NPR has lots of great shows online. You can grab them with a stream ripper or similar (if you use a Mac, Audio Hijack works). In particular, I'd recommend Talk of the Nation: Science Friday and This American Life.
I concur with the original poster. To be clear, this is the Avalon Hill version of Civilization, which was the inspiration for the more widely known computer version by Sid Meier's. The board game is long out of print, but you can sometimes find copies of it on ebay. There's also a European version made by Gibsons Games, which is very similar to the AH version.
The phrase "hoist with his own petard" comes from Shakespeare. Petard, as you noted, means an explosive of some sort. While hoist means to lift up. Shakespeare was referring to a sapper, which duing a siege would place an explosive under a castle wall in order to bring it down. If you've been hoisted by your own petard then you've managed to blow yourself up with your own bomb.
Clearly they haven't made such a utility because it would cut into their display sales. Why would you need a 30" LCD screen when you could get a zillion virtual displays for free?
I don't see the problem here. How is this different than buying a computer that comes bundled with demoware / shareware / crippleware, for which you may have to purchase a licence for it to not expire or become full featured? This just seems like an analog for media-data, as opposed to program-data. No one complains about the demo software, but now it's a big deal when it comes with "demo" music?
If copy protection is a useless waste of RIAA resources, then why are so many people here complaining about it? Seriously, if anyone can easily defeat it, then what's there to discuss? Are we really worried about the RIAA throwing away their money? (No.) Copy protection, even if it is defeatable, is still a hassle, and therefore a deterrant, and is therefore a reasonable use of resources if the RIAA wants to stop copying.
(Note I'm not claiming it is the right thing to do, but it's certainly not worthless to them)
That quote about someone peddling your 'A' paper around town to get an 'A' is misleading. A better analogy would be that you wrote an 'A' paper, and now it is being circulated among a community which likes to read good papers. They aren't passing it off as their own (as she implied), they are appreciating the work for what it is.
I'm highly suspicious of this "integration" process. This uncessary addition of vim into KDE will deprive consumers of real choice, potentially leading to a stranglehold in the up-and-coming field of text editors. Will retailers have the option of replacing Kvim with a component of their own choosing? What will happen to the Kemacs, Kpico, and the just-started Ked projects? I've read before that KDE has not been developed with modularity in mind, making Kvim's removal impractical at best, so we may be witnessing a thinly-veiled attempt by KDE to subsume the entire editor market. Before we jump on the bandwagon here expousing the virtues of this marriage, we should take a lesson from history and recognize the many subtle consequences of this action.
A couple things, actually (neither of which give you stereo-based control over the music, but them's the breaks). The first is a web-based mp3 jukebox interface, so I can use a wireless laptop or whatever to pick individual songs or playlists. The second is to use an x10 remote to send signals to the computer, which it can react to in a variety of ways. In my case, I have it set up so I can start and stop the jukebox, or veto the currently playing song.
Most of the time, I don't really care exactly what it's playing (it's all music I picked out anyway), so I'll just choose a playlist and let it go.
I've found that a cheap FM transmitter coupled with a regular PC makes a great music delivery device. Ramsey Electronics, among other companies, make a variety of FM transmitters that can take the sound output from your computer, and locally broadcast it to any radio or stereo you have. You don't need any other special equiment, get your favorite mp3 playing app on whatever OS you prefer and you're ready to go. The quality isn't anything to write home about, but for the price and the ability to use all your existing equipment, I think it makes a great choice. Just think, you can "stream" to your clock-radio in your bedroom!
Anyone know how to do anything useful with the "multimedia" keys on the newer keyboards? Those are the little nubbin ones that typically (under Windows) control the cd player, volume, sleep/suspend, etc. They don't seem to be recognized under Linux, and I haven't seen any docs on how to get them to be recognized.
I disagree. There are some functions (like "play"), which clearly do not require any more ease-of-use improvements. There are others, however (like programming your VCR), that could stand a little improvement, and I would wager there are scads of features that designers never added to their products because a tangible UI would be prohibitively complex and/or expensive. To me, this technology would seem to work best as an augmentation, rather than a replacement, of traditional physical interfaces. In such a product you get the best of both worlds - a simple phyical interface for day-to-day operation and a dynamic, ethereal one for more complex/less frequently used functions.
Slashdot Mirror
NPR has lots of great shows online. You can grab them with a stream ripper or similar (if you use a Mac, Audio Hijack works). In particular, I'd recommend Talk of the Nation: Science Friday and This American Life.
I concur with the original poster. To be clear, this is the Avalon Hill version of Civilization, which was the inspiration for the more widely known computer version by Sid Meier's. The board game is long out of print, but you can sometimes find copies of it on ebay. There's also a European version made by Gibsons Games, which is very similar to the AH version.
The phrase "hoist with his own petard" comes from Shakespeare. Petard, as you noted, means an explosive of some sort. While hoist means to lift up. Shakespeare was referring to a sapper, which duing a siege would place an explosive under a castle wall in order to bring it down. If you've been hoisted by your own petard then you've managed to blow yourself up with your own bomb.
I don't see the problem here. How is this different than buying a computer that comes bundled with demoware / shareware / crippleware, for which you may have to purchase a licence for it to not expire or become full featured? This just seems like an analog for media-data, as opposed to program-data. No one complains about the demo software, but now it's a big deal when it comes with "demo" music?
If copy protection is a useless waste of RIAA resources, then why are so many people here complaining about it? Seriously, if anyone can easily defeat it, then what's there to discuss? Are we really worried about the RIAA throwing away their money? (No.) Copy protection, even if it is defeatable, is still a hassle, and therefore a deterrant, and is therefore a reasonable use of resources if the RIAA wants to stop copying.
(Note I'm not claiming it is the right thing to do, but it's certainly not worthless to them)
That quote about someone peddling your 'A' paper around town to get an 'A' is misleading. A better analogy would be that you wrote an 'A' paper, and now it is being circulated among a community which likes to read good papers. They aren't passing it off as their own (as she implied), they are appreciating the work for what it is.
I'm highly suspicious of this "integration" process. This uncessary addition of vim into KDE will deprive consumers of real choice, potentially leading to a stranglehold in the up-and-coming field of text editors. Will retailers have the option of replacing Kvim with a component of their own choosing? What will happen to the Kemacs, Kpico, and the just-started Ked projects? I've read before that KDE has not been developed with modularity in mind, making Kvim's removal impractical at best, so we may be witnessing a thinly-veiled attempt by KDE to subsume the entire editor market. Before we jump on the bandwagon here expousing the virtues of this marriage, we should take a lesson from history and recognize the many subtle consequences of this action.
A couple things, actually (neither of which give you stereo-based control over the music, but them's the breaks). The first is a web-based mp3 jukebox interface, so I can use a wireless laptop or whatever to pick individual songs or playlists. The second is to use an x10 remote to send signals to the computer, which it can react to in a variety of ways. In my case, I have it set up so I can start and stop the jukebox, or veto the currently playing song.
Most of the time, I don't really care exactly what it's playing (it's all music I picked out anyway), so I'll just choose a playlist and let it go.
I've found that a cheap FM transmitter coupled with a regular PC makes a great music delivery device. Ramsey Electronics, among other companies, make a variety of FM transmitters that can take the sound output from your computer, and locally broadcast it to any radio or stereo you have. You don't need any other special equiment, get your favorite mp3 playing app on whatever OS you prefer and you're ready to go. The quality isn't anything to write home about, but for the price and the ability to use all your existing equipment, I think it makes a great choice. Just think, you can "stream" to your clock-radio in your bedroom!
Anyone know how to do anything useful with the "multimedia" keys on the newer keyboards? Those are the little nubbin ones that typically (under Windows) control the cd player, volume, sleep/suspend, etc. They don't seem to be recognized under Linux, and I haven't seen any docs on how to get them to be recognized.
Bryan
I disagree. There are some functions (like "play"), which clearly do not require any more ease-of-use improvements. There are others, however (like programming your VCR), that could stand a little improvement, and I would wager there are scads of features that designers never added to their products because a tangible UI would be prohibitively complex and/or expensive. To me, this technology would seem to work best as an augmentation, rather than a replacement, of traditional physical interfaces. In such a product you get the best of both worlds - a simple phyical interface for day-to-day operation and a dynamic, ethereal one for more complex/less frequently used functions.