While I don't know how searches work exactly, they do continue to add new results long after I send them. As for downloading files, you give it a file size and an mp4 hash, and it'll go running around the network trying to find that file. It seems to do a good job of downloading from multiple sources at once.
I run a third party client, mldonkey, as a daemon. A couple times a day I telnet into the daemon and check on the status of my existing transfers. It's not fast, but it will eventually get the file...
As for searching, I barely use that anymore, since there are a couple indexing web sites out there (namely http://www.sharereactor.com), that have a large index of reviews of particular files (such as video quality), and will provide you with the size/hash of that file. When you go to ed2k, you'll get exactly that file. It seeems to work pretty well.
Scriptability: You mention AppleScript, and claims it is like having shellscript for GUI. No it isn't: you are bound to use that specific language. They could easily have supplied a network protocol (like KDE's DCOP) or any other more generic interface. Since they didn't, everything has to go to this dreadful language. Any experienced programmer would instantly fear "an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language".
Please learn a bit more about the OS before bashing it. You are not limited to AppleScript. Ony OSA compliant language can be used. After a few seconds searching google, I see you can write AppleScripts in Tcl, f-script, python, to name a few.
The dreamcasts are being blown out everywhere for $50, and the accessories and games are just as cheap. For those that don't already own one, this is a deal that you simply can't pass up. While the graphics aren't up to par with the xbox, if that concerned you, you wouldn't still be playing Super Mario Bros on your NES emulator...
I haven't bought a console since the Sega Master system, cicra 1986, but now that I'm a poor college student, PC gaming is just a bit too expensive. My parents offered me an xbox with no games or accessories for christmas as my primary present, so I chose a tricked out DC instead. My list:
Dreamcast bundled with some games, Extra DC controller, DC Memory Card, DC VGA Adaptor, Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue, Grandia 2, Soul Caliber, Bomberman Online, Metal Gear Solid, Chu Chu Rocket, Worms Armageddon
All this comes out to about US$270. The console, enough great games to fail me out of school through the end of next year and an extra controller, all for less than the cost of a bare XBox or PS2.
Now, can someone else suggest a few more great games I should pick up? (preferably bargain bin, $20 or less, although not really required)
Re:Mac-only ..... nobody seems to get it.
on
The Guts Of An iPod
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think there is another factor here, just as important as the iPod being mac only.
Sure, Nomads are going to keep selling, just because they're 20 gigs vs. 5 gigs, but do you think people are going to continue to put up with USB transfer after they've seen what FireWire can do?
Apple gets a royalty from every firewire port sold... Six months from now, will you even consider a mp3 player that has USB over one that has firewire, once all the other companies get FW into their products? Of course not, 10 minutes vs a day to transfer all your music is pretty significant.
The iPod is going to have an incredible effect on FireWire's consumer adoption, even more for PC users than mac users. USB2 may have just had yet another stake driven into it's heart.
If the iPod automatically synced with every machine you plugged into it, what if you were just to grab a machine off of your friends computer? It would automatically remove every one of your songs that he didn't have, and then copy over all of his.
This could *really* be annoying, Having the iPod only automatically sync with one machine is definitely a Good Thing(tm).
Of course, this would be even better if you could manually tell it to sync, even if the computer your plugged into is not the iPod's home. I haven't seen anything indicating if this feature exists or not...
Lets see, in a portable mp3 player, you're looking for a few key features:
Size
Battery Life
Capacity
Price
The Nomad blows the iPod away in capacity, as do CD-R players, but they are both far larger and heavier. The Nomad in particular isn't really portable. The iPod is practically small enough to hide it in the palm of your hands. Of course, then there is the battery life problem.
Then there are the solid state players, with 32 or 64 megs of memory. They are small, have great battery life, and are cheap, but they don't hold enough music to make even their low cost worth paying.
Apple termed it wrong, the iPod isn't a breakthrough. It's just another evolutionary step in consumer electronics, but an important one. While there are other players with larger capacities, smaller sizes, or cheaper price tags, the iPod is the first to really hit that sweet spot between each of those requirements. (OK, I admit, at $300, it would be a much much better deal.)
The GTK anti-aliasing is still being handled by the FreeType engine, which is IMHO perceptively as good as it gets. But you're begging for the screenshots aren't you? Here are some tiny morsels for you:)
This interested me, so I did a quick comparison. I wanted to compare directly against your example shots, but I couldn't find a font close enough to what you used to make it worth anything. Instead, I decided to compare anti-aliasing in QuickDraw and CoreGraphics, like the previous poster said. To do this, I compared OmniWeb, which renders with CG, to Internet Explorer 5, which renders with the older QD.
Each of these 4 shots were taken using the Times New Roman font
Just by looking at this, I think it's fairly obvious that large text sizes minimize the differences in AA implementations, and the differences really become aparent at small size. Of course, that could also be Hinting, as other posts have pointed out. I really don't know...
The tiniest size really is a different story, because QuickDraw doesn't even anti-alias at that size. It's interesting to compare them anyway.
Please ignore above (Read: damn Slashcode 2.2 to h
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 1
If you can read the post above, great. Because I can't.
I see it as a blank post. But, from the reply that I've gotten, I assume others can.
Please ignore this duplicate (and not butcher my karma in the process)
Re:But it's not OK when it's Microsoft!
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1
But it's not OK when it's Microsoft!
Exactly!
Monopolies are subject to different rules than companies not in a monopoly position. Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
Monopolies are where the capitalist system breaks down. Monopolies and non-monopolies must be regulated under different rules, or a free market economy just doesn't work.
Re:But it's not OK when it's Microsoft!
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
But it's not OK when it's Microsoft!
Exactly!
Monopolies are subject to different rules than companies not in a monopoly position. Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
Monopolies are where the capitalist system breaks down. Monopolies and non-monopolies must be regulated under different rules, or a free market economy just doesn't work.
In EverQuest, in which money is created without a real way to spend it (for higher level characters), the platinum's value is probably going to keep falling until the game shuts down.
Another MMORPG (damn, these things are getting too long), Shadowbane, apparently sees the light when it comes to maintaining an economy.
In short, Shadowbane is visually similar to EQ, except the focus is not on killing monsters, but on forming guilds, creating a guild town, building it up to a castle, and controlling territory. They goal is to encourage real politics between the player Nations, which, of course, will result in Guild vs. Guild combat.
If the game survives rampant PvPing, or forming one UberGuild(tm), it should be really interesting to see how different nations manage themselves, form government, and set rules for their land. Of course, encouraging trade is a good way to make lots of cash if you run a city, and a good way to do that is to keep random PvPers out of your land (by killing them, of course).
I don't have the slightest damned idea if it'll work, but it looks interesting enough that I'll try it out. The Politics, full scale wars between guilds/nations, and the economic system that actually appears to have some thought behind it are good signs.
I find Raskins comments on Apple's lack of innovation interesting.
He says that apple doesn't innovate at all anymore. While that is true from one point of view, it's quite false from another.
So Apple didn't invent USB. Who cares? Without Apple, it would have never caught on. Even the GUI was pioneered at Xerox PARC. Just because you didn't come up with an origonal idea doesn't mean you didn't play an extremely important role. If the technology is never adopted, it's greatness doesn't mean anything.
Apple has proven itself pretty damn good at taking someone else's technology, and making it popular, and you can't discount the importance of that.
Raskin talks about how Apple also isn't innovating with GUIs anymore. He says that X is just another 'WinMac GUI,' and he's right. He says that Apple needs to adopt a totally different strategy and use the mac as a cash cow while this new innovation catches on.
He says "What I would build wouldn't be a traditional OS, it wouldn't have a traditional GUI, but it would run on Macs, it would run on Wintel boxes, and we'd license it so as to make money from our competitors."
Of course, no mention what it would be. I don't think he really has a clue what this next 'super innovation' (like the mac was in '84) should be, but he blames Apple for not coming up with it yet.
Of course, I've never read The Humane Interface, so maybe this little issue is explained there...
I've been considering tinkering with OpenGL graphics for awhile, and I have a small question that someone more experienced than I can answer.
As said here a bunch of times, OpenGL relies on extensions to expand it's functionality. AFAIK, both NVIDIA and ATI offer these extensions for their cards (as well as a lot of extensions from other developers).
If both ATI and NVIDIA release OpenGL extensions to support new feature x, is there something that keeps developers from having to implement feature x twice, for each api/card, compared with DirectX where there is one standard way to do it?
X-Box is going to be the premier machine for multiplayer.
Several others have pointed out that most 4 player games suck anyway, because there just isn't enough screen space, and they're right.
The X-Box is the only console I've seen that allows you to hook several consoles together on a LAN, to either fit more players on, or to give each player more screen space.
The X-Box can use have up to 4 players per console, and 4 consoles hooked together.
At the Bungie FanFest right before e3, I was playing Halo on the x-box with 8 players (4 per screen, 2 screens). Having an 8 player CTF game on a console was a very new experience.
Needless to say, it ruled. a lot.
One last thing: I think it will be quite hard to beat the x-box controller. The psx, ps2, and n64 controllers all sucked, but the xbox controller was actually large enough to fit my hands without feeling cramped, and the buttons and joysticks were all placed perfectly.
I would rather have the xbox controller over the gamecube controller (which looks like a bad version of the playstation controllers).
Another alternative web browser for Mac OS X, OmniWeb handles this extremely well.
While it doesn't allow you to block JavaScript on a site-by-site basis, or turn on and off individual JavaScript actions, or have kickass image filters (all of which iCab does have)it does have one excellent feature:
Scripts are allowed to open windows only in response to a link being clicked.
Some (poorly designed) sites, require javascript popups for navigation, or an image thumbnail will often appear in a JS popup (like in many game screenshot galleries). Turning off JS completely makes it quite annoying to try and get around these sites. This feature works extremely well. No advertising Popups get through, yet JS can still create new windows when you explicitly click on the link, allowing you to navigate 95% of these sites.
While I'm not a sysadmin, and nothing particularly disastrous would happen if my passwords were compromised, I do like to keep them somewhat secure, and would like to place myself somewhat of a crpyic.
Since I use a mac, I use Apple's Keychain system for password management. From the surface, it looks fairly secure as long as no one figures out your master passphrase. From there you can set access controls to allow none/some/all applications to have access to individual entries.
I was wondering if anyone here had any experience on how secure Keychain is, such as how strong it's encryption is compared to how strong it should be to be reasonably crack-proof if someone managed to get their hands on the file.
If MS really wanted to take over the world, they'd do to MP3 what they did to AVI.
That is, they'd use the same file extension to represent dozens of codecs, many of which were proprietary.
I would like to point out that this is by design, not M$ EvilDoing(tm)
AVI, like Quicktime, is not a video and audio codec, but rather a file format that binds various tracks of data together. With AVI, it is audio and video. The actual encoding of the 2 tracks really doesn't matter. The same is true with Quicktime, although it is a lot more flexible.
The Quicktime file format is open, but within that file there can be numerous tracks of different types, text tracks, Flash tracks, as well as video and audio tracks. Those video and audio codecs may be (and often are) proprietary encodings.
Formats such as Quicktime and AVI are *designed* to bind separate tracks of data together, and leave the actual encoding of that to someone else.
This is why when you download an AVI, it may have a mp3 as an audio track, as mp3 is real audio encoding, and it might have a DivX/Mpeg4 video track, which is real video encoding. AVI just binds these 2 together into a single file.
While I admit, confusion would result by appending.mp3 to a totally separate audio encoding (which is definitely bad), AVI is not an encoding, and your comparison is flawed.
An Interesting and semi-related article was in the LA Times this morning, about how Disney is laying off a good chunk of it's animation group, and many of the older members think that the new environment does not foster the kind of (perceived) creativity that made Disney famous.
From the Article: But longtime animators say the more serious problem is that the division--once the premier place to work--lacks the creative vibrancy that fostered such hits as "Lion King."
Recall they were not normal iron bombs. From this CNN article, "Pentagon sources said the special bombs explode over targets, then shower the electric transformers and lines with tiny carbon fibers, shorting out the systems.
"
They don't permanently destroy the plants, as happened in Iraq, but take them down for several days, limiting long term damage to the civilian population.
Of course, you still have to wonder if it really helped the bombing effort at all...
Anyhow, back on topic a bit more, shutting down a power system temporarily through computer attack or temporarily through carbon fiber bombs really are no different in the eyes of the end user. Their lives are disrupted for several days. If this 'hacker' was actually able to do some damage, the end result would be very similar to what NATO did to serbia. (of course, most of our bridges would still be standing...)
Do you REALLY think Apple uses gcc? Goddamn they use Motorola's compiler! They give you gcc because they don't want to pay the licensing fees on the fucking thing for every copy of OS X they sell.
Wrong. 2 weeks ago at WWDC, Apple clearly stated that Mac OS X is compiled entirely with gcc. They also spent some time talking about the fun stuff they were doing with it, including the imminent the return of ObjectiveC++.
The XBox is going to be a serious player, and that is simply because of the launch title Halo.
Tonight Bungie Studios threw the fifth FanFest, where at the end they unveiled 2 xbox xdk's, and proceeded to demonstrate solo games, and let the attendees play Halo on.
The following is my quick review, copied from where I posted it on another forum, but it should give you an idea of what the XBox is capable of doing.
Keep in mind this info is really new. The FanFest ended about an hour ago, and the info is just starting to trickle it. It should be considered an indication of what Microsoft/Bungie will show at e3 tomorrow
I have played Halo, and declare it Good(tm)
I hold several nifty records A) First person from the general public ever to drive the Warthog. (The Jeep) B) First person from the general public ever to run an enemy over in said Warthog. C) First person from the general public to kill a teammate, which was quite fun.
I'll make this short, then move on into details: Before, I never really considered buying an X-Box. Now, I'm going to be waiting first in line.
Quick list of facts I remember right now: - 4 controllers per x-box, up to 4 xboxes can be connected together through a LAN, for a 16 player game. Bungie has only gotten 3 xboxes working so far, and is working on the fourth. - The controllers were much better than expected. They obviously take some getting used to, but after spinning out for 2 minutes in the Warthog trying to make it turn, it got fairly easy. Good aiming will take more practice, but it does work. - The game is beautiful beyond belief. The waterfalls and trees are amazing, especially the rays of sunlight coming through the tree branches. - All of the weapons seem fairly capable of good damage. No UberWeapons jumped right out. - The other marines sound very much like characters from a previous series of loved Bungie games (Marathon) - The multiplayer game we were playing was using 2 xdks, playing with 8 players, split 4 to a screen. - The multiplayer map was standard CTF, 2 small bases, 2 flags, large canyon in between, Warthog starting on each side. - Warthogs don't care who is driving them, they are not colored for a specific team. At one time a blue driver was driving around a red rear gunner, and neither of them knew it for awhile. - Friendly fire from the rear gunner into the back of the drivers head appears to be possible. Very dangerous - The Warthogs gun is freakishly powerful. But your not going to hit anything at all while it's moving. Be prepared for motion sickness. - The solo games are narrated with in game dialog, and your friendly marines are fairly effective it seems. That didn't keep the demo guy from dying several times.
In short, Halo is one hell of a launch title, and you can bet that Microsoft will leverage that very heavily in their $500 million ad campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
She prefers OpenBSD at work, and OS X at home. Last night we had a nice little chat about proving SOAP services through apache.
You might like eDonkey 2000.
While I don't know how searches work exactly, they do continue to add new results long after I send them. As for downloading files, you give it a file size and an mp4 hash, and it'll go running around the network trying to find that file. It seems to do a good job of downloading from multiple sources at once.
I run a third party client, mldonkey, as a daemon. A couple times a day I telnet into the daemon and check on the status of my existing transfers. It's not fast, but it will eventually get the file...
As for searching, I barely use that anymore, since there are a couple indexing web sites out there (namely http://www.sharereactor.com), that have a large index of reviews of particular files (such as video quality), and will provide you with the size/hash of that file. When you go to ed2k, you'll get exactly that file. It seeems to work pretty well.
Scriptability: You mention AppleScript, and claims it is like having shellscript for GUI. No it isn't: you are bound to use that specific language. They could easily have supplied a network protocol (like KDE's DCOP) or any other more generic interface. Since they didn't, everything has to go to this dreadful language. Any experienced programmer would instantly fear "an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language".
Please learn a bit more about the OS before bashing it. You are not limited to AppleScript. Ony OSA compliant language can be used. After a few seconds searching google, I see you can write AppleScripts in Tcl, f-script, python, to name a few.
Look at Apple's OSA page.
Xserve web page
In particular, this software looks really nice. Apple is really going after schools who simply can't afford a full time IT employee.
The dreamcasts are being blown out everywhere for $50, and the accessories and games are just as cheap. For those that don't already own one, this is a deal that you simply can't pass up. While the graphics aren't up to par with the xbox, if that concerned you, you wouldn't still be playing Super Mario Bros on your NES emulator...
I haven't bought a console since the Sega Master system, cicra 1986, but now that I'm a poor college student, PC gaming is just a bit too expensive. My parents offered me an xbox with no games or accessories for christmas as my primary present, so I chose a tricked out DC instead. My list:
Dreamcast bundled with some games, Extra DC controller, DC Memory Card, DC VGA Adaptor, Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue, Grandia 2, Soul Caliber, Bomberman Online, Metal Gear Solid, Chu Chu Rocket, Worms Armageddon
All this comes out to about US$270. The console, enough great games to fail me out of school through the end of next year and an extra controller, all for less than the cost of a bare XBox or PS2.
Now, can someone else suggest a few more great games I should pick up? (preferably bargain bin, $20 or less, although not really required)
I think there is another factor here, just as important as the iPod being mac only.
Sure, Nomads are going to keep selling, just because they're 20 gigs vs. 5 gigs, but do you think people are going to continue to put up with USB transfer after they've seen what FireWire can do?
Apple gets a royalty from every firewire port sold... Six months from now, will you even consider a mp3 player that has USB over one that has firewire, once all the other companies get FW into their products? Of course not, 10 minutes vs a day to transfer all your music is pretty significant.
The iPod is going to have an incredible effect on FireWire's consumer adoption, even more for PC users than mac users. USB2 may have just had yet another stake driven into it's heart.
This really is a good feature, not a bad one.
If the iPod automatically synced with every machine you plugged into it, what if you were just to grab a machine off of your friends computer? It would automatically remove every one of your songs that he didn't have, and then copy over all of his.
This could *really* be annoying, Having the iPod only automatically sync with one machine is definitely a Good Thing(tm).
Of course, this would be even better if you could manually tell it to sync, even if the computer your plugged into is not the iPod's home. I haven't seen anything indicating if this feature exists or not...
Lets see, in a portable mp3 player, you're looking for a few key features:
Size
Battery Life
Capacity
Price
The Nomad blows the iPod away in capacity, as do CD-R players, but they are both far larger and heavier. The Nomad in particular isn't really portable. The iPod is practically small enough to hide it in the palm of your hands. Of course, then there is the battery life problem.
Then there are the solid state players, with 32 or 64 megs of memory. They are small, have great battery life, and are cheap, but they don't hold enough music to make even their low cost worth paying.
Apple termed it wrong, the iPod isn't a breakthrough. It's just another evolutionary step in consumer electronics, but an important one. While there are other players with larger capacities, smaller sizes, or cheaper price tags, the iPod is the first to really hit that sweet spot between each of those requirements. (OK, I admit, at $300, it would be a much much better deal.)
...is here
Right now, it's the top item on their Hot News page.
This interested me, so I did a quick comparison. I wanted to compare directly against your example shots, but I couldn't find a font close enough to what you used to make it worth anything. Instead, I decided to compare anti-aliasing in QuickDraw and CoreGraphics, like the previous poster said. To do this, I compared OmniWeb, which renders with CG, to Internet Explorer 5, which renders with the older QD.
Each of these 4 shots were taken using the Times New Roman font
Huge fontsMedium fonts
Small fonts
Tiny fonts
Just by looking at this, I think it's fairly obvious that large text sizes minimize the differences in AA implementations, and the differences really become aparent at small size. Of course, that could also be Hinting, as other posts have pointed out. I really don't know...
The tiniest size really is a different story, because QuickDraw doesn't even anti-alias at that size. It's interesting to compare them anyway.
If you can read the post above, great. Because I can't.
I see it as a blank post. But, from the reply that I've gotten, I assume others can.
Please ignore this duplicate (and not butcher my karma in the process)
Exactly!
Monopolies are subject to different rules than companies not in a monopoly position. Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
Monopolies are where the capitalist system breaks down. Monopolies and non-monopolies must be regulated under different rules, or a free market economy just doesn't work.
Exactly!
Monopolies are subject to different rules than companies not in a monopoly position. Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
Monopolies are where the capitalist system breaks down. Monopolies and non-monopolies must be regulated under different rules, or a free market economy just doesn't work.
In EverQuest, in which money is created without a real way to spend it (for higher level characters), the platinum's value is probably going to keep falling until the game shuts down.
Another MMORPG (damn, these things are getting too long), Shadowbane, apparently sees the light when it comes to maintaining an economy.
In short, Shadowbane is visually similar to EQ, except the focus is not on killing monsters, but on forming guilds, creating a guild town, building it up to a castle, and controlling territory. They goal is to encourage real politics between the player Nations, which, of course, will result in Guild vs. Guild combat.
If the game survives rampant PvPing, or forming one UberGuild(tm), it should be really interesting to see how different nations manage themselves, form government, and set rules for their land. Of course, encouraging trade is a good way to make lots of cash if you run a city, and a good way to do that is to keep random PvPers out of your land (by killing them, of course).
I don't have the slightest damned idea if it'll work, but it looks interesting enough that I'll try it out. The Politics, full scale wars between guilds/nations, and the economic system that actually appears to have some thought behind it are good signs.
I find Raskins comments on Apple's lack of innovation interesting.
He says that apple doesn't innovate at all anymore. While that is true from one point of view, it's quite false from another.
So Apple didn't invent USB. Who cares? Without Apple, it would have never caught on. Even the GUI was pioneered at Xerox PARC. Just because you didn't come up with an origonal idea doesn't mean you didn't play an extremely important role. If the technology is never adopted, it's greatness doesn't mean anything.
Apple has proven itself pretty damn good at taking someone else's technology, and making it popular, and you can't discount the importance of that.
Raskin talks about how Apple also isn't innovating with GUIs anymore. He says that X is just another 'WinMac GUI,' and he's right. He says that Apple needs to adopt a totally different strategy and use the mac as a cash cow while this new innovation catches on.
He says "What I would build wouldn't be a traditional OS, it wouldn't have a traditional GUI, but it would run on Macs, it would run on Wintel boxes, and we'd license it so as to make money from our competitors."
Of course, no mention what it would be. I don't think he really has a clue what this next 'super innovation' (like the mac was in '84) should be, but he blames Apple for not coming up with it yet.
Of course, I've never read The Humane Interface, so maybe this little issue is explained there...
I've been considering tinkering with OpenGL graphics for awhile, and I have a small question that someone more experienced than I can answer.
As said here a bunch of times, OpenGL relies on extensions to expand it's functionality. AFAIK, both NVIDIA and ATI offer these extensions for their cards (as well as a lot of extensions from other developers).
If both ATI and NVIDIA release OpenGL extensions to support new feature x, is there something that keeps developers from having to implement feature x twice, for each api/card, compared with DirectX where there is one standard way to do it?
X-Box is going to be the premier machine for multiplayer.
Several others have pointed out that most 4 player games suck anyway, because there just isn't enough screen space, and they're right.
The X-Box is the only console I've seen that allows you to hook several consoles together on a LAN, to either fit more players on, or to give each player more screen space.
The X-Box can use have up to 4 players per console, and 4 consoles hooked together.
At the Bungie FanFest right before e3, I was playing Halo on the x-box with 8 players (4 per screen, 2 screens). Having an 8 player CTF game on a console was a very new experience.
Needless to say, it ruled. a lot.
One last thing: I think it will be quite hard to beat the x-box controller. The psx, ps2, and n64 controllers all sucked, but the xbox controller was actually large enough to fit my hands without feeling cramped, and the buttons and joysticks were all placed perfectly.
I would rather have the xbox controller over the gamecube controller (which looks like a bad version of the playstation controllers).
Another alternative web browser for Mac OS X, OmniWeb handles this extremely well.
While it doesn't allow you to block JavaScript on a site-by-site basis, or turn on and off individual JavaScript actions, or have kickass image filters (all of which iCab does have)it does have one excellent feature:
Scripts are allowed to open windows only in response to a link being clicked.
Some (poorly designed) sites, require javascript popups for navigation, or an image thumbnail will often appear in a JS popup (like in many game screenshot galleries). Turning off JS completely makes it quite annoying to try and get around these sites. This feature works extremely well. No advertising Popups get through, yet JS can still create new windows when you explicitly click on the link, allowing you to navigate 95% of these sites.
While I'm not a sysadmin, and nothing particularly disastrous would happen if my passwords were compromised, I do like to keep them somewhat secure, and would like to place myself somewhat of a crpyic.
Since I use a mac, I use Apple's Keychain system for password management. From the surface, it looks fairly secure as long as no one figures out your master passphrase. From there you can set access controls to allow none/some/all applications to have access to individual entries.
I was wondering if anyone here had any experience on how secure Keychain is, such as how strong it's encryption is compared to how strong it should be to be reasonably crack-proof if someone managed to get their hands on the file.
One person on the panel indicated a lack of support for color syncronization.
I think this post on the OmniGroup MacOS X Dev mailing list (a great source for Cocoa application development) sums it up.
If MS really wanted to take over the world, they'd do to MP3 what they did to AVI.
.mp3 to a totally separate audio encoding (which is definitely bad), AVI is not an encoding, and your comparison is flawed.
That is, they'd use the same file extension to represent dozens of codecs, many of which were proprietary.
I would like to point out that this is by design, not M$ EvilDoing(tm)
AVI, like Quicktime, is not a video and audio codec, but rather a file format that binds various tracks of data together. With AVI, it is audio and video. The actual encoding of the 2 tracks really doesn't matter. The same is true with Quicktime, although it is a lot more flexible.
The Quicktime file format is open, but within that file there can be numerous tracks of different types, text tracks, Flash tracks, as well as video and audio tracks. Those video and audio codecs may be (and often are) proprietary encodings.
Formats such as Quicktime and AVI are *designed* to bind separate tracks of data together, and leave the actual encoding of that to someone else.
This is why when you download an AVI, it may have a mp3 as an audio track, as mp3 is real audio encoding, and it might have a DivX/Mpeg4 video track, which is real video encoding. AVI just binds these 2 together into a single file.
While I admit, confusion would result by appending
An Interesting and semi-related article was in the LA Times this morning, about how Disney is laying off a good chunk of it's animation group, and many of the older members think that the new environment does not foster the kind of (perceived) creativity that made Disney famous.
From the Article:
But longtime animators say the more serious problem is that the division--once the premier place to work--lacks the creative vibrancy that fostered such hits as "Lion King."
Recall they were not normal iron bombs. From this CNN article, "Pentagon sources said the special bombs explode over targets, then shower the electric transformers and lines with tiny carbon fibers, shorting out the systems. "
They don't permanently destroy the plants, as happened in Iraq, but take them down for several days, limiting long term damage to the civilian population.
Of course, you still have to wonder if it really helped the bombing effort at all...
Anyhow, back on topic a bit more, shutting down a power system temporarily through computer attack or temporarily through carbon fiber bombs really are no different in the eyes of the end user. Their lives are disrupted for several days. If this 'hacker' was actually able to do some damage, the end result would be very similar to what NATO did to serbia. (of course, most of our bridges would still be standing...)
Wrong. 2 weeks ago at WWDC, Apple clearly stated that Mac OS X is compiled entirely with gcc. They also spent some time talking about the fun stuff they were doing with it, including the imminent the return of ObjectiveC++.
The XBox is going to be a serious player, and that is simply because of the launch title Halo.
Tonight Bungie Studios threw the fifth FanFest, where at the end they unveiled 2 xbox xdk's, and proceeded to demonstrate solo games, and let the attendees play Halo on.
The following is my quick review, copied from where I posted it on another forum, but it should give you an idea of what the XBox is capable of doing.
Keep in mind this info is really new. The FanFest ended about an hour ago, and the info is just starting to trickle it. It should be considered an indication of what Microsoft/Bungie will show at e3 tomorrow
I have played Halo, and declare it Good(tm)
I hold several nifty records
A) First person from the general public ever to drive the Warthog. (The Jeep)
B) First person from the general public ever to run an enemy over in said Warthog.
C) First person from the general public to kill a teammate, which was quite fun.
I'll make this short, then move on into details:
Before, I never really considered buying an X-Box.
Now, I'm going to be waiting first in line.
Quick list of facts I remember right now:
- 4 controllers per x-box, up to 4 xboxes can be connected together through a LAN, for a 16 player game. Bungie has only gotten 3 xboxes working so far, and is working on the fourth.
- The controllers were much better than expected. They obviously take some getting used to, but after spinning out for 2 minutes in the Warthog trying to make it turn, it got fairly easy. Good aiming will take more practice, but it does work.
- The game is beautiful beyond belief. The waterfalls and trees are amazing, especially the rays of sunlight coming through the tree branches.
- All of the weapons seem fairly capable of good damage. No UberWeapons jumped right out.
- The other marines sound very much like characters from a previous series of loved Bungie games (Marathon)
- The multiplayer game we were playing was using 2 xdks, playing with 8 players, split 4 to a screen.
- The multiplayer map was standard CTF, 2 small bases, 2 flags, large canyon in between, Warthog starting on each side.
- Warthogs don't care who is driving them, they are not colored for a specific team. At one time a blue driver was driving around a red rear gunner, and neither of them knew it for awhile.
- Friendly fire from the rear gunner into the back of the drivers head appears to be possible. Very dangerous
- The Warthogs gun is freakishly powerful. But your not going to hit anything at all while it's moving. Be prepared for motion sickness.
- The solo games are narrated with in game dialog, and your friendly marines are fairly effective it seems. That didn't keep the demo guy from dying several times.
In short, Halo is one hell of a launch title, and you can bet that Microsoft will leverage that very heavily in their $500 million ad campaign.