why isn't there (in any OS I'm aware of) OS-based per-application volume control -- ie, something which sits between the application and the sound card, and adjusts that application's sound output based on that application's volume setting.
If you have Mac OS X and $12, you can do this with Detour.
(And while not a game, the paint program "Painter" came in a metal paint can. Corel owns that product now, so it probably ships in a well-sealed container so as not to let the crapload of bugs out until you open the box at home.)
Stick with HTML/XHTML and CSS. You have PHP, what more could you possibly want? It's better to create web content that is accessible by everyone, than to produce fancy schmancy stuff that only a few people can access, and even fewer will appreciate. I hate Javascript and all other "dynamic" happenings in my browser. Focus on your content.
I agree that using JavaScript to make a site more "fancy" is a waste of time and can lead to serious problems, but if you are writing a complex web application, JavaScript and other tricks can really improve the user experience.
The trick is to make sure that the site works without JavaScript enabled and to test the JavaScript on as many browsers as you can. Because that is time consuming and expensive, you need to make sure that adding a certain script is worth the expense.
It could be argued that complex applications shouldn't be web-based, and I'd generally agree with that, but sometimes it makes sense (and other times, it doesn't make sense but someone makes that decision and then pays you to implement it).
3) Voice control of all functions. Imagine walking into a room and saying 'increase lights by fifty percent and it happens.
I don't think I'd like that. I've always had Macintosh computers, and for a really long time they've had voice recognition. I can tell my Mac to do just about anything (except be inexpensive:) .
But I don't use it. It works fine, but I don't like talking to my computer. I don't know why.
Instead of voice recognition in the house, I'd like to have good controls. All the control panels and switches I've ever seen are crappy and ugly. I want good-looking and easy to use controls. And lots of them, some mounted in obvious places (walls) and some hidden away (coffee table).
What about running the wires along the base of the walls and then clipping on some removable baseboards on top of the wires?
Then when you need to re-wire something, just pop off the baseboards. Plus, if you want a jack to be in a particular spot, just pop off the baseboard, drill a hole, install a jack, wire it up, and pop it back on.
For the doorways, you could have removable thresholds. (Or whatever that piece is called that goes on the floor directly under a doorway.)
Don't get caught up in getting crap to achieve an identity
Uh, everyone I know buys things because they will somehow improve their lives, not to show off. (Perhaps your friends are more shallow than mine, I don't know.)
I don't think it will impress anyone that my basement lights turn on when I go down the stairs. That's not why the lights are on a motion sensor. They are on a motion sensor because when I go to the basement with a load of laundry or a big box, it's a pain in the butt to put down the box, walk to the switch (which isn't near the door because it's an old basement), turn it on, walk back, and pick up my box.
Sure, it wouldn't kill me to do all that, but it's worth $25 to me to not have to do that for the next 10 years that I own the house.
The highlight were the Lego Mindstorm robots and the stop-action movie studios. I guess I had better buy some now, eh?
Nah, you'll be able to get the Mindstorms cheaper on eBay in the future. And all you need for a stop-action movie studio is a cheap ($30) digital camera, some normal Legos or action figures, some cardboard and crayons, and some software that turns a bunch of JPEGs into a movie.
I should also point out that everyone, save for a few persons, have an internal clock outside the standard 24 hour day that approaches 25 hours. If you were to sleep/wake/sleep/wake for about a week, without interruptions, you'd slowly move about until you hit around a 25 hour day.
That's a myth based on very bad science. Our body clock is 24 hours. (Or 24 hours and 11 minutes, if you are to believe the jokers at Harvard Medical School.)
Since they were trying shoe horn a graphical OS onto a 128Kb machine with no HD (but they did have some ROMs), you can't really fault them for taking a few shortcuts.
IIRC, they were tryng to shoe horn a graphical OS onto a 64Kb machine. At the very last minute, the RAM was doubled. But Andy and the gang had already pulled off a miracle.
Predicting which character was next going to drip out of my 300 baud modem...
For the first time, having access to really whacked out text documents, like the one about how Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars") program was not about defending against nuclear strikes but really about defending against alien invasion...
Playing a serial MUD. There were multiple players, which was cool (even cooler because I knew most of them), but since the BBS had only one phone line, only one person could play at once. (I imagine this was typical in those days, but it seems interesting to me now...)
You are crap. If you send it to all and they didn't give reason 2 for refusing then maybe your story just isn't good. It happens you know. Live with it.
If I had just written a book, I'd print out a copy and pay a English grad student to read it and give me her honest opinion.
They provide you with programming for the low price of watching commercials.
They provide us with programming and they hope we watch the commercials. When the government gives a company the right to use a chunk of the airwaves or to create a monopoly (in the case of cable TV), they don't guarantee the company that the people receiving the broadcasts will tune into any particular part of a broadcast.
What makes you think they don't have a right to make money but you have the right to watch free TV?
If the system is public (broadcast TV or cable), then I should have a right to watch whatever portion I want to watch. If the system is private (satellite or DVD), then I will allow the broadcasters to define the rules and if I don't like them I don't have to use their service.
One channel near me puts up an ad for some TV maker in the bottom corner of the screen when "Star Trek: Enterprise" (nee "Enterprise") starts. The ad is about 1/6th the size of the screen. It's really annoying.
Perhaps they realize that all the Star Trek geeks have TiVo and are skipping the commercials.
I hope this doesn't become a trend. Having my favorite character on "Friends" holding a Diet Squirt is fine withe me. Having a big can of Diet Squirt appear in the corner of the screen and bounce around would be really annoying.
Commercials (at least in the US) are usually 30 seconds. TiVo doesn't have commercial skip, but it does have n second skip (where you can define n if you're tricky).
TiVo also has fast-forward, and when you stop fast-fowarding, it jumps backwards a few seconds because it knows you hit the button one second too late.
But I have no idea how the automatic commercial skip of ReplayTV works. I'm pretty sure it is more sophisticated than just skipping ahead 30 seconds. So mod me "+1 informative" and "-1 doesn't know what he's talking about".
Heh, I wonder what ads they will show if everyone driving by is listening to a non-existant station because they are all broadcasting their mp3 players to their radios.
(Perhaps they'll show ads for car stereos with auxiliary input jacks...)
I don't know what its like everywhere, but in the Washington DC metro area there aren't too many billbords
You are lucky. There are billboards all over the US. I've driven across the country a few times and you can't escape them.
Re:And who pays for this? Seems different.
on
Smart Billboards
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· Score: 1
This is something us brits don't understand, what is alternative about a pretty boring family car?
I assume the OP was talking about the little tiny Focus, which seems to be the most popular one around here. The other Focii don't seem to be too popular.
I was in the UK not too long ago, and I had a lot of fun looking at all the different models of cars on the roads. But I was surprised at the number of American cars there. I can kind of understand why some Americans buy American cars, but I don't understand why anyone else would.
Whether or not he did something wrong is irrelevent. It's whether or not he did something unprofitable. Some corporations these days seem to believe they have a god-given right to profit
Companies that are out to make a profit stick around. They get investors. Most companies that aren't out to make a profit disappear rather quickly. Therefore, most companies that exist are out to make a profit. It's not evil. It's pure business.
Companies will do what they feel they need to do to make profit or to stop losing profit.
and that censorship and lawsuit chill is an acceptable tool to that end.
It's both acceptable and successful. They said, "please stop telling people where to buy this DVD that our contract says shouldn't be sold in the US", and the guy in question said, "OK".
It's not as if they passed a law that trampled this guy's rights. They just asked him to stop and he did. IMHO, he should have said "no", but he's allowed so say "OK" if he wants.
It's just unfortunate that saying "no" would cost the guy a lot of money and time. Something needs to be done about that, IMHO.
What they fail to mention is that standing on platforms freezing to death in the rain and sleet waiting for your train to arrive is bad for your health.
No it's not. It's uncomfortable, but it's not unhealthy.
Diseases are not caused by cold or by rain. Hypothermia is caused by cold, but a sane person wouldn't get hypothermia waiting for a train. And your immune system is not lowered by cold weather, either.
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters?
on
The Life of a Spammer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It is very bothersome for me. I get so much spam on the email address that I've had for 10 years that I now don't even look through my filtered mail for false positives. If my software says it's spam, it just gets deleted right away.
I'm sure I'm deleting real email too, but what can I do? I don't have time to look through hundreds of messages a day to see if one is legitimate. (Maybe Flo Fox can do it for me from prison.)
Slashdot Mirror
If you have Mac OS X and $12, you can do this with Detour.
Someone better is almost certainly out there waiting to be noticed. When Google starts to suck, that better search engine might get its chance.
You can kind of see it in these pictures of Marathon, Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity.
(And while not a game, the paint program "Painter" came in a metal paint can. Corel owns that product now, so it probably ships in a well-sealed container so as not to let the crapload of bugs out until you open the box at home.)
I agree that using JavaScript to make a site more "fancy" is a waste of time and can lead to serious problems, but if you are writing a complex web application, JavaScript and other tricks can really improve the user experience.
The trick is to make sure that the site works without JavaScript enabled and to test the JavaScript on as many browsers as you can. Because that is time consuming and expensive, you need to make sure that adding a certain script is worth the expense.
It could be argued that complex applications shouldn't be web-based, and I'd generally agree with that, but sometimes it makes sense (and other times, it doesn't make sense but someone makes that decision and then pays you to implement it).
I don't think I'd like that. I've always had Macintosh computers, and for a really long time they've had voice recognition. I can tell my Mac to do just about anything (except be inexpensive :) .
But I don't use it. It works fine, but I don't like talking to my computer. I don't know why.
Instead of voice recognition in the house, I'd like to have good controls. All the control panels and switches I've ever seen are crappy and ugly. I want good-looking and easy to use controls. And lots of them, some mounted in obvious places (walls) and some hidden away (coffee table).
What about running the wires along the base of the walls and then clipping on some removable baseboards on top of the wires?
Then when you need to re-wire something, just pop off the baseboards. Plus, if you want a jack to be in a particular spot, just pop off the baseboard, drill a hole, install a jack, wire it up, and pop it back on.
For the doorways, you could have removable thresholds. (Or whatever that piece is called that goes on the floor directly under a doorway.)
Uh, everyone I know buys things because they will somehow improve their lives, not to show off. (Perhaps your friends are more shallow than mine, I don't know.)
I don't think it will impress anyone that my basement lights turn on when I go down the stairs. That's not why the lights are on a motion sensor. They are on a motion sensor because when I go to the basement with a load of laundry or a big box, it's a pain in the butt to put down the box, walk to the switch (which isn't near the door because it's an old basement), turn it on, walk back, and pick up my box.
Sure, it wouldn't kill me to do all that, but it's worth $25 to me to not have to do that for the next 10 years that I own the house.
Nah, you'll be able to get the Mindstorms cheaper on eBay in the future. And all you need for a stop-action movie studio is a cheap ($30) digital camera, some normal Legos or action figures, some cardboard and crayons, and some software that turns a bunch of JPEGs into a movie.
...and that in English, it means, "How can a box containing a bunch of plastic squares cost so much money?"
Uh, right. Scientists have come up with a better conclusion: the 25 hour day myth is based on bad science. The human body's cycle is 24 hours.
That's a myth based on very bad science. Our body clock is 24 hours. (Or 24 hours and 11 minutes, if you are to believe the jokers at Harvard Medical School.)
Now that we have Expose, do we even need tabs (be they textual or graphical)?
IIRC, they were tryng to shoe horn a graphical OS onto a 64Kb machine. At the very last minute, the RAM was doubled. But Andy and the gang had already pulled off a miracle.
Predicting which character was next going to drip out of my 300 baud modem...
For the first time, having access to really whacked out text documents, like the one about how Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars") program was not about defending against nuclear strikes but really about defending against alien invasion...
Playing a serial MUD. There were multiple players, which was cool (even cooler because I knew most of them), but since the BBS had only one phone line, only one person could play at once. (I imagine this was typical in those days, but it seems interesting to me now...)
I don't like to write "his or her" all the time so I choose one at random.
If I had just written a book, I'd print out a copy and pay a English grad student to read it and give me her honest opinion.
They provide us with programming and they hope we watch the commercials. When the government gives a company the right to use a chunk of the airwaves or to create a monopoly (in the case of cable TV), they don't guarantee the company that the people receiving the broadcasts will tune into any particular part of a broadcast.
What makes you think they don't have a right to make money but you have the right to watch free TV?
If the system is public (broadcast TV or cable), then I should have a right to watch whatever portion I want to watch. If the system is private (satellite or DVD), then I will allow the broadcasters to define the rules and if I don't like them I don't have to use their service.
Perhaps they realize that all the Star Trek geeks have TiVo and are skipping the commercials.
I hope this doesn't become a trend. Having my favorite character on "Friends" holding a Diet Squirt is fine withe me. Having a big can of Diet Squirt appear in the corner of the screen and bounce around would be really annoying.
TiVo also has fast-forward, and when you stop fast-fowarding, it jumps backwards a few seconds because it knows you hit the button one second too late.
But I have no idea how the automatic commercial skip of ReplayTV works. I'm pretty sure it is more sophisticated than just skipping ahead 30 seconds. So mod me "+1 informative" and "-1 doesn't know what he's talking about".
Heh, I wonder what ads they will show if everyone driving by is listening to a non-existant station because they are all broadcasting their mp3 players to their radios.
(Perhaps they'll show ads for car stereos with auxiliary input jacks...)
You are lucky. There are billboards all over the US. I've driven across the country a few times and you can't escape them.
I assume the OP was talking about the little tiny Focus, which seems to be the most popular one around here. The other Focii don't seem to be too popular.
I was in the UK not too long ago, and I had a lot of fun looking at all the different models of cars on the roads. But I was surprised at the number of American cars there. I can kind of understand why some Americans buy American cars, but I don't understand why anyone else would.
Companies that are out to make a profit stick around. They get investors. Most companies that aren't out to make a profit disappear rather quickly. Therefore, most companies that exist are out to make a profit. It's not evil. It's pure business.
Companies will do what they feel they need to do to make profit or to stop losing profit.
and that censorship and lawsuit chill is an acceptable tool to that end.
It's both acceptable and successful. They said, "please stop telling people where to buy this DVD that our contract says shouldn't be sold in the US", and the guy in question said, "OK".
It's not as if they passed a law that trampled this guy's rights. They just asked him to stop and he did. IMHO, he should have said "no", but he's allowed so say "OK" if he wants.
It's just unfortunate that saying "no" would cost the guy a lot of money and time. Something needs to be done about that, IMHO.
No it's not. It's uncomfortable, but it's not unhealthy.
Diseases are not caused by cold or by rain. Hypothermia is caused by cold, but a sane person wouldn't get hypothermia waiting for a train. And your immune system is not lowered by cold weather, either.
It is very bothersome for me. I get so much spam on the email address that I've had for 10 years that I now don't even look through my filtered mail for false positives. If my software says it's spam, it just gets deleted right away.
I'm sure I'm deleting real email too, but what can I do? I don't have time to look through hundreds of messages a day to see if one is legitimate. (Maybe Flo Fox can do it for me from prison.)