If you want some good old school scifi, try Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Forge of God is great too. His later stuff, even stranger.
But it sounds like you might enjoy something untechy. Try Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie. Really interesting. Look through the Booker shortlists if you're stuck.
Or the best idea? Ask a professional at your local library.
If you pay for your digital TV (Sky, cable) then sure you do. But if you have a Freeview (free digital terrestrial) digibox receiver, you don't need a smartcard to receive digital TV, which transmits about 26 TV channels and 12 radio stations. You'd actually watch about 10 of the TV channels regularly, and all the major ones transmit anamorphic widescreen most of the time. (There used to be a pay-subscription digital terrestrial broadcaster, OnDigital/ITV Digital, but they went bust, and the BBC more or less took it over. More info here.
So in the UK, the genie is out of the bottle. A TV marked "DVB" just works, and will continue to work. Why does Hollywood bother messing about with copy restriction, screwing the adoption of digital TV in the US, when it's already free and unrestricted in the UK (and Australia)?
Non-UK Mac users might not have realised this, but the Apple we know doesn't own www.apple.co.uk. Don't ask me how the agency that does has got away with it, but it's been this way for some time.
Does Inkwell include support for editing gestures (such as "scrub" to delete a region) and ink text?
Yes, it does. This page has some more info on what it does, and because I couldn't find an example there, I screen-grabbed a gesture list and put it here.
Hey! Ralph Whitbeck! Stop sticking your Amazon referral URL in otherwise content-free Amazon-promoting comments! You've done this (and been flamed for it) in plenty of other similarly uninteresting posts.
I'm glad somebody with deep pockets is reinventing the Newton Notepad concept because it was a really great way to take notes and Apple seems to have abandoned the technology.
No, they just ditched the Newton. The handwriting recognition is alive and well in Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), rechristened "Inkwell". Works in any app, using a Wacom tablet. Apple would be well placed to do a tablet of their own if they want to - anyone for a Powerbook without a lid?
If you read the article, you would notice that the OS cheerfully lets you rip, image, and mount whole DVD's to your hard drive, so you can watch them on battery power without the added electrical drain of the disk player.
Not quite true. If you just copy the DVD by drag-and-drop, you'll probably have playback problems. (CSS and the disc name disagreeing?) Image the thing with Disk Copy and you should be fine.
Alternatively, use a program like DVD Backup to rip, DeCSS, de-region, and you're golden. Apple's DVD player will play it back just fine.
Apple actually enabled this feature (in the last six months or so) so that their DVD Player app could play back DVDs that had just been created with their DVD Studio Pro package: pre-imaging, pre-burn, just sitting there loose on the hard drive. Apple is trying to make things easier for content creators, their traditional market, and a handy side-effect for everyone else is a non-DRM solution on the table.
Just to add that the discount for residents is 90%. The big issue that will cause the most problems is around the edge of the zone (the North/South circular) where those within the zone will get 90% off, and those outside will get nothing except a drop in property value.
From a personal perspective, I live within the zone and ride a big scooter to work, so I'm exempt. Curious to see what's going to happen to the roads and the tube, and if they'll finally let scooters and motorbikes into bus/taxi lanes with the new flood of scooters out there.
Oh, if you want to know more about long distance scooter travel, check this out:
Yes, you're right. The fun part of this one is that it's the company's mistake in a PR release. They've just promised bandwidth of eight times what they can deliver. Sign up, then sue.
Glad someone's fallen foul of that bits/bytes marketingspeak that's been allowing bad companies to quote large impressive numbers for years.
Just a quick note to say that a comparison of a few online digital photo places has been done by a writer for TidBITS, the well-respected Mac-slanted newsletter. The relevant issues are #616 and #617.
On another topic, if you're thinking about jumping to digital photography, do it. Briefly:
1. Resolution of consumer film, even used with a (basic) SLR, is not as good as you might think. I've had film negatives scanned with a professional drum scanner, and they looked terrible, loaded with grain.
2. Instant feedback (and better photos as you learn more, faster).
3. Take as many photos as you want (until everyone smiles, until the framing is right, etc.).
4. Digital cameras are smaller and lighter than film cameras.
5. No developing or film costs.
6. iPhoto really does let you view/organise your photos far better than any album could.
Seriously though, getting a digital camera changes the way you take photos. My partner and I have taken over 2000 photos since Christmas, not counting the ones we've trashed already. Yes, we used to use Picture CDs from conventional photography, and they were pretty good, but our (low-end) 2 megapixel camera gives higher resolution images than the best Picture CD pics we got. (And not all of those were equal, but don't get me started on that.)
BTW, Photo CD - the really nice pro CD option with all the different resolution options from Kodak - has been discontinued. No new machines are available.
I, for instance, would love to have a clone of my heart available when my own one needs replacement in a couple of decades (not entirely unlikely given the number of heart deseases in my family). Of course I wouldn't want to kill a full grown living and breading clone of me to obtain that heart but that may very well be unnecessary.
There is at least one person in the world who does keep a living heart donor on hand at all times, the Sultan of Dubai I think. Wherever he travels, he has a second private jet, kitted out with an operating theatre, a medical team... and the volunteer living heart donor.
Should the Sultan have a heart attack, the volunteer will be killed, his heart transplanted. This is a sought-after job, with a fixed term of a couple of years. There is a waiting list hundreds long, and even if you don't die in the line of duty, you and your family are richly rewarded.
The new iMac does have a fan, just a really quiet one. Quieter than the hard drive. And I'm not even sure that it runs all the time, because the airflow is pretty well straight up and out. Mostly, though it's quiet because PPCs don't generate as much heat as Intel chips, and don't need so much Raw Cooling Power.
Slashdot Mirror
Um. "avoision" is only a word if you have a heavy Brooklyn accent and meant to speak of "aversion".
Or if you're Kent Brockman. Never underestimate the influence of The Simpsons.
If you want some good old school scifi, try Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Forge of God is great too. His later stuff, even stranger.
But it sounds like you might enjoy something untechy. Try Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie. Really interesting. Look through the Booker shortlists if you're stuck.
Or the best idea? Ask a professional at your local library.
If you pay for your digital TV (Sky, cable) then sure you do. But if you have a Freeview (free digital terrestrial) digibox receiver, you don't need a smartcard to receive digital TV, which transmits about 26 TV channels and 12 radio stations. You'd actually watch about 10 of the TV channels regularly, and all the major ones transmit anamorphic widescreen most of the time. (There used to be a pay-subscription digital terrestrial broadcaster, OnDigital/ITV Digital, but they went bust, and the BBC more or less took it over. More info here.
So in the UK, the genie is out of the bottle. A TV marked "DVB" just works, and will continue to work. Why does Hollywood bother messing about with copy restriction, screwing the adoption of digital TV in the US, when it's already free and unrestricted in the UK (and Australia)?
Non-UK Mac users might not have realised this, but the Apple we know doesn't own www.apple.co.uk. Don't ask me how the agency that does has got away with it, but it's been this way for some time.
Does Inkwell include support for editing gestures (such as "scrub" to delete a region) and ink text?
Yes, it does. This page has some more info on what it does, and because I couldn't find an example there, I screen-grabbed a gesture list and put it here.
Hey! Ralph Whitbeck! Stop sticking your Amazon referral URL in otherwise content-free Amazon-promoting comments! You've done this (and been flamed for it) in plenty of other similarly uninteresting posts.
And in your sig too. You'll go blind, you know.
I'm glad somebody with deep pockets is reinventing the Newton Notepad concept because it was a really great way to take notes and Apple seems to have abandoned the technology.
No, they just ditched the Newton. The handwriting recognition is alive and well in Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), rechristened "Inkwell". Works in any app, using a Wacom tablet. Apple would be well placed to do a tablet of their own if they want to - anyone for a Powerbook without a lid?
If you read the article, you would notice that the OS cheerfully lets you rip, image, and mount whole DVD's to your hard drive, so you can watch them on battery power without the added electrical drain of the disk player.
Not quite true. If you just copy the DVD by drag-and-drop, you'll probably have playback problems. (CSS and the disc name disagreeing?) Image the thing with Disk Copy and you should be fine.
Alternatively, use a program like DVD Backup to rip, DeCSS, de-region, and you're golden. Apple's DVD player will play it back just fine.
Apple actually enabled this feature (in the last six months or so) so that their DVD Player app could play back DVDs that had just been created with their DVD Studio Pro package: pre-imaging, pre-burn, just sitting there loose on the hard drive. Apple is trying to make things easier for content creators, their traditional market, and a handy side-effect for everyone else is a non-DRM solution on the table.
Just to add that the discount for residents is 90%. The big issue that will cause the most problems is around the edge of the zone (the North/South circular) where those within the zone will get 90% off, and those outside will get nothing except a drop in property value.
From a personal perspective, I live within the zone and ride a big scooter to work, so I'm exempt. Curious to see what's going to happen to the roads and the tube, and if they'll finally let scooters and motorbikes into bus/taxi lanes with the new flood of scooters out there.
Oh, if you want to know more about long distance scooter travel, check this out:
http://byscooter.com
Yes, you're right. The fun part of this one is that it's the company's mistake in a PR release. They've just promised bandwidth of eight times what they can deliver. Sign up, then sue.
Glad someone's fallen foul of that bits/bytes marketingspeak that's been allowing bad companies to quote large impressive numbers for years.
Just a quick note to say that a comparison of a few online digital photo places has been done by a writer for TidBITS, the well-respected Mac-slanted newsletter. The relevant issues are #616 and #617.
On another topic, if you're thinking about jumping to digital photography, do it. Briefly:
1. Resolution of consumer film, even used with a (basic) SLR, is not as good as you might think. I've had film negatives scanned with a professional drum scanner, and they looked terrible, loaded with grain.2. Instant feedback (and better photos as you learn more, faster).
3. Take as many photos as you want (until everyone smiles, until the framing is right, etc.).
4. Digital cameras are smaller and lighter than film cameras.
5. No developing or film costs.
6. iPhoto really does let you view/organise your photos far better than any album could.
Seriously though, getting a digital camera changes the way you take photos. My partner and I have taken over 2000 photos since Christmas, not counting the ones we've trashed already. Yes, we used to use Picture CDs from conventional photography, and they were pretty good, but our (low-end) 2 megapixel camera gives higher resolution images than the best Picture CD pics we got. (And not all of those were equal, but don't get me started on that.)
BTW, Photo CD - the really nice pro CD option with all the different resolution options from Kodak - has been discontinued. No new machines are available.
I, for instance, would love to have a clone of my heart available when my own one needs replacement in a couple of decades (not entirely unlikely given the number of heart deseases in my family). Of course I wouldn't want to kill a full grown living and breading clone of me to obtain that heart but that may very well be unnecessary.
There is at least one person in the world who does keep a living heart donor on hand at all times, the Sultan of Dubai I think. Wherever he travels, he has a second private jet, kitted out with an operating theatre, a medical team... and the volunteer living heart donor.
Should the Sultan have a heart attack, the volunteer will be killed, his heart transplanted. This is a sought-after job, with a fixed term of a couple of years. There is a waiting list hundreds long, and even if you don't die in the line of duty, you and your family are richly rewarded.
Unless it's just another urban legend...
The new iMac does have a fan, just a really quiet one. Quieter than the hard drive. And I'm not even sure that it runs all the time, because the airflow is pretty well straight up and out. Mostly, though it's quiet because PPCs don't generate as much heat as Intel chips, and don't need so much Raw Cooling Power.