Re:What's wrong with finder?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Those compaints are from before 10.3 came out, which is when the OS X Finder took several leaps forward.
Also, most of the article seems to be about pimping an alternative design ideas (mainly credited to Tog) which don't sound better than the current design in any way whatsoever (IMHO, YMMV, uh... IANAL.)
Well, I'm not going to respond by making their case for them, because (as I said), I'm on the side of letting people do what they want.
Really? I personally haven't heard any arguments against gay/poly marriages that were not rooted in ignorance, bigotry, or both. Every argument I've heard effectively boils down to one of the following:
I would suggest you read columns by George Will and other "social conservatives" on the issue of how the potentially-child-producing male/female marriage has a "civilizing" impact on the culture. Their arguments tend to be rooted more in Aristotle than the book of Leviticus.
That doesn't make them right, it's just that if you have not heard such arguments, then you haven't been listening very closely to what they were trying to say.
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
So, you are saying that the issues like gay weddings, living wills, abortion, and the teaching of evolution simply are not worthy of debate?
The reason nobody in America debates about the issues you want to get us riled up about is because our current society is very stable, and there is nearly a consensus (for better or worse) on all of them.
Other than libertarian crackpots like me (and a handful of pie-eyed college kids), nobody cares about the concept of "limited government."
Almost everybody agrees that the military is one of the few things worth throwing vast sums of money at.
Most older folks still watch TV news, but more and more people are simply turning to other sources, to get away from the endless parade of Michael Jackson trials and whatnot.
The "political prisoners" and "torture" you speak of are not nearly the hot-button issues you wish they were.
Government agency corruption has always been with us. Anybody who thinks it's an invention of either Bush or Clinton is simply too young to know any better.
Meanwhile, the issues you dismissed so quickly are critically important to the culture.
Marriage is the basic unit of family organization upon which our entire civilization is built. While I happen to think that government has no business prohibiting families made up of same-sex couples (or even multiple-partner marriages), there are those who strongly feel otherwise, and not simply for reasons of puritan bigotry. Their objections are not entirely without merit.
Living wills and abortion both get down to a very fundamental question: At what point do your rights, specifically the single most important right of survival, begin and end? When does a person become a person? When to they cease to be a person? Are we entitled to waive our own right to life under certain circumstances? These are big questions, and the minutae of how the answers are applied can impact millions of people.
Evolution is the theoretical model upon which all of our modern knowledge of biology is built. It is absolutely vital to the long-term advancement of science that it is taught in schools. At the same time, Darwin's second book, The Descent of Man, runs afowl of several major religions regarding man's relationship to other animals. Balancing the need to teach "this is what our best science has established" with the need to avoid saying "your family's religion must be incorrect superstition" is a challenge which presents no easy answers (unless you are willing to dismiss the other side's concerns out of hand.)
The role of religion in public structures is also a problem. Our first Ammendment states that our government must neither endorse nor hinder any specific religion. Some people feel that public displays of religious dogma constitute an endorsement. Others feel that banning such dogma from all public places constitutes a hinderance. The problem with the debate is that both sides are completely correct. You can't really ban religion from all public places without restricting the free practice, and you can't really have public space and/or resources promoting religion without forcing those who oppose it to be in the position of contributing to it with their tax dollars.
"Virii" is a deliberate misuse of the plural form, like "boxen."
If you feel compelled to point out that it is incorrect, in either Latin or English, to use "virii" instead of "viruses" or simply "virus", then you have clearly missed the joke entirely.
Besides, English is defined by usage, not by ancient rules dictating the structure of an entirely different language. If enough people start using "virii" as the plural form of computer virus, vs. "viruses" for the plural form of biological virus, than "virii" simply becomes correct, no matter how badly you want to prevent it.
Let me guess, you're still upset that Heinz changed the spelling on their bottles from "Catsup" to "Ketchup", ain'tcha?
The thing is, you can now change phone providers without giving up your phone number (mine ends with four consecutive nines, so it's a pretty sweet one to have).
If Apple and Motorola release a phone/iPod that I really, really want, and only do business with one provider who agrees not to tack on a bunch of useless lock-down to the services, I will simply buy the phone and switch to that provider. Hell, I dropped Sprint in favor of T-Mobile just out of being pissed off about lousy service.
Sure, some people have locked themselves into multi-year contracts, but most people can change services fairly soon.
Verizon and Cingular might be saying they won't support something like this right now, but if they start looking at losing an endless stream of customers over it, they are bound to change their tune.
Personally, I'm hoping no American networks pick up the show.
PBS now broadcasts nearly full-time in 1080i wide-screen High-Def for free over the air in most markets, and they usually rebroadcast the best British shows about a year later.
I would rather see it that way than a 4:3 540i digital broadcast like what I get from most of the other networks most of the time.
If you think iPod accessories (mostly sold by Belkin, Monster, and Labtech, not by Apple) are overpriced, make competing accessories and chop those guys off at the knees.
The pin-out diagrams for the iPod are easy enough to harvest from hacker sites.
Seriously. Do it. If you can make a reliable $20 car adapter which uses the cigarette lighter for power and FM for radio connectivity, I would rather buy yours than the $80 one from Belkin.
2. You can almost never find their CD's in used stores either. People who buy Beatles albums tend to keep them.
3. Even if you do find them, used CD's typically go for about $9 per disk these days, which works out to an average of about 85 cents per song, depending on which Beatles albums you are buying. Not exactly "10 cents on the dollar compared to iTunes", which would, for example allow you to buy the songs only from the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack for 99 cents each, skipping out on paying for all the George Martin orchestration crap. Complete albums on iTMS almost always go for $9.99 each, and almost all tracks are available separately.
4. Your folks were correct to rip their existing CD's, as I have, but if I want to buy Willie Nelson's excellent ballad "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" without buying the entire merely-okay album "Red Headed Stranger", then iTMS is a terrific way to go.
Re:Believe it or not, Apple's DRM doesn't bother m
on
iTunes DRM Hole Closed
·
· Score: 1
Russian mafia, Californian mafia... is there really that much of a difference?:)
Fewer former KGB operatives working in Cupertino, for starters.
Also, Apple Computer doesn't have the means to fix the outcome of NHL games.
(Then again, so long as the strike continues, neither does the Russian mafia...)
Gosh, sorry for having fun and trying to make a little side cash off it. Obviously if I don't rise to your Romantic-era ideals of being the consumate "artist" I should not even bother. I guess I'll tear down my studio now. Thanks for the advice.
Yes it does, but it's a Mac mini behind a home DSL line. There's no way I'm posting a link to it on a site as big as Slashdot. You will just have to be "cool" enough to discover us on your own.;)
Star Wars Online did well but everywhere you turn there is something Star Wars. The movies are current and there are many console and PC games to keep interest up.
What are you talking about?
Everybody knows that the last Star Wars movie came out in 1983. It wasn't as good as the first two, but it had its moments.
I'm sticking with WoW, and here's 90% of the reason why (from the official FAQ):
Will MEO be released for the Mac / Xbox / Playstation / Gamecube?
MEO is currently only in development for Windows-based PC platforms.
True, not many of my gaming friends are Mac heads, true. Serious hard-core gamers almost all use Windows... but if my Mac friends and my PC friends can't all game together on the same server, none of us are going to bother with it. Blizzard understood this, as they have with nearly all of their multi-player games, and look at the way they dominate whatever market they enter (RTS, RPG, MMORPG...) I'm surprised so few other gaming companies have come to this realization.
I beleive all it would take is work to get yourself known around the internet. Its no diffrent that advertising for your really sweet lingere store or your RPG webstite.
I have a lingerie store!?!?!?
Holy crap, I gotta hang out there more.
Re:Believe it or not, Apple's DRM doesn't bother m
on
iTunes DRM Hole Closed
·
· Score: 1
How about paying 90 cents less and get yourself lossless DRM free music ?
That sounds like it would be terrific, if I didn't mind supporting the Russian mafia.
Wow! I can make almost $5000 per million dollars of gross record sales while having (by far) the most fun job in the entire chain while becoming sufficiently famous to trade on my name to make loads of money elsewhere!? Sign me up!
Best of all, some of those fees are flat, one-time payouts, so my take of the next million would be significantly higher.
Note that Steve Albini got where he is today by getting "screwed" in exactly the same fashion.
1. Cry Baby / Piece of My Heart
Melissa Etheridge & Joss Stone
2. Switch
Will Smith
3. Since U Been Gone
Kelly Clarkson
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Green Day
5. Rich Girl
Gwen Stefani & Eve
6. Mr. Brightside
The Killers
7. Candy Shop
50 Cent
8. One, Two Step
Ciara featuring Missy Elliot
9. Obsession (No Es Amor)
Frankie J & Baby Bash
10. Caught Up
Usher
Which of these "artists" are poor? Will Smith? Gwen Stefani? Usher?
Won't somebody do something to help these poor starving artists out of their current plight!?
Thank you for that bit of spin, Ms. Courney Love, but the truth is that the "loan" for studio time comes out of your future cut of the profits, and if none exist you simply walk away. A contract with a band doesn't mean much when the band "splits up" and defaults on the whole affair.
George Clinton even managed to sucker exclusive deals out of two different labels by forming two different "bands" using almost the exact same musicians (Parliament and Funkadelic.)
It's very simple math. One gold record == you barely break even, if that. Two gold records == you become rich. A couple records eventually go platinum == You have enough money to start a label of your own, and maybe buy your own professional soccer team.
The other option is to spend your own money recording and promoting yourself. There are thousands of people doing that in thousands of basements right at this very moment, and almost none of them will make a dime of profit. In fact, almost all of them will lose money. A few just might realize the dream of making enough money to quit their day jobs, but only if they are very good and very lucky... and they can expect not to rise much higher than that. (Unless they are "discovered" by a major label and/or distributor, and become part of the machine.)
Not everything of value in this world has a monetary value.
Only because some things are worth more than any ammount of money, hence the term "priceless," and some things which are not worth any money at all, hense the term "worthless."
Very few works of art in the history of mankind have been truly priceless. Most of the work coming from artists who think their stuff is priceless is actually worthless. All other art can be bought at a price. (With the exception of public domain works, which are free now, but once had a money value.)
Performance artists has always been about getting paid, not about creating something which will hang on a church ceiling forever.
I thought it was about both.
Prior to the 20th Century, performance art was not something you could preserve. The concept is, by its very nature, temporal.
The phonograph and the motion-picture camera changed that a little, but most performance artists still consider the actual performance, which is gone forever as soon as it's over, to be the real art form.
That was merely a light-hearted joke, followed by an honest question, not flamebait... but since there are some moderators out there acting like asses, I will fight fire with fire. I've got Karma to burn. Re-posting my currently -1 comment at 2. Mod me down, and I'll just do it again:
I imagine you could make 30-50,000 a year between sales of your music and merchandise and show tickets, if you had a decent content delivery system and you kept putting out good music the money would keep flowing in.. Just so you know i am also an indie rocker, and no, i wouldnt sign a contract with the RIAA...there ARE better ways, if youa are good and love the music you CAN make a living without being a whore.
Yeah, but then I would have to put the effort into making good music. I just want to force feed the crap I'm making now into the public conscious, become wealthy, and act like a total ass for the rest of my life.
So, do you make 30-50K per year as an indie artist, or are you just "imagining" that you can?
Slashdot Mirror
Those compaints are from before 10.3 came out, which is when the OS X Finder took several leaps forward.
Also, most of the article seems to be about pimping an alternative design ideas (mainly credited to Tog) which don't sound better than the current design in any way whatsoever (IMHO, YMMV, uh... IANAL.)
Reading your post, I can't help but be reminded of Kevin Nealon's pr0n reviews on SNL:
I found it interesting. Interesting... interesting... very interesting... VERY VERY interesting... and suddenly I lost interest.
Well, I'm not going to respond by making their case for them, because (as I said), I'm on the side of letting people do what they want.
Really? I personally haven't heard any arguments against gay/poly marriages that were not rooted in ignorance, bigotry, or both. Every argument I've heard effectively boils down to one of the following:
I would suggest you read columns by George Will and other "social conservatives" on the issue of how the potentially-child-producing male/female marriage has a "civilizing" impact on the culture. Their arguments tend to be rooted more in Aristotle than the book of Leviticus.
That doesn't make them right, it's just that if you have not heard such arguments, then you haven't been listening very closely to what they were trying to say.
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
So, you are saying that the issues like gay weddings, living wills, abortion, and the teaching of evolution simply are not worthy of debate?
The reason nobody in America debates about the issues you want to get us riled up about is because our current society is very stable, and there is nearly a consensus (for better or worse) on all of them.
Other than libertarian crackpots like me (and a handful of pie-eyed college kids), nobody cares about the concept of "limited government."
Almost everybody agrees that the military is one of the few things worth throwing vast sums of money at.
Most older folks still watch TV news, but more and more people are simply turning to other sources, to get away from the endless parade of Michael Jackson trials and whatnot.
The "political prisoners" and "torture" you speak of are not nearly the hot-button issues you wish they were.
Government agency corruption has always been with us. Anybody who thinks it's an invention of either Bush or Clinton is simply too young to know any better.
Meanwhile, the issues you dismissed so quickly are critically important to the culture.
Marriage is the basic unit of family organization upon which our entire civilization is built. While I happen to think that government has no business prohibiting families made up of same-sex couples (or even multiple-partner marriages), there are those who strongly feel otherwise, and not simply for reasons of puritan bigotry. Their objections are not entirely without merit.
Living wills and abortion both get down to a very fundamental question: At what point do your rights, specifically the single most important right of survival, begin and end? When does a person become a person? When to they cease to be a person? Are we entitled to waive our own right to life under certain circumstances? These are big questions, and the minutae of how the answers are applied can impact millions of people.
Evolution is the theoretical model upon which all of our modern knowledge of biology is built. It is absolutely vital to the long-term advancement of science that it is taught in schools. At the same time, Darwin's second book, The Descent of Man, runs afowl of several major religions regarding man's relationship to other animals. Balancing the need to teach "this is what our best science has established" with the need to avoid saying "your family's religion must be incorrect superstition" is a challenge which presents no easy answers (unless you are willing to dismiss the other side's concerns out of hand.)
The role of religion in public structures is also a problem. Our first Ammendment states that our government must neither endorse nor hinder any specific religion. Some people feel that public displays of religious dogma constitute an endorsement. Others feel that banning such dogma from all public places constitutes a hinderance. The problem with the debate is that both sides are completely correct. You can't really ban religion from all public places without restricting the free practice, and you can't really have public space and/or resources promoting religion without forcing those who oppose it to be in the position of contributing to it with their tax dollars.
The religion clau
"Virii" is a deliberate misuse of the plural form, like "boxen."
If you feel compelled to point out that it is incorrect, in either Latin or English, to use "virii" instead of "viruses" or simply "virus", then you have clearly missed the joke entirely.
Besides, English is defined by usage, not by ancient rules dictating the structure of an entirely different language. If enough people start using "virii" as the plural form of computer virus, vs. "viruses" for the plural form of biological virus, than "virii" simply becomes correct, no matter how badly you want to prevent it.
Let me guess, you're still upset that Heinz changed the spelling on their bottles from "Catsup" to "Ketchup", ain'tcha?
No kidding. 7.1 has been a free download for more than five years now, and this "Easter Egg" has been known about at least as long.
Slashdot
Really Fucking Old News for Nerds. Stuff that didn't matter much even then.
The thing is, you can now change phone providers without giving up your phone number (mine ends with four consecutive nines, so it's a pretty sweet one to have).
If Apple and Motorola release a phone/iPod that I really, really want, and only do business with one provider who agrees not to tack on a bunch of useless lock-down to the services, I will simply buy the phone and switch to that provider. Hell, I dropped Sprint in favor of T-Mobile just out of being pissed off about lousy service.
Sure, some people have locked themselves into multi-year contracts, but most people can change services fairly soon.
Verizon and Cingular might be saying they won't support something like this right now, but if they start looking at losing an endless stream of customers over it, they are bound to change their tune.
Personally, I'm hoping no American networks pick up the show.
PBS now broadcasts nearly full-time in 1080i wide-screen High-Def for free over the air in most markets, and they usually rebroadcast the best British shows about a year later.
I would rather see it that way than a 4:3 540i digital broadcast like what I get from most of the other networks most of the time.
If you think iPod accessories (mostly sold by Belkin, Monster, and Labtech, not by Apple) are overpriced, make competing accessories and chop those guys off at the knees.
The pin-out diagrams for the iPod are easy enough to harvest from hacker sites.
Seriously. Do it. If you can make a reliable $20 car adapter which uses the cigarette lighter for power and FM for radio connectivity, I would rather buy yours than the $80 one from Belkin.
Good point there. This thread is a day or two old, so slashdotting is unlikely.
:)
http://www.thesliderules.com
Note the lack of contact info on the site. We've been extremely lazy about self-promotion so far.
By the way, you site looks very empty when I browse to it from work... probably because I'm blocking images.
1. You can't buy Beatles albums in iTMS.
2. You can almost never find their CD's in used stores either. People who buy Beatles albums tend to keep them.
3. Even if you do find them, used CD's typically go for about $9 per disk these days, which works out to an average of about 85 cents per song, depending on which Beatles albums you are buying. Not exactly "10 cents on the dollar compared to iTunes", which would, for example allow you to buy the songs only from the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack for 99 cents each, skipping out on paying for all the George Martin orchestration crap. Complete albums on iTMS almost always go for $9.99 each, and almost all tracks are available separately.
4. Your folks were correct to rip their existing CD's, as I have, but if I want to buy Willie Nelson's excellent ballad "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" without buying the entire merely-okay album "Red Headed Stranger", then iTMS is a terrific way to go.
Russian mafia, Californian mafia... is there really that much of a difference? :)
Fewer former KGB operatives working in Cupertino, for starters.
Also, Apple Computer doesn't have the means to fix the outcome of NHL games.
(Then again, so long as the strike continues, neither does the Russian mafia...)
Gosh, sorry for having fun and trying to make a little side cash off it. Obviously if I don't rise to your Romantic-era ideals of being the consumate "artist" I should not even bother. I guess I'll tear down my studio now. Thanks for the advice.
Ass.
Yes it does, but it's a Mac mini behind a home DSL line. There's no way I'm posting a link to it on a site as big as Slashdot. You will just have to be "cool" enough to discover us on your own. ;)
Hint: We are in the Twin Cities.
Star Wars Online did well but everywhere you turn there is something Star Wars. The movies are current and there are many console and PC games to keep interest up.
What are you talking about?
Everybody knows that the last Star Wars movie came out in 1983. It wasn't as good as the first two, but it had its moments.
LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!
I'm sticking with WoW, and here's 90% of the reason why (from the official FAQ):
True, not many of my gaming friends are Mac heads, true. Serious hard-core gamers almost all use Windows... but if my Mac friends and my PC friends can't all game together on the same server, none of us are going to bother with it. Blizzard understood this, as they have with nearly all of their multi-player games, and look at the way they dominate whatever market they enter (RTS, RPG, MMORPG...) I'm surprised so few other gaming companies have come to this realization.
I beleive all it would take is work to get yourself known around the internet. Its no diffrent that advertising for your really sweet lingere store or your RPG webstite.
I have a lingerie store!?!?!?
Holy crap, I gotta hang out there more.
How about paying 90 cents less and get yourself lossless DRM free music ?
That sounds like it would be terrific, if I didn't mind supporting the Russian mafia.
Wow! I can make almost $5000 per million dollars of gross record sales while having (by far) the most fun job in the entire chain while becoming sufficiently famous to trade on my name to make loads of money elsewhere!? Sign me up!
Best of all, some of those fees are flat, one-time payouts, so my take of the next million would be significantly higher.
Note that Steve Albini got where he is today by getting "screwed" in exactly the same fashion.
Wise up, even top 10 artists can be poor!
iTunes current top 10 downloads:
1. Cry Baby / Piece of My Heart
Melissa Etheridge & Joss Stone
2. Switch
Will Smith
3. Since U Been Gone
Kelly Clarkson
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Green Day
5. Rich Girl
Gwen Stefani & Eve
6. Mr. Brightside
The Killers
7. Candy Shop
50 Cent
8. One, Two Step
Ciara featuring Missy Elliot
9. Obsession (No Es Amor)
Frankie J & Baby Bash
10. Caught Up
Usher
Which of these "artists" are poor? Will Smith? Gwen Stefani? Usher?
Won't somebody do something to help these poor starving artists out of their current plight!?
Thank you for that bit of spin, Ms. Courney Love, but the truth is that the "loan" for studio time comes out of your future cut of the profits, and if none exist you simply walk away. A contract with a band doesn't mean much when the band "splits up" and defaults on the whole affair.
George Clinton even managed to sucker exclusive deals out of two different labels by forming two different "bands" using almost the exact same musicians (Parliament and Funkadelic.)
It's very simple math.
One gold record == you barely break even, if that.
Two gold records == you become rich.
A couple records eventually go platinum == You have enough money to start a label of your own, and maybe buy your own professional soccer team.
The other option is to spend your own money recording and promoting yourself. There are thousands of people doing that in thousands of basements right at this very moment, and almost none of them will make a dime of profit. In fact, almost all of them will lose money. A few just might realize the dream of making enough money to quit their day jobs, but only if they are very good and very lucky... and they can expect not to rise much higher than that. (Unless they are "discovered" by a major label and/or distributor, and become part of the machine.)
Not everything of value in this world has a monetary value.
Only because some things are worth more than any ammount of money, hence the term "priceless," and some things which are not worth any money at all, hense the term "worthless."
Very few works of art in the history of mankind have been truly priceless. Most of the work coming from artists who think their stuff is priceless is actually worthless. All other art can be bought at a price. (With the exception of public domain works, which are free now, but once had a money value.)
I thought it was about both.
Prior to the 20th Century, performance art was not something you could preserve. The concept is, by its very nature, temporal.
The phonograph and the motion-picture camera changed that a little, but most performance artists still consider the actual performance, which is gone forever as soon as it's over, to be the real art form.
BTW has anyone ever considered themselves a 'programming artist'?
:)
Yeah. Donald Knuth [stanford.edu], Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University.
Heh. I would love a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Programming to go with my Bachelor of Science in Music.
(Dupe posting because mods who didn't get the joke are a little too quick on the "Off topic" trigger today.)
That was merely a light-hearted joke, followed by an honest question, not flamebait... but since there are some moderators out there acting like asses, I will fight fire with fire. I've got Karma to burn. Re-posting my currently -1 comment at 2. Mod me down, and I'll just do it again:
I imagine you could make 30-50,000 a year between sales of your music and merchandise and show tickets, if you had a decent content delivery system and you kept putting out good music the money would keep flowing in.. Just so you know i am also an indie rocker, and no, i wouldnt sign a contract with the RIAA...there ARE better ways, if youa are good and love the music you CAN make a living without being a whore.
Yeah, but then I would have to put the effort into making good music. I just want to force feed the crap I'm making now into the public conscious, become wealthy, and act like a total ass for the rest of my life.
So, do you make 30-50K per year as an indie artist, or are you just "imagining" that you can?