[. . . ]egg-laying organisms don't nerse their young!
What about our good friend the duck-billed platypus? Eggs and milk, baby.
Whenever one generalizes about possible life forms based on knowledge of other life forms, one is bound to overlook counterexamples. Evolution and biodiversity are funny that way. Just look at the platypus!
To get back on topic, I'm definitely hot for squid with boobs.
It's probably your cats and not women who are scared by the "insane fan noise." You can't fool your neighbors into thinking you have women over just because you keep saying "Here, pussy, pussy."
you can right-click or ctrl-click on the "comment" field for slashdot submissions and tick "Spelling -> Check Spelling as you Type"
I have been using Macs since 1992 and Apple machines since 1983. I switched to OS X near the end of the Jaguar epoch, not quite believing that it would be fast on my 1998 PCI graphics G4 (it was). I'd read about spellchecking in text fields for Carbon-based apps but figured something was wrong with my install.
Your clear instructions have changed everything for me. My brain is built to spell (literary type), but I need the red dots to draw my attention to on-screen errors which are harder for me to notice than print errors.
I have this steadycam and it works very well for me
That's not a steadycam (mods); that's a tripod. Let's just say that any shots you take of a moving subject with the "steadycam" you linked to are either going to be even more shaky than without the "steadycam" or are going to see a gradual diminishing of the size of the subject in comparison to the rest of the scene.
Apple haven't proven themselves any more skilled at designing secure desktops than Microsoft have.
You, sir, are either stupid or insane. Despite that there can never be equivalence in Internet presence, Apple *has* proven more skilled at designing a secure desktop than Microsoft. There is not one single instance of a Mac OS X virus in the wild anywhere, ever.
A more secure desktop is precisely what Apple has proved it can build, even if (though I doubt it) market share contributes to this effect.
Someone should string FirienFirien and Zonk up by their editorial tonsils. We can't RTFA unless we shell out money. There is no option to register for free or view advertising in exchange for a subscription. Since when did Slashdot becaome a digital country club where one has no option but to pay to play? Oh, I forgot. 90% of Slashdot doesn't ever bother to RTFA.
That said, I think the most interesting element about this article (of which I could read two paragraphs in addition to its headline) is that a major business news publication is engaging in rumor-mongering just like the fan-based Apple sites. It looks like even the mainstream media has begun imbibing Jobs' Purple Kool-Aid.
Not that I'm complaining. (Just check out mistersquid's profile on http://discussions.info.apple.com/ if you don't believe me). I just find it interesting that mood of Apple's fan-base is starting to be reflected in major media channels.
In a whispery voice: The next time you fire up Acrobat, it will tell you that it needs to repair certain files. Check the box which says "Do not show this notice again" and click "No" or whatever the dismiss-without-execution button is.
Spoke too quickly. The problem is robust, as they say. There are a couple of other things I needed to do. FYI, I'm running Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0.2.
After following the above instructions, I also had to do the following.
1. cd to the directory with the modified ZIP file.
2. Change the ZIP file named PDFMaker.dot so that its permissions are 444
The only problem is that the next time you start Adobe Acrobat you get a nag screen stating that Acrobat needs to make repairs.
Here is a Mac OS X-ey hack/kludge to get around this problem.
1. Delete the PDFMaker.dot file from the directory in question.
2. Make a new directory within the directory from which you deleted the PDFMaker.dot file.
3. Make a ZIP archive of the new directory (this step may not be necessary, but this prevents the program from complaining that a directory cannot be replaced by a file which some programs do).
4. Rename the ZIP archive to PDFMaker.dot
Acrobat will no longer try to install the missing PDFMaker.dot files and your office programs will be Adobe PDF Toolbar-free even upon relaunch.
One that I use frequently is the ability to merge many small documents in a binder to create a larger PDF.
In the same vein as Em_Adespoton's suggestion of Combine PDF, I suggest you check out the Command Line Utility I like using to combine pdf files which is pdftk.
Would any of us have tolerated the preventative measures before that stuff happened?
Much of what you say, ScentCone, is thoughtful, passionate and enlightening. I have no argument with most of what you said, especially in terms of its spirit, which I will take the liberty of characterizing as socially-conscious and altruistically-oriented. But I do want to object to what you seem to imply in the sentence I quoted above.
Despite the horrors and ramifications of the Spanish train attacks and the destruction of the World Trade Center, no free citizen shoud tolerate the kinds of restrictions upon civil liberties as outlined in the Patriot Act. In another context, and with all due respect to those who lost their lives and livelihoods in the wars of the last thousand years, the acts you refer to as terrorist acts are acts of rebellion, acts which seek to destroy the empire which dominates the world.
I'm not saying such acts of rebellion are exemplary or laudable, though some may consider them to be so. I am also not comparing these acts the hormone-driven execution of Columbine-esque revenge fantasies by barely post-pubescent computer literates. I am, however, allowing that these acts do have different meaning for some who are just as passionate and thoughtful but in ways that are opposed to the dominant world order.
In any case, relinquishing our freedoms because we are afraid to die will secure us nothing, neither freedom nor or lives. I think someone said something to this effect much more eloquently nearly years ago. Amazing how it's still true today.
shouldn't there also be a button marked "I have no idea what this means"
How about something like "Program wants higher security access. Continue to trust unknown program?" with buttons "Yes" "No" and "More Details"? with "No" selected as the default?
it would be nice if they could go to the record labels and say without DRM we sold x many hundre thousand more tracks.
This is just a wild guess, but I'm betting that the number of non-iTunes-downloaded tracks is going to be a teeny tiny percentage of the music tracks downloaded from Apple's servers. Call me crazy, but I don't think the overall market to which iTMS caters really care or are even aware of iTunes DRM.
I don't think that the idea here is to replace the one button mouse, just offer a choice to those who wish to use two buttons and don't want to go third party.
Presuming Apple does release a multi-button mouse, unless Apple sells it as a separate item, Apple either 1) will build out another model for each existing model that comes with a mouse or 2) will offer the mouse as a build-to-order option. Neither of these paths seems particularly good, especially the second one.
The only "problem" is the Airport Extreme card still has poor reception, at least compared to my old white iBook G3.
The iBooks get the best reception of all Macintosh models. At least this was the case when I got my 15" 1.25 GHz Powerbook about 1.5 years ago. So, you probably won't see the kind of reception on your Powerbook as you do on your iBook.
That said, some Powerbooks, especially the 12" models, have reception issues (like getting 2 bars when fewer than 10 feet from the WiFi node, Airport or generic) and the way to improve it is to open up your PB and to make sure the connector to the Airport card is fully seated.
It seems sort of silly, but for a while many Powerbooks were coming out the factory with their Airport cards not fully connected to the Airport antenna. Check yours just to make sure.
Legislators have already said that the eBay thing was an unintended side-effect and would be fixed before it became law.
I live in Ohio, too, and the effects on eBay sellers in Ohio may be an "unintended side-effect," but until the law is amended to strictly exclude online auctions, I can guarantee you that eBay auctions are its target.
Claiming eBay sellers are not the target is like shooting at a fly on the side of a barn and claiming that you are not aiming for the barn. I'm willing to bet that eBay sales based in Ohio far outstrip terrestrial and telephone auctions in the state.
I have somehow found myself stuck in this godforsaken swing state and am subject to the inaninties of Ohio's brand of Midwestern legislating. That said, I still vote and I pay taxes.
Not 5 minutes ago, I phoned Senator Mumper's office to let him know that I am EXTREMELY displeased with this piece of legislation. The person on the other end informed me that changes to Senate Bill 209 were being introduced today (Tuesday, 8 March), but I continued to explain the reason for my feelngs.
My two objections were that 1) this legislation on the face of it appears to conflict with Congress's Interstate Commerce Clause which prohibits states from enacting legislation that will impede commerce between the states, and 2) the software on eBay is what does the auctioning, not the seller, and so the seller is in fact a client of an auctioneer, not an auctioneer him or herself.
I also provided the receptioninst with my name, address, and phone number, and indicated that I will be writing a carrier mail letter to express my EXTREME DISPLEASURE with Senator Mumper's role in authoring this legislation.
Oh, and if you came to this post because of its subject line, here you go:
Senator Larry A. Mumper Senate Building
Room 222, Second Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614-466-8049
This question can also be posed as "What constitutes a member of the Press?" I'm guessing that the framers of the 1st Amendement knew very well that the then contemporary Press was not a simple affair. Toward the end of the 18th century, printing anything even using a hand press involved massive expense. As a result, any member of the Press likely was part of a larger ensemble of humans, machines, and institutions committed to reaching an audience commonly referred as "the public sphere."
The massive expense and significant size of these apparatuses provided a kind of check. Today that check no longer exists; reaching an audience of millions is near-to-free at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Access to web publishing enables almost anyone with access to a computer (or a cell phone) to reach many people at once.
My own idiosyncratic answer to your question is that anyone can be a journalist if by journalist you mean someone who distributes information (regardless of accuracy) to a public audience (regardless of size). Bloggers? They're journalists. Editor of your high school newspaper? Yep, journalist, too. Spouse or partner who tacks up a grocery list on the family fridge? No, not public enough.
Admittedly, this is a fast and dirty, and somewhat clumsy, construal of the relationship between the terms journalism, Press, and public. My main point is that once the cost of gaining access to "the Press" becomes cheap enough, elites will try to limit the protections afforded to members of the Press by questioning who can legitimately claim membership within that guild.
(This is not meant to imply that the parent's author is interested in regaining such restrictions, though such may be the case.)
It may be that Red Nova is a valid news site, but they should really check the status of their sources.
My thoughts exactly. What amazes me here is that this is a variation of the Sokal hoax that recently got aired on Slashdot.
It may be the case that something is happening around these world-changing events that the random number generator is detecting but correlation does not imply causation. The machine could be picking up on anything as much as it could be picking up a "global consciousness."
If people are also able to change the behavior of the machine simply by thinking about it then what about people not near the machine, say in their own living rooms, who think about the machine. Is knowledge of its location important? It would seem not given this is a global consciousness machine.
What I'm really struck by is how similar this machine sounds to a the Nefastis machine described by Thomas Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49. For my money, all of the handwaving in the posts above demonstrate that most human belief is not based on fact but on prejudice and bias. Even those claiming to have scientific orientation are susceptible to bad methodology, unsubstantiated claims, and just plain foolishness.
Slashdot Mirror
[. . . ]egg-laying organisms don't nerse their young!
What about our good friend the duck-billed platypus? Eggs and milk, baby.
Whenever one generalizes about possible life forms based on knowledge of other life forms, one is bound to overlook counterexamples. Evolution and biodiversity are funny that way. Just look at the platypus!
To get back on topic, I'm definitely hot for squid with boobs.
C'mon, what about boob.jobs? This is Slashdot after all . . .
You are AMAZING. I want your children.
I think the idiomatic expression to signal admiration is "I want to have your children." What you said is just plain stalker talk.
; )
and the insane fan noise scares away the women
It's probably your cats and not women who are scared by the "insane fan noise." You can't fool your neighbors into thinking you have women over just because you keep saying "Here, pussy, pussy."
you can right-click or ctrl-click on the "comment" field for slashdot submissions and tick "Spelling -> Check Spelling as you Type"
I have been using Macs since 1992 and Apple machines since 1983. I switched to OS X near the end of the Jaguar epoch, not quite believing that it would be fast on my 1998 PCI graphics G4 (it was). I'd read about spellchecking in text fields for Carbon-based apps but figured something was wrong with my install.
Your clear instructions have changed everything for me. My brain is built to spell (literary type), but I need the red dots to draw my attention to on-screen errors which are harder for me to notice than print errors.
So, thank you, sir. This absolutely rocks!
I have this steadycam and it works very well for me
That's not a steadycam (mods); that's a tripod. Let's just say that any shots you take of a moving subject with the "steadycam" you linked to are either going to be even more shaky than without the "steadycam" or are going to see a gradual diminishing of the size of the subject in comparison to the rest of the scene.
[. . .] before they had them fancy html interpreters they just looked at the text and IMAGINED its formatting.
That's OK, Vicsun. I don't even see the code anymore. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead . . .
You, sir, are either stupid or insane. Despite that there can never be equivalence in Internet presence, Apple *has* proven more skilled at designing a secure desktop than Microsoft. There is not one single instance of a Mac OS X virus in the wild anywhere, ever.
A more secure desktop is precisely what Apple has proved it can build, even if (though I doubt it) market share contributes to this effect.
Someone should string FirienFirien and Zonk up by their editorial tonsils. We can't RTFA unless we shell out money. There is no option to register for free or view advertising in exchange for a subscription. Since when did Slashdot becaome a digital country club where one has no option but to pay to play? Oh, I forgot. 90% of Slashdot doesn't ever bother to RTFA.
That said, I think the most interesting element about this article (of which I could read two paragraphs in addition to its headline) is that a major business news publication is engaging in rumor-mongering just like the fan-based Apple sites. It looks like even the mainstream media has begun imbibing Jobs' Purple Kool-Aid.
Not that I'm complaining. (Just check out mistersquid's profile on http://discussions.info.apple.com/ if you don't believe me). I just find it interesting that mood of Apple's fan-base is starting to be reflected in major media channels.
Now curses and pestilence upon you for irritaning me into re-installing Adobe Acrobat just to try this out.
And blessings to you Savage-Rabbit for correcting my suggestion. Thanks.
In a whispery voice: The next time you fire up Acrobat, it will tell you that it needs to repair certain files. Check the box which says "Do not show this notice again" and click "No" or whatever the dismiss-without-execution button is.
Spoke too quickly. The problem is robust, as they say. There are a couple of other things I needed to do. FYI, I'm running Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0.2.
After following the above instructions, I also had to do the following.
The only problem is that the next time you start Adobe Acrobat you get a nag screen stating that Acrobat needs to make repairs.
Here is a Mac OS X-ey hack/kludge to get around this problem.
Acrobat will no longer try to install the missing PDFMaker.dot files and your office programs will be Adobe PDF Toolbar-free even upon relaunch.
One that I use frequently is the ability to merge many small documents in a binder to create a larger PDF.
In the same vein as Em_Adespoton's suggestion of Combine PDF, I suggest you check out the Command Line Utility I like using to combine pdf files which is pdftk.
A very clean and efficient tool.
Would any of us have tolerated the preventative measures before that stuff happened?
Much of what you say, ScentCone, is thoughtful, passionate and enlightening. I have no argument with most of what you said, especially in terms of its spirit, which I will take the liberty of characterizing as socially-conscious and altruistically-oriented. But I do want to object to what you seem to imply in the sentence I quoted above.
Despite the horrors and ramifications of the Spanish train attacks and the destruction of the World Trade Center, no free citizen shoud tolerate the kinds of restrictions upon civil liberties as outlined in the Patriot Act. In another context, and with all due respect to those who lost their lives and livelihoods in the wars of the last thousand years, the acts you refer to as terrorist acts are acts of rebellion, acts which seek to destroy the empire which dominates the world.
I'm not saying such acts of rebellion are exemplary or laudable, though some may consider them to be so. I am also not comparing these acts the hormone-driven execution of Columbine-esque revenge fantasies by barely post-pubescent computer literates. I am, however, allowing that these acts do have different meaning for some who are just as passionate and thoughtful but in ways that are opposed to the dominant world order.
In any case, relinquishing our freedoms because we are afraid to die will secure us nothing, neither freedom nor or lives. I think someone said something to this effect much more eloquently nearly years ago. Amazing how it's still true today.
shouldn't there also be a button marked "I have no idea what this means"
How about something like "Program wants higher security access. Continue to trust unknown program?" with buttons "Yes" "No" and "More Details"? with "No" selected as the default?
it would be nice if they could go to the record labels and say without DRM we sold x many hundre thousand more tracks.
This is just a wild guess, but I'm betting that the number of non-iTunes-downloaded tracks is going to be a teeny tiny percentage of the music tracks downloaded from Apple's servers. Call me crazy, but I don't think the overall market to which iTMS caters really care or are even aware of iTunes DRM.
I don't think that the idea here is to replace the one button mouse, just offer a choice to those who wish to use two buttons and don't want to go third party.
Presuming Apple does release a multi-button mouse, unless Apple sells it as a separate item, Apple either 1) will build out another model for each existing model that comes with a mouse or 2) will offer the mouse as a build-to-order option. Neither of these paths seems particularly good, especially the second one.
Or 3) Apple will ditch the single-button mouse.
The only "problem" is the Airport Extreme card still has poor reception, at least compared to my old white iBook G3.
The iBooks get the best reception of all Macintosh models. At least this was the case when I got my 15" 1.25 GHz Powerbook about 1.5 years ago. So, you probably won't see the kind of reception on your Powerbook as you do on your iBook.
That said, some Powerbooks, especially the 12" models, have reception issues (like getting 2 bars when fewer than 10 feet from the WiFi node, Airport or generic) and the way to improve it is to open up your PB and to make sure the connector to the Airport card is fully seated.
It seems sort of silly, but for a while many Powerbooks were coming out the factory with their Airport cards not fully connected to the Airport antenna. Check yours just to make sure.
Legislators have already said that the eBay thing was an unintended side-effect and would be fixed before it became law.
I live in Ohio, too, and the effects on eBay sellers in Ohio may be an "unintended side-effect," but until the law is amended to strictly exclude online auctions, I can guarantee you that eBay auctions are its target.
Claiming eBay sellers are not the target is like shooting at a fly on the side of a barn and claiming that you are not aiming for the barn. I'm willing to bet that eBay sales based in Ohio far outstrip terrestrial and telephone auctions in the state.
I have somehow found myself stuck in this godforsaken swing state and am subject to the inaninties of Ohio's brand of Midwestern legislating. That said, I still vote and I pay taxes.
Not 5 minutes ago, I phoned Senator Mumper's office to let him know that I am EXTREMELY displeased with this piece of legislation. The person on the other end informed me that changes to Senate Bill 209 were being introduced today (Tuesday, 8 March), but I continued to explain the reason for my feelngs.
My two objections were that 1) this legislation on the face of it appears to conflict with Congress's Interstate Commerce Clause which prohibits states from enacting legislation that will impede commerce between the states, and 2) the software on eBay is what does the auctioning, not the seller, and so the seller is in fact a client of an auctioneer, not an auctioneer him or herself.
I also provided the receptioninst with my name, address, and phone number, and indicated that I will be writing a carrier mail letter to express my EXTREME DISPLEASURE with Senator Mumper's role in authoring this legislation.
Oh, and if you came to this post because of its subject line, here you go:
there is far more internet penetration and PC's among the populace here than in SK.
Could you please give me some of what you and your mods are smoking because it must be some mighty fine shit.
According to figures gathered by Internet World Stats, in December of 2004 South Korea had Internet penetration of 63.3% while in November of 2004 the United States had Internet pentration of 66.8%.* 3.5% difference in penetration hardly qualifies as "far more" despite the month's differrence in time.
* These numbers were gathered by different organizations. Nielsen in the case of the US and KNIRC in the case of South Korea
Now, could you imagine what would happen if the US had a president that bet 100 billion on the internet?
Yeah, he would would have been lobbied out of office by the MPAA.
What constitutes a "journalist"?
This question can also be posed as "What constitutes a member of the Press?" I'm guessing that the framers of the 1st Amendement knew very well that the then contemporary Press was not a simple affair. Toward the end of the 18th century, printing anything even using a hand press involved massive expense. As a result, any member of the Press likely was part of a larger ensemble of humans, machines, and institutions committed to reaching an audience commonly referred as "the public sphere."
The massive expense and significant size of these apparatuses provided a kind of check. Today that check no longer exists; reaching an audience of millions is near-to-free at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Access to web publishing enables almost anyone with access to a computer (or a cell phone) to reach many people at once.
My own idiosyncratic answer to your question is that anyone can be a journalist if by journalist you mean someone who distributes information (regardless of accuracy) to a public audience (regardless of size). Bloggers? They're journalists. Editor of your high school newspaper? Yep, journalist, too. Spouse or partner who tacks up a grocery list on the family fridge? No, not public enough.
Admittedly, this is a fast and dirty, and somewhat clumsy, construal of the relationship between the terms journalism, Press, and public. My main point is that once the cost of gaining access to "the Press" becomes cheap enough, elites will try to limit the protections afforded to members of the Press by questioning who can legitimately claim membership within that guild.
(This is not meant to imply that the parent's author is interested in regaining such restrictions, though such may be the case.)
It may be that Red Nova is a valid news site, but they should really check the status of their sources.
My thoughts exactly. What amazes me here is that this is a variation of the Sokal hoax that recently got aired on Slashdot.
It may be the case that something is happening around these world-changing events that the random number generator is detecting but correlation does not imply causation. The machine could be picking up on anything as much as it could be picking up a "global consciousness."
If people are also able to change the behavior of the machine simply by thinking about it then what about people not near the machine, say in their own living rooms, who think about the machine. Is knowledge of its location important? It would seem not given this is a global consciousness machine.
What I'm really struck by is how similar this machine sounds to a the Nefastis machine described by Thomas Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49. For my money, all of the handwaving in the posts above demonstrate that most human belief is not based on fact but on prejudice and bias. Even those claiming to have scientific orientation are susceptible to bad methodology, unsubstantiated claims, and just plain foolishness.
Global consciousness machine, indeed.