> Seriously, how hard is it to look at the date and notice the year is different?
I believe people have not looked at the date because it's still of actuality. Heh! 2 big puns to MS anyways:
- I ran a few CSS 2 tests on W3C site... the 10 I took all came back as negatives in IE7. First bash and pun for IE7. Kudos guys for perfect standardization! I know I might've been unlucky, though. I took them randomly. But it's still better than it was before, especially in CSS1.
- It's funny how IE7 have been in the works for 1 friggin year. It's been so long people can take a year old article and it's still "news" and no one ever complains... uh and it's still beta... and it's still not CSS compliant... Smells almost like a Google GMail Ever-Beta, or a (used to be) Mirabilis ICQ Ever-Beta. It's not like history repeating because the history is not even made yet. Once it will get out, we'll see for the next IE how it goes.
And the funny thing is, if they are to roll out that IE7 with the Vista of theirs, they need to put their act together, so I am quite sure CSS will remain broken for the forseable future, hence the core of P.T. article is still valid IMHO.
What can I say other than a big "LOL" and a very sarcastic thumbs up to Microsoft.
If you want to that the basic principles, simply go with the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Yeah I know, sometimes Apple do weird things too... But the first part of the book (the first 3 chapters) contains the basic information you need to create a good interface, totally platform-agnostic. It's been my guideline for years, since the System-Finder times. *sigh* back then the interfaces were easy and there was no brushed aluminum to foil the day.
That version contains updated and modern Part I for the super buzzword "U-Ex". But they decided they did not have sources anymore... so I suggest you go for the "Original" Classical environment Human Interface Guidelines book for the first two appendices:
The resources are relatively adequate, but the bibliography extends to much more than the basics, it covers all the "why's" and "how's". It predates Mac OS, though, so the books were mostly rewritten, but the basics are still prevalent on many topics.
Phones do have many flavo(u)rs. My phone was $25 with my carrier. If I want to plug on my computer, I need a $60 cable and even then, it's about as compatible as any proprietary system goes.
The exact same phone is made but Bluetooth enabled (tm). That exact same phone is $300 with my carrier.
So I guess they don't exactly mind us having phones that can connect to our computer... They just want their part of the pie and some lost revenues royalties on all these MID, screen backgrounds and whatnot I would never get from them.
Now it's either you're more crooks and evil and violent people than all other countries... which I really find hard to believe...
Or maybe the "land of freedom" (tm) just went to the opposite extreme? Alas, I find that very easy to believe. A raise in wiretapping just confirms that, I'd say. I really wonder what's the percentage of people wiretapped for their political views.
And there is STILL a very stupid 2Gb limitation on Windoze XP that pisses off anyone who ever had to do video or sound editing: the fscking recycle bin recycles up to 2gb max.
I have a 200gb drive. I have a 4gb file. I cannot make any mistakes while trashing that file, or else I need to undelete.
That's the world upside down. I would say you'd need to be more careful of bigger files than smaller, don't you think?
My non-Mac computer is currently running Windoze XP. I went to 1G of RAM when I know that usually I use 500M. Sometimes, I go to 700-800. And I disabled the virtual memory.
Second computer I did that. So far, I find that a worthwhile investment.
Beware, though. On WinXP, you do a malloc of 64 megs, it will TAKE 64 megs of RAM if you disable the virtual memory. If you do a malloc of 64 megs and never access it with virtual memory on, it will take minimal space. Some software assume that. So make sure you run the task manager after a good day of work to see the dedicated (peak) if it fits on your RAM, add up a good 25% to that and you'll know if you are ok.
It is still the non mixed tracks. I call that source, much more than the mixed source, especially if you read the main story and what I replied to.
Of course, I can describe the sound if you want to go deeper in your "source" analogy. Or I could tell you all the frequencies and harmonics that were there in a 360 degrees radius from the instrument / voice. And for digital instruments, the instrument name, manufacturer and serial number along with exactly the pressure points that were applied sampled to the latest 60th second for every button of the instrument, along with its preliminary setting up to the brand of RCA cable that was used (or the balanced cable) and length. And to go deeper we could do a Ghost in the Shell stunt and take the Ghost of Reznor and all the contributors to the track and give them to everyone to play around. Or maybe the actual quarks moving around in the studio and outside elements that would create that. Basically, I don't know what rhetorical argument you gave but it makes no sense, especially since you just have to read the context of the main story to know what I meant by source.
From your comments, you seem to think that mixdown of a track is less of an art than the actual production of the instrument is. These are all arts. Like sound reinforcment, architecture of the room and lighting engineering does wonders to make your show more enjoyable, no matter if it's punk rock or classical music. Recoding engineers are also artists in their own domain, making progress and wanting better quality and to put the original artist's vision on the final audio medium.
Next time you listen to your "Music" that has no boundaries but imagination and is made solely by the artists, just remember that what you hear on your prisitine CD is not reality but the reality that all those non-existent people want to give us. And without that non-existent art of sound engineering during the past hundred of years, we would still be listening to Edison's screamed-in-the-cone recordings, and not something as worked that seems as natural as we have now. Certainly the downward spiral would have had much less impact that it did, considering how worked and meticulately crafted the sound of that puppy was.
A lot of people are using Macs for pro music, like for pro video.
I will not enter the Holy debate though (even if I'm a Mac owner myself).
But I wanted to share that maybe NIN can do it because it's mostly his private propriety. Most "popular" artists are under heavy contracts and under license for their life and newborn with compulsory drops of bloods and limbs, much worse than NY Times registration. And of course, these big wigs are not exactly what we might call our friends *cough*RIAA*cough*.
The day I will see Mr. RIAA give us the _SOURCE_ of a track for free to download, I will raise my glass of wine to them, even if I'm north of the border.
Backgrounder on me: I'm currently writing things for Mac and PC, in 2003 and XCode, professionally.
I have to add to your very nice and concise description:
- Don't try to learn Objective-C by yourself, it's weird syntaxically and many many pitfalls can be avoided by carefully perusing and actually doing the examples for the first few chapters of Ora's Learning Cocoa with Objective-C (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/). It's that weird. But it's totally worth it.
- XCode and VC both have the good things and bad things. I'd say that VC is slightly better because they got more years under the belt that XCode. They also got Visual Assist X, which is God-sent (http://www.wholetomato.com/). And only for the build styles, that are so well hidden in XCode, that ought to piss you off (on VC, you just select the configuration and here you go).
- As usual, you will pester while doing the transition. It's normal. You are accustomed to something and that "something" is not what you will have, hence you won't have your favorite little shortcut, or your thing you always do, software will react oddly too. Again, not because it's much worst, it's simply different.
All in all, it's a very interesting endeavor. Good luck!
I'm from Canada. Something else. Not USA. Not the same rulings. Same piece of crap legislators and some Jack Shafting done under the blanket between two countries. Anyways.
On my side, I got two very legal things I think are much worst.
1) I legally bought in a store a DVD boxed set of everything that Studio Ghibli did. E-ve-ry-thing. Every movies. How much did it cost me? The equivalent of $100USD, (horrendously high Quebec) taxes included. These are blatantly copied from original DVDs with English translations, as well as from subtitlers groups from the time where Disney didn't had the rights to their stuff. This DVD is oh-so-smelling of copyrights infringements it's not funny. It's made in China. What is worst? _BUYING_ these and having some weird sense of legitimacy? Or downloading the stuff to a crappy DVD-R that will last 10 years max?
2) I legally bought 3 CDs made by a company called SonMai... or SM. SM CDs are an exact replica of CDs you could buy in Japan at 4500Y. Add import fees, you get about USD$45 for a CD. Except these cost 3 for USD$35. They are precisely the same, same booklet, same artwork, same music, same everything. They even throw in some extra stuff sometimes. This company is very clearly NOT paying the original authors and rightholders. But this CD would be considered game for me to possess while my cheap MP3 I downloaded with glitches in sound, encoded in Blade, that lacks the 3rd song's last seconds, I can go to prison?
I got a friend who works at copyright offices. Even he is dumbfounded to give me an explanation. For one there are big companies that are doing multi-million dollars with cheap copies... and this is game... while there are sharers that are NOT doing multi-million dollars, that are doing it for fun... and probably will never listen to the song or DVD... and these can get big penalties?
Give me a break here. This is as silly as Microsoft now wanting to control piracy after they got their market share by allowing everyone to have a pirate copy of all their OSes and softwares until Windows 95.
Nice one. Just want to point out that newbies don't understand 3 buttons. They don't understand 2 buttons. They understand "Click".
You should've seen my grand-father trying to double-click something, only to have different results every time. Until I understood he took ALL his fingers to click on ALL the buttons.
We know we have to use one finger to left-click. Normal people don't.
We can pay a big 15$ for a new mouse with 2 gazillion buttons and wheels and whatnot. Usual people don't.
And I'm not even talking about the side buttons here.
Only one entry per person and you must be a US or Canadian (except for Quebec) resident over the age of 18 to play.
I'm from Quebec... and as usual, contents makers will not take the trouble of being compatible with Loto-Québec's rules. They are easy to follow, strangely... not a lot of stuff to fill in. It mainly is there to make sure we don't get screwed up
... and it also means everyone in the other countries will not be able to participate. Yeehaa
I think I will sue Microsoft and whatnot companies in a giant suit for them NOT to be supported in the leading edge's Portable music player (iPods). I want to buy songs from wal-mart but it comes only in WMA and can't be played on iPods nor even thrown on a CD. heck, I haven't tried playing music on the WMP for Mac but I have doubts this will work.
I think I will sue the Canadian Gov't for their services not to work on Safari, only one IE of particular version without the Sun JRE plugged-in or else you can't use their secure services. I have doubts this will work.
Basically, there are techniques you must discover to help you because these things aren't shown in school (I've told many people in schoolboards that a nice course would be "stress management"). You also need to learn to listen to yourself.
I agree however that after 2.5 days, you see ghosts. It's not really funny. You have to really think about what you're doing, check it twice and even thrice. And a coworker better not do a bad joke to you or else you are laughing yourself to your grave.
I did it a few times... but not for long. It depends on the level of involvement you have on the project and how interested you are to that project.
Without counting programming blitz at home, so far, my worst cases were:
- 60 hours for 3 weeks, followed by a 4-day blitz of 12+ hours per day. - 2 weeks to do a 3 months project (2 weeks at 12+ hours per day, last days "till you drop, wake up and start again") - 2.5 days non-stop.
The first example meant a buggy software. We had to code for months under pressure (at 40hr/wk) and had to implement new features and correct bugs for 3 weeks with overtime blitz and finally we had to finalize things under horrible pressure for a few days while the client was actually waiting on the line. The project was ambitious, the idea was good but it was too late for too little.
The second example, I was required to create a software from scratch, with a semi-specific design. After thinking about it a few hours, I immersed myself in code, taking time to auto-demote myself to a coder level and put a "do not disturb under death penalty" sign around my neck. People knew it was hard, I knew it was hard. I was under my own things and after hectic days of coding, I released a somehow bug-free software. Very minor tweaks and nudges had to be done for the final version, mostly due to interfacing with other people's work.
The third example, something slipped management's mind and I had to rush a new feature. The feature was made. I was happy.
In all these examples, only the first one was a disaster, mainly because we were pressed to do something for a very long time, giving our 120% for weeks, followed by giving yet again our 150% for a few weeks, followed by giving a 200% for days. One has only so many percentages in reserve.:)
The lesson here is how much sustained work I was able to give, at comparable quality. A programmer is somehow like an artist: if he is given time to contemplate his canvas first and at various times during the project, he is able to create something much better than someone who just go heads on and resurface when it's done.
Let's imagine for two seconds that you bought the latest and greatest car in the world. It did cost you $20,000. What happens in the US (and Canada)? You get some very bad fees and taxes to pay. You need to pay some very bad ass insurance fees. You save on gas and you save on repairs.
Let's imagine you kept your old oil-burning car from the 70's. You got nothing to pay on it, it's crap anyways. You got half insurance to pay, and even that, it's really cheap. You got about no taxes to pay. You repair with jobber's pieces and you drink 3x as much gas.
Which one is to your advantage? The old car of course.
Now let's go to Japan. Strangely enough, you get everything upside down there. The beautiful car you are buying is _expected_ to be changed after 5 years. Why? Because at that point, there kicks in all the very bad fees. In fact, the more your car pollutes, the more expensive it is. And the more your car is old, the more expensive it is. Then, the car's materials are recycled and the loop starts again.
So instead of having taxes on _new_ cars, why not do an incentive to change the _old_ cars? Then we'd reduce whatever pollution there is in here. It's the world upside down, I know. But it's so much more environmentally sound it's almost an abomination to let it go.
--
And as far as being an "abomination" to keep 5 billion dollars because of pollution, I strongly urge you to reconsider. By your ideas, we should just cut all the forest raw in the entire planet to make lumber and paper. THAT would make some money! Your argument is as shallow as the goal of NOT entering Kyoto.
Money is a creation of Humans, it is as virtual as possible on this planet. My dollar can buy two dozen tomatos and a big bag of rice in many countries. In here, it is merely possible for me to buy half a dozen tomatoes, even if we got more productivity and tools to produce than ever. Weird huh?
Environment is NOT the creation of Humans. It is our RESPONSIBILITY to keep it. It is not a ratio in some lame equation, it's a requirement if we want to survive as a specie. Hence the Kyoto treaty. They targeted the worst polluters of the planet and the one with the proper means to change something... which means us... and they said "well, you got the means, you got the responsibility, you should be the ones doing something".
I can send back my Mac to Apple, they will recycle most of what's left of it. The whole process is explained in their recycle page.
My computer is a Powerbook G3 400, I am still very happy about this computer, however, 7 years after I bought it, it begins to lack the vigor of before, and I am left struggling to play XVIDs for example. And actions that takes 10 minutes on my job's PC takes hours in here (thanks, no Altivec). And some parts are starting to crumble too (no more sound card, sometimes USB hangs,...)
So I decided to buy a new one for xmas. I plan on keeping the G3 for as long as it will support me, even upgrading its CPU to a G4 550. That way, I will be able to make this computer a perfect little multimedia station, all bundled in with TV out and many cool features like being able to go to the Internet and play MP3s. And when it will irrecoverably be dead, I will send it to be recycled by my nice folks at Apple.
So in other words, I do agree with you, torpor. I think reuse first, and recycle second. Now if white box manufacturers could do the same. *sigh*
This is the kind of crappy document that makes me think there is a future for our planet. No really.
This is always good to have someone say it is better for our own good to have as many jobs as we can in our own country (I'm from.ca)... but it is ludicrous to think that companies will do things for a Greater Good. What will they do? They will want to make as much money as possible and who can blame them?
So we have outsourcing of our running shoes in these paradise islands where the only escape is 6 months of hard unpaid labor. Who think that this will NOT be the case for everything else, including computers?
In Quebec, we have doctors and graduates quitting the place for bigger bucks elsewhere in the country. Everyone says it's best not to but who to blame them when you can get 400K US per year elsewhere and 100K CDN in here.
I Google gets slashdotted, I fear the world is going to end!
I really sincerely think this could be the other way around ^^ If Google decided to put a "Let's slashdot slashdot" link on their main page, I'm sure Slashdot servers would cry, fall on their knees and they would get out the little white flag.
Wasn't DeCSS all about choice to use DVD on Linux and they got badly beaten anyways?... probably just my overactive imagination again >_
I don't really care about the choice anyways, they can always do what they want, I will never use anything from Real... but if they get away with it, it will be yet another proof that there are two levels of laws.
Slashdot Mirror
> Seriously, how hard is it to look at the date and notice the year is different?
I believe people have not looked at the date because it's still of actuality. Heh! 2 big puns to MS anyways:
- I ran a few CSS 2 tests on W3C site... the 10 I took all came back as negatives in IE7. First bash and pun for IE7. Kudos guys for perfect standardization! I know I might've been unlucky, though. I took them randomly. But it's still better than it was before, especially in CSS1.
- It's funny how IE7 have been in the works for 1 friggin year. It's been so long people can take a year old article and it's still "news" and no one ever complains... uh and it's still beta... and it's still not CSS compliant... Smells almost like a Google GMail Ever-Beta, or a (used to be) Mirabilis ICQ Ever-Beta. It's not like history repeating because the history is not even made yet. Once it will get out, we'll see for the next IE how it goes.
And the funny thing is, if they are to roll out that IE7 with the Vista of theirs, they need to put their act together, so I am quite sure CSS will remain broken for the forseable future, hence the core of P.T. article is still valid IMHO.
What can I say other than a big "LOL" and a very sarcastic thumbs up to Microsoft.
Unless they are mistaken, this is a 2K5 article. And it talks about the beta 1 release, I got beta 3.
Now on the topic of better CSS, I think IE7b3 is better than what is advertised in that article. It's still far from perfect though.
If you want to that the basic principles, simply go with the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Yeah I know, sometimes Apple do weird things too... But the first part of the book (the first 3 chapters) contains the basic information you need to create a good interface, totally platform-agnostic. It's been my guideline for years, since the System-Finder times. *sigh* back then the interfaces were easy and there was no brushed aluminum to foil the day.
r ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html
... so I suggest you go for the "Original" Classical environment Human Interface Guidelines book for the first two appendices:
i nes/HIGuidelines-2.html (on total bottom of page)
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExpe
That version contains updated and modern Part I for the super buzzword "U-Ex". But they decided they did not have sources anymore
http://gemma.apple.com/documentation/mac/HIGuidel
The resources are relatively adequate, but the bibliography extends to much more than the basics, it covers all the "why's" and "how's". It predates Mac OS, though, so the books were mostly rewritten, but the basics are still prevalent on many topics.
Actually...
Phones do have many flavo(u)rs. My phone was $25 with my carrier. If I want to plug on my computer, I need a $60 cable and even then, it's about as compatible as any proprietary system goes.
The exact same phone is made but Bluetooth enabled (tm). That exact same phone is $300 with my carrier.
So I guess they don't exactly mind us having phones that can connect to our computer... They just want their part of the pie and some lost revenues royalties on all these MID, screen backgrounds and whatnot I would never get from them.
Mike
I think it clearly redirects the page to its own server.
No text is shown, no nothing, only merely a blank page.
No matter what, ppl should check the page first before saying it's been properly mirrored.
None of the two mirrors work on plain vanilla firefox.
Recently it was asserted that 1 american out of 138 is behind bars1 10417&Sn=WORL&IssueID=28037
... which I really find hard to believe ...
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=
, making USA the place where that ratio is the highest in the world.
Now it's either you're more crooks and evil and violent people than all other countries
Or maybe the "land of freedom" (tm) just went to the opposite extreme? Alas, I find that very easy to believe. A raise in wiretapping just confirms that, I'd say. I really wonder what's the percentage of people wiretapped for their political views.
Even there...
I use NTFS...
And there is STILL a very stupid 2Gb limitation on Windoze XP that pisses off anyone who ever had to do video or sound editing: the fscking recycle bin recycles up to 2gb max.
I have a 200gb drive. I have a 4gb file. I cannot make any mistakes while trashing that file, or else I need to undelete.
That's the world upside down. I would say you'd need to be more careful of bigger files than smaller, don't you think?
Mike
My non-Mac computer is currently running Windoze XP. I went to 1G of RAM when I know that usually I use 500M. Sometimes, I go to 700-800. And I disabled the virtual memory.
Second computer I did that. So far, I find that a worthwhile investment.
Beware, though. On WinXP, you do a malloc of 64 megs, it will TAKE 64 megs of RAM if you disable the virtual memory. If you do a malloc of 64 megs and never access it with virtual memory on, it will take minimal space. Some software assume that. So make sure you run the task manager after a good day of work to see the dedicated (peak) if it fits on your RAM, add up a good 25% to that and you'll know if you are ok.
Mike
It is still the non mixed tracks. I call that source, much more than the mixed source, especially if you read the main story and what I replied to.
Of course, I can describe the sound if you want to go deeper in your "source" analogy. Or I could tell you all the frequencies and harmonics that were there in a 360 degrees radius from the instrument / voice. And for digital instruments, the instrument name, manufacturer and serial number along with exactly the pressure points that were applied sampled to the latest 60th second for every button of the instrument, along with its preliminary setting up to the brand of RCA cable that was used (or the balanced cable) and length. And to go deeper we could do a Ghost in the Shell stunt and take the Ghost of Reznor and all the contributors to the track and give them to everyone to play around. Or maybe the actual quarks moving around in the studio and outside elements that would create that. Basically, I don't know what rhetorical argument you gave but it makes no sense, especially since you just have to read the context of the main story to know what I meant by source.
From your comments, you seem to think that mixdown of a track is less of an art than the actual production of the instrument is. These are all arts. Like sound reinforcment, architecture of the room and lighting engineering does wonders to make your show more enjoyable, no matter if it's punk rock or classical music. Recoding engineers are also artists in their own domain, making progress and wanting better quality and to put the original artist's vision on the final audio medium.
Next time you listen to your "Music" that has no boundaries but imagination and is made solely by the artists, just remember that what you hear on your prisitine CD is not reality but the reality that all those non-existent people want to give us. And without that non-existent art of sound engineering during the past hundred of years, we would still be listening to Edison's screamed-in-the-cone recordings, and not something as worked that seems as natural as we have now. Certainly the downward spiral would have had much less impact that it did, considering how worked and meticulately crafted the sound of that puppy was.
You'll have problems if you got something else that Mac OS X to get the file.
.sit (that's no problem since Stuffit Expander is available for PC)
... so you really need mac os x to open this one up.
... but it would not let it convert. So tough luck I'd say.
First it's compressed in
But then, the file is actually a disk image (.dmg)
Finally, you will have all the files in audio format inside the dmg.
I tried dmg2iso on pc as a challenge (I have a Mac too)
Sowwy!
Mike
A lot of people are using Macs for pro music, like for pro video.
I will not enter the Holy debate though (even if I'm a Mac owner myself).
But I wanted to share that maybe NIN can do it because it's mostly his private propriety. Most "popular" artists are under heavy contracts and under license for their life and newborn with compulsory drops of bloods and limbs, much worse than NY Times registration. And of course, these big wigs are not exactly what we might call our friends *cough*RIAA*cough*.
The day I will see Mr. RIAA give us the _SOURCE_ of a track for free to download, I will raise my glass of wine to them, even if I'm north of the border.
Mike
Backgrounder on me: I'm currently writing things for Mac and PC, in 2003 and XCode, professionally.
I have to add to your very nice and concise description:
- Don't try to learn Objective-C by yourself, it's weird syntaxically and many many pitfalls can be avoided by carefully perusing and actually doing the examples for the first few chapters of Ora's Learning Cocoa with Objective-C (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/). It's that weird. But it's totally worth it.
- XCode and VC both have the good things and bad things. I'd say that VC is slightly better because they got more years under the belt that XCode. They also got Visual Assist X, which is God-sent (http://www.wholetomato.com/). And only for the build styles, that are so well hidden in XCode, that ought to piss you off (on VC, you just select the configuration and here you go).
- As usual, you will pester while doing the transition. It's normal. You are accustomed to something and that "something" is not what you will have, hence you won't have your favorite little shortcut, or your thing you always do, software will react oddly too. Again, not because it's much worst, it's simply different.
All in all, it's a very interesting endeavor. Good luck!
Mike
Interesting to know it uses php and mysql:
/home/ourmedia/htdocs/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 31
Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Link to server lost, unable to reconnect in
Thanks, slashdot, to expose server innards by stressing it out beyond creator's expectations.
I'm from Canada. Something else. Not USA. Not the same rulings. Same piece of crap legislators and some Jack Shafting done under the blanket between two countries. Anyways.
... or SM. SM CDs are an exact replica of CDs you could buy in Japan at 4500Y. Add import fees, you get about USD$45 for a CD. Except these cost 3 for USD$35. They are precisely the same, same booklet, same artwork, same music, same everything. They even throw in some extra stuff sometimes. This company is very clearly NOT paying the original authors and rightholders. But this CD would be considered game for me to possess while my cheap MP3 I downloaded with glitches in sound, encoded in Blade, that lacks the 3rd song's last seconds, I can go to prison?
... and this is game ... while there are sharers that are NOT doing multi-million dollars, that are doing it for fun... and probably will never listen to the song or DVD ... and these can get big penalties?
On my side, I got two very legal things I think are much worst.
1) I legally bought in a store a DVD boxed set of everything that Studio Ghibli did. E-ve-ry-thing. Every movies. How much did it cost me? The equivalent of $100USD, (horrendously high Quebec) taxes included. These are blatantly copied from original DVDs with English translations, as well as from subtitlers groups from the time where Disney didn't had the rights to their stuff. This DVD is oh-so-smelling of copyrights infringements it's not funny. It's made in China. What is worst? _BUYING_ these and having some weird sense of legitimacy? Or downloading the stuff to a crappy DVD-R that will last 10 years max?
2) I legally bought 3 CDs made by a company called SonMai
I got a friend who works at copyright offices. Even he is dumbfounded to give me an explanation. For one there are big companies that are doing multi-million dollars with cheap copies
Give me a break here. This is as silly as Microsoft now wanting to control piracy after they got their market share by allowing everyone to have a pirate copy of all their OSes and softwares until Windows 95.
Mike
I got a PowerBook G3 (Pismo) ... Got it almost when it went on the market... so it's very old.
Never upgraded the CPU, still have 512MB of ram, upgraded the internal HD for a 18GB. Other than that it's all legit.
And I am still running latest rev of Mac OS X, with adequate performances for everyday usage.
LOL!
Nice one. Just want to point out that newbies don't understand 3 buttons. They don't understand 2 buttons. They understand "Click".
You should've seen my grand-father trying to double-click something, only to have different results every time. Until I understood he took ALL his fingers to click on ALL the buttons.
We know we have to use one finger to left-click. Normal people don't.
We can pay a big 15$ for a new mouse with 2 gazillion buttons and wheels and whatnot. Usual people don't.
And I'm not even talking about the side buttons here.
Mike
I'm from Quebec ... and as usual, contents makers will not take the trouble of being compatible with Loto-Québec's rules. They are easy to follow, strangely... not a lot of stuff to fill in. It mainly is there to make sure we don't get screwed up
... and it also means everyone in the other countries will not be able to participate. Yeehaa
That gives me an idea.
I think I will sue Microsoft and whatnot companies in a giant suit for them NOT to be supported in the leading edge's Portable music player (iPods). I want to buy songs from wal-mart but it comes only in WMA and can't be played on iPods nor even thrown on a CD. heck, I haven't tried playing music on the WMP for Mac but I have doubts this will work.
I think I will sue the Canadian Gov't for their services not to work on Safari, only one IE of particular version without the Sun JRE plugged-in or else you can't use their secure services. I have doubts this will work.
Mike
When you got no choice, you got no choice. ^^
Basically, there are techniques you must discover to help you because these things aren't shown in school (I've told many people in schoolboards that a nice course would be "stress management"). You also need to learn to listen to yourself.
I agree however that after 2.5 days, you see ghosts. It's not really funny. You have to really think about what you're doing, check it twice and even thrice. And a coworker better not do a bad joke to you or else you are laughing yourself to your grave.
I did it a few times... but not for long. It depends on the level of involvement you have on the project and how interested you are to that project.
:)
Without counting programming blitz at home, so far, my worst cases were:
- 60 hours for 3 weeks, followed by a 4-day blitz of 12+ hours per day.
- 2 weeks to do a 3 months project (2 weeks at 12+ hours per day, last days "till you drop, wake up and start again")
- 2.5 days non-stop.
The first example meant a buggy software. We had to code for months under pressure (at 40hr/wk) and had to implement new features and correct bugs for 3 weeks with overtime blitz and finally we had to finalize things under horrible pressure for a few days while the client was actually waiting on the line. The project was ambitious, the idea was good but it was too late for too little.
The second example, I was required to create a software from scratch, with a semi-specific design. After thinking about it a few hours, I immersed myself in code, taking time to auto-demote myself to a coder level and put a "do not disturb under death penalty" sign around my neck. People knew it was hard, I knew it was hard. I was under my own things and after hectic days of coding, I released a somehow bug-free software. Very minor tweaks and nudges had to be done for the final version, mostly due to interfacing with other people's work.
The third example, something slipped management's mind and I had to rush a new feature. The feature was made. I was happy.
In all these examples, only the first one was a disaster, mainly because we were pressed to do something for a very long time, giving our 120% for weeks, followed by giving yet again our 150% for a few weeks, followed by giving a 200% for days. One has only so many percentages in reserve.
The lesson here is how much sustained work I was able to give, at comparable quality. A programmer is somehow like an artist: if he is given time to contemplate his canvas first and at various times during the project, he is able to create something much better than someone who just go heads on and resurface when it's done.
Let's talk about cars for the heck of it.
... which means us ... and they said "well, you got the means, you got the responsibility, you should be the ones doing something".
Let's imagine for two seconds that you bought the latest and greatest car in the world. It did cost you $20,000. What happens in the US (and Canada)? You get some very bad fees and taxes to pay. You need to pay some very bad ass insurance fees. You save on gas and you save on repairs.
Let's imagine you kept your old oil-burning car from the 70's. You got nothing to pay on it, it's crap anyways. You got half insurance to pay, and even that, it's really cheap. You got about no taxes to pay. You repair with jobber's pieces and you drink 3x as much gas.
Which one is to your advantage? The old car of course.
Now let's go to Japan. Strangely enough, you get everything upside down there. The beautiful car you are buying is _expected_ to be changed after 5 years. Why? Because at that point, there kicks in all the very bad fees. In fact, the more your car pollutes, the more expensive it is. And the more your car is old, the more expensive it is. Then, the car's materials are recycled and the loop starts again.
So instead of having taxes on _new_ cars, why not do an incentive to change the _old_ cars? Then we'd reduce whatever pollution there is in here. It's the world upside down, I know. But it's so much more environmentally sound it's almost an abomination to let it go.
--
And as far as being an "abomination" to keep 5 billion dollars because of pollution, I strongly urge you to reconsider. By your ideas, we should just cut all the forest raw in the entire planet to make lumber and paper. THAT would make some money! Your argument is as shallow as the goal of NOT entering Kyoto.
Money is a creation of Humans, it is as virtual as possible on this planet. My dollar can buy two dozen tomatos and a big bag of rice in many countries. In here, it is merely possible for me to buy half a dozen tomatoes, even if we got more productivity and tools to produce than ever. Weird huh?
Environment is NOT the creation of Humans. It is our RESPONSIBILITY to keep it. It is not a ratio in some lame equation, it's a requirement if we want to survive as a specie. Hence the Kyoto treaty. They targeted the worst polluters of the planet and the one with the proper means to change something
I can send back my Mac to Apple, they will recycle most of what's left of it. The whole process is explained in their recycle page.
...)
My computer is a Powerbook G3 400, I am still very happy about this computer, however, 7 years after I bought it, it begins to lack the vigor of before, and I am left struggling to play XVIDs for example. And actions that takes 10 minutes on my job's PC takes hours in here (thanks, no Altivec). And some parts are starting to crumble too (no more sound card, sometimes USB hangs,
So I decided to buy a new one for xmas. I plan on keeping the G3 for as long as it will support me, even upgrading its CPU to a G4 550. That way, I will be able to make this computer a perfect little multimedia station, all bundled in with TV out and many cool features like being able to go to the Internet and play MP3s. And when it will irrecoverably be dead, I will send it to be recycled by my nice folks at Apple.
So in other words, I do agree with you, torpor. I think reuse first, and recycle second. Now if white box manufacturers could do the same. *sigh*
Mike
This is the kind of crappy document that makes me think there is a future for our planet. No really.
.ca) ... but it is ludicrous to think that companies will do things for a Greater Good. What will they do? They will want to make as much money as possible and who can blame them?
... saaaame thing ...
This is always good to have someone say it is better for our own good to have as many jobs as we can in our own country (I'm from
So we have outsourcing of our running shoes in these paradise islands where the only escape is 6 months of hard unpaid labor. Who think that this will NOT be the case for everything else, including computers?
In Quebec, we have doctors and graduates quitting the place for bigger bucks elsewhere in the country. Everyone says it's best not to but who to blame them when you can get 400K US per year elsewhere and 100K CDN in here.
Same thing
I love thinkers.
I Google gets slashdotted, I fear the world is going to end!
I really sincerely think this could be the other way around ^^ If Google decided to put a "Let's slashdot slashdot" link on their main page, I'm sure Slashdot servers would cry, fall on their knees and they would get out the little white flag.
Wasn't DeCSS all about choice to use DVD on Linux and they got badly beaten anyways? ... probably just my overactive imagination again >_
I don't really care about the choice anyways, they can always do what they want, I will never use anything from Real... but if they get away with it, it will be yet another proof that there are two levels of laws.