in Vienna. The other will, well, do the exact opposite. Apparently people standing in front of one will be able to talk to people standing in front of the other.
Since I live in one of the two cities about to be connected this way and you seem to live in the other (judging from your URL) we will both see what it is like in May. I am just wondering how it will work once more than two cities are connected. Imagine being involved in an animated conversation with someone in Berlin only to be switched to Stockholm in mid-sentence.
This is not a direct translation, but rather the gist from the original German article. Please forgive the shitty English.
The first two cylinders are supposed to be installed in March of 2004. They plan to connect all European capitals by 2008. The plan is to have them feature views from other cylinders in the "best picture quality". Additionally people will be able to contact their counterparts at the other cylinder in "sound and picture"
The cylinders seem to cost about two million Euro a piece. They plan to earn money by selling advertising. The advertising will be limited to a maximum of 13% "airtime". Since they plan to be on air 24/7 that translates to 192 minutes of ads per day. They will sell advertising time to "exclusive content-partners" to "not endanger the THOLOS concept" and stop any "dilution" through additional programmes.
Inside the cylinder you will find eight HDTV-projectors, 22 microphones, 22 loudspeakers and three cameras. Networking is done via 100 MBit-Lines. To protect from vandalism the glass walls will be coated with a "special nano-structured anti-graffiti-protective-coating". And they want to hire security personnel to keep an eye on the expensive hardware around the clock.
There must be some other way to handle this situation. I know that I was one of those crying "foul play" when the RIAA started (or was rumoured to have started) sabotaging various peer-to-peer services with faked files. But looking back I must admit that that was a rather cool tactic to use. They entered the game and adapted to the existing rules and exploited them. The coolness stopped there, however.
Lawsuits are, in circumstances like these and my opinion, the unfair way out. Using a measure that is not available to both sides. More or less exploiting the legal service because you cannot (or don't want to) compete in any other way. And don't let me get started on copy-protection. Hardly anything has pissed me off as much as when I bought a CD that I couldn't rip and put on my mp3 player. Incidentally that was the last CD I bough. I remember seeing a discussion featuring Chuck D. and Lars Ulrich at the height of the Metallica/Napster controversy. Ulrich's favourite word was "control". And that is the way it is, huh? It's all about control where it should be about respect.
Fans don't agree with the way things are going anymore. Instead of adapting to their wishes you decide to sue them. That is what living in a free country with a free market is all about. The need to adapt is gone when you have the courts on your side.
Windows users like choice? Then why do most of them use Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and, well, Windows? They generally take what they are fed, right? Microsoft doesn't yet have a solution of their own for legal music downloading as far as I know. So they need some aggressive rhetoric. I was under the impression that the iTunes music store had one of the largest catalogues out there. Does the general user want to use a plethora of services to locate the right song? I don't think so, but I don't work for Microsoft's media division.
.. I'll still get most of my music with SoulSeek, Kazaa, WinMX and Overnet, and buy the rest from second hand CD shops.
Anyone with me on this?
Not me. I get most of my music from Juno, Substance or Vinyl Addiction. The gratification is not instantaneous, but I still don't have to move my arse. But I do visit used record stores from time to time. What a shame that the old New Order records are so overpriced (at least if they are original Factory releases)
The marketplace is starting to get crowded now. Just a couple of stories back the new Napster was discussed and now this. I really wonder how they will manage on the PC side of things. Name recognition, promotional partners and advertising will certainly help. No word about non-American availability, though.
I find the inclusion of audio-books quite interesting. Up until now they advertised their partnership with audible.com on that front. An audible subscription still is the better deal if you listen to a lot of books (you can get two a month for US$ 20) but it looks like single titles are cheaper, or at least in the same ballpark.
I am curious how iTunes for Windows fares in the look and feel and functionality departments. Seems like I must visit a Windows-using friend at some time in the future. Expect to see the return of "number of songs sold in period" press-releases from Apple.
On an unrelated note: Did the original submitter of the story really need to link Apple, AOL and Pepsi? Are these URLs people have a hard time figuring out otherwise?
Question one: Will they include a version of Sam & Max that is playable on the XBOX? Or will you need a PC to take advantage of the bonus? I can't be the only person out there owning a XBOX but no Windows PC. After all you can get the XBOX so you don't have to get a Windows machine.
Question two: Is the Armed and Dangerous game any good? I guess I could get myself to play through Sam & Max for a tenth time (after all it has been a couple of years since I last did that), but the bonus won't make my buy a shitty game.
Day of the Tentacle still is the Lucasarts adventure I remember most fondly. I tried downloading it a while ago as perfect fodder for one of those newfangled SCUMM interpreters but couldn't find my original manual. I had to stop more or less immediately after going through the grandfather clock. Sooner or later they will hopefully re-release that one as well.
I really would want to continue playing my character in an eventual sequel. Naturally this would mean changing the tone quite a bit, since you are rather powerful at the end. I also wonder if all or at least some of the additions to the PC version will make it onto the list of download-able items for XBOX live once they get around offering any.
Even though it does not sound quite as catchy I would guess that the XBOX2 (quite a stupid name in itself) will get the third game in the Half-Life series. The second console is still much further off than the second game. They might have delayed it to get the PC and XBOX versions out at the same time, though, which would be fine with me. I don't have a PC, after all, but I have a XBOX.
Interesting, because the CIA or the Mosad would be part of my biggest worries. I would know I would either die or be shipped in a box to some remote Island on which neither American nor Israely law exists.
But maybe you don't regard these two as American interest groups when millions of Americans are nuked by a 'virus';-)
No, I don't consider the secret services of two nations to be interest groups. They are governmental in nature as opposed to the commercial nature of the two "* Associations of America."
The problem is that such an attack would not only reach private machines, but quite a few computers that have no business running such a software in the first place. Since almost everything is running Windows these days the few crucial computers you could take out in addition to the "meaningless" ones might have a very large impact. Their fifteen million user-base might or might not be a fact. Just claiming it might make a lot of people think that they are trustworthy and cool, and get es5 one step closer to the claimed number. I don't know if you might manage to produce another power-failure this way, or if you could keep planes and trains from staying on schedule. I do know, however, that not being able to access my favourite web-site would not be all that I had to worry about.
Defending your own country against and invader (please check it for yourself - that's what Israel is) is not "terrorism".
While I might be tempted to agree with that statement under certain circumstances it does not apply here. Should my assumption be correct (and there are some huge "ifs" involved) then this attack would, or could, be targeted at every nation with a high percentage of personal computers. Israel is not the only country that qualifies for that. As such it would not be defence against an aggressor but offence against multiple bystanders. I would not go as far as calling them innocent, but they might not be actively involved in the conflict.
Wouldn't that be just the cleverest act of terrorism you can think of? Bait the "foreign devils" with all you hate about them and then, BAM!, nuke millions of computers in an instant. Takes more preparation to get off the ground than your garden variety virus or worm but the pay-off is much greater, isn't it? And if I was living in Palestine threat of legal action by some American interest group would be the least of my worries.
Slashdot Mirror
This is still a site about News for Nerds, and it doesn't get much nerdier than that. There are people who have more interests than just Linux and SCO.
I refrained from taking sides in the whole debate. I just wanted to show off my intimate knowledge of superfluous pop-culture. And the last couple of times I have seen the three movies it was always back to back, so they form an unit in my mind. It's just one film and I judge the whole, not the single acts.
"Empire's got the better ending. Luke loses his arm, finds out Vader is his father. All that Jedi had was a bunch of muppets."
That has already happened and unless George Lucas goes around lobotomising his audience there is no way it can un-happen. If you feel that your wallet has been raped then maybe you shouldn't have bought the DVD or the action figures. Spending money on a movie ticket is like forced sex to you? Someone has to get their sense of perspective checked and it is not me.
Needed to get this off my chest. So much in fact that I will throw in an extra point for the moderators to take away from me.
Regarding resizing of the Dock: Seems like there are two different definitions of the word "border" when it comes to the dock. If you call the little black bar between trash (plus minimised windows) and applications the border then yes, dragging the mouse there will resize the dock. If you call the circumference of the entire milky white rectangle of the dock border then no, dragging won't do anything. Now I will make a really corny comment about how borders for me are on the outside of things and not on the inside and what that has to do with me living in the EU. Then you will come to my house and beat me up.
To resize the dock you might have been looking for an area that was free so no app/document name hovered over it. The only area of the Dock where that happens is at the separator between documents and applications--the exact place where you can find the separator bar that has always been the target for resizing the dock. This is where the mouse-pointer changes to indicate this. It doesn't matter if you "touch" that area at the very top or anywhere else, but you can only resize the dock from the separator (unless you open dock options, of course). Sorry to disagree and all that, but vanilla OS X 10.3 does not "work as advertised"
And I totally could have told you. Ah, well ....
Since the piece originated in Edge magazine I suppose that little factoid is meaningless. In case you have never read it: Edge is by far the best computer and video gaming magazine in existence. They writers are not always objective--they are fans after all--but they are independent. They might praise one system and condemn another, but it feels like they are doing it because they believe and not because someone paid them off. It also is, as far as I know, the only one you can safely read in public because of the fantastic art-direction.
Their web-presence is not really representative so I urge you to check it out on a news-stand if you ever have the chance. In the recent tenth anniversary issue they had a story on the origins of the magazine. According to official gospel it was not launched to make money, but to simply be the best gaming mag in existence. I cannot judge whether or not this is true, but it certainly feels that way. And yes, I am a fanboy, but a truly well done magazine is such a rare thing that I simply have to cherish it.
We all know how important low wind-resistance is in space-ships. Because otherwise the saucer-section of the Enterprise might not have crashed quite as spectacularly in that one film where it did.
May I enquire what you, as a DJ, do with these Ogg files? Traktor doesn't seem to support it and as far as I know there aren't any other viable computer-DJ-solutions out there. Traktor does support the iPod, incidentally, but maybe it will support that Dell thingy (or other players) at some point in the future.
And about the flashing: That will definitely come from the brits. They seem to be really crazy about the sport. Definitely more so than other countries.
A lot of Austrian people speak English, though. Or they are at least faking it on Slashdot. Look at me for a perfect example. And English people quite frequently give two fingers instead of just the one.
Since I live in one of the two cities about to be connected this way and you seem to live in the other (judging from your URL) we will both see what it is like in May. I am just wondering how it will work once more than two cities are connected. Imagine being involved in an animated conversation with someone in Berlin only to be switched to Stockholm in mid-sentence.
The first two cylinders are supposed to be installed in March of 2004. They plan to connect all European capitals by 2008. The plan is to have them feature views from other cylinders in the "best picture quality". Additionally people will be able to contact their counterparts at the other cylinder in "sound and picture"
The cylinders seem to cost about two million Euro a piece. They plan to earn money by selling advertising. The advertising will be limited to a maximum of 13% "airtime". Since they plan to be on air 24/7 that translates to 192 minutes of ads per day. They will sell advertising time to "exclusive content-partners" to "not endanger the THOLOS concept" and stop any "dilution" through additional programmes.
Inside the cylinder you will find eight HDTV-projectors, 22 microphones, 22 loudspeakers and three cameras. Networking is done via 100 MBit-Lines. To protect from vandalism the glass walls will be coated with a "special nano-structured anti-graffiti-protective-coating". And they want to hire security personnel to keep an eye on the expensive hardware around the clock.
There must be some other way to handle this situation. I know that I was one of those crying "foul play" when the RIAA started (or was rumoured to have started) sabotaging various peer-to-peer services with faked files. But looking back I must admit that that was a rather cool tactic to use. They entered the game and adapted to the existing rules and exploited them. The coolness stopped there, however.
Lawsuits are, in circumstances like these and my opinion, the unfair way out. Using a measure that is not available to both sides. More or less exploiting the legal service because you cannot (or don't want to) compete in any other way. And don't let me get started on copy-protection. Hardly anything has pissed me off as much as when I bought a CD that I couldn't rip and put on my mp3 player. Incidentally that was the last CD I bough. I remember seeing a discussion featuring Chuck D. and Lars Ulrich at the height of the Metallica/Napster controversy. Ulrich's favourite word was "control". And that is the way it is, huh? It's all about control where it should be about respect.
Fans don't agree with the way things are going anymore. Instead of adapting to their wishes you decide to sue them. That is what living in a free country with a free market is all about. The need to adapt is gone when you have the courts on your side.
Windows users like choice? Then why do most of them use Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and, well, Windows? They generally take what they are fed, right? Microsoft doesn't yet have a solution of their own for legal music downloading as far as I know. So they need some aggressive rhetoric. I was under the impression that the iTunes music store had one of the largest catalogues out there. Does the general user want to use a plethora of services to locate the right song? I don't think so, but I don't work for Microsoft's media division.
Not me. I get most of my music from Juno, Substance or Vinyl Addiction. The gratification is not instantaneous, but I still don't have to move my arse. But I do visit used record stores from time to time. What a shame that the old New Order records are so overpriced (at least if they are original Factory releases)
I find the inclusion of audio-books quite interesting. Up until now they advertised their partnership with audible.com on that front. An audible subscription still is the better deal if you listen to a lot of books (you can get two a month for US$ 20) but it looks like single titles are cheaper, or at least in the same ballpark.
I am curious how iTunes for Windows fares in the look and feel and functionality departments. Seems like I must visit a Windows-using friend at some time in the future. Expect to see the return of "number of songs sold in period" press-releases from Apple.
On an unrelated note: Did the original submitter of the story really need to link Apple, AOL and Pepsi? Are these URLs people have a hard time figuring out otherwise?
Question one: Will they include a version of Sam & Max that is playable on the XBOX? Or will you need a PC to take advantage of the bonus? I can't be the only person out there owning a XBOX but no Windows PC. After all you can get the XBOX so you don't have to get a Windows machine.
Question two: Is the Armed and Dangerous game any good? I guess I could get myself to play through Sam & Max for a tenth time (after all it has been a couple of years since I last did that), but the bonus won't make my buy a shitty game.
Day of the Tentacle still is the Lucasarts adventure I remember most fondly. I tried downloading it a while ago as perfect fodder for one of those newfangled SCUMM interpreters but couldn't find my original manual. I had to stop more or less immediately after going through the grandfather clock. Sooner or later they will hopefully re-release that one as well.
I really would want to continue playing my character in an eventual sequel. Naturally this would mean changing the tone quite a bit, since you are rather powerful at the end. I also wonder if all or at least some of the additions to the PC version will make it onto the list of download-able items for XBOX live once they get around offering any.
Even though it does not sound quite as catchy I would guess that the XBOX2 (quite a stupid name in itself) will get the third game in the Half-Life series. The second console is still much further off than the second game. They might have delayed it to get the PC and XBOX versions out at the same time, though, which would be fine with me. I don't have a PC, after all, but I have a XBOX.
No, I don't consider the secret services of two nations to be interest groups. They are governmental in nature as opposed to the commercial nature of the two "* Associations of America."
The problem is that such an attack would not only reach private machines, but quite a few computers that have no business running such a software in the first place. Since almost everything is running Windows these days the few crucial computers you could take out in addition to the "meaningless" ones might have a very large impact. Their fifteen million user-base might or might not be a fact. Just claiming it might make a lot of people think that they are trustworthy and cool, and get es5 one step closer to the claimed number. I don't know if you might manage to produce another power-failure this way, or if you could keep planes and trains from staying on schedule. I do know, however, that not being able to access my favourite web-site would not be all that I had to worry about.
While I might be tempted to agree with that statement under certain circumstances it does not apply here. Should my assumption be correct (and there are some huge "ifs" involved) then this attack would, or could, be targeted at every nation with a high percentage of personal computers. Israel is not the only country that qualifies for that. As such it would not be defence against an aggressor but offence against multiple bystanders. I would not go as far as calling them innocent, but they might not be actively involved in the conflict.
Wouldn't that be just the cleverest act of terrorism you can think of? Bait the "foreign devils" with all you hate about them and then, BAM!, nuke millions of computers in an instant. Takes more preparation to get off the ground than your garden variety virus or worm but the pay-off is much greater, isn't it? And if I was living in Palestine threat of legal action by some American interest group would be the least of my worries.