Re:An additional word about 'blocky trans..'
on
Star Wars on DVD
·
· Score: 1
Actually, all it is that, due to differences in how color works in the different media, the blocky masks are easier to see on video than on film. That's all. It's kind of like this: the rectangle should be very close to the background color. Since TVs and/or tape can't show colors that subtley different, it makes one darker, one lighter, and the difference becomes more apparent.
Hit your library and find an old biography of Lucas. There a very good one from around 82-84, either just before or just after Jedi. Lucas pretty much hates directing. He shoots a bunch and does most of his work in editing.
As for the trilogy, he can release a new version every week and edit in Smurfs and Transformers for all I care. Like most others here, I only hate his adamant refusal to let the originals see the light of day. Ask around, that's all 95% of us want.
Re:It's not just the shady companies
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Quicktime is even easier than another poster described--(right-?)click on the tray icon, properties (or whatever), and uncheck 'quicktime system tray icon' in the 'browser plug-ins' settings page (which, IIRC, is the first to come up.) Or go start menu - control panels - quicktime. its in the options. no need to delete files, etc. of course, I'm sure it comes back after each update, but it's not too horrid. I agree that any intrusion is too much, but still, compared to others', it's no too bad.
I hate real's with a passion, not only because it's hidden, but because once you find it, you still have to wade through a couple confusing "aren't you not sure you don't want to not have this not launch at startup?" confirmation screens.
Seriously. If you want Office, floppies, no viruses, and have money, get Macs and USB floppy drives. They'll R/W PC-formatted floppies, have no viruses, and they're Unix underneath so you can script things like "restore the user's folder to a fresh default state every night."
I learned this from a slashdot post and am happy to pass it along--just start your page with extract($_GET); and/or extract($_POST); a nd continue as before. And it works for cookies, but I'm too lazy to see if it's 'cookie' or 'cookies'. This might totally negate the security stuff* but it's handy and you don't have to mess with PHP's settings (i.e., php.ini) which may not be possible on a server you don't own.
* at the very least: if you're expecting data from a POST, someone can't overwrite it by changing the URL (GET).
according to typing pal, "During the test, you typed at a speed of 46 words/minute and made 18 errors. According to these results, you are an expert typist..." ha. sounds a bit low to me. (fwiw, I nearly never key in things I'm reading. everything I type =comes outta my brain. too bad there's not a way to clock slashdot posts or something useful like that.:-) )
Next pass through (without the backspace key) got me to 55 and 4.
I have ripped several movies to Divx4 AVIs @ 1920kbps + 128k mp3 audio. Using an HP (Compaq) TC1100 Tablet PC (10.4" screen, brightness all the way up, sound about halfway up through headphones) I can play a movie for 2hrs30min--just enough to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and then play a few hands of FreeCell. The unit is small physically so the battery is kind of small, and decoding ripped DVDs requires more CPU power than playing an original DVD (AFAIK) due to the fact that it's compressed even more.
My 12" G3/800 iBook can play back a whole DVD easily, maybe two if they're short (Toy Story 1 & 2 and Chicken Run are always fun.) Since I'm cheap an never get direct flights (FL to CA) that's enough for me.:-)
It's a year and a half old and still gives a solid 2.5-3 hrs of use--wireless web surfing with the performance turned all the way up to keep Safari from lagging too bad.
I doubt this is useful to the poster but I've read lots of interesting stuff in this thread and thought I'd share my experiences.
This theme is pretty (good job with the gradient logo!) but it's too low-contrast. White text on light brown/gold and light brown/gold text on white are both tough to read. Slashbots: please fix!
I bought my iPod *specifically* to use while driving on my new long commute. I've used it for about 6 months. I don't exercise with it or use it at home or work--it is *strictly* for car use. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's doable, and the reason I bought the iPod is so I could have my whole collection with me. I *never* dial up a playlist and let it go. I *always* listen to a song or two, then think of another, pick it, listen, and repeat. Here's my system:
1) click 'menu' a bunch of times to get to the top screen. No looking required. 2) look, scroll down to 'browse', return eyes to road, click 'select' (button in the middle of the wheel) 3) look, scroll to 'songs' or 'artists', return eyes to the road, click 'select' 4) scroll down the giant list a few rotations at a time. glance down after each scroll to see if I'm in the right neighborhood. (like, 'scroll, scroll, scroll, look. scroll, scroll, scroll, look.') 5) start scrolling slower and slower, with the same scroll-scroll-look system, until I get to the desired song. Press 'select' a couple times to play it.
So yeah, it's not ideal, but it's not undoable either, and if you're smart about it, you're not a danger on the road. I do NOT recommend just staring at your iPod while driving to pick out a new song.
Also, it's a cinch to do at a stoplight, which (sigh) there are plenty of. Takes ~15-30 seconds to pick one song out of 4,000. But I'm still waiting for my voice-activated search.:-)
I haven't been keeping up that closely on all things HD, but right now, isn't the only HD DVD the most recent edition of Terminator 2, and doesn't the HD part of it only play in WMP?
Are you being funny and the mods didn't get it, or were you being serious and your "insightful" mods are a bit of a reach? I mean, your advice is sound and your process is good but the process you describe, by definition, is *not* an upgrade. It's closer to a migration. An upgrade is like what I do on OS X: 1) hear about a new update being available 2) read forums for a day or two to see if there's anything catastrophic (like the old "hard drive name starts with a space" bug) 3) system prefs -> software update -> check now -> install 4) reboot
OTOH, Mac OS X has not had a single, automatically-spreading, remote root exploit worm in the 3 years it has been out, so to be honest, I don't even really concern myself with updates. I mean, not with a gotta-have-it, zero-day urgency.
Besides, how in the hell is the average user supposed to know what EVERY SINGLE PIECE of pertinant information is? And what if they have tons of songs and movies--are they supposed to buy a whole external drive just to run a damn system update? Even if they do, there will still be a thousand little things to be done--little preferences to be set, arrange the desktop icons, browser history is gone so links are blue again, etc etc etc.
Ever take a *lot* of notes on your iPaq? Ever read a *lot* on it? (I have a friend who loves reading ebooks on his palm, but I can't stand reading much on a tiny screen that has to be scrolled every half-paragraph.) Ever do a worthwhile drawing on one? Ever browse the web much on one? (And not just stripped WAP sites, I mean the WHOLE www.)
I have a tablet (part-time, from work) and it's great. It has nothing to do with getting XP onto a little box. (Import a Libretto if that's what you want.) It has to do with getting a suitably powerful device, that you can write and draw a *lot* on, large enough to hold and be seen, small enough to be comfortable to carry around for a while. And for general use, I think a stylus is generally far superior to a regular mouse, let alone a touchpad or button mouse. (Right- and middle-clicking aside.)
As for the CPU, I think it's great. My first tablet was fun but honestly pretty much sucked--the 1 GHz Transmeta CPU was really pokey. (Sorry, Linus.) Our new one, with a 1 GHz Centrino, is much, much faster. The more CPU the better--handwriting and speech recognition use lots of juice, and both can be greatly improved over where we are right now. A phat AMD would be great. Hope ComHPaq goes that way soon.
OpenTalk says even *less* than Rendezvous! Look at the definition:
1 A meeting at a prearranged time and place. See Synonyms at engagement. 2 A prearranged meeting place, especially an assembly point for troops or ships. 3 A popular gathering place: The café is a favorite rendezvous for artists. 4 Aerospace. The process of bringing two spacecraft together.
All have something to do with getting together ("connecting") in a certain geographic proximity. Since people on the same subnet (where Rendezvous works) tend to be physically close, the name is PERFECT!
OpenTalk just sounds like, well, some kind of open communication thing. Who is communicating with whom? How are they communicating? What makes this method different from all the others? OpenTalk is as worthless a name as OpenTransport or a thousand other bland CamelCase words. Hell, at least AppleTalk let you know *something* about the intended use--it was for Apples.
In his biography, Lee Iacocca mentions in 1964/65, when the Mustang was introduced and doing very well (over 400k sold in the first 12 months) he saw a sign in a diner window that said "Our hotcakes are selling like Mustangs!"
Correct. I was at the WWDC keynote and specifically remember Jobs saying "iPod has X% of the market measured in units... even more when measured in revenue." OK, OK, so I forget the exact percentage, but it was well over 50 (70%?) and I got a good chuckle out of that at the time--IOW, "we have most of the market *and* we've got higher margins than everyone else."
watch the keynote for the exact figures & quote. http://stream.apple.akadns.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, all it is that, due to differences in how color works in the different media, the blocky masks are easier to see on video than on film. That's all. It's kind of like this: the rectangle should be very close to the background color. Since TVs and/or tape can't show colors that subtley different, it makes one darker, one lighter, and the difference becomes more apparent.
Hit your library and find an old biography of Lucas. There a very good one from around 82-84, either just before or just after Jedi. Lucas pretty much hates directing. He shoots a bunch and does most of his work in editing.
As for the trilogy, he can release a new version every week and edit in Smurfs and Transformers for all I care. Like most others here, I only hate his adamant refusal to let the originals see the light of day. Ask around, that's all 95% of us want.
Quicktime is even easier than another poster described--(right-?)click on the tray icon, properties (or whatever), and uncheck 'quicktime system tray icon' in the 'browser plug-ins' settings page (which, IIRC, is the first to come up.) Or go start menu - control panels - quicktime. its in the options. no need to delete files, etc. of course, I'm sure it comes back after each update, but it's not too horrid. I agree that any intrusion is too much, but still, compared to others', it's no too bad.
I hate real's with a passion, not only because it's hidden, but because once you find it, you still have to wade through a couple confusing "aren't you not sure you don't want to not have this not launch at startup?" confirmation screens.
Seriously. If you want Office, floppies, no viruses, and have money, get Macs and USB floppy drives. They'll R/W PC-formatted floppies, have no viruses, and they're Unix underneath so you can script things like "restore the user's folder to a fresh default state every night."
shoulda been .msi, not .mis.
Holy hell! 12 MB (.mis) in about 30 seconds. Sweet!
I learned this from a slashdot post and am happy to pass it along--just start your page with
a nd continue as before.
extract($_GET);
and/or
extract($_POST);
And it works for cookies, but I'm too lazy to see if it's 'cookie' or 'cookies'.
This might totally negate the security stuff* but it's handy and you don't have to mess with PHP's settings (i.e., php.ini) which may not be possible on a server you don't own.
* at the very least: if you're expecting data from a POST, someone can't overwrite it by changing the URL (GET).
"Until this spring, that is, when two lawyers... a clue"
OMG they... a clue? Great!
That reminds me, this morning, I... my breakfast.
according to typing pal, "During the test, you typed at a speed of 46 words/minute and made 18 errors. According to these results, you are an expert typist..." ha. sounds a bit low to me. (fwiw, I nearly never key in things I'm reading. everything I type =comes outta my brain. too bad there's not a way to clock slashdot posts or something useful like that. :-) )
Next pass through (without the backspace key) got me to 55 and 4.
I have ripped several movies to Divx4 AVIs @ 1920kbps + 128k mp3 audio. Using an HP (Compaq) TC1100 Tablet PC (10.4" screen, brightness all the way up, sound about halfway up through headphones) I can play a movie for 2hrs30min--just enough to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and then play a few hands of FreeCell. The unit is small physically so the battery is kind of small, and decoding ripped DVDs requires more CPU power than playing an original DVD (AFAIK) due to the fact that it's compressed even more.
:-)
My 12" G3/800 iBook can play back a whole DVD easily, maybe two if they're short (Toy Story 1 & 2 and Chicken Run are always fun.) Since I'm cheap an never get direct flights (FL to CA) that's enough for me.
It's a year and a half old and still gives a solid 2.5-3 hrs of use--wireless web surfing with the performance turned all the way up to keep Safari from lagging too bad.
I doubt this is useful to the poster but I've read lots of interesting stuff in this thread and thought I'd share my experiences.
"But eth final sentence really got me."
;-)
*ahem* You misspelled 'teh'.
This theme is pretty (good job with the gradient logo!) but it's too low-contrast. White text on light brown/gold and light brown/gold text on white are both tough to read. Slashbots: please fix!
I bought my iPod *specifically* to use while driving on my new long commute. I've used it for about 6 months. I don't exercise with it or use it at home or work--it is *strictly* for car use. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's doable, and the reason I bought the iPod is so I could have my whole collection with me. I *never* dial up a playlist and let it go. I *always* listen to a song or two, then think of another, pick it, listen, and repeat. Here's my system:
:-)
1) click 'menu' a bunch of times to get to the top screen. No looking required.
2) look, scroll down to 'browse', return eyes to road, click 'select' (button in the middle of the wheel)
3) look, scroll to 'songs' or 'artists', return eyes to the road, click 'select'
4) scroll down the giant list a few rotations at a time. glance down after each scroll to see if I'm in the right neighborhood. (like, 'scroll, scroll, scroll, look. scroll, scroll, scroll, look.')
5) start scrolling slower and slower, with the same scroll-scroll-look system, until I get to the desired song. Press 'select' a couple times to play it.
So yeah, it's not ideal, but it's not undoable either, and if you're smart about it, you're not a danger on the road. I do NOT recommend just staring at your iPod while driving to pick out a new song.
Also, it's a cinch to do at a stoplight, which (sigh) there are plenty of. Takes ~15-30 seconds to pick one song out of 4,000. But I'm still waiting for my voice-activated search.
Besides being very hot on venus, it literally rains sulfuric acid.
Thanks. No, I wasn't trolling, just too lazy to search. Anyone else want to answer... in miles? Hell, I'll even accept answers in km.
OK, I'll do the first... um, let's see, about 24,000 miles around at the equator, so (24,000/360)=~67 miles apart.
How far apart are 1deg longitudianal lines at the equator? How far apart, say, 10 or 20 degrees south of the north pole?
Also, I forget--do lines of latitude get closer together as you go closer to the poles, or are they all X miles apart?
I haven't been keeping up that closely on all things HD, but right now, isn't the only HD DVD the most recent edition of Terminator 2, and doesn't the HD part of it only play in WMP?
evidently these new PDAs aren't strong enough to run a webserver off of yet...
OMGLOLWTF I must be new here
Are you being funny and the mods didn't get it, or were you being serious and your "insightful" mods are a bit of a reach? I mean, your advice is sound and your process is good but the process you describe, by definition, is *not* an upgrade. It's closer to a migration. An upgrade is like what I do on OS X:
1) hear about a new update being available
2) read forums for a day or two to see if there's anything catastrophic (like the old "hard drive name starts with a space" bug)
3) system prefs -> software update -> check now -> install
4) reboot
OTOH, Mac OS X has not had a single, automatically-spreading, remote root exploit worm in the 3 years it has been out, so to be honest, I don't even really concern myself with updates. I mean, not with a gotta-have-it, zero-day urgency.
Besides, how in the hell is the average user supposed to know what EVERY SINGLE PIECE of pertinant information is? And what if they have tons of songs and movies--are they supposed to buy a whole external drive just to run a damn system update? Even if they do, there will still be a thousand little things to be done--little preferences to be set, arrange the desktop icons, browser history is gone so links are blue again, etc etc etc.
Ever take a *lot* of notes on your iPaq? Ever read a *lot* on it? (I have a friend who loves reading ebooks on his palm, but I can't stand reading much on a tiny screen that has to be scrolled every half-paragraph.) Ever do a worthwhile drawing on one? Ever browse the web much on one? (And not just stripped WAP sites, I mean the WHOLE www.)
I have a tablet (part-time, from work) and it's great. It has nothing to do with getting XP onto a little box. (Import a Libretto if that's what you want.) It has to do with getting a suitably powerful device, that you can write and draw a *lot* on, large enough to hold and be seen, small enough to be comfortable to carry around for a while. And for general use, I think a stylus is generally far superior to a regular mouse, let alone a touchpad or button mouse. (Right- and middle-clicking aside.)
As for the CPU, I think it's great. My first tablet was fun but honestly pretty much sucked--the 1 GHz Transmeta CPU was really pokey. (Sorry, Linus.) Our new one, with a 1 GHz Centrino, is much, much faster. The more CPU the better--handwriting and speech recognition use lots of juice, and both can be greatly improved over where we are right now. A phat AMD would be great. Hope ComHPaq goes that way soon.
...with just 30-odd comments. Cue the "they must be running the server on one" posts. :-)
OpenTalk says even *less* than Rendezvous! Look at the definition:
1 A meeting at a prearranged time and place. See Synonyms at engagement.
2 A prearranged meeting place, especially an assembly point for troops or ships.
3 A popular gathering place: The café is a favorite rendezvous for artists.
4 Aerospace. The process of bringing two spacecraft together.
All have something to do with getting together ("connecting") in a certain geographic proximity. Since people on the same subnet (where Rendezvous works) tend to be physically close, the name is PERFECT!
OpenTalk just sounds like, well, some kind of open communication thing. Who is communicating with whom? How are they communicating? What makes this method different from all the others? OpenTalk is as worthless a name as OpenTransport or a thousand other bland CamelCase words. Hell, at least AppleTalk let you know *something* about the intended use--it was for Apples.
Maybe you could play your LPs back at 45 or 78, capture at 96k, and then resample them down to the correct speed... ;-)
In his biography, Lee Iacocca mentions in 1964/65, when the Mustang was introduced and doing very well (over 400k sold in the first 12 months) he saw a sign in a diner window that said "Our hotcakes are selling like Mustangs!"
Correct. I was at the WWDC keynote and specifically remember Jobs saying "iPod has X% of the market measured in units... even more when measured in revenue." OK, OK, so I forget the exact percentage, but it was well over 50 (70%?) and I got a good chuckle out of that at the time--IOW, "we have most of the market *and* we've got higher margins than everyone else."
watch the keynote for the exact figures & quote.
http://stream.apple.akadns.net/