I would like to add some more support for this product as well as some tips that address some of the tHings in your post.
Organizing: Delicious library allows you to sort by a lot of different pieces of information. One you have it sorted how you'd like, simply arrange the books on your shelf to mimic the virtual bookshelves in DL.
Open Format: DL actually saves everything out as XML so you should have no problem pulling all of your info out of it should you decide to give it up. This also allows for people to make helper apps/plugins to be used with the DL data file. One example is an export to the web feature.
The only major issue is that you need a Mac. I believe that everyone should have a mac even as a second machine. The mac mini or an old G4 on ebay would work great.
While I have yet to actually try it myself, I have read many good reviews regarding this series of audio CDs. The nice thing is, I was able to find it at my local library so there was no initial cash outlay on my part. I have listened to a few of the "Lessons" and it seems like a viable alternative to traditional spanish courses. Basically it is the teacher (Michel Thomas) sitting with two students go over conversational Spanish. I took Spanish in high-school and college and the one hurdle I never made it over was the conversational aspect. I was never in a situation where I could hear others speaking often, and in my mind this addreses that without having to go to Spain or Mexico or ask someone in class to continually repeat themselves.
I wonder if/how this will affect Nintendos use of the Gamespy network for the DS. I'm sure they probably won't be too happy about having to get into bed with Fox. Who knows though.
While I agree with most of your comments, it seems that some of the major problems with DIY home automation could be a non-issue pretty soon. ZigBee looks to be but on solution and while I haven't read much about it being used as such UltraWideband could also conceivably be used for HA. That being said Wired currently has a nice article about a company that is using ZigBee devices in an attempt to bring HA to the masses, and, I must say, I am pretty impressed. It appears to be one of the first systems that, while prices are not readily available, may make the extra cost of implementation worth it. I know there are a ton of lower cost solutions that just fail in the easy to implement department. Anyway here's the article at wired and here's the company's website.
I suggested this awhile ago for another article on silent computing. It got shot down quite handily, mainly because I can't speel verry whell. Anyway the people that did respond with things other than spelling mistakes had good insight into this. It seems this guy has come up with workarounds for problems they noted. -peel
I had suggested this idea long ago, and posted about it here. I was subsequently shot down. Although there were a few reasons for it not being doable based in science, I can only assume the main reason it didn't go over well was because of the very high gramatical standard that the readers of slashdot hold themselves and others to. -peel
I always like pulling off some sneaky move, especially picking people off with a sniper rifle from extremely long distances, and not getting caught. One of my favorties was shooting peoples' hats off in Goldeneye for N64.
I also really enjoy playing dumbed down kids games. Mario party is a perfect example but there are others as well. I've played just about all of the Putt Putt and Pajama Sam games for no apparent reason.
-peel
-----
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Not so much with RPGs but with FPS like Quake III and Bond on the GC or Perfect Dark on N64 we had a habit of changing names often. Usually something to either poke fun at our opponents, or to be totally insensitive regarding a recent tragedy.
For example - during one game of Bond multiplayer we had Alliyah, Dale Ernhardt, and Enis Cosby all running around. It's pretty funny, in a very sick way, to read "You just killed Dale Ernhardt"
In Quake at the office I have most recently been Nate-Sucks, Steve's A Fart Brain, and Sit On It.
This isn't so different from a GameCube disc. It's a little smaller and has.3GB more storgae but other than that I don't see a real significant leap in technology, nor another reason to introduce yet another optical disc format.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but GC discs do not employ dual layer technology, so theoretically they could hold twice the amount of data. I'll leave all of the comments about using this type of storage in a handheld to others. -peel
Does anybody really even care about Quark anymore? At the firm I work for no one uses Quark and no one really did. Even for brochures, newseltters, etc. Illustrator is used for everything. We have one copy that is not even currently installed (well it might actually be on all the computers) that we keep for those rare instances when we end up with a Quark file to work on, but I have not actually heard of one person who is really waitng for Quark. For anything that we would have possibly used Quark for we've switched to InDesign which is quite capable and readily available for OS X. And even those people that are waiting for it, I hardly see Quark as being the thing that helps bring Apple's profits up. -peel
Back in the day Bungie made some very excellent games for the Mac of all things. Including one of my favorite FPS games/series ever, Marathon. They also reinvented the side-scroller with a game called Abuse. Then they took the 3D third person action game to a new level with Oni, where not only could you blow the crap out of people, a la Quake, but also beat the crap out of people, a la Street Fighter.
Then they started on something really ambitious... Halo.
Halo was supposed to be one of the best FPS games of all time. Originally slated for the Mac and later for the PC halo was going to revolutionize the FPS market. It had amazing physics, great texture mapping allowing seamless movement from indoors to outdoors,the ability to use any weapon and vehicle in the game (is this still there?) and, what I think was the coolest, persistent reality (I kill you in room A and when I come back 3 days later your corpse is stll laying there rotting).
And, as many stories often turn for the worse, along came Microsoft to ruin everyone's fun. Since they needed a flagship game for the Xbox and Bungie wasn't doing so well (but were almost complete with halo form my understanding) Microsoft bought them out. They dumbed down the orignal features of Halo to get it out for the Xbox's launch and assured both the PC and Mac fans who were eagerly awaiting it's arrival that they would get their copy.
Well it looks like the PC people finally got their copy, although in my opinion a bit too late. And as many Mac people out there probably suspected, they won't be getting theirs any time soon, if ever.
I held out hope that I might get a version for the Mac but it looks like I'll have to get an Xbox or PC to play it now.
The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Thank you Microsoft for screwing us again... (Well except for all of the lucky Xbox owners out there...Oh, and the PC folks who are going to buy it) -peel
Contrary to what I state in my question, money is really not the driving force by any means. It's more about an alternative to what's out there. I generally don't charge myself the astronomical rates I charge everyone else to work on their computers, so for me it's just about doing something on my own. I could have my website hosted for less than $10 a month with e-mail and all sorts of stuff, and it would be cheaper than all of the money I've put into my own server, but where's the fun in that? Thanks for all of the links and comments, -peel
The Titanium PowerBook G4s also had a huge probelm with chiping. The band around the center of the unit as well as the screen hinges would chip (paint ?), and as a result the machine began looking very ugly. Apple originaly discounted this in much the same way as the cube. Eventually they gave in to overwhelming negative feedback from users and have been replacing them for many people (don't let them know you wear a watch). I think this, along with very poor airport signal strength, is one of the main factors that drove them to switch to the new aluminum case. So it will be interesting to see if they address, it ignore it, or ignore it then address it. -peel
MisterHouse has been around for a while now and mainly relies on X10 modules. It works fairly well but as one other poster noted it really does need a dedicated box with a bit of muscle or it's a bit slow and frustrating to use. I came across it while looking for X10 software for linux, which it runs on as well as OSX and most versions of Windows. There are many similar products out there for Windows, Mac and even a few simple ones for linux. The most popular/commercial product was a piece of software for the ActiveHome module that came as part of IBM's Home Director kit (I can't remember what the old version was now it comes with HomeVoice). In all my years of using X10 I'd still have to say XTension for the Mac was one of the coolest products out there as it let you create a floorplan pretty easily and it ran well on an old 75Mhz PPC. Lately I've just been using Heyu which is a simple command line interface for linux that supports macros. Anything I want to do I can set a cron job to do automagically or start an ssh session and do from work or wherever. Sure there's no voice control, but personally I always felt a little weird even using speech recognition on the Mac, it could never quite understand "Who's your daddy?" -peel
It's not a bad idea that they put some games in there instead of the hidden Bricks game, but I can't figure out why every cellphone, PDA, and other little handheld wireless device with a screen doesn't automatically have SNAKE on it. I mean they really don't get much better than that as far as games go. We all know what Bricks is but what the heck is Parachute anyway. -peel
I try to support the local independent theatres as much as possible, but for me this doesn't really help them. I'm sure a lot of people don't care, but I'd prefer not to go to a theatre that is sponsored by and supports Micro$oft. I realize that their computers are probably running windowz, and that's just a result of the monopoly, but as this move really puts them in bed with Microsoft, I'll have to think about going elsewhere. Such a dilemma!
I also have the Inova X5 Tactical flashlight that's already been mentioned and and love everything about it...except the blue light just doesn't really do it for me. Apparently it comes in both blue and white configurations (maybe green too), but I have only ever been able to find blue. While I'm sure all the arguments about blue light at night being better than white are true, I find that it is not totally useful at night for all situations. Maybe it's just that our eyes have been trained to white light but I sometimes find it harder to see things at night with the light than without it. Using a regular white flashlight solves the problem. Other than that most of it's other claims appear true; It has been dropped, kicked, thrown, left in a pitcher of beer for over 10 minutes, and flashed from at least 1000 ft. away (Obviously this is not 2 miles but from this short distance it was still somewhat blinding) Anyway just my thoughts. -peel
I find it ironic that when Tony Hawk Pro Skater started putting ads in the levels, playing mainstream music and selling soundtrack cd's for the game, no one had a problem . Now for some reason, someone puts a McDougals in a video game there's a problem. Must have somehting to do with people worried that the ones who embrace McDaniels in the game will do better than the ones that don't. Who cares if there are ads in a game. Personally I think it's a great idea, and if it works right the games should be cheaper. The fact is, people always need to complain about something. I say figure out something real to bitch about next time. -peel
It seems to me that someone would have come up with a noise cancelling method by now. You know, something similar to the technology utilized by some headphones such as these by Aiwa. Basically you could sample the sound inside the case then invert the wave, and then play it back through a case speaker. Viola! Instant nose reduction. This would also dynamically address other noisy things such as cd-rom drives. Just an idea to make millions. -peel
p.s.- If you don't understand how this works you can also try it out with your home stereo and a song with a lot of base. Take your speakers and aim them at each other then take one of the sets of wires and switch the positive and the negative. You will notice the sound of the bass reduces dramatically due to an effect called phasing.
In trying to be helpful I was also stupid. I didn't read the original post clearly and missed the word internally. The other poster is correct. You can only use it in a pc slot. Which of course the iBook is lacking. Plain and simple. I am an idiot. -peel
Long answer: It's more of a software driver issue than anything else. If you're concerned with the price then check out the orinoco silver card here which supposedly works fine with os 9 and you can get a driver for it for use with os x here. That site has a lot of other info for you. You could also look on ebay for a used airport card as your case works fine with airport. I am also not even using an apple access point but a Linksys 4 port router with access point. Hope this helps. -peel
--
Of course you don't know! You don't know because only I know. If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you--and for a student to be teaching his teacher is presumptuous and rude. Do I make myself clear? -Mr. Turkentine
What I want is a filesystem that supports 1)Long File Names 2)Large Files (over 4GB) 3)Journaling and 4) can be used between Linux, Mac OS X and whatever else. Unfortuantely there are currently no filesystems that mett all of these criteria. The closest one unfortunately is FAT32, only even it falls way short. Until then it is very difficult for me to share my firewire drive between multiple platforms. -peel
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to add some more support for this product as well as some tips that address some of the tHings in your post.
Organizing:
Delicious library allows you to sort by a lot of different pieces of information. One you have it sorted how you'd like, simply arrange the books on your shelf to mimic the virtual bookshelves in DL.
Open Format:
DL actually saves everything out as XML so you should have no problem pulling all of your info out of it should you decide to give it up. This also allows for people to make helper apps/plugins to be used with the DL data file. One example is an export to the web feature.
The only major issue is that you need a Mac. I believe that everyone should have a mac even as a second machine. The mac mini or an old G4 on ebay would work great.
-peel
While I have yet to actually try it myself, I have read many good reviews regarding this series of audio CDs. The nice thing is, I was able to find it at my local library so there was no initial cash outlay on my part. I have listened to a few of the "Lessons" and it seems like a viable alternative to traditional spanish courses. Basically it is the teacher (Michel Thomas) sitting with two students go over conversational Spanish. I took Spanish in high-school and college and the one hurdle I never made it over was the conversational aspect. I was never in a situation where I could hear others speaking often, and in my mind this addreses that without having to go to Spain or Mexico or ask someone in class to continually repeat themselves.
Hope this helps, -peel
I wonder if/how this will affect Nintendos use of the Gamespy network for the DS. I'm sure they probably won't be too happy about having to get into bed with Fox. Who knows though.
-peel
While I agree with most of your comments, it seems that some of the major problems with DIY home automation could be a non-issue pretty soon. ZigBee looks to be but on solution and while I haven't read much about it being used as such UltraWideband could also conceivably be used for HA. That being said Wired currently has a nice article about a company that is using ZigBee devices in an attempt to bring HA to the masses, and, I must say, I am pretty impressed. It appears to be one of the first systems that, while prices are not readily available, may make the extra cost of implementation worth it. I know there are a ton of lower cost solutions that just fail in the easy to implement department. Anyway here's the article at wired and here's the company's website.
I suggested this awhile ago for another article on silent computing. It got shot down quite handily, mainly because I can't speel verry whell. Anyway the people that did respond with things other than spelling mistakes had good insight into this. It seems this guy has come up with workarounds for problems they noted. -peel
I had suggested this idea long ago, and posted about it here. I was subsequently shot down. Although there were a few reasons for it not being doable based in science, I can only assume the main reason it didn't go over well was because of the very high gramatical standard that the readers of slashdot hold themselves and others to. -peel
I also really enjoy playing dumbed down kids games. Mario party is a perfect example but there are others as well. I've played just about all of the Putt Putt and Pajama Sam games for no apparent reason.
-peel
-----
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Not so much with RPGs but with FPS like Quake III and Bond on the GC or Perfect Dark on N64 we had a habit of changing names often. Usually something to either poke fun at our opponents, or to be totally insensitive regarding a recent tragedy.
For example - during one game of Bond multiplayer we had Alliyah, Dale Ernhardt, and Enis Cosby all running around. It's pretty funny, in a very sick way, to read "You just killed Dale Ernhardt"
In Quake at the office I have most recently been Nate-Sucks, Steve's A Fart Brain, and Sit On It.
Well the NES only has two years to go and it will be 20 years old. In three years it will legally be able to drink in the US. -peel
This isn't so different from a GameCube disc. It's a little smaller and has .3GB more storgae but other than that I don't see a real significant leap in technology, nor another reason to introduce yet another optical disc format.
GC Optical Disc - 7.62cm(3in) 1.5GB Storgae capcity
PSP UMD - 6.1cm (2.4in) 1.8GB Storage Capacity
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but GC discs do not employ dual layer technology, so theoretically they could hold twice the amount of data. I'll leave all of the comments about using this type of storage in a handheld to others. -peel
Does anybody really even care about Quark anymore? At the firm I work for no one uses Quark and no one really did. Even for brochures, newseltters, etc. Illustrator is used for everything. We have one copy that is not even currently installed (well it might actually be on all the computers) that we keep for those rare instances when we end up with a Quark file to work on, but I have not actually heard of one person who is really waitng for Quark. For anything that we would have possibly used Quark for we've switched to InDesign which is quite capable and readily available for OS X. And even those people that are waiting for it, I hardly see Quark as being the thing that helps bring Apple's profits up. -peel
Back in the day Bungie made some very excellent games for the Mac of all things. Including one of my favorite FPS games/series ever, Marathon. They also reinvented the side-scroller with a game called Abuse. Then they took the 3D third person action game to a new level with Oni, where not only could you blow the crap out of people, a la Quake, but also beat the crap out of people, a la Street Fighter.
Then they started on something really ambitious... Halo.
Halo was supposed to be one of the best FPS games of all time. Originally slated for the Mac and later for the PC halo was going to revolutionize the FPS market. It had amazing physics, great texture mapping allowing seamless movement from indoors to outdoors,the ability to use any weapon and vehicle in the game (is this still there?) and, what I think was the coolest, persistent reality (I kill you in room A and when I come back 3 days later your corpse is stll laying there rotting).
And, as many stories often turn for the worse, along came Microsoft to ruin everyone's fun. Since they needed a flagship game for the Xbox and Bungie wasn't doing so well (but were almost complete with halo form my understanding) Microsoft bought them out. They dumbed down the orignal features of Halo to get it out for the Xbox's launch and assured both the PC and Mac fans who were eagerly awaiting it's arrival that they would get their copy.
Well it looks like the PC people finally got their copy, although in my opinion a bit too late. And as many Mac people out there probably suspected, they won't be getting theirs any time soon, if ever.
I held out hope that I might get a version for the Mac but it looks like I'll have to get an Xbox or PC to play it now.
The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Thank you Microsoft for screwing us again... (Well except for all of the lucky Xbox owners out there...Oh, and the PC folks who are going to buy it) -peel
Contrary to what I state in my question, money is really not the driving force by any means. It's more about an alternative to what's out there. I generally don't charge myself the astronomical rates I charge everyone else to work on their computers, so for me it's just about doing something on my own. I could have my website hosted for less than $10 a month with e-mail and all sorts of stuff, and it would be cheaper than all of the money I've put into my own server, but where's the fun in that? Thanks for all of the links and comments, -peel
The Titanium PowerBook G4s also had a huge probelm with chiping. The band around the center of the unit as well as the screen hinges would chip (paint ?), and as a result the machine began looking very ugly. Apple originaly discounted this in much the same way as the cube. Eventually they gave in to overwhelming negative feedback from users and have been replacing them for many people (don't let them know you wear a watch). I think this, along with very poor airport signal strength, is one of the main factors that drove them to switch to the new aluminum case. So it will be interesting to see if they address, it ignore it, or ignore it then address it. -peel
MisterHouse has been around for a while now and mainly relies on X10 modules. It works fairly well but as one other poster noted it really does need a dedicated box with a bit of muscle or it's a bit slow and frustrating to use. I came across it while looking for X10 software for linux, which it runs on as well as OSX and most versions of Windows. There are many similar products out there for Windows, Mac and even a few simple ones for linux. The most popular/commercial product was a piece of software for the ActiveHome module that came as part of IBM's Home Director kit (I can't remember what the old version was now it comes with HomeVoice). In all my years of using X10 I'd still have to say XTension for the Mac was one of the coolest products out there as it let you create a floorplan pretty easily and it ran well on an old 75Mhz PPC. Lately I've just been using Heyu which is a simple command line interface for linux that supports macros. Anything I want to do I can set a cron job to do automagically or start an ssh session and do from work or wherever. Sure there's no voice control, but personally I always felt a little weird even using speech recognition on the Mac, it could never quite understand "Who's your daddy?" -peel
http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/hush/
please note that mini-itx sells these things so the review may be biased
It's not a bad idea that they put some games in there instead of the hidden Bricks game, but I can't figure out why every cellphone, PDA, and other little handheld wireless device with a screen doesn't automatically have SNAKE on it. I mean they really don't get much better than that as far as games go. We all know what Bricks is but what the heck is Parachute anyway. -peel
I try to support the local independent theatres as much as possible, but for me this doesn't really help them. I'm sure a lot of people don't care, but I'd prefer not to go to a theatre that is sponsored by and supports Micro$oft. I realize that their computers are probably running windowz, and that's just a result of the monopoly, but as this move really puts them in bed with Microsoft, I'll have to think about going elsewhere. Such a dilemma!
I also have the Inova X5 Tactical flashlight that's already been mentioned and and love everything about it...except the blue light just doesn't really do it for me. Apparently it comes in both blue and white configurations (maybe green too), but I have only ever been able to find blue. While I'm sure all the arguments about blue light at night being better than white are true, I find that it is not totally useful at night for all situations. Maybe it's just that our eyes have been trained to white light but I sometimes find it harder to see things at night with the light than without it. Using a regular white flashlight solves the problem. Other than that most of it's other claims appear true; It has been dropped, kicked, thrown, left in a pitcher of beer for over 10 minutes, and flashed from at least 1000 ft. away (Obviously this is not 2 miles but from this short distance it was still somewhat blinding) Anyway just my thoughts. -peel
I find it ironic that when Tony Hawk Pro Skater started putting ads in the levels, playing mainstream music and selling soundtrack cd's for the game, no one had a problem . Now for some reason, someone puts a McDougals in a video game there's a problem. Must have somehting to do with people worried that the ones who embrace McDaniels in the game will do better than the ones that don't. Who cares if there are ads in a game. Personally I think it's a great idea, and if it works right the games should be cheaper. The fact is, people always need to complain about something. I say figure out something real to bitch about next time. -peel
How on earth can they ban me using my .Mac address form Apple? This just seems crazy. Well if they do I will just go get another one. -peel
p.s.- If you don't understand how this works you can also try it out with your home stereo and a song with a lot of base. Take your speakers and aim them at each other then take one of the sets of wires and switch the positive and the negative. You will notice the sound of the bass reduces dramatically due to an effect called phasing.
In trying to be helpful I was also stupid. I didn't read the original post clearly and missed the word internally. The other poster is correct. You can only use it in a pc slot. Which of course the iBook is lacking. Plain and simple. I am an idiot. -peel
Long answer: It's more of a software driver issue than anything else. If you're concerned with the price then check out the orinoco silver card here which supposedly works fine with os 9 and you can get a driver for it for use with os x here. That site has a lot of other info for you. You could also look on ebay for a used airport card as your case works fine with airport. I am also not even using an apple access point but a Linksys 4 port router with access point. Hope this helps. -peel
--
Of course you don't know! You don't know because only I know. If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you--and for a student to be teaching his teacher is presumptuous and rude. Do I make myself clear? -Mr. Turkentine
What I want is a filesystem that supports 1)Long File Names 2)Large Files (over 4GB) 3)Journaling and 4) can be used between Linux, Mac OS X and whatever else. Unfortuantely there are currently no filesystems that mett all of these criteria. The closest one unfortunately is FAT32, only even it falls way short. Until then it is very difficult for me to share my firewire drive between multiple platforms. -peel
just my carrot for the button soup.