The Mac version of the BSoD is the Transparent Multilingual Screen of Doom. Another word for it might be familiar to Linux/*BSD/Solaris/xNIX users: Kernel Panic.
I have only had ONE on any Mac running Mac OS X. That was because I had the buggy version of the WiFi driver (fixed now) and I hit a WiFi access point that was malfunctioning.
WiFi should not be used in a business setting, period. Anything important should be limited to the wired network. If I was a SysAdmin at a company, I would make it an important policy to have all people using laptops keep WiFi turned off at all times when on campus. With regard to people working in the field: use a VPN over a wired connection, or else. Most hotels have wired Internet connectivity for guests. If a wired connection is unavailable, use dialup. End of story.
WiFi was built for convenience of home users, not for enterprise. It is a technology that does not belong in enterprise networking. Period.
For the past 5 years, I have been using an Ericsson r520m phone on T-Mobile. The r520m never even came out in the US, it was an Euro-only model. Yet it worked happily on the T-Mobile/Cingular (yes, they share infrastructure in California) network.
I moved to a Motorola v330 because I wanted to sync my phone information with my MacBook. I could never get the bluetooth on the MacBook to see the r520m's rudimentary implementation of bluetooth. (It was the proof-of-concept phone, dontcha know!) The v330 is cheap now on eBay, and it's cheaper still to buy one still locked to T-Mobile rather than an unlocked one. So yeah, now I have a 2004 model phone, in 2007. I'm cool with it, though. Yes, the camera sucks, but that's why I have a separate camera.
I figure by the time the Moto gives out, there will be unlocked iPhones on eBay for me to buy, and happily use with my T-Mobile service. GSM: the lingua franca of mobile phones. Gotta love it.
!Anti-Bush screensavers, keyloggers for the Venezuelan Secret Police, and a nice big fat backdoor so that Chavez can launch his super 'leet bot army to DDOS the Yanquis! !Que bueno!
Hmmm...is North Corea somehow related to Chick Corea? And is L. Ron Hubbard worshipped as a deity there? Is their prime export clams? Wait, you meant North Korea! With that little pipsqueak with the Elvis pompadour and platform shoes! And no lights on at night! Ah, now I understand. K thx bai...
Back in the day, before the official WEG Star Wars RPG, there was Traveller. Very good game, very good ruleset. Part of the character creation process was giving your character a back-story. You couldn't "level up" the character after that, a fatal flaw of the rules, but the characters were able to hit the ground running.
I was involved with a group of people who had written up an entire Star Wars total conversion for the game. Jedi powers were an offshoot of Traveller's psionics, for example. The proof of just how good those games were that I still vividly remember some of the characters I created in the game. Good times, man. Good times.
This was in the early 1980s, well before the WEG games. When the WEG system was introduced in 1987, I sat down and read it. It made my brain hurt. The unnecessary complexity of the SW RPG system when you compared it to Traveller stood out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately this was the bellwether for the future of gaming. D20, GURPS...all of them. It's no accident that RPG gaming has shifted to online computer environments. Only the Guardians of Order Tri-Stat system bucked the trend of more and more complexity. Big Eyes, Small Mouth was a revelation. Sitting in on a BESM game made me remember just how fun paper-and-pencil gaming was.
Traveller is being relaunched as Traveller^5. They keep saying that the new system will premiere in June 2007. However, it's almost July 2007, and no big annoucements. However, later versions of Traveller like GURPS Traveller, MegaTraveller and "Mark Miller's Traveller" aka Traveller v.4 all were "added complexity" kind of systems. I hope that the new version strips things down and gets back to the basics. If not, I'll just take the old black books, graft on the skill improvement rules from Tri-Stat, and...well...hope to find some people who want to go kick some butt in a Galaxy far, far away.
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!
...for Linux bite the bag, and at least NVidia's and Intel's are worth using, this is a blessing in disguise for all those who intend to use Linux with their MacIntels. No big loss.
Get Audacity. Import a few tracks off of modern CDs. Look at the squared off waveforms. Then take a CD from, say, the late 1980s or early 1990s and look at the waveforms on that. Note the less clipped waveforms? Then take a listen. You will be amazed.
Oversaturating analog tape is fine because the clipping is more organic and less buzzy. In fact, you get a bit more presence from "recording hot." Oversaturating digital recording media? You get ugly digital clipping, artifacts, and buzz galore. Yet numb-nuts producers insist on "recording hot" when recording to digital. Result? Crappy recordings.
I am always struck by how wildly better the state of recording in the '70s was to what it is now. This is part of the reason. Don't get me started about Autotune.
Just so y'all know, Photoshop Elements does about as much as most casual users of Photoshop need, and it's less than a Benjamin./me is waiting for the next version of Elements which will be a Universal app based on CS3. Currently Photoshop Elements is at v.4 for Mac and v.5 for Windows. It currently has to run under Rosetta with MacIntel which makes Baby Jebus cry.
Clippy doesn't really exist in the newest version of Office for Mac, which is Office 2004. You can install Clippy in Office v.X, but the only Office Assistant you get with 2004 is the Mac droid guy which twists itself around like a Rubik's Cube when not in use, and is based on the original Compact Macs.
Even in Office v.X you don't need to have any Office Assistant on the desktop if you don't want one.
The Soviet Union basically *invented* the dogma of preventative war. This was one of the reasons why its adoption by the G. W. Bush administration was so shocking.
Folks like you are what scares me. Comparing the nightmarish kleptocracy/dictatorship in the USA to the nightmarish kleptocracy/dictatorship Russia has become is quite realistic. If you prefer the Russian model, vote for Giuliani: he's openly advocated more "preventative war" in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yep-- denounce individualism, appeal to fear, give no-bid contracts to your cronies -- vote GOP!
Arguably Tron was the first Cyberpunk movie, ever. Beat out Blade Runner if my memory serves me right. Also the short story in which the term "Cyberpunk" was coined was written in 1980 but published in '83.
Tron was the first movie to ponder the concept of life inside a computer or a computer network. Even though Tron's worldview was more the black-and-white traditional superhero/space opera good-vs.-evil worldview rather than the more nuanced, shaded, and shady world of what we now know as Cyberpunk, it postulated human interaction with a completely digital world, where "all things that are, are lights." Flynn would not have to be physically sucked into the world if Tron was entirely true to the genre, but then again arguably the genre didn't exist at that point. Networked computers were only seen commonly in business. Personal Computers were basically toys at that point. Networking? What's that? Modems? Expensive toys that spit 300 characters out per second. There was no popular concept of this yet.
Any Tron sequel would by necessity have to borrow tropes from Cyberpunk. There would be no more need for the human digitizer. Flynn would just have to "jack in" to interact with the world he interacted with as a physical figure in the original. And the playing field is bigger now...not just one machine, but billions. I would think that Flynn might also naturally morph into somewhat or maybe even entirely a villain, perhaps one with the global reach and Croesus-esque wealth of a Bill Gates and the charisma of a Steve Jobs. Maybe, while defending his proprietary empire, he has to face the Open Source movement. Maybe he might just revive the Master Control Program to help him in his quest. Hmmm...let's say I'm "open sourcing" this idea and if Disney/Pixar wants to do something with it, go right ahead.
No need to, read comments above you. The new "Palm OS" is going to be Linux-based, with emulation for old Palm apps. To be perfectly frank, I'm more excited about Palm going Linux than upset about the end of Palm OS. Basically Palm OS = Mac OS 6.x without Multifinder. Rest in pieces. The only thing I don't like about this is that Palm should have done this YEARS AGO. YEARS. They might be a little late to the party, alas.
What about the whackos who go to funerals of servicemen and women with their "God Hates Fags" and "God is killing soldiers for our sins" signs? Just sayin...
The "Clone Wars" shorts gave me back my love of Star Wars. Unfortunately Genndy Tartakovsky is not involved in the upcoming CGI series but from what I understand the people at the helm of that (no, not Lucas, Lucas is just bankrolling it) are similarly SW fans with a major love of animation as a form of cinema.
If these movies have a prayer of being good, he should pay Lawrence Kasdan silly money to write the screenplay, point him in the direction he wants him to write, and stand back and let him do it. Or maybe Paul Dini, with similar lack of interference from Lucas.
From what I understand, these movies will be set between Episode III and the original Star Wars. (I refuse to call it Episode IV...that was the first damn movie, dammit.) And they will have lots of action. Like the animated shorts. Just keep Lucas away from the script. And for crissake keep him away from writing dialogue. Please.
While I have sympathy for your situation, every single (US) soldier who is pulling a trigger is a volunteer. "I was only following orders" stopped being a valid excuse for government-sanctioned murder a loooong time ago in an all-volunteer army.
I call bullshit, CSD.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces after 9/11 did so because they wanted to get back at the culprits responsible for 9/11. It is not the fault of these brave volunteers that they were not sent to Afghanistan, the country which gave aid and comfort to Qaeda, but to Iraq, which had precisely zip, zilch, nada to do with 9/11.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces did so because they wanted to legitimize their family, who did what many generations of families did and snuck into the US. My grandfather was given an exit visa to go from Berdichev in the Ukraine to Canada in 1922. He and his family did not settle in Canada, but instead went to Chicago, IL, US. Technically he and his family were "illegal immigrants." My Great Uncle Chuck was born in Chicago. Both Great Uncle Chuck and Great Uncle Art served in World War II, including liberating Dachau. Anyway, at that time, there wasn't much enforcement of immigration law. Now there is. One of the most foolproof ways of insuring your family is legitimized is serving in the Armed Forces. Hence, there's a lot of people with Latino surnames who are dying in Iraq.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces did so because economic opportunities in their community were not so great. For some people, this is the only way they can go to College. Some have made arrangements to do their hitch after they get done with college. Some do their hitch before they go to college. From what I understand it's really hard to do the former unless you go through ROTC in High School, like a neighbor girl did. She's going to go to med school on Uncle Sam's dime, then serve as a ship's surgeon on a Naval ship.
I know that Michael Moore is persona non grata in some quarters, but he captures the vulnerability of youth in places like Flint, MI, US where industry has dried up, and options are few. The recruiters play on this vulnerability and get themselves cannon fodder by stretching the truth and out-and-out lying. "You can play Basketball in the Army." "You can be a rapper in the Army." Bull fucking shit, dude. You can do Basic, get your gun, and go to Iraq to kill or be killed.
There are many other reasons people join the Armed Forces. Maybe they are good reasons. Maybe they aren't. At the point you go in as a buck private you are 0wnz0r3d, kiddo. You do what you are told. Period. End of story. If you are supposed to "soften up" an "Ali Baba" for interrogation, you do what the Intel Officer tells you to do. Or else you get cashiered, court-martialled, or a cap busted in your ass on the spot. Often times your "superiors" are not from the Regular Army or Regular Marine Corps, but they are "consultants" or "contractors." (Read: high-priced mercs working for companies like Blackwater or Custer Battles.) You are told you must obey them just like any other superior ranked officer in the Regular Armed Forces.
I do NOT support this war. I do NOT support the Commander-In-Chief, or Dick Cheney, or any of their Neo-Conservative buddies. However, I DO support the troops. They can't pick and choose their battles. "It is theirs to fight and die, it is not theirs to wonder why." I think that was Kipling, I might be wrong. Anyway, they didn't ask to be where they are. They didn't ask for Stop-Loss, and for the endlessly extended tours of duty. They only go home for good if they are so broken they can't be patched up and sent back.
The people who best support the Troops are the people who are trying to bring them home from Iraq. The people who best support the Troops are the people who want to prevent them from going to Iran.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac version of the BSoD is the Transparent Multilingual Screen of Doom. Another word for it might be familiar to Linux/*BSD/Solaris/xNIX users: Kernel Panic.
I have only had ONE on any Mac running Mac OS X. That was because I had the buggy version of the WiFi driver (fixed now) and I hit a WiFi access point that was malfunctioning.
Will there be any funstuff going on to celebrate?
WiFi should not be used in a business setting, period. Anything important should be limited to the wired network. If I was a SysAdmin at a company, I would make it an important policy to have all people using laptops keep WiFi turned off at all times when on campus. With regard to people working in the field: use a VPN over a wired connection, or else. Most hotels have wired Internet connectivity for guests. If a wired connection is unavailable, use dialup. End of story.
WiFi was built for convenience of home users, not for enterprise. It is a technology that does not belong in enterprise networking. Period.
For the past 5 years, I have been using an Ericsson r520m phone on T-Mobile. The r520m never even came out in the US, it was an Euro-only model. Yet it worked happily on the T-Mobile/Cingular (yes, they share infrastructure in California) network.
I moved to a Motorola v330 because I wanted to sync my phone information with my MacBook. I could never get the bluetooth on the MacBook to see the r520m's rudimentary implementation of bluetooth. (It was the proof-of-concept phone, dontcha know!) The v330 is cheap now on eBay, and it's cheaper still to buy one still locked to T-Mobile rather than an unlocked one. So yeah, now I have a 2004 model phone, in 2007. I'm cool with it, though. Yes, the camera sucks, but that's why I have a separate camera.
I figure by the time the Moto gives out, there will be unlocked iPhones on eBay for me to buy, and happily use with my T-Mobile service. GSM: the lingua franca of mobile phones. Gotta love it.
!Anti-Bush screensavers, keyloggers for the Venezuelan Secret Police, and a nice big fat backdoor so that Chavez can launch his super 'leet bot army to DDOS the Yanquis! !Que bueno!
Hmmm...is North Corea somehow related to Chick Corea? And is L. Ron Hubbard worshipped as a deity there? Is their prime export clams? Wait, you meant North Korea! With that little pipsqueak with the Elvis pompadour and platform shoes! And no lights on at night! Ah, now I understand. K thx bai...
So long, and thanks for all the experiments.
Back in the day, before the official WEG Star Wars RPG, there was Traveller. Very good game, very good ruleset. Part of the character creation process was giving your character a back-story. You couldn't "level up" the character after that, a fatal flaw of the rules, but the characters were able to hit the ground running.
I was involved with a group of people who had written up an entire Star Wars total conversion for the game. Jedi powers were an offshoot of Traveller's psionics, for example. The proof of just how good those games were that I still vividly remember some of the characters I created in the game. Good times, man. Good times.
This was in the early 1980s, well before the WEG games. When the WEG system was introduced in 1987, I sat down and read it. It made my brain hurt. The unnecessary complexity of the SW RPG system when you compared it to Traveller stood out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately this was the bellwether for the future of gaming. D20, GURPS...all of them. It's no accident that RPG gaming has shifted to online computer environments. Only the Guardians of Order Tri-Stat system bucked the trend of more and more complexity. Big Eyes, Small Mouth was a revelation. Sitting in on a BESM game made me remember just how fun paper-and-pencil gaming was.
Traveller is being relaunched as Traveller^5. They keep saying that the new system will premiere in June 2007. However, it's almost July 2007, and no big annoucements. However, later versions of Traveller like GURPS Traveller, MegaTraveller and "Mark Miller's Traveller" aka Traveller v.4 all were "added complexity" kind of systems. I hope that the new version strips things down and gets back to the basics. If not, I'll just take the old black books, graft on the skill improvement rules from Tri-Stat, and...well...hope to find some people who want to go kick some butt in a Galaxy far, far away.
Achtung, baby...
...for Linux bite the bag, and at least NVidia's and Intel's are worth using, this is a blessing in disguise for all those who intend to use Linux with their MacIntels. No big loss.
Finally you get to the heart of the matter.
Get Audacity. Import a few tracks off of modern CDs. Look at the squared off waveforms. Then take a CD from, say, the late 1980s or early 1990s and look at the waveforms on that. Note the less clipped waveforms? Then take a listen. You will be amazed.
Oversaturating analog tape is fine because the clipping is more organic and less buzzy. In fact, you get a bit more presence from "recording hot." Oversaturating digital recording media? You get ugly digital clipping, artifacts, and buzz galore. Yet numb-nuts producers insist on "recording hot" when recording to digital. Result? Crappy recordings.
I am always struck by how wildly better the state of recording in the '70s was to what it is now. This is part of the reason. Don't get me started about Autotune.
Just so y'all know, Photoshop Elements does about as much as most casual users of Photoshop need, and it's less than a Benjamin. /me is waiting for the next version of Elements which will be a Universal app based on CS3. Currently Photoshop Elements is at v.4 for Mac and v.5 for Windows. It currently has to run under Rosetta with MacIntel which makes Baby Jebus cry.
I'm on my Mac, clickin' my second mouse button.
Second mouse buttons have worked since Cheetah, the first version of Mac OS X. No pesky drivers to install...it works automagickally.
I'm not sure when scroll wheel support went into the default HID support for Mac OS X, but it works in both Panther (10.3.x) and Tiger (10.4.x)
Next time, try a more clever troll. K thx bai.
Clippy doesn't really exist in the newest version of Office for Mac, which is Office 2004. You can install Clippy in Office v.X, but the only Office Assistant you get with 2004 is the Mac droid guy which twists itself around like a Rubik's Cube when not in use, and is based on the original Compact Macs.
Even in Office v.X you don't need to have any Office Assistant on the desktop if you don't want one.
OK, how about...
Prague Spring
The Hungarian uprising of 1956
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
The Soviet Union basically *invented* the dogma of preventative war. This was one of the reasons why its adoption by the G. W. Bush administration was so shocking.
Folks like you are what scares me. Comparing the nightmarish kleptocracy/dictatorship in the USA to the nightmarish kleptocracy/dictatorship Russia has become is quite realistic. If you prefer the Russian model, vote for Giuliani: he's openly advocated more "preventative war" in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yep-- denounce individualism, appeal to fear, give no-bid contracts to your cronies -- vote GOP!
Arguably Tron was the first Cyberpunk movie, ever. Beat out Blade Runner if my memory serves me right. Also the short story in which the term "Cyberpunk" was coined was written in 1980 but published in '83.
Tron was the first movie to ponder the concept of life inside a computer or a computer network. Even though Tron's worldview was more the black-and-white traditional superhero/space opera good-vs.-evil worldview rather than the more nuanced, shaded, and shady world of what we now know as Cyberpunk, it postulated human interaction with a completely digital world, where "all things that are, are lights." Flynn would not have to be physically sucked into the world if Tron was entirely true to the genre, but then again arguably the genre didn't exist at that point. Networked computers were only seen commonly in business. Personal Computers were basically toys at that point. Networking? What's that? Modems? Expensive toys that spit 300 characters out per second. There was no popular concept of this yet.
Any Tron sequel would by necessity have to borrow tropes from Cyberpunk. There would be no more need for the human digitizer. Flynn would just have to "jack in" to interact with the world he interacted with as a physical figure in the original. And the playing field is bigger now...not just one machine, but billions. I would think that Flynn might also naturally morph into somewhat or maybe even entirely a villain, perhaps one with the global reach and Croesus-esque wealth of a Bill Gates and the charisma of a Steve Jobs. Maybe, while defending his proprietary empire, he has to face the Open Source movement. Maybe he might just revive the Master Control Program to help him in his quest. Hmmm...let's say I'm "open sourcing" this idea and if Disney/Pixar wants to do something with it, go right ahead.
No need to, read comments above you. The new "Palm OS" is going to be Linux-based, with emulation for old Palm apps. To be perfectly frank, I'm more excited about Palm going Linux than upset about the end of Palm OS. Basically Palm OS = Mac OS 6.x without Multifinder. Rest in pieces. The only thing I don't like about this is that Palm should have done this YEARS AGO. YEARS. They might be a little late to the party, alas.
Digital Consumer Enfeeblement.
What about the whackos who go to funerals of servicemen and women with their "God Hates Fags" and "God is killing soldiers for our sins" signs? Just sayin...
You are SO sued...
However, state law apparently cannot trump federal statute, hence the DEA sweeps on medical marijuana dispensaries.
The "Clone Wars" shorts gave me back my love of Star Wars. Unfortunately Genndy Tartakovsky is not involved in the upcoming CGI series but from what I understand the people at the helm of that (no, not Lucas, Lucas is just bankrolling it) are similarly SW fans with a major love of animation as a form of cinema.
If these movies have a prayer of being good, he should pay Lawrence Kasdan silly money to write the screenplay, point him in the direction he wants him to write, and stand back and let him do it. Or maybe Paul Dini, with similar lack of interference from Lucas.
From what I understand, these movies will be set between Episode III and the original Star Wars. (I refuse to call it Episode IV...that was the first damn movie, dammit.) And they will have lots of action. Like the animated shorts. Just keep Lucas away from the script. And for crissake keep him away from writing dialogue. Please.
...of Rupert Murdoch buying your company. Heh, my pic of Dick Cheney as Darth Sidious will probably be taken off my Photobucket. Just watch.
While I have sympathy for your situation, every single (US) soldier who is pulling a trigger is a volunteer. "I was only following orders" stopped being a valid excuse for government-sanctioned murder a loooong time ago in an all-volunteer army.
I call bullshit, CSD.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces after 9/11 did so because they wanted to get back at the culprits responsible for 9/11. It is not the fault of these brave volunteers that they were not sent to Afghanistan, the country which gave aid and comfort to Qaeda, but to Iraq, which had precisely zip, zilch, nada to do with 9/11.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces did so because they wanted to legitimize their family, who did what many generations of families did and snuck into the US. My grandfather was given an exit visa to go from Berdichev in the Ukraine to Canada in 1922. He and his family did not settle in Canada, but instead went to Chicago, IL, US. Technically he and his family were "illegal immigrants." My Great Uncle Chuck was born in Chicago. Both Great Uncle Chuck and Great Uncle Art served in World War II, including liberating Dachau. Anyway, at that time, there wasn't much enforcement of immigration law. Now there is. One of the most foolproof ways of insuring your family is legitimized is serving in the Armed Forces. Hence, there's a lot of people with Latino surnames who are dying in Iraq.
Many people who volunteered to join the US Armed Forces did so because economic opportunities in their community were not so great. For some people, this is the only way they can go to College. Some have made arrangements to do their hitch after they get done with college. Some do their hitch before they go to college. From what I understand it's really hard to do the former unless you go through ROTC in High School, like a neighbor girl did. She's going to go to med school on Uncle Sam's dime, then serve as a ship's surgeon on a Naval ship.
I know that Michael Moore is persona non grata in some quarters, but he captures the vulnerability of youth in places like Flint, MI, US where industry has dried up, and options are few. The recruiters play on this vulnerability and get themselves cannon fodder by stretching the truth and out-and-out lying. "You can play Basketball in the Army." "You can be a rapper in the Army." Bull fucking shit, dude. You can do Basic, get your gun, and go to Iraq to kill or be killed.
There are many other reasons people join the Armed Forces. Maybe they are good reasons. Maybe they aren't. At the point you go in as a buck private you are 0wnz0r3d, kiddo. You do what you are told. Period. End of story. If you are supposed to "soften up" an "Ali Baba" for interrogation, you do what the Intel Officer tells you to do. Or else you get cashiered, court-martialled, or a cap busted in your ass on the spot. Often times your "superiors" are not from the Regular Army or Regular Marine Corps, but they are "consultants" or "contractors." (Read: high-priced mercs working for companies like Blackwater or Custer Battles.) You are told you must obey them just like any other superior ranked officer in the Regular Armed Forces.
I do NOT support this war. I do NOT support the Commander-In-Chief, or Dick Cheney, or any of their Neo-Conservative buddies. However, I DO support the troops. They can't pick and choose their battles. "It is theirs to fight and die, it is not theirs to wonder why." I think that was Kipling, I might be wrong. Anyway, they didn't ask to be where they are. They didn't ask for Stop-Loss, and for the endlessly extended tours of duty. They only go home for good if they are so broken they can't be patched up and sent back.
The people who best support the Troops are the people who are trying to bring them home from Iraq. The people who best support the Troops are the people who want to prevent them from going to Iran.