It is a reservation system for the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. I think it is one of the most usable Flash sites I've seen in a while.
It's usable only if your employer doesn't block active content from untrusted sites. Mine does, and the page you referenced comes out blank with an ugly purplish background color. The only thing that gives a hint about the purpose of the site is the titlebar (ironically enough, the <title> tag ist an HTML feature...).
There's no alternative representation of the page in HTML. Either you have Flash set up and working, or you'll have to take your business elsewhere. Maybe one day they'll wonder why the neighboring resorts get more business than they do, even if Broadmoor's site is _so_ much cooler. Here's a hint: The way it is set up now, their site is the equivalent of saying "Get lost, loser!" to some potential customers. And as the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Sometime before I came along, my company's website [ssai-llc.com] was done entirely in Flash. One of these days I'll get around to trashing it and replacing it with proper HTML.
If you need support to get rid of the Flash-trash on your site: the ssai-llc.com homepage renders as a white page when viewed from my workplace. My employer blocks all active content from untrusted sites. Call it paranoid, call it stupid, but that's the way it is - and for your company it means that you lost at least one potential customer because of bad web design.
You know why designers use Flash? It's because it looks the same on every browser and every OS.
That's true indeed for me. More specifically, it looks like a blank white page on every browser and every OS I use. Where I work, all active content from untrusted sites is blocked for security reasons. I did the same at home because I was sick and tired of long download times, popups, weird navigation, useless rollover effects and the like. Your site doesn't work with JS, cookies, InactiveX disabled? Too bad. Remember: On the internet, the competition is just a mouse klick away.
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances."
In other news, three project submissions by Seagate Technologies, codenamed "U Series", "Barracuda" and "Cheetah X15", and one submission by Plextor (codename "40X") were rejected by the science committee. In a joint declaration, the spokespersons of the two companies declared that "We are deeply dismayed that such an outdated technology has been chosen in place of our state-of-the-art submissions."
The speaker of the science committee was not available for comments.
There are two conditions which have to be met for legislative regulation to be effective:
1. There must be a law against UCE which is ratified by all nations worldwide (U.N.)
2. The law must be actually enforced in all states
Nr. 1 is no problem in principle (only Switzerland and the Holy See are non-members of the U.N. today, and they will likely follow U.N. legislative practices), but it will likely take many years to work out and ratify an anti-UCE law. Individual national legislation is not the way to go here, the internet is a global network.
As for nr. 2, I doubt that prosecution of UCE distributors would get a very high priority in many states. And if a law isn't enforced (or if only a few token scapegoats are prosecuted to show good will) it might as well not exist.
Where I live, we have legislation which forbids unauthorized entry into data processing systems. That's very good, but if a teenager from the (imaginary) country of Krbzngan hacks my servers and puts me out of business, this law won't help me - in all probability I won't get any of my lost time and money back, and he will not be prosecuted because the police in Krbzngan has other priorities than going after an underage criminal (assuming that cracking is illegal under the local legislation in the first place).
I'm not saying that legislation against UCE shouldn't be done, it will certainly be successful in reducing the amount of spam, but in order to be really effective we will have to supplement it with technical means.
This is a great example of the Free Market at work!
It is also a great example of the "Tragedy of the Commons" where a free-for-all resource is exploited to the point of being useless. There are two possible answers to avoid this: One is regulation (which would be cumbersome and probably ineffective, given the global nature of the Internet), or technical means (which I favor). In any case, there must be a certain penalty associated to misusing the resource, or else we'll have a econonomy-textbook case here.
Two links which might be worth a read: This and this (go up one directory for more comments).
They can mark it in any way they want to. Small, large, or invisible ink (jk!) and as long as they mark them they are probably covering their asses. The fact that joe sixpack doesn't know how to look for the mark isn't their concern.
Here in Europe, they must have been getting a mighty load of flak from the consumers, since they're starting to label "copy protected" CDs more clearly. The first two i got into my hands (Natalie Imbruglia and Heather Nova) were indistinguishable from real CDs, but last week a friend of mine bought "Laundry Service" by Shakira, one of the top-selling pop CDs at the moment. There was a black text box on the front of the inlay and on the back inlay which clearly stated "Will not play on PC/MAC". The jewel case still featured the CD-audio logo, though.
Problem is, she has no Hi-Fi gear in her workroom and I've taught her to use MusicMatch on the PC to rip her CDs. The CD, needless to say, wouldn't play. After making a real CD out of it, I took the liberty of scanning the front and back cover and changed the text boxes to "Will play on PC/MAC" (small revenge, I know, but I couldn't resist).
On the positive side, the Shakira record can at least be digitally recorded to MD from the original, unlike the ones by Imbruglia and Nova (one had the SCMS bit set, the other would set a new track mark every 3 seconds or so).
Thanks for enlightening me about the meaning of "throbber" in this particular context. I'd reckon that pornzilla will probably feature a different set of tiles than the original, quite possibly involving "members"?
If pornzilla pulls this off (...) and gets really successful, there might be hard times ahead for Microsoft. Somehow, I cannot imagine them doing an "Internet Explorer 8.0 - the best browser for one-handed operation" ad campaign. But then again, read on, the really fun part comes now:
Microsoft actually looked into entering the pr0n business in the 90s, according to this 1994 article by Andrew Schulman in DDJ. Quoting from it: "The best bet is to find areas where Microsoft doesn't have a product, and where there is a chance of a several-year window of opportunity before it does have a product. On the other hand, the only market I've ever heard of that Microsoft didn't want to get into was pornographic screen savers and related multimedia titles. As one company employee told me, 'We looked carefully at adult software, and decided to leave that money on the table'".
...there are other factors than performance, indulge me for a moment:
I work at a big corporation which relied on IBM mainframes for its whole business for almost 30 years until the PC and the high-end Unix servers shook up the landscape for good. I'm from the PC (IT) camp, which has been separate from the Big Iron (DP) guys in the organization since the early days.
DP, once very powerful, has lost a great deal of influence in the 90s, although they still run most of the mission-critical stuff, and the main reason for this were the high-end Unix servers, most of them Sun boxen running Oracle. Believe me, there's no love lost between those two fractions in our company.
Our mainframe guys see Linux as an opportunity to get better integration with the IT world, which was abysmal until now (3270 terminal windows, IMS/DB, TSO/ISPF and such horrors) and to better position themselves against the Sun/Oracle camp which is after their budgets and their butts. Today, we have Linux happily running on our mainframes (still in an experimental phase, not in production), serving up http and Samba shares without a hiccup.
If we're talking about bringing Linux into the large corporations, the crucial influence of IBM cannot be overestimated. We were a died-in-the wool IBM shop (S/390, Token Ring, 3270PC, OS/2, S/36, AS/400, the whole enchilada) and successfully trusted our business to IBM for 30 years (paid through our nose for it, too, I might add). IBM has lots of credibility and trust, so if they say Linux is cool, our CTO listens. Microsoft, on the other hand, is viewed with some "new kid on the block" suspicion. Our management doesn't like downtime and security breaches, and the memory of the ILOVEYOU aftermath is still very vivid, for example. Plus, we migrated to NT4 late (about 28'000 systems, ended September 99) and now Microsoft is practically forcing us into another expensive upgrade cycle sooner than we wanted and with IT budgets cut short on account of the less-than-stellar economy because NT4 support is withdrawn in 2003.
We thus have the following situation: IT and DP are up against the Unix enterprise server guys, all this with the backing of IBM. The astronomically high cost of Sun/Oracle solutions is being questioned more and more, and technologically viable low-end solutions (x86 multiprocessor servers, Linux) begin to rattle the foundations from below.
I don't want to make bold predictions here, but if I were Sun, I'd be worried. To me, it looks like interesting times are ahead.
The average user must become more computer savvy, including being able to deal with a command line and wanting to understand to some degree what the OS is doing.
This is the Procrustean way IMO, and it will get us nowhere fast. We'll have to adapt Linux to the users, not vice-versa.
This is where OS X beats the pants off Linux - everything looks friendly and Macish, the keyboard works from the start (out of four x86 distros I've tried over the last two years, not ONE got the Swiss-German layout right both in X and at the command prompt without tinkering), the mouse works as it's supposed to, the monitor resolution and color depth are optimal, the Internet is just a few mouse clicks away - and you can do all this without seeing a terminal window and unpacking tarballs. And if you need it, the shell in all its glory is just a few mouse klicks away. I know that it's easier for Apple because they only have a relatively limited hardware base to support, but something like OS X is the goal we should pursue.
Get the various streaming media formats supported on Linux. Get the various video formats supported. Get the various "features" of broken web-browsers supported in Linux browsers. Once all the features of porn sites are easily accessible using Linux, then success will come.
If what you say is true, then these guys are visionaries.
Quote: "The goal of the Pornzilla project is to make Mozilla into a great porn browser."
Note that the project has "Members" (apparently they're not trying to be funny here) as well as a "throbber" feature (whatever that is, I don't really want to know).
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Dan "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" Quayle (source)
>I believe there is anti spy patch for windows XP.
For the paranoid, there's xp-AntiSpy (download here) which is supposed to turn off most if not all of those "XP phone home" features, including those that make some sense (like ntp).
The truly paranoid, like me, prefer not to run software from a site featuring banner ads for dubious services and a front page that can only be viewed if you have JavaScript enabled.
The solution to all this, of course, is right there in the second paragraph of your post.
After getting a copyright, or an intellectual property, a company must defend it tooth and nail from ANY kind of predatory or even harmless knockoffs.
Point taken, but by your line of reasoning, Slashdot should soon receive mail from Apple's lawyers, since the new look of this topic could be qualified as a "harmless" knockoff. They're walking a thin line here, I hope they know what they're doing.
As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - but I think there's no way you can make OS X out of WinXP by slapping a skin on it, all the ugliness and UI blunders are right underneath, right down to the infamous "Aqua" blue screen so familiar to Windows users.
One of the main reasons Apple is still in business is the consistency of the user interface, and this - together with the solid foundation of OS X, good hardware and applications - should be their unique selling points.
Apple has been doing some mistakes with the UI lately (see for example this, this, this, or this page), and I'd rather see them working on improving the greatest UI on earth than on suing a non-commercial website about some Aqua-lookalike skin. Investing time and money to make sure nobody in the neighborhood has a house the same color as yours and at the same time neglecting to take care of the foundations which are slowly rotting away is not a good idea.
Raymond
(P.S. I understand everybody who wants to change the default look of Windows XP - every time I see it I'm expecting Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po to cavort over the desktop, and this gives me the creeps:P )
Just a short time ago, the folks at ThemeXP unwittingly found themselves at the receiving end of a C-A-D notification from Apple's lawyers for getting a little too close to the Aqua look with two themes on their website. Quoting verbatim from ThemeXP's front page:
"Apple's Copyright - 02.13.02 @ 6:18 PM EST
Apple has contacted ThemeXP and notified us that we are in violation of Apple's copyright on OS X by hosting two themes: "EclipseOSX v4.40" and "MacOSX Aqua 3.2". As much as we enjoy long and expensive lawsuits against mega-corporations, we decided to comply with their notice of infringement and take down both of the two themes we previously hosted."
My reaction on this is mixed. I realize that the look and the UI are an important part of the Apple experience, but Apple now has a solid OS foundation and there's no way one can turn Windows XP into OS X by just slapping a skin on it. I think they should loosen up a little and try to convince users by displaying technical excellence rather than by turning their legal wolfpack loose. Your opinions?
Putting resistors on the fan wire will slow the fan down, cutting down on the noise substantially.
IANAEE(*), but from following the discussions in various newsgroups i gather that one should use diodes in line rather than resistors (approx 0.7 V drop per diode, is this true?). I'm sure someone here can give an explanation why this is so (of if it's just voodoo engineering).
"Sorry for being an hour late, honey. I wanted to call you from my cellphone, but the display just reads 'i 0\/\/Nz y00 700z3R' and the menu doesn't work anymore. Can you fix that?"
I thought I had made it sufficiently clear that I wasn't seriously trying to refute or attack the parent poster but rather to point out some of those whacky pages one finds all over the internet, and this within a topic which lent itself to attempts at humor.
Read the post again: "as soon as they find a way to escape their comfortably padded cells" (the guys at the Flat Earth Society clearly don't take themselves very seriously), "important-looking numbers", "I have to take my medication now".
"-1, Unfunny", maybe, or "-1, Offtopic" - but "Flamebait"? I hope whoever did that will meet the wrath of metamod.
I swear I am not making this up. Look it up at your university library if you don't believe me:
According to a review of the book "Shark Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance" (Lyons Press) in reputable science journal "American Scientist", Volume 89, September-October 2001, p. 458, "The book is loaded with other shark-related facts, including the surprising information that these animals are less dangerous than toilets: In 1996, only 18 people in the United States were killed or injured by a shark, whereas 43,687 were injured by a toilet. ("Could the toilets be mistaking people for seals?)
And you worry about shark attacks? Me, I play Barry White songs to my toilet. I'd rather have it put the moves on me than mistake me for a seal.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a reservation system for the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. I think it is one of the most usable Flash sites I've seen in a while.
It's usable only if your employer doesn't block active content from untrusted sites. Mine does, and the page you referenced comes out blank with an ugly purplish background color. The only thing that gives a hint about the purpose of the site is the titlebar (ironically enough, the <title> tag ist an HTML feature...).
There's no alternative representation of the page in HTML. Either you have Flash set up and working, or you'll have to take your business elsewhere. Maybe one day they'll wonder why the neighboring resorts get more business than they do, even if Broadmoor's site is _so_ much cooler. Here's a hint: The way it is set up now, their site is the equivalent of saying "Get lost, loser!" to some potential customers. And as the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Sometime before I came along, my company's website [ssai-llc.com] was done entirely in Flash. One of these days I'll get around to trashing it and replacing it with proper HTML.
If you need support to get rid of the Flash-trash on your site: the ssai-llc.com homepage renders as a white page when viewed from my workplace. My employer blocks all active content from untrusted sites. Call it paranoid, call it stupid, but that's the way it is - and for your company it means that you lost at least one potential customer because of bad web design.
You know why designers use Flash? It's because it looks the same on every browser and every OS.
That's true indeed for me. More specifically, it looks like a blank white page on every browser and every OS I use. Where I work, all active content from untrusted sites is blocked for security reasons. I did the same at home because I was sick and tired of long download times, popups, weird navigation, useless rollover effects and the like. Your site doesn't work with JS, cookies, InactiveX disabled? Too bad. Remember: On the internet, the competition is just a mouse klick away.
Take a gander at this one:
.
United States Patent 6,330,670 (December 11, 2001):
Digital rights management operating system
Makes me want to puke.
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances."
(Attributed to EPIC's Marc Rotenberg)
> I think the english cubit is around 18 inches.
According to my penguin:
opus:[log] #units cubits inches
* 18
/ 0.55555556
opus:[log] #
qed
In other news, three project submissions by Seagate Technologies, codenamed "U Series", "Barracuda" and "Cheetah X15", and one submission by Plextor (codename "40X") were rejected by the science committee. In a joint declaration, the spokespersons of the two companies declared that "We are deeply dismayed that such an outdated technology has been chosen in place of our state-of-the-art submissions."
The speaker of the science committee was not available for comments.
There are two conditions which have to be met for legislative regulation to be effective:
1. There must be a law against UCE which is ratified by all nations worldwide (U.N.)
2. The law must be actually enforced in all states
Nr. 1 is no problem in principle (only Switzerland and the Holy See are non-members of the U.N. today, and they will likely follow U.N. legislative practices), but it will likely take many years to work out and ratify an anti-UCE law. Individual national legislation is not the way to go here, the internet is a global network.
As for nr. 2, I doubt that prosecution of UCE distributors would get a very high priority in many states. And if a law isn't enforced (or if only a few token scapegoats are prosecuted to show good will) it might as well not exist.
Where I live, we have legislation which forbids unauthorized entry into data processing systems. That's very good, but if a teenager from the (imaginary) country of Krbzngan hacks my servers and puts me out of business, this law won't help me - in all probability I won't get any of my lost time and money back, and he will not be prosecuted because the police in Krbzngan has other priorities than going after an underage criminal (assuming that cracking is illegal under the local legislation in the first place).
I'm not saying that legislation against UCE shouldn't be done, it will certainly be successful in reducing the amount of spam, but in order to be really effective we will have to supplement it with technical means.
This is a great example of the Free Market at work!
It is also a great example of the "Tragedy of the Commons" where a free-for-all resource is exploited to the point of being useless. There are two possible answers to avoid this: One is regulation (which would be cumbersome and probably ineffective, given the global nature of the Internet), or technical means (which I favor). In any case, there must be a certain penalty associated to misusing the resource, or else we'll have a econonomy-textbook case here.
Two links which might be worth a read: This and this (go up one directory for more comments).
They can mark it in any way they want to. Small, large, or invisible ink (jk!) and as long as they mark them they are probably covering their asses. The fact that joe sixpack doesn't know how to look for the mark isn't their concern.
Here in Europe, they must have been getting a mighty load of flak from the consumers, since they're starting to label "copy protected" CDs more clearly. The first two i got into my hands (Natalie Imbruglia and Heather Nova) were indistinguishable from real CDs, but last week a friend of mine bought "Laundry Service" by Shakira, one of the top-selling pop CDs at the moment. There was a black text box on the front of the inlay and on the back inlay which clearly stated "Will not play on PC/MAC". The jewel case still featured the CD-audio logo, though.
Problem is, she has no Hi-Fi gear in her workroom and I've taught her to use MusicMatch on the PC to rip her CDs. The CD, needless to say, wouldn't play. After making a real CD out of it, I took the liberty of scanning the front and back cover and changed the text boxes to "Will play on PC/MAC" (small revenge, I know, but I couldn't resist).
On the positive side, the Shakira record can at least be digitally recorded to MD from the original, unlike the ones by Imbruglia and Nova (one had the SCMS bit set, the other would set a new track mark every 3 seconds or so).
Too bad none of those ten has to do with the fact that country music makes your ears bleed.
Yes, but if aliens ever attack the earth, we can play country music to them at full blast and their heads will explode.
"Don't run, we are your friends...! Don't run, we are your friends...!"
(kudos to Tim Burton!)
Thanks for enlightening me about the meaning of "throbber" in this particular context. I'd reckon that pornzilla will probably feature a different set of tiles than the original, quite possibly involving "members"?
If pornzilla pulls this off (...) and gets really successful, there might be hard times ahead for Microsoft. Somehow, I cannot imagine them doing an "Internet Explorer 8.0 - the best browser for one-handed operation" ad campaign. But then again, read on, the really fun part comes now:
Microsoft actually looked into entering the pr0n business in the 90s, according to this 1994 article by Andrew Schulman in DDJ. Quoting from it:
"The best bet is to find areas where Microsoft doesn't have a product, and where there is a chance of a several-year window of opportunity before it does have a product. On the other hand, the only market I've ever heard of that Microsoft didn't want to get into was pornographic screen savers and related multimedia titles. As one company employee told me, 'We looked carefully at adult software, and decided to leave that money on the table'".
Microsoft pr0n, imagine that. The mind boggles.
You see, trolling involves making up facts to support an argument, whereas marketing involves, erm...
...two drinks minimum.
SCNR - and kudos to Scott Adams for this one.
...there are other factors than performance, indulge me for a moment:
I work at a big corporation which relied on IBM mainframes for its whole business for almost 30 years until the PC and the high-end Unix servers shook up the landscape for good. I'm from the PC (IT) camp, which has been separate from the Big Iron (DP) guys in the organization since the early days.
DP, once very powerful, has lost a great deal of influence in the 90s, although they still run most of the mission-critical stuff, and the main reason for this were the high-end Unix servers, most of them Sun boxen running Oracle. Believe me, there's no love lost between those two fractions in our company.
Our mainframe guys see Linux as an opportunity to get better integration with the IT world, which was abysmal until now (3270 terminal windows, IMS/DB, TSO/ISPF and such horrors) and to better position themselves against the Sun/Oracle camp which is after their budgets and their butts. Today, we have Linux happily running on our mainframes (still in an experimental phase, not in production), serving up http and Samba shares without a hiccup.
If we're talking about bringing Linux into the large corporations, the crucial influence of IBM cannot be overestimated. We were a died-in-the wool IBM shop (S/390, Token Ring, 3270PC, OS/2, S/36, AS/400, the whole enchilada) and successfully trusted our business to IBM for 30 years (paid through our nose for it, too, I might add). IBM has lots of credibility and trust, so if they say Linux is cool, our CTO listens. Microsoft, on the other hand, is viewed with some "new kid on the block" suspicion. Our management doesn't like downtime and security breaches, and the memory of the ILOVEYOU aftermath is still very vivid, for example. Plus, we migrated to NT4 late (about 28'000 systems, ended September 99) and now Microsoft is practically forcing us into another expensive upgrade cycle sooner than we wanted and with IT budgets cut short on account of the less-than-stellar economy because NT4 support is withdrawn in 2003.
We thus have the following situation: IT and DP are up against the Unix enterprise server guys, all this with the backing of IBM. The astronomically high cost of Sun/Oracle solutions is being questioned more and more, and technologically viable low-end solutions (x86 multiprocessor servers, Linux) begin to rattle the foundations from below.
I don't want to make bold predictions here, but if I were Sun, I'd be worried. To me, it looks like interesting times are ahead.
The average user must become more computer savvy, including being able to deal with a command line and wanting to understand to some degree what the OS is doing.
This is the Procrustean way IMO, and it will get us nowhere fast. We'll have to adapt Linux to the users, not vice-versa.
This is where OS X beats the pants off Linux - everything looks friendly and Macish, the keyboard works from the start (out of four x86 distros I've tried over the last two years, not ONE got the Swiss-German layout right both in X and at the command prompt without tinkering), the mouse works as it's supposed to, the monitor resolution and color depth are optimal, the Internet is just a few mouse clicks away - and you can do all this without seeing a terminal window and unpacking tarballs. And if you need it, the shell in all its glory is just a few mouse klicks away. I know that it's easier for Apple because they only have a relatively limited hardware base to support, but something like OS X is the goal we should pursue.
Raymond
Get the various streaming media formats supported on Linux. Get the various video formats supported. Get the various "features" of broken web-browsers supported in Linux browsers. Once all the features of porn sites are easily accessible using Linux, then success will come.
If what you say is true, then these guys are visionaries.
Quote: "The goal of the Pornzilla project is to make Mozilla into a great porn browser."
Note that the project has "Members" (apparently they're not trying to be funny here) as well as a "throbber" feature (whatever that is, I don't really want to know).
The wonders of Open Source...
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Dan "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" Quayle
(source)
>I believe there is anti spy patch for windows XP.
For the paranoid, there's xp-AntiSpy (download here) which is supposed to turn off most if not all of those "XP phone home" features, including those that make some sense (like ntp).
The truly paranoid, like me, prefer not to run software from a site featuring banner ads for dubious services and a front page that can only be viewed if you have JavaScript enabled.
The solution to all this, of course, is right there in the second paragraph of your post.
Raymond
The Black Death was spread by rats, but the rats were just a symptom - the real problem was overpopulation.
Or rather, the combined effects of overpopulation, bad sanitary conditions, and famine - see for example this page.
After getting a copyright, or an intellectual property, a company must defend it tooth and nail from ANY kind of predatory or even harmless knockoffs.
:P )
Point taken, but by your line of reasoning, Slashdot should soon receive mail from Apple's lawyers, since the new look of this topic could be qualified as a "harmless" knockoff. They're walking a thin line here, I hope they know what they're doing.
As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - but I think there's no way you can make OS X out of WinXP by slapping a skin on it, all the ugliness and UI blunders are right underneath, right down to the infamous "Aqua" blue screen so familiar to Windows users.
One of the main reasons Apple is still in business is the consistency of the user interface, and this - together with the solid foundation of OS X, good hardware and applications - should be their unique selling points.
Apple has been doing some mistakes with the UI lately (see for example this, this, this, or this page), and I'd rather see them working on improving the greatest UI on earth than on suing a non-commercial website about some Aqua-lookalike skin. Investing time and money to make sure nobody in the neighborhood has a house the same color as yours and at the same time neglecting to take care of the foundations which are slowly rotting away is not a good idea.
Raymond
(P.S. I understand everybody who wants to change the default look of Windows XP - every time I see it I'm expecting Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po to cavort over the desktop, and this gives me the creeps
"Apple's Copyright - 02.13.02 @ 6:18 PM EST
Apple has contacted ThemeXP and notified us that we are in violation of Apple's copyright on OS X by hosting two themes: "EclipseOSX v4.40" and "MacOSX Aqua 3.2". As much as we enjoy long and expensive lawsuits against mega-corporations, we decided to comply with their notice of infringement and take down both of the two themes we previously hosted."
My reaction on this is mixed. I realize that the look and the UI are an important part of the Apple experience, but Apple now has a solid OS foundation and there's no way one can turn Windows XP into OS X by just slapping a skin on it. I think they should loosen up a little and try to convince users by displaying technical excellence rather than by turning their legal wolfpack loose. Your opinions?
Putting resistors on the fan wire will slow the fan down, cutting down on the noise substantially.
:P
IANAEE(*), but from following the discussions in various newsgroups i gather that one should use diodes in line rather than resistors (approx 0.7 V drop per diode, is this true?). I'm sure someone here can give an explanation why this is so (of if it's just voodoo engineering).
Raymond
(*) I am not an electrical engineer
"Sorry for being an hour late, honey. I wanted to call you from my cellphone, but the display just reads 'i 0\/\/Nz y00 700z3R' and the menu doesn't work anymore. Can you fix that?"
I thought I had made it sufficiently clear that I wasn't seriously trying to refute or attack the parent poster but rather to point out some of those whacky pages one finds all over the internet, and this within a topic which lent itself to attempts at humor.
Read the post again: "as soon as they find a way to escape their comfortably padded cells" (the guys at the Flat Earth Society clearly don't take themselves very seriously), "important-looking numbers", "I have to take my medication now".
"-1, Unfunny", maybe, or "-1, Offtopic" - but "Flamebait"? I hope whoever did that will meet the wrath of metamod.
I swear I am not making this up. Look it up at your university library if you don't believe me:
According to a review of the book "Shark Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance" (Lyons Press) in reputable science journal "American Scientist", Volume 89, September-October 2001, p. 458, "The book is loaded with other shark-related facts, including the surprising information that these animals are less dangerous than toilets: In 1996, only 18 people in the United States were killed or injured by a shark, whereas 43,687 were injured by a toilet. ("Could the toilets be mistaking people for seals?)
And you worry about shark attacks? Me, I play Barry White songs to my toilet. I'd rather have it put the moves on me than mistake me for a seal.