I don't get it... screw them because they're oppressed?
You DON'T get it, the GP was pointing out that if fundies don't feel like they're in totalitarian control of laws, morals, and the imperial enterprise, then they're 'oppressed.'
Of course, not all fundamentalists think this way about society and conquest. Some are just interested in prescribing my sex life and lying to my children.
In 1999, I bought a "Blue & White" Power Mac G3.... EIGHT YEARS after I bought the box, and it is still running strong, running the latest and greatest software.
I've had quite a few similar experiences to yours, cranking old IIfx and AIO G3 machines to new heights etc., and I had the same B&W as you, it left my hands very much upgraded.
However, not all macs are created equal. There are many all-in-one designs, dead-end transition models (e.g. beige G3's) and hobbled motherboards in Apple's product history.
Your experience is good, because you picked the right model: that case persisted throughout many product changes, for years. Yet, it has that stupid zip drive bay, so get out the snips to put in a second optical drive, and now you're into a case mod.
The whole fuss about Apple machines upgrading tends to forget the vertical integration of the Mac. It's all about the software: yes, my old 366MHz G3 'toilet-seat' iBook is maxed out for ram and HD, and that's it for hardware upgrades, but it purrs running Panther and makes a very tough hard-working field machine for logging DV footage and running business apps. It's 7 years old and faster and very stable, thanks to OS X 10.3.
Likewise I have some old win98 boxes sitting here on the floor, being upgraded to... puppy linux. If I could put more RAM in them I would, but installing a more efficient OS is the best upgrade you can do for an old machine.
You can't upgrade hardware on a mac. Is that clear enough?
Horse hooey and FUD.
RAM and HD are standard, and accessible (the Mini, is, understandably, tricky without instructions). Processors are in zif sockets. Yes, you can't upgrade the video on their consumer machines, but consumers rarely upgrade beyond ram/hd, they add-on things like usb flash card readers. The Mac Pro tower takes multiple video and controller cards, etc. Every single mac I've ever owned or managed has been upgraded, that's in the hundreds. Some of them were pretty much rebuilt inside. Maybe you wish you could just throw any old motherboard in there? I happily relinquish that questionable freedom in lieu of driver-hell.
That said, there isn't much point to upgrading a Mac beyond memory and storage, as upgrading components costs more and nets less performance, due to high used mac prices, compared to buyi. Most of the serious upgrading I've done is for fun, not profit, even though I buy standard parts at bargain prices.
So, apple users can upgrade, just within similar constraints to any 'tier one' manufacturer. Joe Consumer upgrades ram and hd, then sells the old machine and buys new, which is better economics anyway, and expands capabilities by plugging in firewire devices etc. Joe Pro crams RAM, cards and drives in his Mac Pro tower, and wisely leaves the liquid-cooled quad processor and finely tuned motherboard alone, because a pro wants to make money, not fiddly time. Joe Hobbyist doesn't grok the economics of upgrading macs by selling the old then buying better, and doesn't care, because screwing with a new power supply to replace the cheapass smoking POS on his $500 barebones box gives him jollies.
The area around the Ambassador bridge is nice and sharp for me, in google maps (.ca), I can see pedestrians, so maybe you're confused by the salt mine nearby, which has a high albedo and is thus overexposed?
Anyway I've spent lots of time hanging around under and near that bridge, and there isn't anything 'sensitive' about it on the Canadian side. False alarm.
...that they could use it as a starting place for planning out their research. It is excellent for that. You can very quickly find worthwhile generalities on most subjects, and often encounter trivial but useful details not easily found elsewhere, just because some geek for that topic took the time to care and fill out the article. Generally, because it is an encyclopaedia, it is particularly useful for finding the connections and boundaries between topics--in other words, for building up an outline and setting research priorities.
Of course, I made it entirely explicit that one cannot cite wikipedia directly in a research paper, just as they couldn't cite the Britannica or the CDROM encyclopaedia they have at home. I was stunned when these supposedly literate, intelligent, creative 19 year-olds had trouble grasping the concept of primary sources--proof to me that public education is really a thinly disguised low-security vocational prison.
Keep in mind that there are a huge number of bacteria living in you and on you, most of them completely uncharacterized, and many of them probably essential for your health and well being.
They outnumber "your" cells 10 to one in your own body (a quadrillion), though they're so small the mass isn't much. Your gut flora is particularly essential to your survival, converting carbohydrates etc. for you to use. You are a walking fermentation vat.
Reasonable is the size that I want it to be. The app has zero context for what I am doing, am about to do, or even just prefer. Having a "make bigger" button that makes it just big enough for the current content is annoying (I recently bought a MacMini so I'm not talking entirely out of my ass).
The zoom button has two settings in most apps: snap-to and user-specified, and if you haven't specified it maximizes. It degrades to user-specified and maximize whent snap-to doesn't work. Got it? This isn't always obvious until you rely on it. It isn't always consistent either, that's up to the developer of what you're using. It sounds like you won't try adapting to the metaphor of interleaved windows, which is the basis of the UI; those windows are supposed to have stuff showing around the edges.
Additionally it's bloody annoying that I can't grab the side of a window and drag it wider. Or the bottom of the window and drag it taller. Instead I have to grab the lower corner of the window and drag it wider and taller or make a best guess estimate to do one or the other.
I can understand how that annoys, if you don't use the zoom function.
It's also quite amazing in this day that you have to buy mpeg decoder components.
I agree, but it isn't much of a gripe; you've started whining. Just use MPlayer if it's MPEG2 you want, otherwise most mpeg files play fine in Quicktime, and plenty of free codecs are available to add in.
Snap to content only makes sense if your window only displays one kind of content at a time.
I prefer it for exactly that reason: to reframe the window properly to match new content, you don't have to drag an edge, you can click (or keystroke). Saves time and fussy mousework.
In an application like safari or firefox where there are tabs each of which is displaying different content it makes no sense at all. In that context the window should change it's size every time I change tabs to snap to the new context. Well that would be annoying of course, almost as annoying as snapping to the context on Tab A while the content on all other tabs is messed up.
True, but same holds for maximized, especially on widescreen monitors--fluid layouts can have unreadably long lines . If one gives a hoot about how the content is framed in a browser, set it manually, since html doesn't generally have snap-to content anyway: browsers toggle zooming between maximized (almost like winXX) and a user setting, it's a fallback when snap-to can't work.
And I suspect I would get used to it eventually and not mind it any longer if I used Macs routinely. Heck, maybe there's a good reason to be unable to maximize a window as I'm used to doing. I grant that the user paradigm is different, and that I don't know it well at all.
You've hit it exactly, it's a different paradigm. Since Mac applications only run one instance, windows are attached to the application. The green button isn't a maximize button, as the windows on a Mac are supposed to interleave, as part of a system-wide integration that allows for things like truly useful drag-n-drop. The green button 'zooms,' using a a snap-to-fit-content approach, and toggling with a user-defined setting. In other words, if you want to maximize a window, just size it manually, then it should remember that--but you lose some of the aforementioned integration. Personally, snap-to-content makes a hell of a lot of sense to me, when it works (depends on the quality of app: MS products are notoriously bad at this, e.g.). You know you're really using a Mac to good effect when you're moving stuff effortlessly from window to window, app to app, and treating windows like children of parent applications.
But it sure did make me uncomfortable back when I did occasionally have to use a Mac at work. Especially as this was back in the "circular hockey puck mouse" days.
That puck is the worst mouse ever made. The first thing I do to a new Mac (dozens or hundreds since '90), is get a real 3+ button mouse or trackball on it--contextual clicking is reasonably well integrated into the OS. The second thing is to set up proper keyboard powers, through Keyquencer in the old days (I miss that app) and Quicksilver and Automater now.
RULE: never trust a computer as it comes from the factory, it isn't finished and it is commercially sabotaged.
But the bad assumption remains: rocket technology. Like I said, who's to say they haven't gone further with physics, or pursued a different, or completely unthought-of (to us) means of travel?
No kidding. "If we put a thousand horses on a carriage, it still won't be fast enough to lift from the ground. But if we could discover the rumoured winged horse, we can do it."
Something tells me that we're a couple of paradigms away from comprehending galactic distances as attainable. Propellant propulsion systems are to interstellar travel what horses are to flight.
I never thought to look for a way to enable keyboard support, because I didn't know it was even possible.
My point is that a 'power-user' understands that keyboard support is a basic part of a mature operating system, that MacOS has a long history, and that it keeps things simple on the surface and very powerful underneath. Ergo: look for keyboard support, starting with menus, then with preferences and control panels, and if that fails, try to RTFM, including online advice. This is how I learn, and I think it's pretty standard techno-macho behaviour.
I never expect a general user (yes, I support them all the time) to guess at keyboard support. But if one calls oneself a power user (yes, I support them too) on a nerd forum like/. and doesn't think to access power user features (such as keyboard options), there's a duty to challenge it. Oh, sure, there are lots of hidden features that power-users don't need to know about, like cmd-opt-plus/minus for zooming the screen (toggled by cmd-opt-8, BTW), but I've only met a few bona-fide power-users that were entirely mouse-centric, and they are all creative types who had to specialize outside of working in the OS, and didn't type much anyway.
This is still what money is. I goto work and use my time, effort, and skills in exchange for a money. I then use that money to buy goods and services. Now Mr.MoneyBags might make more then I do, but that is because someone values his time, effort, or skills more then mine, and thus he gets paid more. What he does with his money, be it giving food to starving kids, saving it for his family, or blowing it all away on fast cars and fast women is his perogative and his choice. He earned the right to spend that money however he chooses (withing the confines of legally, of course)
This, more or less, is how I explain money to my children: it's a stored barter, delayed value given for goods or services, that can later be redeemed at convenience, so it gives more choice and helps you meet your needs better.
However, I use this explanation because they are children. I don't need to confuse them with the details of what, for instance, their grandfather sees going on, as he manages the financing of new ventures and schemes.
My dad doesn't like to admit it very often but the larger the sum, the more opportunity to game the system (I wish that he would game it himself some, then he wouldn't be broke but rich). Huge amounts of capital mean everyone with decision making power who's in on it will make out large, and if some look the other way, everyone makes out larger. Think of high finance as The House, and in the casino, the House always wins in the end.
A big part of the gravity-like agglomeration of capital is how much gaming of the system is going on, under considerable secrecy. Finance is very compartmentalized under some valid privacy rules, and the nod-and-wink regulation that accompanies it. When incredible breaches like the Enron debacle make us think about rooting out corruption, we've just fallen into an ideological trap: 'the players are mostly fair, and the rules keep them that way.' How about this: many of the players are working for the House, and the House doesn't even legally exist, it's a loose syndicate that caan't be centralized or identified.
Hollywood and the utilities industries have had some of the more embarrassing schemes that I've heard of. The amount that people were getting paid just for retainer, and then rubberstamping things or scheming over coffee, would give you chills, and the amount of 'surplus' capital in these schemes that were budgeted into various hidden payouts was astounding--and this is the stuff I was allowed to see. I'm talking more money in minutes than you make in years. It's not that "someone values Mr. Moneybags time" more, and that it's fair value--it's just that the only people looking are in on it.
The most disturbing part of what you wrote (and how most of my country thinks) is in the way that you conflate exchange value with use value, as though there were some natural market force determining that $8,000,000 for 2 hours of handwritten expertise is equivalent in productivity to 150 years in the factory assembling automobiles. If you've seen the way nudge-nudge that it works, and the willful blindness and denial put to use by people in the position of directly supporting this global embezzlement, you'd know that something else is at work: avarice and deception, and an ideological outlook that blurs 'what you can get for it' with 'how useful it is.'
There were other forces involved other than just technical merit that swung the market toward FCP on the mac platform.
Granted. Avid did move off of Macs for, what, three years or so, but returned to the platform with full dedication once OS X settled down. Avid is pretty much cross platform now, and given the crazy inverse market share in hollywood (producers, writers, camera crew, stars, fx, etc.--mac laptops everywhere), it isn't surprising.
Adobe and Apple's relationship is more complex than any outsider can divine, I'd wager, so there was undoubtedly some politicking when Apple bought Final Cut and started developing it to address Premiere's shortcomings. Don't forget that both Avid and Premiere were Mac-only initially, and the first cheap desktop NLE's were mostly D-Vision on PC's or Premiere on Macs (about '92-'93). Adobe appeared to have gotten too comfortable, and development stagnated, it seemed to us who were stuck using it, so FCP was seen as a kind of saviour (though EditDV was a pretty good low-end stopgap). Hell, Premiere took ages just to properly support IEE1394 (firewire), and by that time we all had firewire decks/cameras.
Premiere is an application more like a PC--supports anything but perhaps nothing well. Avid is a system that likes to be sold as a dedicated workstation. It's understandable to be [sic] why neither prefers to run on OS X at this point.
See, that doesn't make sense. Premiere is notorious for not supporting different codecs and hardware (though claiming to), and I can back this assertion with the lack of hair on my head as evidence. Perhaps they've improved in the last 18 months, I'm still using v1.5. A new Avid Media Composer system on OS X Tiger is fantastic to use, maybe the best out there, though typically for conservative Avid their support for new hardware is a bit slow, and it would be nice to have an intel version (G5 only at this point). Just to be clear: Premiere is not available for the Mac at all, and Avid on the Mac rocks, so what were you saying?
You've described a market of about 60,000 annual sales to Apple, though, you know. They can't survive in niche markets like that.
You did invoke Final Cut Pro--the consumer space is another matter entirely. If you want to compare iLife (includes iMovie + iDVD) to anything out there, I suggest you take a swing at it yourself, as it's hard to understand how much "more in control" one feels when everything works without grief, instead of spending lots of time figuring out how to integrate programs from different vendors, different codecs, what parts go where, etc. Your "in control" feeling as a tinkerer puts you into a niche as well, and your comments are contradictory in that sense--Apple has the consumer space for media production figured out, it's a legit driver of sales and part of the reason for their current growth.
I've spent lots of time teaching video production to beginner and advanced students on Premiere Pro, Ulead products, discreet! products, and iMovie - Final Cut Express/Pro, and I can tell you that beginners are much more productive and creative when using iMovie, and that Premiere Pro is harder to keep running than Final Cut. Would you feel even more in control if you got more done, to a higher standard, in the same amount of time?
Choice is good, as long as they're good choices. Hooray for shareware video software on Windows, for the few who can stomach them, and blessed are those who don't know better. Anyway, as a *nix user, shouldn't you be using Kino or MainActor? Try out the LiveCD for dyne:bolic sometime, or try blender--it runs on Windows too.
however, like all programs that makes a task 'easy' tends to direct the user along it's prescribed method for doing the task.
OK, I think you're confusing iMovie (free, or nearly) with FCP ($300 - $1200 or so, depending on discounts). Final Cut is not easy, nor prescriptive. I can edit, colour correct, audio edit, capture, etc. in dozens of ways, depending on workflow and habits. In fact, other than media management and settings (both of which SUCK on FCP), it's pretty much like Avid's functionality--and complexity.
None of what it accomplishes can't be done using other programs. And I feel more in control picking and chosing components. Plus, the existence of 'Final Cut Pro' on the Mac platform crowds out and eliminates the motivation for other people to come in and develop competing products.
Well, one can build a house with a can opener and a rock, but who wants to? FCP is the rage in the industry because it has an excellent balance of usability, reliability, and power, and it scales fairly well, including sliding into many an established workflow, especially now that it handles multiple cameras and better formats. No other programs offer that combination. In a sense, it breaks the rule of "cheap, fast, good: pick two." THATS why it dominates on the Mac, when Premiere and Avid were well entrenched leaders for... well, a decade. They dropped the ball.
I also cannot justify spending the tons of money for a new Macintosh, and all the new software I'd have to buy to get equivalent performance with other tasks.
Well, I guess you aren't billing $80/hr as an editor. Downtime (do you hear me, cinelerra?!) is costly, and in an afternoon of lost business, you've lost any price advantages; at 20 minutes per day of lost productivity, over the course of a year, well, that's just bad math, because at 40 weeks per year, that's $4800 you've sacrificed to the gods of false frugality.
Except it confuses the hell out of the power users coming from Windows, ya know, the ones (like me) that don't know it can even be turned on.
Oh, for crying out loud... if you're a power user, and confused, R-T-F-M! Or visit a web forum, like Mac OSX Hints or better, google's Mac search page. Or maybe you're not really a power user, just well-adapted to using windows--I've noted the distinction, people who understand how to do things with windows really well, but aren't clear on why it works that way.
I'm constantly amazed at how people switch to a graphic interface and command line that is widely reputed to be "better" and yet expect it to work just like the one they abandoned.
The Canon GL-2 is a bit tinny feeling, yes. But that light weight makes it a good field camera when you have to drag it around by foot, and since it's so inexpensive you can spend more on a nice tripod head and mic kit. Plus, it has a 20x zoom and many other nice little prosumer features that make it a bargain MiniDV camera. While most documentarians would prefer sony's prosumer offerings like vintage PD-170's because they're rugged, the GL-2 holds its own. It is NOT a shoulder-mount camera, so yes it will shake when hand-held. It's a worthwhile trade-off for field work, and cheapo studio work.
The National Film Board of Canada is one of the world's best producers of documentaries, going right back to the origins of the craft. Their best-selling doc ever, Being Caribou, was shot entirely on a GL-2, because it was the best camera for the job, and survived.
Pro shooters have to get used to these tiny cameras, and the different techniques for getting a stable image out of them. Hint: get the right tripod, or put your elbows on something stable.
Hey astronomer nerds: does anyone have further updates on the theory that the Sun has a ferrite/calcium solid surface that lights up the neon plasma layer with electric arcs? Will Hinode help with clearing this up? Heven't heard much on this interesting interpretation recently.
I'll leave it to you to decide if USA is undergoing a subtle change to empire
Hmmm. You think that over 700 military bases in nearly half the countries in the world, plus an enormous complex of business-via-strongarm and CIA-supported deal preparation (think 'economic hit-men'), plus undue power at the UN and major trade organisations, you think that that might indicate the only remaining modern-day empire?
Because the only way to have an empire these days is to hide it... unless you can actually take over the world. China hides it under the notion of 'traditional' borders, it's a Han delusion. Russia is still crumbling. The Commonwealth is a wan nod and wink. But the US, well, they can still get away with invading small geopolitically strategic places around the globe under the thin guise of 'defense,' suggesting that their borders are everywhere.
What is the modern, newly relevant definition of empire?
Oh, for crying out loud, don't use Patrick Moore to support any of your arguments. He's made a lucrative career out of making perfectly reasonable middle-ground arguments into sheep's clothing as a corporate shill. His credibility went down the toilet when he started several PR front organizations for the transnational foresty industry in his home province.
He's like a shrill ex-smoker: rabid, anti-whatever-he-was, and self-serving under the guise of magnanimity and moderation.
Not that I disagree with you, what you're saying is sensible from an energy point of view./.ers should be aware of the astoturfing Mr. Moore, however. Whenever he stands up to speak, look to see who benefits, and you'll see that he stands for a concentration of corporate power, and unfettered transnational industrialism.
The big thing about nuclear power is the business model. Who gets the profit, or is any allowed? Who has oversight? And who sets the standards, enforces the distribution rights? Most of these issues are submarined.
I had an excellent sense of direction back in B.C....
Then I moved
Try moving from Vancouver, where north is always where the mountains are and south is always the States, to Windsor, where the USA (i.e. Detroit) is NORTH of you. Canadians grow up being North, so Windsorites are perennially confused, and have simply given up compass directions, instead using landmarks like 'the Tim Horton's next to Star Bingo' or 'the big new Canadian Tire.' Most of them actually wince when you try using compass sense.
What this points out to me is that we're natural orienteers, and that if we have a magnetic sense it's latent or subtle, and we (well some of us) are very good at proprioceptive position (knowing how where we are positioned relates to where we were).
Because people have to have some place to put the little sticky with the password...
You laugh, but the imac I'm in front of right now is covered in stickies (no pswds, though). At first, I thought the design looked like a big chiclet, but that stickie space is useful.
I know I can pretty much build this PC (minus mac components) for about $1000
Do you eat at restaurants? I make a point of eating out only when it's something I couldn't cook better myself, but I'm kind of a cheapskate.
I can cook a cheap and delicious terrine, the same way I could certainly build a much cheaper computer with the same specs. But I can't outcook a chef.
There's no way I could build a computer that can have the same footprint, operate with two cables (power/usb, maybe network) and fade into the furniture like an appliance. I can pick up an iMac and move it to another part of the house and be booted up in two minutes. Really, an iMac is halfway between a desktop and a notebook computer, and that has its own value (maybe $200? plus tier 1 support for a year, and the OS).
The sleeves only need to be sequential in the drawers
Since CD's are made from a relatively soft material, won't standing them in a drawer on their edge create the risk of warping? They're best held rigidly by the hole for long-term storage, as in jewel cases, vertically, and separated so that they aren't degraded by off-gassing solvents from labelling. Since due diligence is the basis for the problem, that seems to be a basic part of the problem: how do you store 30K discs the way they were designed to be?
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I don't get it... screw them because they're oppressed?
You DON'T get it, the GP was pointing out that if fundies don't feel like they're in totalitarian control of laws, morals, and the imperial enterprise, then they're 'oppressed.'Of course, not all fundamentalists think this way about society and conquest. Some are just interested in prescribing my sex life and lying to my children.
In 1999, I bought a "Blue & White" Power Mac G3. ... EIGHT YEARS after I bought the box, and it is still running strong, running the latest and greatest software.
I've had quite a few similar experiences to yours, cranking old IIfx and AIO G3 machines to new heights etc., and I had the same B&W as you, it left my hands very much upgraded.
However, not all macs are created equal. There are many all-in-one designs, dead-end transition models (e.g. beige G3's) and hobbled motherboards in Apple's product history.
Your experience is good, because you picked the right model: that case persisted throughout many product changes, for years. Yet, it has that stupid zip drive bay, so get out the snips to put in a second optical drive, and now you're into a case mod.
The whole fuss about Apple machines upgrading tends to forget the vertical integration of the Mac. It's all about the software: yes, my old 366MHz G3 'toilet-seat' iBook is maxed out for ram and HD, and that's it for hardware upgrades, but it purrs running Panther and makes a very tough hard-working field machine for logging DV footage and running business apps. It's 7 years old and faster and very stable, thanks to OS X 10.3.Likewise I have some old win98 boxes sitting here on the floor, being upgraded to... puppy linux. If I could put more RAM in them I would, but installing a more efficient OS is the best upgrade you can do for an old machine.
You can't upgrade hardware on a mac. Is that clear enough?
Horse hooey and FUD.
RAM and HD are standard, and accessible (the Mini, is, understandably, tricky without instructions). Processors are in zif sockets. Yes, you can't upgrade the video on their consumer machines, but consumers rarely upgrade beyond ram/hd, they add-on things like usb flash card readers. The Mac Pro tower takes multiple video and controller cards, etc. Every single mac I've ever owned or managed has been upgraded, that's in the hundreds. Some of them were pretty much rebuilt inside. Maybe you wish you could just throw any old motherboard in there? I happily relinquish that questionable freedom in lieu of driver-hell.
That said, there isn't much point to upgrading a Mac beyond memory and storage, as upgrading components costs more and nets less performance, due to high used mac prices, compared to buyi. Most of the serious upgrading I've done is for fun, not profit, even though I buy standard parts at bargain prices.
So, apple users can upgrade, just within similar constraints to any 'tier one' manufacturer. Joe Consumer upgrades ram and hd, then sells the old machine and buys new, which is better economics anyway, and expands capabilities by plugging in firewire devices etc. Joe Pro crams RAM, cards and drives in his Mac Pro tower, and wisely leaves the liquid-cooled quad processor and finely tuned motherboard alone, because a pro wants to make money, not fiddly time. Joe Hobbyist doesn't grok the economics of upgrading macs by selling the old then buying better, and doesn't care, because screwing with a new power supply to replace the cheapass smoking POS on his $500 barebones box gives him jollies.
??
The area around the Ambassador bridge is nice and sharp for me, in google maps (.ca), I can see pedestrians, so maybe you're confused by the salt mine nearby, which has a high albedo and is thus overexposed?
Anyway I've spent lots of time hanging around under and near that bridge, and there isn't anything 'sensitive' about it on the Canadian side. False alarm.
...that they could use it as a starting place for planning out their research. It is excellent for that. You can very quickly find worthwhile generalities on most subjects, and often encounter trivial but useful details not easily found elsewhere, just because some geek for that topic took the time to care and fill out the article. Generally, because it is an encyclopaedia, it is particularly useful for finding the connections and boundaries between topics--in other words, for building up an outline and setting research priorities.
Of course, I made it entirely explicit that one cannot cite wikipedia directly in a research paper, just as they couldn't cite the Britannica or the CDROM encyclopaedia they have at home. I was stunned when these supposedly literate, intelligent, creative 19 year-olds had trouble grasping the concept of primary sources--proof to me that public education is really a thinly disguised low-security vocational prison.
Keep in mind that there are a huge number of bacteria living in you and on you, most of them completely uncharacterized, and many of them probably essential for your health and well being.
They outnumber "your" cells 10 to one in your own body (a quadrillion), though they're so small the mass isn't much. Your gut flora is particularly essential to your survival, converting carbohydrates etc. for you to use. You are a walking fermentation vat.
Reasonable is the size that I want it to be. The app has zero context for what I am doing, am about to do, or even just prefer. Having a "make bigger" button that makes it just big enough for the current content is annoying (I recently bought a MacMini so I'm not talking entirely out of my ass).
The zoom button has two settings in most apps: snap-to and user-specified, and if you haven't specified it maximizes. It degrades to user-specified and maximize whent snap-to doesn't work. Got it? This isn't always obvious until you rely on it. It isn't always consistent either, that's up to the developer of what you're using. It sounds like you won't try adapting to the metaphor of interleaved windows, which is the basis of the UI; those windows are supposed to have stuff showing around the edges.
Additionally it's bloody annoying that I can't grab the side of a window and drag it wider. Or the bottom of the window and drag it taller. Instead I have to grab the lower corner of the window and drag it wider and taller or make a best guess estimate to do one or the other.
I can understand how that annoys, if you don't use the zoom function.
It's also quite amazing in this day that you have to buy mpeg decoder components.
I agree, but it isn't much of a gripe; you've started whining. Just use MPlayer if it's MPEG2 you want, otherwise most mpeg files play fine in Quicktime, and plenty of free codecs are available to add in.
Snap to content only makes sense if your window only displays one kind of content at a time.
I prefer it for exactly that reason: to reframe the window properly to match new content, you don't have to drag an edge, you can click (or keystroke). Saves time and fussy mousework.
In an application like safari or firefox where there are tabs each of which is displaying different content it makes no sense at all. In that context the window should change it's size every time I change tabs to snap to the new context. Well that would be annoying of course, almost as annoying as snapping to the context on Tab A while the content on all other tabs is messed up.
True, but same holds for maximized, especially on widescreen monitors--fluid layouts can have unreadably long lines . If one gives a hoot about how the content is framed in a browser, set it manually, since html doesn't generally have snap-to content anyway: browsers toggle zooming between maximized (almost like winXX) and a user setting, it's a fallback when snap-to can't work.
And I suspect I would get used to it eventually and not mind it any longer if I used Macs routinely. Heck, maybe there's a good reason to be unable to maximize a window as I'm used to doing. I grant that the user paradigm is different, and that I don't know it well at all.
You've hit it exactly, it's a different paradigm. Since Mac applications only run one instance, windows are attached to the application. The green button isn't a maximize button, as the windows on a Mac are supposed to interleave, as part of a system-wide integration that allows for things like truly useful drag-n-drop. The green button 'zooms,' using a a snap-to-fit-content approach, and toggling with a user-defined setting. In other words, if you want to maximize a window, just size it manually, then it should remember that--but you lose some of the aforementioned integration. Personally, snap-to-content makes a hell of a lot of sense to me, when it works (depends on the quality of app: MS products are notoriously bad at this, e.g.). You know you're really using a Mac to good effect when you're moving stuff effortlessly from window to window, app to app, and treating windows like children of parent applications.
But it sure did make me uncomfortable back when I did occasionally have to use a Mac at work. Especially as this was back in the "circular hockey puck mouse" days.
That puck is the worst mouse ever made. The first thing I do to a new Mac (dozens or hundreds since '90), is get a real 3+ button mouse or trackball on it--contextual clicking is reasonably well integrated into the OS. The second thing is to set up proper keyboard powers, through Keyquencer in the old days (I miss that app) and Quicksilver and Automater now.
RULE: never trust a computer as it comes from the factory, it isn't finished and it is commercially sabotaged.
But the bad assumption remains: rocket technology. Like I said, who's to say they haven't gone further with physics, or pursued a different, or completely unthought-of (to us) means of travel?
No kidding. "If we put a thousand horses on a carriage, it still won't be fast enough to lift from the ground. But if we could discover the rumoured winged horse, we can do it."
Something tells me that we're a couple of paradigms away from comprehending galactic distances as attainable. Propellant propulsion systems are to interstellar travel what horses are to flight.
My point is that a 'power-user' understands that keyboard support is a basic part of a mature operating system, that MacOS has a long history, and that it keeps things simple on the surface and very powerful underneath. Ergo: look for keyboard support, starting with menus, then with preferences and control panels, and if that fails, try to RTFM, including online advice. This is how I learn, and I think it's pretty standard techno-macho behaviour.
I never expect a general user (yes, I support them all the time) to guess at keyboard support. But if one calls oneself a power user (yes, I support them too) on a nerd forum like /. and doesn't think to access power user features (such as keyboard options), there's a duty to challenge it. Oh, sure, there are lots of hidden features that power-users don't need to know about, like cmd-opt-plus/minus for zooming the screen (toggled by cmd-opt-8, BTW), but I've only met a few bona-fide power-users that were entirely mouse-centric, and they are all creative types who had to specialize outside of working in the OS, and didn't type much anyway.
This is still what money is. I goto work and use my time, effort, and skills in exchange for a money. I then use that money to buy goods and services. Now Mr.MoneyBags might make more then I do, but that is because someone values his time, effort, or skills more then mine, and thus he gets paid more. What he does with his money, be it giving food to starving kids, saving it for his family, or blowing it all away on fast cars and fast women is his perogative and his choice. He earned the right to spend that money however he chooses (withing the confines of legally, of course)
This, more or less, is how I explain money to my children: it's a stored barter, delayed value given for goods or services, that can later be redeemed at convenience, so it gives more choice and helps you meet your needs better.
However, I use this explanation because they are children. I don't need to confuse them with the details of what, for instance, their grandfather sees going on, as he manages the financing of new ventures and schemes.
My dad doesn't like to admit it very often but the larger the sum, the more opportunity to game the system (I wish that he would game it himself some, then he wouldn't be broke but rich). Huge amounts of capital mean everyone with decision making power who's in on it will make out large, and if some look the other way, everyone makes out larger. Think of high finance as The House, and in the casino, the House always wins in the end.
A big part of the gravity-like agglomeration of capital is how much gaming of the system is going on, under considerable secrecy. Finance is very compartmentalized under some valid privacy rules, and the nod-and-wink regulation that accompanies it. When incredible breaches like the Enron debacle make us think about rooting out corruption, we've just fallen into an ideological trap: 'the players are mostly fair, and the rules keep them that way.' How about this: many of the players are working for the House, and the House doesn't even legally exist, it's a loose syndicate that caan't be centralized or identified.
Hollywood and the utilities industries have had some of the more embarrassing schemes that I've heard of. The amount that people were getting paid just for retainer, and then rubberstamping things or scheming over coffee, would give you chills, and the amount of 'surplus' capital in these schemes that were budgeted into various hidden payouts was astounding--and this is the stuff I was allowed to see. I'm talking more money in minutes than you make in years. It's not that "someone values Mr. Moneybags time" more, and that it's fair value--it's just that the only people looking are in on it.
The most disturbing part of what you wrote (and how most of my country thinks) is in the way that you conflate exchange value with use value, as though there were some natural market force determining that $8,000,000 for 2 hours of handwritten expertise is equivalent in productivity to 150 years in the factory assembling automobiles. If you've seen the way nudge-nudge that it works, and the willful blindness and denial put to use by people in the position of directly supporting this global embezzlement, you'd know that something else is at work: avarice and deception, and an ideological outlook that blurs 'what you can get for it' with 'how useful it is.'
There were other forces involved other than just technical merit that swung the market toward FCP on the mac platform.
Granted. Avid did move off of Macs for, what, three years or so, but returned to the platform with full dedication once OS X settled down. Avid is pretty much cross platform now, and given the crazy inverse market share in hollywood (producers, writers, camera crew, stars, fx, etc.--mac laptops everywhere), it isn't surprising.
Adobe and Apple's relationship is more complex than any outsider can divine, I'd wager, so there was undoubtedly some politicking when Apple bought Final Cut and started developing it to address Premiere's shortcomings. Don't forget that both Avid and Premiere were Mac-only initially, and the first cheap desktop NLE's were mostly D-Vision on PC's or Premiere on Macs (about '92-'93). Adobe appeared to have gotten too comfortable, and development stagnated, it seemed to us who were stuck using it, so FCP was seen as a kind of saviour (though EditDV was a pretty good low-end stopgap). Hell, Premiere took ages just to properly support IEE1394 (firewire), and by that time we all had firewire decks/cameras.
Premiere is an application more like a PC--supports anything but perhaps nothing well. Avid is a system that likes to be sold as a dedicated workstation. It's understandable to be [sic] why neither prefers to run on OS X at this point.
See, that doesn't make sense. Premiere is notorious for not supporting different codecs and hardware (though claiming to), and I can back this assertion with the lack of hair on my head as evidence. Perhaps they've improved in the last 18 months, I'm still using v1.5. A new Avid Media Composer system on OS X Tiger is fantastic to use, maybe the best out there, though typically for conservative Avid their support for new hardware is a bit slow, and it would be nice to have an intel version (G5 only at this point). Just to be clear: Premiere is not available for the Mac at all, and Avid on the Mac rocks, so what were you saying?
You did invoke Final Cut Pro--the consumer space is another matter entirely. If you want to compare iLife (includes iMovie + iDVD) to anything out there, I suggest you take a swing at it yourself, as it's hard to understand how much "more in control" one feels when everything works without grief, instead of spending lots of time figuring out how to integrate programs from different vendors, different codecs, what parts go where, etc. Your "in control" feeling as a tinkerer puts you into a niche as well, and your comments are contradictory in that sense--Apple has the consumer space for media production figured out, it's a legit driver of sales and part of the reason for their current growth.
I've spent lots of time teaching video production to beginner and advanced students on Premiere Pro, Ulead products, discreet! products, and iMovie - Final Cut Express/Pro, and I can tell you that beginners are much more productive and creative when using iMovie, and that Premiere Pro is harder to keep running than Final Cut. Would you feel even more in control if you got more done, to a higher standard, in the same amount of time?
Choice is good, as long as they're good choices. Hooray for shareware video software on Windows, for the few who can stomach them, and blessed are those who don't know better. Anyway, as a *nix user, shouldn't you be using Kino or MainActor? Try out the LiveCD for dyne:bolic sometime, or try blender--it runs on Windows too.
OK, I think you're confusing iMovie (free, or nearly) with FCP ($300 - $1200 or so, depending on discounts). Final Cut is not easy, nor prescriptive. I can edit, colour correct, audio edit, capture, etc. in dozens of ways, depending on workflow and habits. In fact, other than media management and settings (both of which SUCK on FCP), it's pretty much like Avid's functionality--and complexity.
None of what it accomplishes can't be done using other programs. And I feel more in control picking and chosing components. Plus, the existence of 'Final Cut Pro' on the Mac platform crowds out and eliminates the motivation for other people to come in and develop competing products.
Well, one can build a house with a can opener and a rock, but who wants to? FCP is the rage in the industry because it has an excellent balance of usability, reliability, and power, and it scales fairly well, including sliding into many an established workflow, especially now that it handles multiple cameras and better formats. No other programs offer that combination. In a sense, it breaks the rule of "cheap, fast, good: pick two." THATS why it dominates on the Mac, when Premiere and Avid were well entrenched leaders for... well, a decade. They dropped the ball.
I also cannot justify spending the tons of money for a new Macintosh, and all the new software I'd have to buy to get equivalent performance with other tasks.
Well, I guess you aren't billing $80/hr as an editor. Downtime (do you hear me, cinelerra?!) is costly, and in an afternoon of lost business, you've lost any price advantages; at 20 minutes per day of lost productivity, over the course of a year, well, that's just bad math, because at 40 weeks per year, that's $4800 you've sacrificed to the gods of false frugality.
Oh, for crying out loud... if you're a power user, and confused, R-T-F-M! Or visit a web forum, like Mac OSX Hints or better, google's Mac search page. Or maybe you're not really a power user, just well-adapted to using windows--I've noted the distinction, people who understand how to do things with windows really well, but aren't clear on why it works that way.
I'm constantly amazed at how people switch to a graphic interface and command line that is widely reputed to be "better" and yet expect it to work just like the one they abandoned.
The Canon GL-2 is a bit tinny feeling, yes. But that light weight makes it a good field camera when you have to drag it around by foot, and since it's so inexpensive you can spend more on a nice tripod head and mic kit. Plus, it has a 20x zoom and many other nice little prosumer features that make it a bargain MiniDV camera. While most documentarians would prefer sony's prosumer offerings like vintage PD-170's because they're rugged, the GL-2 holds its own. It is NOT a shoulder-mount camera, so yes it will shake when hand-held. It's a worthwhile trade-off for field work, and cheapo studio work.
The National Film Board of Canada is one of the world's best producers of documentaries, going right back to the origins of the craft. Their best-selling doc ever, Being Caribou, was shot entirely on a GL-2, because it was the best camera for the job, and survived.
Pro shooters have to get used to these tiny cameras, and the different techniques for getting a stable image out of them. Hint: get the right tripod, or put your elbows on something stable.
That would be the Maasai, with under a million people, not a huge culture, so 'oftentimes' is a stretch. Raw milk is drunk by billions, however.
Fresh blood out of healthy living cattle should be better than safe, anyway, it's incredibly healthy for those adapted to it.
Hmmm. You think that over 700 military bases in nearly half the countries in the world, plus an enormous complex of business-via-strongarm and CIA-supported deal preparation (think 'economic hit-men'), plus undue power at the UN and major trade organisations, you think that that might indicate the only remaining modern-day empire?
Because the only way to have an empire these days is to hide it... unless you can actually take over the world. China hides it under the notion of 'traditional' borders, it's a Han delusion. Russia is still crumbling. The Commonwealth is a wan nod and wink. But the US, well, they can still get away with invading small geopolitically strategic places around the globe under the thin guise of 'defense,' suggesting that their borders are everywhere.
What is the modern, newly relevant definition of empire?
Oh, for crying out loud, don't use Patrick Moore to support any of your arguments. He's made a lucrative career out of making perfectly reasonable middle-ground arguments into sheep's clothing as a corporate shill. His credibility went down the toilet when he started several PR front organizations for the transnational foresty industry in his home province.
He's like a shrill ex-smoker: rabid, anti-whatever-he-was, and self-serving under the guise of magnanimity and moderation.
Not that I disagree with you, what you're saying is sensible from an energy point of view. /.ers should be aware of the astoturfing Mr. Moore, however. Whenever he stands up to speak, look to see who benefits, and you'll see that he stands for a concentration of corporate power, and unfettered transnational industrialism.
The big thing about nuclear power is the business model. Who gets the profit, or is any allowed? Who has oversight? And who sets the standards, enforces the distribution rights? Most of these issues are submarined.
Try moving from Vancouver, where north is always where the mountains are and south is always the States, to Windsor, where the USA (i.e. Detroit) is NORTH of you. Canadians grow up being North, so Windsorites are perennially confused, and have simply given up compass directions, instead using landmarks like 'the Tim Horton's next to Star Bingo' or 'the big new Canadian Tire.' Most of them actually wince when you try using compass sense.
What this points out to me is that we're natural orienteers, and that if we have a magnetic sense it's latent or subtle, and we (well some of us) are very good at proprioceptive position (knowing how where we are positioned relates to where we were).
You laugh, but the imac I'm in front of right now is covered in stickies (no pswds, though). At first, I thought the design looked like a big chiclet, but that stickie space is useful.
Do you eat at restaurants? I make a point of eating out only when it's something I couldn't cook better myself, but I'm kind of a cheapskate.
I can cook a cheap and delicious terrine, the same way I could certainly build a much cheaper computer with the same specs. But I can't outcook a chef.
There's no way I could build a computer that can have the same footprint, operate with two cables (power/usb, maybe network) and fade into the furniture like an appliance. I can pick up an iMac and move it to another part of the house and be booted up in two minutes. Really, an iMac is halfway between a desktop and a notebook computer, and that has its own value (maybe $200? plus tier 1 support for a year, and the OS).
Since CD's are made from a relatively soft material, won't standing them in a drawer on their edge create the risk of warping? They're best held rigidly by the hole for long-term storage, as in jewel cases, vertically, and separated so that they aren't degraded by off-gassing solvents from labelling. Since due diligence is the basis for the problem, that seems to be a basic part of the problem: how do you store 30K discs the way they were designed to be?