Have you ever tried to use these with iTunes though? I've tried what I believe is the latest version of the plugin, to play Vorbis files in iTunes, and it's awful. There's a pause of a couple of seconds before playing—either when first playing a song, or even after pausing in the middle. AFAIK the metadata support is pretty poor too. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge this is the situation.
Don't ask for money to be spent on a standard so you can fire up one music player over another, when they can actually be using that money to be able to get more source information.
This is an entirely legitimate view, of course, but as far as the average OS X user is concerned, the existing "source information" is effectively useless. Maybe it would be more beneficial to the community to buy up the copyright on a bunch of works, but for this specific part of the population that isn't really useful until there's better support for Vorbis and for Theora.
(How much would it cost, anyway, to develop working Quicktime components for these two? Certainly a very small percentage of $100M.)
While there are plenty of things that could/should be wikified and added to Wikipedia's knowledge base, it would also be nice to help people use the things that are already present.
Specifically, I'm talking about the open formats upon which Wikimedia insists, and the lack of support for those formats on Mac OS X. Audio must be Vorbis and video Theora, but there isn't any convenient way to play these. Sure there are ports of mplayer and other such tools, but the average OS X user isn't willing to use tools with non-standard UIs and flaky behavior. IMHO there should be an effort to create plugins for Quicktime that allows seamless playback of Vorbis and Theora content with iTunes and/or Quicktime Player. This would include playback on the iPod.
I cringe every time I see a link to an audio or video file on a Wikimedia site, because I know that in order to view the content I'm going to need to fire up some program other than iTunes if I want to watch it. iTunes is well-designed and feels comfortable, and the third-party media players can't help but feel different—not to mention that it's impossible to play, say Vorbis music and iTS music with the same program.
The contribution of money towards a Quicktime component—or even to Apple, as that's where iPod changes would have to come from—might not be a frivolous use of a $100 million grant.
On November 29, 2005, Seigenthaler wrote an op-ed in USA Today discussing his biography on Wikipedia. The article had contained incorrect statements between May and September of that year, including allegations which he considered "character assassination." The statements, which had been inserted anonymously, had been removed by the time he wrote the article.
Exactly. Why would a user want to close something she's not looking at?
Suppose the user has a page of search results, and opens the top five sites in tabs in the background. The first tab has the information she needs, so she can close the others. (That's just a quick contrived example; I'm sure there are better ones.)
Does the Dock have a little X next to each icon where you can end a program? [...] You first have to restore the program so you can see its window, and then click on the X to quit it.
Actually, you can right- (or control-) click on a program's icon and select "Quit" to quit it. This doesn't bring an application to the front.
Of course not, that would lead to data-loss accidents.
Only a very poorly-designed app wouldn't prompt the user to save any unsaved information before quitting.
If you're one of those rabid anti-emacs and/or pro-vi(m) users, you might like info.vim. It's an implementation of GNU info for vim. I haven't used it myself, so I can't vouch for how it looks, but it may be worth a try if you really hate emacs.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you looked at Skim? I find it to be extremely fast and light; it's certainly great for my needs.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Unless you're using iTunes, which natively supports Apple Lossless, and which has no support for FLAC.
Have you ever tried to use these with iTunes though? I've tried what I believe is the latest version of the plugin, to play Vorbis files in iTunes, and it's awful. There's a pause of a couple of seconds before playing—either when first playing a song, or even after pausing in the middle. AFAIK the metadata support is pretty poor too. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge this is the situation.
(How much would it cost, anyway, to develop working Quicktime components for these two? Certainly a very small percentage of $100M.)
While there are plenty of things that could/should be wikified and added to Wikipedia's knowledge base, it would also be nice to help people use the things that are already present.
Specifically, I'm talking about the open formats upon which Wikimedia insists, and the lack of support for those formats on Mac OS X. Audio must be Vorbis and video Theora, but there isn't any convenient way to play these. Sure there are ports of mplayer and other such tools, but the average OS X user isn't willing to use tools with non-standard UIs and flaky behavior. IMHO there should be an effort to create plugins for Quicktime that allows seamless playback of Vorbis and Theora content with iTunes and/or Quicktime Player. This would include playback on the iPod.
I cringe every time I see a link to an audio or video file on a Wikimedia site, because I know that in order to view the content I'm going to need to fire up some program other than iTunes if I want to watch it. iTunes is well-designed and feels comfortable, and the third-party media players can't help but feel different—not to mention that it's impossible to play, say Vorbis music and iTS music with the same program.
The contribution of money towards a Quicktime component—or even to Apple, as that's where iPod changes would have to come from—might not be a frivolous use of a $100 million grant.
Don't you mean "lossy" codec? If the songs are compressed in a lossless codec, you can losslessly re-encode them at will.
...oh.
Never mind.
...but we spent so much time on your Wikipedia article!
(Seriously, look at that article... someone put waaay too much time into it.)
So this voting system will require your DNA to be on file with the Department of Homeland Security, right?
...but I thought the servers were RAIDed already?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
(Anything said in Latin sounds profound.)
:-)
...97% of the world's sysadmins will be gone for a couple of hours, starting at the exact same time. Sounds like time for "Black Hat Fun Fest 2003"...
But seriously -- anyone mind providing conversions to USD?
A man? What about the CowboyNeal opt... oh -- yeah, you're right.
If you're one of those rabid anti-emacs and/or pro-vi(m) users, you might like info.vim. It's an implementation of GNU info for vim. I haven't used it myself, so I can't vouch for how it looks, but it may be worth a try if you really hate emacs.
D00dz! *BSD sux0rz, it's dying so quick that...
Wait, you mean it really is? Oops, never mind.