What "others"? There's only Apple. Linux/BSD/etc are only available on physical media for those that don't want to or don't know how to get it any other way. As for programs, everything short of Photoshop is available for download as well.
This isn't about open source vs. closed source. It's about market share.
Windows has more exploits than Macs because more people use Windows, the saying goes.
So: why, in the late 90s, when Apache had 2-5x the market share of IIS, were there so many IIS exploits and so few for Apache?
Answer: well, I won't say the answer, but it DAMN sure wasn't because IIS had more users, because it didn't. This directly refutes the "Windows is perfect, it just has so many viruses because there are so many boxes to pwn!!!!!11"
That's the point I was making--that high market share != lots of exploits.
Besides, market share or no market share, there are millions upon millions of Mac users--most of them brimming with confidence, and no AV software or firewall. (It's worth noting that XP SP2 comes with a firewall that's on by default; OS X comes with one but it's off by default. And Safari, the ONLY browser included with OS X 10.4, comes with the option "automatically open downloaded files" enabled by default as well!) Ooh, wouldn't that make a GREAT target for hackers--all those unprotected machines? Sure would! So... where are the exploits for Mac OS X? *sound of crickets chirping*
Your comment is SO FUCKING LAME that, despite the fact that you're an AC, I'll dissect every single point.
> and youll rush to buy another point release that is the equivelant of a glorified service pack.
No, SPs are (supposed to be) bug fixes, each version of OS X has many new features.
> Apple posts security updates all the time.
Ah yes, this old gem: "Neither OS is perfect, therefore they're both equally bad." Uh-huh.
> Granted most are much harder to execute than windows flaws
I assume that when you say this you mean "Apple has had ZERO severe, self-replicating, self-spreading viruses in the wild in the last 5 years, compared to literally thousands for Windows." There, fixed that for you.
> but they are still there and because of the macboy fanaticism most dont upgrade their machines if there was actually enough macs to make it worth a hackers time they would probably have even more known vulnerabilities and problems.
Ah yes, Apple's low market share is the only reason that Macs suffer less. Didn't you yourself say that Mac flaws are "much harder to execute than windows flaws"? And didn't we settle this whole size-matters thing OVER FIVE YEARS AGO by comparing the number of exploits found in Apache (market leader) with IIS (distant second)?
> I administer macs and windows and most of our problems are with MACS... say it aint so alex...
Maybe it's the quality of your admins?
> they lock up, they beachball,
Yeah, occasionally. I work with over 400 so I see it happen every so often. And the beachball is just a 'wait' cursor, it doesn't necessarily mean you've got a problem that can't be overcome or won't solve itself in a few more seconds. It's actually quite nice--it prevents you from going click-happy and causing MORE delays.
> our xserve every few months just decides it wont boot and has to be restored.
Remember, kids: the plural of "anecdote" is NOT "data." Again--bad admins? Possibly bad hardware? (Possibly a totally untrue statement from an anonymous user on a web forum?) Our four XServes hum along with uptimes only disrupted by the occasional system software update, and we haven't restored one yet. (Most are G4s, if that gives you a hint of their age.)
> I get so sick of the Mac fanatics acting like their machines never have problems
It's not "never", it's just "a thousand times less than the competition." Or, in my mind, "EFFECTIVELY zero."
> the only group i know more full of crap than our politicians is mac fanboys
I'm pressy sure/. ACs are up there in the top five as well.
This has nothing to do with fanboyism. The difference is, OS X from 10.0 to 10.1 (faster) to 10.2 (smoother looking) to 10.3 (expose) to 10.4 (dashboard, spotlight) has had lots of improvements, and each previous release was only a year or so apart, and 10.4 came out over a year ago, while Vista took the largest software company in the world 5 years to come up, stripping features the whole time, which is is just coming out now. (Where by "now" I mean "soon.") So of course the differences in each version of OS X are smaller, and of course it's more impressive to have had a product with most of the same features out sooner, and of course MS looks like crap for taking so long to deliver so little.
Add to that the system requirements, the many different versions, and Microsoft's abysmal security record--their response to which is mostly to ask users "Are you sure you want to do this?" before every trivial operation, AND NOT EVEN REQUIRING AN ADMIN PASSWORD TO SAY 'YES'--and you can see why people aren't getting excited about it.
On a related note, I think it would be the funniest thing in the world if Apple announced tomorrow that 10.5 would be released on Monday the 29th.:-)
And, IIRC, the reason Hollywood exists in California is because many early movies were ripped-off plays and books and the filmmakers wanted to be as far away as physically possible from all the east-coast-based copyright holders. The WHOLE FUCKING INDUSTRY is built on copyright violation! (Assuming what I read on the Interwebs is true.)
A few random thoughts
on
iPhone Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Here are some thoughts I've had in the last couple weeks.
Success: - Will it be a success? Yes. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it gorgeous? Yes. And the price will eventually drop, just like the iPod did. It's Apple's famous method: release a really nice, almost perfect product for a bunch of money, sell a bunch to the first batch of buyers; then, when that supply is exhausted, improve it, drop the price, sell again to the next round who weren't willing to buy the first time. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Note: don't look for a widescreen, touchscreen, iPod until MAYBE September for the 2007 Xmas season; more likely, you'll have to wait until Spring 2008. Apple won't let a nice iPod cannibalize sales they'll get to people who buy the iPhone MOSTLY because they want a widescreen iPod. Oh, and by the way--current iPods have 4:3 screens. (1.33:1.) All Apple's computers are 16:10. (1.6:1.) The iPhone, like the original PBG4, is 3:2. (1.5:1.) So: what shape should iTMS movies be?)
- BUT--the iPod wasn't a success just because it was pretty. It really is a better, easier-to-use MP3 player than anything else out there for most people. The iPhone will ONLY succeed if the touchscreen system works as well as Steve says it does. I can tell it'll be mostly great just by looking--a regular touchscreen could easily handle 90% of the single-finger action he demo'ed--but I'll have to see the keyboard in person to become a believer on that.
- will Apple work out a deal with Cingular to offer a reasonable data plan? No one will be happy with the Internet Communicator of the Future if it costs $100/month to do anything with. For this to really, really work, there has to be reasonably-fast, reasonably-priced data. If it becomes a situation of "Oh, I can't use Safari until I get to Starbucks or Panera" that will be a big buzzkill.
- will they meet their goals? They said they want to sell 10 million phones--have 1% of the market--in 18 months. (God, that sounds like so many WWW business plans I heard in 1995-97--"If we could just get 1% of all web users to visit our site...") That sounds good on the one hand, given that they want 1% of a billion phones, BUT--Cingular only has 60M customers. Is the iPhone so great that ONE SIXTH of Cingular's customer base will spend $500? If not, are that many people going to get out of contracts and switch carriers in the next 18 months? I'm not so sure. Like I said, I really think the iPhone will be a success, but their expectations are pretty high.
Other thoughts: - no iChat! no iChat A/V! How LAME! Either a) it's part of the deal not to step on Cingular's toes by offering anything like VOIP, or b) it's waiting for Rev B. Unfortunately, my money's on A. Well, at least you can use the browser to access Meebo.
- Proximity sensor--nice. But I hope that's not one of their patents. My Canon XTi turns off the screen when you put it up to your face--and it already exists.;-)
- Apple will need to add 'Cingular' and 'iPhone' to Leopard's spellcheck dictionary.:-)
- I'll pick one up in a couple rev's just to have a decent browser. Despite having twice as many pixels as the iPhone, browsing on my Axim mostly sucks.
Agreed. I don't even like Star Trek but I think he did an incredible job of decorating and I wouldn't mind having a setup like this because it just looks so right.. This looks as good as Star Tours or Space Mountain or anything else you'll see at a Disney or Universal park. (Speaking of which, Universal Orlando is getting rid of the Back to the Future ride. I was really hoping it'd make it until 2015, at least.) Why is this any worse than every single boring fancy-wood setup you see in Home Theater Magazine? At least this guy is being a little creative and having some fun, rather than just surrounding himself in mahogany or whatever to make sure you know how rich he is.
Now he just needs a bar that looks like the Mos Eisley Cantina.:-)
Entrapment is when a cop comes up to you and says "You wanna buy some weed?" or "I'll pay you to kill my wife." I think what the MPAA is doing here is closer to entrapment than not--yeah, in the same way, you don't have to download that file, but on the other hand, by putting it in their shared folder and/or posting a tracker, what they're doing is more like "offering" than "leaving laying around." But the fact that it's not a "real" file doesn't matter, any more than the fact that you bought oregano or baby powder from an undercover cop will help your case. The intent is clear.
That said, I think they could do a lot more damage to torrents overall by worsening the signal:noise ratio than by going after infringers.
...still no love for DirecTiVos. And, I guess, never. From http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1-1.asp "The TiVoToGo feature is not currently available on Series3. This feature will not be available [emphasis mine] on the DIRECTV DVR with TiVo or the original TiVo boxes (TiVo Series1)."
All I want to do is download shows. I've got two hackable TiVos (and even a supported USB/network adapter) but I've never been able to get it to work, and with two jobs, a newborn, and no "spare" PCs anymore, it's difficult for me to try--my last attempt was over a year ago. Are there any reputable services/people that can hack my TiVo for me? I'm not trying to get around TiVo's fees, I just want to have it make shows available for download, and maybe a web-based frontend for recording/deleting shows and the ability to make its daily call over the network would be nice, too. Any suggestions?
It's a total cliché but it's true--learning another language makes you learn more about your own. I learned more about English grammar in my first semester of Spanish than I did in all previous years--I'm sure I was taught it all at some point, but I never had to really use the rules of English grammar because I could speak the language without trying and I did the (more or less) right thing naturally. But in learning Spanish, all that stuff about infinitives, progressives, the subjunctive, etc. finally stuck.
BTW, the article was neat. Glad it got accepted. Thanks for submitting.
"If you mostly compose plain Word documents, simple presentations and plain spreadsheets, the new design may not be worth the effort to master it, and you might want to stick with an older version of Office."
I've used the beta of Office 2007. The ribbon is neither bad nor good to me, and live previews are very nice, but my needs are few, and I will indeed be sticking with an older version of Office--specifically, I'll soon be celebrating* one whole decade with Office 97.:-) The features are fine, there's no activation, it runs really, really fast on 5-year-old hardware...
* OK, not really celebrating, but you know what I mean.
> Why is it that relating computers to cars is considered insightful?
There's actually one in the original article: "It's as if Toyota decided to switch the position of choices on the automobile shift lever, or Motorola decided to rearrange the buttons on the cellphone key pad."
Cars aside, imagine a world where keypads went 789, 456, 123, 0. Man, that would SUCK.;-)
Oh, no, wait... it would FUCKING RULE if the keypads on my phones, computer, ATM, etc. were all the same. Ever use a computer's keypad to enter a phone number you dial often?
Sorry, no offense meant. Not trying to be a grammar nazi (headlines are--almost by definition--almost always grammatically incorrect in some way), it just struck me as funny. (My wife is Hungarian and she's always complaining about our language, so it's always on my mind.) I wasn't meaning to make fun of you at all--the fact is, it's hard to write good headlines. (Just watch Jay Leno for proof!) I like your alternative--very clever.:-)
Worst headline ever, from the Orlando Sentinel a year or so ago: "QUAKE'S RUINS YIELDS LIVES." VERY hard to parse that-- - every word in that sentence could be a noun or verb - every word ends in S, which could indicate a present tense verb, a plural noun, or a possessive noun - the all-caps makes the apostrophe easy to miss The solution is possessive noun, plural noun, verb, plural noun.
So, is this an electronic plant that makes paper, or a plant that makes electric paper?
Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light bulb? A: Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light.
I can't tell you for sure how long it takes--they rip overnight, or during the day while I'm at work.:-) And my life is such that I don't walk in the door with movies and start watching them right away. I buy them when I'm out shopping, rip them whenever, and watch them some time after that. I do occasionally watch an actual DVD if it is an exciting new purchase--and every time, as I stab the Menu button waiting to be allowed to get past the ads and "You Thief!" bits, I'm reminded again of why I do this.* And unless you carefully use something like DVD Shrink to remaster the VIDEO_TS folders before copying them, you still have to suffer through all that crap every time. Single file, easily portable (great for traveling), and a TiVo-style 'Now Playing' list in the media software of your choice--what could be better?
* And I'm not really into the special features that much, either--wow, they used fight choreographers, stuntmen, and greenscreens; the actors had a great time and loved working with each other; and the director thinks it's a great movie. Big whoop. Yes, some are good, but most aren't worth the time to find out. Not when you've got two jobs and a new baby.
Sales! I buy DVDs when they make it into the $5.49 bin at WalMart or the $7.50-9.99 bin anywhere else.* Bring'em home, rip'em**, copy'em to my server***, then put'em into a closet.**** I'm not big into extras or anything, and copying the VIDEO_TS folders would take up too much room anyway, so I'm happy to have one file per movie.
I've also recently discovered that this method also works with DVDs from the library.:-) I imagine it would also work with NetFlix discs.
* There's no such thing as "I've got to have that video the day it comes out" for me. If I really wanted to see it, I saw it in the theater. I can wait a couple months for the price to drop. Plus, things like LOTR, etc.--you *know* they're gonna come out with 5 more versions and/or 2- or 3-disc sets. Wait and get the one you want.
** I rip them with HandBrake on Mac OS X to ~1500kbps, deinterlaced, 2-pass H264 MP4s.
*** Best Buy just had a great sale: 500 GB SATA Western Digitals for $149.99 out-the-door--no rebate required. My G5 now has 2.:-) Rsync + cron = the poor-man's RAID.
**** thus the original DVD--the source material--becomes a 'backup.' (Front-up?)
Just bought a new (well, used, but new to me, less than a month old) Dell Axim. I like my phone tiny and simple. I carry my PDA SOMETIMES, when I want to be taking notes and whatnot. But the only device I always, always carry (besides my Swiss Army knife) is my phone, and I want it to be small. I don't spend all day adding contacts and events. The Axim is for portable notes and for a couple web things when I don't want to bring out my laptop. Worst case, if I need to take a note and don't have my Axim, is I use my phone and leave myself a voicemail at work.
There are some natural limiting factors to devices: screen size, keyboard/keypad size, physical size, how it fits in your hand, how it fits in your pocket, how big the battery is (and by that, how long it lasts; though that's as dependent upon functionality as well.) If the phone I carry every waking hour was as big as my PDA, with as bad battery life, I'd die.
All design is compromise. For example, add features = add size = harder to carry and worse battery life. Technological advances negate some of these, but in some cases, I'd rather take better performance over more features and the same performance. For example, if cell phone batteries last 7 days instead of 2 days, that doesn't mean I want a bunch more features and go back to 2-day life--I *want* that longer life. I'd *prefer* longer life over more features.
It's just like a car--if a more efficient engine is developed, do you want better milage, or do you want more luxury features (i.e. more weight) and the same milage as before? Everyone has their "sweet spot" of how much they want to carry, what they want to use and when, etc etc etc. That's why there are different devices.
That said, as cool as my Axim is (624 MHz, 640x480, color, 1 GB CF, 1 GB SD, 802.11b) there are quite a few things I miss from my old, B/W, 160x160, ran-forever-on-two-AA's Palm M105.
PS: why, in 2006, do Axims lose all their data if you let the battery run down? What aren't they using non-volatile (I think that's the term) memory, like a CF card, for the main storage? That's RETARDED!!!!!
> While there were huge *glaring* technical problems with the film...
On that note, one of the things they did RIGHT was they wrote a special program so that every time Matthew Broderick hit a key on the keyboard, one letter showed up on the screen. (That is, he could press any key, and the correct letter appeared.) I hate that in 99% of movies, the sounds of the keys being pressed has no relation in time, speed, or quantity to what is appearing on the screen. God damn, it was a solved problem TWO FREAKING DECADES AGO!
That said, the studio loaned him a Galaga machine to practice on while shooting--that's really him playing in the scenes that show him playing. He was sad to see it go at the end of filming.:-)
Source: Dynamite Magazine (anyone else remember that?) I think, in an article published way back then.
Slashdot Mirror
What "others"? There's only Apple. Linux/BSD/etc are only available on physical media for those that don't want to or don't know how to get it any other way. As for programs, everything short of Photoshop is available for download as well.
This isn't about open source vs. closed source. It's about market share.
Windows has more exploits than Macs because more people use Windows, the saying goes.
So: why, in the late 90s, when Apache had 2-5x the market share of IIS, were there so many IIS exploits and so few for Apache?
Answer: well, I won't say the answer, but it DAMN sure wasn't because IIS had more users, because it didn't. This directly refutes the "Windows is perfect, it just has so many viruses because there are so many boxes to pwn!!!!!11"
That's the point I was making--that high market share != lots of exploits.
Besides, market share or no market share, there are millions upon millions of Mac users--most of them brimming with confidence, and no AV software or firewall. (It's worth noting that XP SP2 comes with a firewall that's on by default; OS X comes with one but it's off by default. And Safari, the ONLY browser included with OS X 10.4, comes with the option "automatically open downloaded files" enabled by default as well!) Ooh, wouldn't that make a GREAT target for hackers--all those unprotected machines? Sure would! So... where are the exploits for Mac OS X? *sound of crickets chirping*
Maybe because having dozens of users get up and leave their desks to read documents isn't really effective in a business setting?
Your comment is SO FUCKING LAME that, despite the fact that you're an AC, I'll dissect every single point.
/. ACs are up there in the top five as well.
> and youll rush to buy another point release that is the equivelant of a glorified service pack.
No, SPs are (supposed to be) bug fixes, each version of OS X has many new features.
> Apple posts security updates all the time.
Ah yes, this old gem: "Neither OS is perfect, therefore they're both equally bad." Uh-huh.
> Granted most are much harder to execute than windows flaws
I assume that when you say this you mean "Apple has had ZERO severe, self-replicating, self-spreading viruses in the wild in the last 5 years, compared to literally thousands for Windows." There, fixed that for you.
> but they are still there and because of the macboy fanaticism most dont upgrade their machines if there was actually enough macs to make it worth a hackers time they would probably have even more known vulnerabilities and problems.
Ah yes, Apple's low market share is the only reason that Macs suffer less. Didn't you yourself say that Mac flaws are "much harder to execute than windows flaws"? And didn't we settle this whole size-matters thing OVER FIVE YEARS AGO by comparing the number of exploits found in Apache (market leader) with IIS (distant second)?
> I administer macs and windows and most of our problems are with MACS... say it aint so alex...
Maybe it's the quality of your admins?
> they lock up, they beachball,
Yeah, occasionally. I work with over 400 so I see it happen every so often. And the beachball is just a 'wait' cursor, it doesn't necessarily mean you've got a problem that can't be overcome or won't solve itself in a few more seconds. It's actually quite nice--it prevents you from going click-happy and causing MORE delays.
> our xserve every few months just decides it wont boot and has to be restored.
Remember, kids: the plural of "anecdote" is NOT "data." Again--bad admins? Possibly bad hardware? (Possibly a totally untrue statement from an anonymous user on a web forum?) Our four XServes hum along with uptimes only disrupted by the occasional system software update, and we haven't restored one yet. (Most are G4s, if that gives you a hint of their age.)
> I get so sick of the Mac fanatics acting like their machines never have problems
It's not "never", it's just "a thousand times less than the competition." Or, in my mind, "EFFECTIVELY zero."
> the only group i know more full of crap than our politicians is mac fanboys
I'm pressy sure
This has nothing to do with fanboyism. The difference is, OS X from 10.0 to 10.1 (faster) to 10.2 (smoother looking) to 10.3 (expose) to 10.4 (dashboard, spotlight) has had lots of improvements, and each previous release was only a year or so apart, and 10.4 came out over a year ago, while Vista took the largest software company in the world 5 years to come up, stripping features the whole time, which is is just coming out now. (Where by "now" I mean "soon.") So of course the differences in each version of OS X are smaller, and of course it's more impressive to have had a product with most of the same features out sooner, and of course MS looks like crap for taking so long to deliver so little.
:-)
Add to that the system requirements, the many different versions, and Microsoft's abysmal security record--their response to which is mostly to ask users "Are you sure you want to do this?" before every trivial operation, AND NOT EVEN REQUIRING AN ADMIN PASSWORD TO SAY 'YES'--and you can see why people aren't getting excited about it.
On a related note, I think it would be the funniest thing in the world if Apple announced tomorrow that 10.5 would be released on Monday the 29th.
Will people be lining up at midnight to buy it?
And, IIRC, the reason Hollywood exists in California is because many early movies were ripped-off plays and books and the filmmakers wanted to be as far away as physically possible from all the east-coast-based copyright holders. The WHOLE FUCKING INDUSTRY is built on copyright violation! (Assuming what I read on the Interwebs is true.)
Here are some thoughts I've had in the last couple weeks.
;-)
:-)
Success:
- Will it be a success? Yes. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it gorgeous? Yes. And the price will eventually drop, just like the iPod did. It's Apple's famous method: release a really nice, almost perfect product for a bunch of money, sell a bunch to the first batch of buyers; then, when that supply is exhausted, improve it, drop the price, sell again to the next round who weren't willing to buy the first time. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Note: don't look for a widescreen, touchscreen, iPod until MAYBE September for the 2007 Xmas season; more likely, you'll have to wait until Spring 2008. Apple won't let a nice iPod cannibalize sales they'll get to people who buy the iPhone MOSTLY because they want a widescreen iPod. Oh, and by the way--current iPods have 4:3 screens. (1.33:1.) All Apple's computers are 16:10. (1.6:1.) The iPhone, like the original PBG4, is 3:2. (1.5:1.) So: what shape should iTMS movies be?)
- BUT--the iPod wasn't a success just because it was pretty. It really is a better, easier-to-use MP3 player than anything else out there for most people. The iPhone will ONLY succeed if the touchscreen system works as well as Steve says it does. I can tell it'll be mostly great just by looking--a regular touchscreen could easily handle 90% of the single-finger action he demo'ed--but I'll have to see the keyboard in person to become a believer on that.
- will Apple work out a deal with Cingular to offer a reasonable data plan? No one will be happy with the Internet Communicator of the Future if it costs $100/month to do anything with. For this to really, really work, there has to be reasonably-fast, reasonably-priced data. If it becomes a situation of "Oh, I can't use Safari until I get to Starbucks or Panera" that will be a big buzzkill.
- will they meet their goals? They said they want to sell 10 million phones--have 1% of the market--in 18 months. (God, that sounds like so many WWW business plans I heard in 1995-97--"If we could just get 1% of all web users to visit our site...") That sounds good on the one hand, given that they want 1% of a billion phones, BUT--Cingular only has 60M customers. Is the iPhone so great that ONE SIXTH of Cingular's customer base will spend $500? If not, are that many people going to get out of contracts and switch carriers in the next 18 months? I'm not so sure. Like I said, I really think the iPhone will be a success, but their expectations are pretty high.
Other thoughts:
- no iChat! no iChat A/V! How LAME! Either a) it's part of the deal not to step on Cingular's toes by offering anything like VOIP, or b) it's waiting for Rev B. Unfortunately, my money's on A. Well, at least you can use the browser to access Meebo.
- Proximity sensor--nice. But I hope that's not one of their patents. My Canon XTi turns off the screen when you put it up to your face--and it already exists.
- Apple will need to add 'Cingular' and 'iPhone' to Leopard's spellcheck dictionary.
- I'll pick one up in a couple rev's just to have a decent browser. Despite having twice as many pixels as the iPhone, browsing on my Axim mostly sucks.
Maybe the submitter had a cold?
(For those who are arriving late: The headline has already changed, but in the original post was "Political Bloggers Bay Be Forced to Register")
Agreed. I don't even like Star Trek but I think he did an incredible job of decorating and I wouldn't mind having a setup like this because it just looks so right.. This looks as good as Star Tours or Space Mountain or anything else you'll see at a Disney or Universal park. (Speaking of which, Universal Orlando is getting rid of the Back to the Future ride. I was really hoping it'd make it until 2015, at least.) Why is this any worse than every single boring fancy-wood setup you see in Home Theater Magazine? At least this guy is being a little creative and having some fun, rather than just surrounding himself in mahogany or whatever to make sure you know how rich he is.
:-)
Now he just needs a bar that looks like the Mos Eisley Cantina.
Yup. And it's not entrapment:
i t-cars-of-modesto.html
"...bait cars are not considered entrapment because the thieves do not have to take them."
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/11179/the-ba
Entrapment is when a cop comes up to you and says "You wanna buy some weed?" or "I'll pay you to kill my wife." I think what the MPAA is doing here is closer to entrapment than not--yeah, in the same way, you don't have to download that file, but on the other hand, by putting it in their shared folder and/or posting a tracker, what they're doing is more like "offering" than "leaving laying around." But the fact that it's not a "real" file doesn't matter, any more than the fact that you bought oregano or baby powder from an undercover cop will help your case. The intent is clear.
That said, I think they could do a lot more damage to torrents overall by worsening the signal:noise ratio than by going after infringers.
Sideshow Bob: "Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry?"
...still no love for DirecTiVos. And, I guess, never. From http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1-1.asp
"The TiVoToGo feature is not currently available on Series3. This feature will not be available [emphasis mine] on the DIRECTV DVR with TiVo or the original TiVo boxes (TiVo Series1)."
All I want to do is download shows. I've got two hackable TiVos (and even a supported USB/network adapter) but I've never been able to get it to work, and with two jobs, a newborn, and no "spare" PCs anymore, it's difficult for me to try--my last attempt was over a year ago. Are there any reputable services/people that can hack my TiVo for me? I'm not trying to get around TiVo's fees, I just want to have it make shows available for download, and maybe a web-based frontend for recording/deleting shows and the ability to make its daily call over the network would be nice, too. Any suggestions?
Sounds like someone got one of these shirts for Christmas and took it to heart.
It's a total cliché but it's true--learning another language makes you learn more about your own. I learned more about English grammar in my first semester of Spanish than I did in all previous years--I'm sure I was taught it all at some point, but I never had to really use the rules of English grammar because I could speak the language without trying and I did the (more or less) right thing naturally. But in learning Spanish, all that stuff about infinitives, progressives, the subjunctive, etc. finally stuck.
BTW, the article was neat. Glad it got accepted. Thanks for submitting.
"If you mostly compose plain Word documents, simple presentations and plain spreadsheets, the new design may not be worth the effort to master it, and you might want to stick with an older version of Office."
:-) The features are fine, there's no activation, it runs really, really fast on 5-year-old hardware...
I've used the beta of Office 2007. The ribbon is neither bad nor good to me, and live previews are very nice, but my needs are few, and I will indeed be sticking with an older version of Office--specifically, I'll soon be celebrating* one whole decade with Office 97.
* OK, not really celebrating, but you know what I mean.
> Why is it that relating computers to cars is considered insightful?
;-)
There's actually one in the original article: "It's as if Toyota decided to switch the position of choices on the automobile shift lever, or Motorola decided to rearrange the buttons on the cellphone key pad."
Cars aside, imagine a world where keypads went 789, 456, 123, 0. Man, that would SUCK.
Oh, no, wait... it would FUCKING RULE if the keypads on my phones, computer, ATM, etc. were all the same. Ever use a computer's keypad to enter a phone number you dial often?
Sorry, no offense meant. Not trying to be a grammar nazi (headlines are--almost by definition--almost always grammatically incorrect in some way), it just struck me as funny. (My wife is Hungarian and she's always complaining about our language, so it's always on my mind.) I wasn't meaning to make fun of you at all--the fact is, it's hard to write good headlines. (Just watch Jay Leno for proof!) I like your alternative--very clever. :-)
Worst headline ever, from the Orlando Sentinel a year or so ago: "QUAKE'S RUINS YIELDS LIVES."
VERY hard to parse that--
- every word in that sentence could be a noun or verb
- every word ends in S, which could indicate a present tense verb, a plural noun, or a possessive noun
- the all-caps makes the apostrophe easy to miss
The solution is possessive noun, plural noun, verb, plural noun.
"Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany"
So, is this an electronic plant that makes paper, or a plant that makes electric paper?
Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light bulb?
A: Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light.
Panspermia is mentioned in Dan Brown's Deception Point, copyright 2001.
I can't tell you for sure how long it takes--they rip overnight, or during the day while I'm at work. :-) And my life is such that I don't walk in the door with movies and start watching them right away. I buy them when I'm out shopping, rip them whenever, and watch them some time after that. I do occasionally watch an actual DVD if it is an exciting new purchase--and every time, as I stab the Menu button waiting to be allowed to get past the ads and "You Thief!" bits, I'm reminded again of why I do this.* And unless you carefully use something like DVD Shrink to remaster the VIDEO_TS folders before copying them, you still have to suffer through all that crap every time. Single file, easily portable (great for traveling), and a TiVo-style 'Now Playing' list in the media software of your choice--what could be better?
* And I'm not really into the special features that much, either--wow, they used fight choreographers, stuntmen, and greenscreens; the actors had a great time and loved working with each other; and the director thinks it's a great movie. Big whoop. Yes, some are good, but most aren't worth the time to find out. Not when you've got two jobs and a new baby.
No biggie. They're close enough that you can still get some karma points by copying the +5 comments from that article and posting them here. :-)
Sales! I buy DVDs when they make it into the $5.49 bin at WalMart or the $7.50-9.99 bin anywhere else.* Bring'em home, rip'em**, copy'em to my server***, then put'em into a closet.**** I'm not big into extras or anything, and copying the VIDEO_TS folders would take up too much room anyway, so I'm happy to have one file per movie.
:-) I imagine it would also work with NetFlix discs.
:-) Rsync + cron = the poor-man's RAID.
I've also recently discovered that this method also works with DVDs from the library.
* There's no such thing as "I've got to have that video the day it comes out" for me. If I really wanted to see it, I saw it in the theater. I can wait a couple months for the price to drop. Plus, things like LOTR, etc.--you *know* they're gonna come out with 5 more versions and/or 2- or 3-disc sets. Wait and get the one you want.
** I rip them with HandBrake on Mac OS X to ~1500kbps, deinterlaced, 2-pass H264 MP4s.
*** Best Buy just had a great sale: 500 GB SATA Western Digitals for $149.99 out-the-door--no rebate required. My G5 now has 2.
**** thus the original DVD--the source material--becomes a 'backup.' (Front-up?)
Just bought a new (well, used, but new to me, less than a month old) Dell Axim. I like my phone tiny and simple. I carry my PDA SOMETIMES, when I want to be taking notes and whatnot. But the only device I always, always carry (besides my Swiss Army knife) is my phone, and I want it to be small. I don't spend all day adding contacts and events. The Axim is for portable notes and for a couple web things when I don't want to bring out my laptop. Worst case, if I need to take a note and don't have my Axim, is I use my phone and leave myself a voicemail at work.
There are some natural limiting factors to devices: screen size, keyboard/keypad size, physical size, how it fits in your hand, how it fits in your pocket, how big the battery is (and by that, how long it lasts; though that's as dependent upon functionality as well.) If the phone I carry every waking hour was as big as my PDA, with as bad battery life, I'd die.
All design is compromise. For example, add features = add size = harder to carry and worse battery life. Technological advances negate some of these, but in some cases, I'd rather take better performance over more features and the same performance. For example, if cell phone batteries last 7 days instead of 2 days, that doesn't mean I want a bunch more features and go back to 2-day life--I *want* that longer life. I'd *prefer* longer life over more features.
It's just like a car--if a more efficient engine is developed, do you want better milage, or do you want more luxury features (i.e. more weight) and the same milage as before? Everyone has their "sweet spot" of how much they want to carry, what they want to use and when, etc etc etc. That's why there are different devices.
That said, as cool as my Axim is (624 MHz, 640x480, color, 1 GB CF, 1 GB SD, 802.11b) there are quite a few things I miss from my old, B/W, 160x160, ran-forever-on-two-AA's Palm M105.
PS: why, in 2006, do Axims lose all their data if you let the battery run down? What aren't they using non-volatile (I think that's the term) memory, like a CF card, for the main storage? That's RETARDED!!!!!
> While there were huge *glaring* technical problems with the film...
:-)
On that note, one of the things they did RIGHT was they wrote a special program so that every time Matthew Broderick hit a key on the keyboard, one letter showed up on the screen. (That is, he could press any key, and the correct letter appeared.) I hate that in 99% of movies, the sounds of the keys being pressed has no relation in time, speed, or quantity to what is appearing on the screen. God damn, it was a solved problem TWO FREAKING DECADES AGO!
That said, the studio loaned him a Galaga machine to practice on while shooting--that's really him playing in the scenes that show him playing. He was sad to see it go at the end of filming.
Source: Dynamite Magazine (anyone else remember that?) I think, in an article published way back then.