Also, if you think that any linux desktop even approaches the ease of use and learning curve of OS X, you've never used either.
I'm going to disagree with you and say that the GNOME desktop environment is considerably easier to use than OS X's environment. OS X is one of the few OSes* that I haven't had much chance to properly explore and on those occasions I found it to be awkward and frustrating to use. Similarly, windows has made me swear since long before I ever branched out and experimented with other OSes.
I think that given a properly thought out GNU/Linux distribution (I haven't tried them all) could provide a new user with a very comfortable experience, and the community support is excellent, making the learning curve fairly shallow. I'll assume that the average stuff that "normal people" do on their computers probably involves a lot of multimedia playback, and I'm going to boldly suggest that GNU/Linux is the least frustrating OS for multimedia due to the general lack of battling stupid commercial software** and their myriad ways of taking control and limiting users (although free/open source software on Windows and OS X doesn't seem too bad, it probably isn't the most popular under those OSes).
Every OS has their niche though, and I don't think people who make heavy use of graphics and 3D programs, or heavy games users really count as new users.
--
* I've used GNU/Linux for 5 or 6 years, I've used Mac OS 7 through 9, MS-DOS, Windows from 3.1 to XP, and the computers at my primary school ran RiscOS. Yes, I know there are a thousand other OSes out there, but I think I've had exposure to most of the common ones.
** As opposed to good commercial software: that exists too.
Meh, nothing I've seen about 4th edition has impressed me yet. At best they are fixing some terrible problems present in 3rd edition, and at worst they are ignoring all the incredible game design that has come out in the last 10 years.
They're still releasing 3 core books and separate background books, when they should be releasing 1 core book containing the rules, character generation and a little basic background. They're keeping levels, which have been hideous from the word go, and force you to wrestle with the mechanics to make your character.
I'm supporting Warhammer Fantasy for medieval games, which somehow manages to take levels and not make them bad and my overall favourite RPG system is probably the Unisystem (although I secretly like Shadowrun 4th edition too).
I don't think I'm needy in that I have to spend an hour a day on the phone or I'll panic and think I'm not with people. It's just handy to have when you need it, or to send texts to my fiancée before I go to sleep (she doesn't own a computer, and calling her on the landline would wake her flatmate up).
Finally a million pounds is way beyond anything I can conceive having. It's so life changing I'm not even sure I'd want it. Certainly not having an overdraft is great, but what makes you get up in the morning if you haven't got something to work towards?
Realistically I'd take the money, but idealistically I'd decline it.
...one in three people aged 16 to 24 in the UK would not give up their mobile phone for a million pounds. Is it fair to say that the ability to communicate effectively with your friends may just be more important to some people than material wealth?
No. A radian is a measurement of angle. There are 2Pi radians in a circle, just as there are 360 degrees in a circle. It makes no difference whether or not you have constant radii. In fact it makes things easier, because you can calculate arcs just my multiplying the angle in radians by the radius (if that is required).
You do not need to start adding points to take into account varying distance or anything like that, you just work in radians rather than degrees.
Actually you can use your fingers to count to 12 without re-engineering the human race.
Just point your thumb to one of your finger segments, you have 3 on each of your 4 fingers, making 12 finger segments on each hand (useful for counting up to 144).
This was actually used in some ancient civilisations, and may be another reason why the number 12 is so important to our counting systems.
The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD. That's because the Bible is a work of fiction, and its viewpoint has absolutely nothing to do with global warming. I really don't like idea of other people allowing the world to fall apart just because their favourite author said it will - we actually have some responsibility to look after the environment. I'm sure non-fundamentalists, or people from almost any other religion would agree.
I can't see these stats making any difference. The recording industry is highly unlikely to start making apologies for using bad data, and are going to use the best numbers they can come up with, accurate or not.
I remember my mother throwing out all my issues of Sonic the Comic. A mere three weeks before I mentioned them to her because I had found issue 1 on Ebay that I wanted to complete my collection. This was 5 years after I moved out of my parents' home. I was not amused. I learnt to draw copying those comics damnit!
I still love playing all the 2D Sonic games though.
I don't know what course this lecturer was teaching, but in my maths lectures I have to take down word-for-word everything the lecturer says, and I can't make mistakes. I suspect the situation is similar for most science courses. I wouldn't use a laptop though, because it's far easier to write symbols, equations and draw diagrams by hand (unless you are really nifty with LaTeX).
If you want students to pay attention then: a) make your lectures better structured b) make your lectures more interesting c) provide printed notes, so students don't need to take them during the lecture.
That's nice. I had a powerbook for a while, and it came with an inbuilt single button touchpad. I bought a mouse with two buttons, and the second mouse button did nothing. (This was back in 1999). If you went out and bought a two button mouse and it worked then good for you.
The major point I was making was that it is not confusing, and even a 10 year old kid can pick up the use of multiple mouse buttons, as shown anecdotally in the case of the Acorn 5000s.
I don't use QT player, I don't use iTunes. Yes I do know exactly what context means. I said I didn't like having no right mouse button to give me a context menu. It should not require the use of both hands in order to gain such a menu.
I remember my primary school bought in a whole set of new computers. They were Acorn 5000s with an Archimedes dotted here and there running RiscOS. These computers had three mouse buttons which all did different things. I don't recall anyone having any problems with this setup.
When I came to secondary school and it was full of Macs I remember having huge problems coming to terms with the lack of functionality, and consequently didn't use them for several years until about the time when iMacs appeared and I was working on the school magazine.
Nowadays I do most things via the command line, but I still find lack of context menus via the right mouse button very frustrating. I still have problems with Apple's mice due to their lack of scroll wheels, which is an utter crime.
No, the TV licensing people still require a court order to enter. However you are free to give your permission for them to enter, if they show up unannounced without an order.
This happened to a friend of mine. The man showed up at the door and said he was with TV licensing and asked "may we come in?" My friend asked if he had permission, and the man replied "Yes.. if you give it." My friend said no and the man had to leave.
I actually read that as SCO tragic death for a second, (really, I tend to get a bit muddled when reading words at times). Still, I think I prefer my alternate title...
My flatmate showed the duality movie to me about 2 years ago and burned it onto a tiny 5cm CD which I stuck in one of the folds of my wallet.
I completely forgot about it and only rediscovered it 6 months ago. I then gave it to my sister who found it very amusing and said that the disc was "cute".
It's now residing in my wallet again. Just for the sake of it.
My school in Scotland (UK) provided us only with Macs, not a single Windows machine was to be found in the entire school.
Then when I came to university (Edinburgh), I found that the university provided the CS students with the fast linux PCs, and everyone else gets to use the NT4 machines, which are painfully slow, taking 5 minutes (I'm not exaggerating) to log on with Novell.
Now I'm a Linux user, fully backed by my university. So maybe things are improving for the UK techie.
There's probably nothing preventing you from projecting the keyboard onto something soft, like a mousemat, or a sponge, or a towel - something that will cushion the hammering against the table.
Just think, you could have any pattern you wanted for your keyboard!
And again at 333 fps. This allows the Famouss Q3DM6 bridge to rail jump to be done in a single jump, if a proper circle jump is performed. Otherwise, at 125 fps you need to start from the far end of the bridge, perform a circle jump and then bunnyhop to gain a little extra speed.
Oh, by the way, this jump can only be performed on a remote server, as for some reason a listen server screws with the physics enough to make this jump impossible.
Quake 1 jumps always seem far more impressive though in my opionion, because your speed is only capped if you press the forward button, and the stunts a good Quaker can perform are totally unbelievable. See http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/ for more crazy Quake 1 action.
Radiant Silvergun may be one of the rarest games out there, but it sure as hell deserves to be bought. My flatmates (one of whom works in a videogames shop) managed to import a copy from America for £150, and for quite some time it became the most played game in our flat.
It's made by Treasure, who are responsible for other amazing games such Bangio (which feature all the missiles) and Ikaruga (essentially a much easier sequel to RS), as well as Sin & Punishment, Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers etc. Truly one of the greatest developers out there.
BTW, we are still no way near to completing RS - it's probably the most unfair game in existence, but the satisfaction of completing a level without dying rivals that completing most games. Well worth seeking out.
Simply go to your old Mozilla plugins folder and copy all the plugins except npnul32.dll and put them into your new Mozilla plugins folder. Unless the plugins are broken with the new version, this should just work, even if Mozilla is still running.
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I'm going to disagree with you and say that the GNOME desktop environment is considerably easier to use than OS X's environment. OS X is one of the few OSes* that I haven't had much chance to properly explore and on those occasions I found it to be awkward and frustrating to use. Similarly, windows has made me swear since long before I ever branched out and experimented with other OSes.
I think that given a properly thought out GNU/Linux distribution (I haven't tried them all) could provide a new user with a very comfortable experience, and the community support is excellent, making the learning curve fairly shallow. I'll assume that the average stuff that "normal people" do on their computers probably involves a lot of multimedia playback, and I'm going to boldly suggest that GNU/Linux is the least frustrating OS for multimedia due to the general lack of battling stupid commercial software** and their myriad ways of taking control and limiting users (although free/open source software on Windows and OS X doesn't seem too bad, it probably isn't the most popular under those OSes).
Every OS has their niche though, and I don't think people who make heavy use of graphics and 3D programs, or heavy games users really count as new users.
--
* I've used GNU/Linux for 5 or 6 years, I've used Mac OS 7 through 9, MS-DOS, Windows from 3.1 to XP, and the computers at my primary school ran RiscOS. Yes, I know there are a thousand other OSes out there, but I think I've had exposure to most of the common ones.
** As opposed to good commercial software: that exists too.
Meh, nothing I've seen about 4th edition has impressed me yet. At best they are fixing some terrible problems present in 3rd edition, and at worst they are ignoring all the incredible game design that has come out in the last 10 years.
They're still releasing 3 core books and separate background books, when they should be releasing 1 core book containing the rules, character generation and a little basic background. They're keeping levels, which have been hideous from the word go, and force you to wrestle with the mechanics to make your character.
I'm supporting Warhammer Fantasy for medieval games, which somehow manages to take levels and not make them bad and my overall favourite RPG system is probably the Unisystem (although I secretly like Shadowrun 4th edition too).
I quite literally owe my life to a mobile phone.
I don't think I'm needy in that I have to spend an hour a day on the phone or I'll panic and think I'm not with people. It's just handy to have when you need it, or to send texts to my fiancée before I go to sleep (she doesn't own a computer, and calling her on the landline would wake her flatmate up).
Finally a million pounds is way beyond anything I can conceive having. It's so life changing I'm not even sure I'd want it. Certainly not having an overdraft is great, but what makes you get up in the morning if you haven't got something to work towards?
Realistically I'd take the money, but idealistically I'd decline it.
...one in three people aged 16 to 24 in the UK would not give up their mobile phone for a million pounds. Is it fair to say that the ability to communicate effectively with your friends may just be more important to some people than material wealth?No. A radian is a measurement of angle. There are 2Pi radians in a circle, just as there are 360 degrees in a circle. It makes no difference whether or not you have constant radii. In fact it makes things easier, because you can calculate arcs just my multiplying the angle in radians by the radius (if that is required).
You do not need to start adding points to take into account varying distance or anything like that, you just work in radians rather than degrees.
Actually you can use your fingers to count to 12 without re-engineering the human race. Just point your thumb to one of your finger segments, you have 3 on each of your 4 fingers, making 12 finger segments on each hand (useful for counting up to 144). This was actually used in some ancient civilisations, and may be another reason why the number 12 is so important to our counting systems.
And what if your measurement is not exactly one second?
Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.
I can't see these stats making any difference. The recording industry is highly unlikely to start making apologies for using bad data, and are going to use the best numbers they can come up with, accurate or not.
I remember my mother throwing out all my issues of Sonic the Comic. A mere three weeks before I mentioned them to her because I had found issue 1 on Ebay that I wanted to complete my collection. This was 5 years after I moved out of my parents' home. I was not amused. I learnt to draw copying those comics damnit!
I still love playing all the 2D Sonic games though.
I don't know what course this lecturer was teaching, but in my maths lectures I have to take down word-for-word everything the lecturer says, and I can't make mistakes. I suspect the situation is similar for most science courses. I wouldn't use a laptop though, because it's far easier to write symbols, equations and draw diagrams by hand (unless you are really nifty with LaTeX).
If you want students to pay attention then:
a) make your lectures better structured
b) make your lectures more interesting
c) provide printed notes, so students don't need to take them during the lecture.
That's nice. I had a powerbook for a while, and it came with an inbuilt single button touchpad. I bought a mouse with two buttons, and the second mouse button did nothing. (This was back in 1999). If you went out and bought a two button mouse and it worked then good for you.
The major point I was making was that it is not confusing, and even a 10 year old kid can pick up the use of multiple mouse buttons, as shown anecdotally in the case of the Acorn 5000s.
I don't use QT player, I don't use iTunes. Yes I do know exactly what context means. I said I didn't like having no right mouse button to give me a context menu. It should not require the use of both hands in order to gain such a menu.
I remember my primary school bought in a whole set of new computers. They were Acorn 5000s with an Archimedes dotted here and there running RiscOS. These computers had three mouse buttons which all did different things. I don't recall anyone having any problems with this setup.
When I came to secondary school and it was full of Macs I remember having huge problems coming to terms with the lack of functionality, and consequently didn't use them for several years until about the time when iMacs appeared and I was working on the school magazine.
Nowadays I do most things via the command line, but I still find lack of context menus via the right mouse button very frustrating. I still have problems with Apple's mice due to their lack of scroll wheels, which is an utter crime.
If you are confused, This guide is pretty good at explaining the differences between the current AMD offerings.
I'm not exactly sure what alternative he would prefer, other than "Restart Computer". "Reboot" makes perfect sense, and I know exactly what to expect.
No, the TV licensing people still require a court order to enter. However you are free to give your permission for them to enter, if they show up unannounced without an order.
This happened to a friend of mine. The man showed up at the door and said he was with TV licensing and asked "may we come in?" My friend asked if he had permission, and the man replied "Yes.. if you give it." My friend said no and the man had to leave.
I actually read that as SCO tragic death for a second, (really, I tend to get a bit muddled when reading words at times). Still, I think I prefer my alternate title...
My flatmate showed the duality movie to me about 2 years ago and burned it onto a tiny 5cm CD which I stuck in one of the folds of my wallet.
I completely forgot about it and only rediscovered it 6 months ago. I then gave it to my sister who found it very amusing and said that the disc was "cute".
It's now residing in my wallet again. Just for the sake of it.
My school in Scotland (UK) provided us only with Macs, not a single Windows machine was to be found in the entire school.
Then when I came to university (Edinburgh), I found that the university provided the CS students with the fast linux PCs, and everyone else gets to use the NT4 machines, which are painfully slow, taking 5 minutes (I'm not exaggerating) to log on with Novell.
Now I'm a Linux user, fully backed by my university. So maybe things are improving for the UK techie.
There's probably nothing preventing you from projecting the keyboard onto something soft, like a mousemat, or a sponge, or a towel - something that will cushion the hammering against the table.
Just think, you could have any pattern you wanted for your keyboard!
This is how it's pronounced according to the article. Actually, the Japanese don't emphasise syllables, hence this would just be Do-jin-she.
And again at 333 fps. This allows the Famouss Q3DM6 bridge to rail jump to be done in a single jump, if a proper circle jump is performed. Otherwise, at 125 fps you need to start from the far end of the bridge, perform a circle jump and then bunnyhop to gain a little extra speed.
Oh, by the way, this jump can only be performed on a remote server, as for some reason a listen server screws with the physics enough to make this jump impossible.
Quake 1 jumps always seem far more impressive though in my opionion, because your speed is only capped if you press the forward button, and the stunts a good Quaker can perform are totally unbelievable. See http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/ for more crazy Quake 1 action.
Radiant Silvergun may be one of the rarest games out there, but it sure as hell deserves to be bought. My flatmates (one of whom works in a videogames shop) managed to import a copy from America for £150, and for quite some time it became the most played game in our flat.
It's made by Treasure, who are responsible for other amazing games such Bangio (which feature all the missiles) and Ikaruga (essentially a much easier sequel to RS), as well as Sin & Punishment, Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers etc. Truly one of the greatest developers out there.
BTW, we are still no way near to completing RS - it's probably the most unfair game in existence, but the satisfaction of completing a level without dying rivals that completing most games. Well worth seeking out.
Simply go to your old Mozilla plugins folder and copy all the plugins except npnul32.dll and put them into your new Mozilla plugins folder. Unless the plugins are broken with the new version, this should just work, even if Mozilla is still running.