A much more sensible approach is to open new browser windows rather than tabs, and then do all of your switching using the WM. One of the many advantages of this is that you can use keyboard shortcuts to cycle through all your windows, browser and the rest.
Well, that's your opinion, and I for one completely hate cycling through dozens of windows along with my email,xterms, and other programs taking up space.
In an "ideal world"(tm), I should just "think" of the window I want, and microseconds later it should appear magically in front of me. In reality, we can't do that. But with the magical use of Desktops via alt F1,F2,etc. and judicious use of alt-tab, we can grab windows instantly.
What I do is assign a specific function for my desktops. I.e. desktop 1 is xterm/mp3, desktop 2 is web browser, desktop 3 is xpdf/gv/open office, and desktop 4 is email/news. For each desktop I try not to open more than 2 windows. This lets me swap(not cycle) the windows efficiently, without cycling and scanning back and forth through dozens of windows. This effectively allows me to switch through 8 applications efficiently(without using a mouse), and more if I add desktops or stick in an application or two on desktops that aren't frequently used(and can resort to mouse use).
Going back to tabbed windows, they help because they keep multiple instances nicely in one "app container", especially in the case of web browsers where I can have anywhere from 3 to 10 windows open at a given time. Also I love kde's konsole as you can also have tabbed xterms and switch between them quite fast(shift+arrow keys). I guess my point with tabbed browsing is they help to keep things organized and my WM uncluttered.
I have a firm commitment from the CFO, read wife, that when Doom 3 comes out I get a brand new PC the next day.:-) I'm happy.
Aren't you lucky? By the time Doom3 comes out I'll be married by then...the last thing my wife will want to see is me playing video games like a child.
Re:Good idea for nuclear waste?
on
Going Up?
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· Score: 1
That whole 'spiraling into the sun' thing bugs me.
That's when you know people used to watch Superman too much.
I humbly disagree. Unlike most of the other Bioware RPGs(BG1/2 are the ones I have played), NWN for some reason makes me feel like I'm playing the old Final Fantasy games.
The reason? A tighter story-line where most of the main quests are *actually* related to the main plot(duh), and the side quests help develop and deepen the plot. What I mean is in the previous BG games, you have hundreds of side quests, but they had nothing to do with the main plot, and neither did those quests develop/deepen the plot any further. In my opinion that made the game tedious in some cases, and even in one of the developer feedbacks they acknowledged this problem a lot in BG2.
Gone are the stupid quests like "Take my loaf of bread to my son is the southern city" or "Kill the big spiders in my house". In NWN, its more like "Investigate why my brother turned into a werewolf"...which in turn ties back to the plot of finding a hidden cult.
To me NWN has all the action/power-up/etc of Diablo2 coupled with traditional RPG gameplay.
Meanwhile, pirates continue to find ways to circumvent copyrights. Sales keep dropping. The Supreme Court eventually shoots down key parts of the DMCA--and the DMCA is so screwy, this isn't a matter of if, but when--and suddenly we're allowed to _legally_ circumvent copyrights.
DMCA was invented by guys in black trench coats, black hats, with hairy faces. They couldn't fight hackers, so they bought legislation.
Any corporations knows this--
I've been using the CVS version for a while now to run WCIII; it runs at 100% full speed, with nvidia cards you get even faster framerate than on windows.
Really? Do you have any informal comparison numbers to backup your claims? Because if you check the WineX 2.0 article, it clearly shows that direct3d games do NOT run at "full speed" nor "faster" in WineX/Linux than Windows.
At lower resolutions, games like Quake3 and Max Payne run 1/3 the speed compared to Windows 2000. Crank up the resolution, and watch the gap decrease a bit...but it is still half the speed of its Windows counterparts.
Of course, I think the merits of WineX are its game compatability; it's absolutely awesome that it can run recent games like WC3.
A better virus would be one that makes a mating call out through your speakers when it infects your computer...in no time would you attract horny little critters. Though one would have to find out mating calls that: a) us humans can't hear, b) require time-of-year stats(call play period), and c) are most receptive to certain species(read most horny)
BTW, Duck/bird hunters use whistles that make such calls to ease their hunting. Take this with a grain of salt 'cause I saw it on some TV show I can't remember(Simpsons?).
Forgive me for being blunt, but Nintendo doesn't give a shit about its customers who want to back-up their cd/cart. These customers are a small minority in Nintendo eyes.
Nintendo is far more afraid of piracy. They don't want to provide an easy way for backing-up and restoring cd/carts. The ratio to legally backed up software to pirated is something like 1:1000(made up figure).
They don't give a fuck about the small minority, because believe it or not, it doesn't affect their business. Big wow huh? Most corporations don't _really_care_ about the customer, they only care to the point of making a damn buck.
As soon as they find out, "make customer x happy == $$$ lost", they go "screw x, protect $$$". Remember, you are just a variable in a money equation.
Next you'll see "Wear this vibrating belt, and see your weight go down 2% immediately!!" on your favorite infomercial channel:)
Little did buyers know that the vibrating was a superconducting ceramic disk rotating over powerful electromagnetics within the belt's buckle, causing the belt wearer to lose weight almost immediately.
Companies are free from litigation, because technically weight is "force of gravity" and not *mass*...so the belt works 'as advertised' and no one can sue them!
1. Backup all critical data and hide backup somewhere. 2. Cause data catastrophe: rm -rf/*; 3. Cry to boss, "Oh no! Critical hardware failure! Your pictures..err..data is lost sir! CVS codebase gone!" 4. Mess up your hair, throw water on your face looking like madly trying to recover the data. 5. Wait until everyone panics, and starts running around like mad! And you hear screams, "Oh no! My new algorithm I worked since yesterday...all gone!" 6. While everyone is in a state of frenzy, restore all data. 7. Boss will be very,very happy. 8. Ask for raise the next day for your superior risk-analysis and data-recovery skills. 9. Repeat 1-7 twice a year, and you'll recieve a bonus too!
Here in Canada we have people advertising in the Computer Paper(major canada-wide computer newspaper) to willing to install PS/PS2 modchips for $40 bucks canadian.
I've seen them advertising a year ago, and they still advertise today. Hell if selling modchips was 'really' illegal, the posters of those adverts should go to jail first.
Therefore, I don't really think the guy in the article went to jail because of modchipping. The sucker was fined and jailed because he actually made a PROFIT from selling pirating games(which btw, is clearly illegal)!
Re:amazing documentation browser?
on
.NET for Apache
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· Score: 1
Manpages are the last place I would go for documentation, they are next to worthless
Worthless? Hardly. They give you the precise specs on any piece of info you need; typical for some function calls in the exec family or some obscure function you rarely use.
Now if you want to learn something new, for example, how to code in X Windows using motif, then yes its not good for that purpose. However when you have a general idea of how everything works, but just need the full reference information...nothing beats man pages.
Nuff said.
amazing documentation browser?
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 1
If you happen to want a full-fledged high-quality IDE and an amazing documentation browser along with it, you'll need to dish out a few dollars for Visual Studio.NET
Pfft. Personally I hate Microsoft's doc browser. Sure it has a LOT of information spanning googles of CDs and MSDN web content. Plus they have a bucket load of tutorials, examples, etc.
But it is not an amazing documentation browser. *NIX OSs already have the perfect doc browser: man pages. You can swiftly search to grab full reference info on some function. All without lifting your hand off the keyboard. I love the standard of man pages too; they give the FULL specs on almost every command, function, file format, , etc. Yes I do agree that man pages are not wonderful for learning new stuff though.
Going back to why I hate Microsoft's method: its just too damn slow to look-up reference information. You need to click click click click, type your search, then click click click click click click. Up pops a window, where then you need to click click click to pick the relevant topic. It's really bad for looking-up reference information, as it takes too much time to find specific info on some function/command/etc. When you finally find the reference info you need, I find it is not as complete as a typical full-fledged man page. Meaning, you need to read a couple of knowledge base articles too. So I wouldn't call it an amazing doc browser, but rather an amazing repository of information.
Still, nothing can beat the beauty of man pages: elegant, simple, and fast. Don't believe me? Run "man X" to see what I mean.
Actually cash-deprived college souls would pirate rather than shelling hundreds "educational-version" of Apps.
Sorry, but its true. Its either $0 or $500 for a Microsoft App like Office. In most other markets, companies are smart enough to know to introduce multiple product lines of varying prices. For example, Nvidia sells their Geforce4 at different price points from their 4600,4400,4200, G4Mx, etc. Games can run on any of those cards; number of features depends on how much the customer is willing to spend.
Why couldn't software be like that? I mean wouldn't you love to use a strip-down version of MS Word without all the insane,stupid, features you never use, but it still saves in a Word-compatible format? This way a strapped college student can take their word-compatible file and print it from a full featured version of Word at college, saving money on software(and a printer)!
Actually my brother works at Turbo Labs too. He worked on High Availability project for Linux...which he said never really raked in profits for TL(didn't have the 5 nines nor sold hardware with it).
Also many of the projects are being cancelled due to some murky waters at the corporation. My brother recieved his last paycheck--but only half of it. He's still waiting for the other half to come through.
As I game player since my wee little ages, I think you hit the mark. I find that when I come home from work, playing games just 'soothes' me. Even though it occupies a fixed chunk of my time, as I need to learn other stuff(Unix).
However there is one problem in your analysis: you assume all type of games will cause an avid gamer to relax. I can tell you that this is not always the case, as it depends on the game. Personally for me, a game like System Shock 2 or Aliens vs. Predators 2 does NOT relax me. Primarily because you have to be very alert of your surroundings within the game. For example is AVP2, you are creeping in the dark with faint alien murmors, and suddenly a fuckin' alien drops out of no where. Or in System Shock 2 where everything is so hush hush that out of no where(respawn system) a mutant-humaniod comes running right at you.
I guess you could say both of these games have a creepy/horror environment, where you need to be on your toes, alert, and get an adrenaline rush when enemies pop out of no where. It leaves me tense and not relaxed. On the other hand when I play a game like Grand Theft Auto 3 or Soldier of Fortune2(I love the satisfaction of unloading my shotgun onto an enemy...only those who have played it can understand what I mean), they don't keep me tense(environment is different) and don't throw constant suprises every 60 seconds.
Of course that doesn't mean such games arent fun; they are great to play when you are NOT looking to relax but rather are killing time.
Re:Opens up whole new marketing opportunities...
on
Chicken-Feather Chips
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· Score: 1
Would you like your Pentium in Original or Extra Crispy?
I'd prefer Cajun style. Oh btw, can you put some Artic thermal compound on the side topped with a crispy fan?
Slashdot Mirror
A much more sensible approach is to open new browser windows rather than tabs, and then do all of your switching using the WM. One of the many advantages of this is that you can use keyboard shortcuts to cycle through all your windows, browser and the rest.
Well, that's your opinion, and I for one completely hate cycling through dozens of windows along with my email,xterms, and other programs taking up space.
In an "ideal world"(tm), I should just "think" of the window I want, and microseconds later it should appear magically in front of me. In reality, we can't do that. But with the magical use of Desktops via alt F1,F2,etc. and judicious use of alt-tab, we can grab windows instantly.
What I do is assign a specific function for my desktops. I.e. desktop 1 is xterm/mp3, desktop 2 is web browser, desktop 3 is xpdf/gv/open office, and desktop 4 is email/news. For each desktop I try not to open more than 2 windows. This lets me swap(not cycle) the windows efficiently, without cycling and scanning back and forth through dozens of windows. This effectively allows me to switch through 8 applications efficiently(without using a mouse), and more if I add desktops or stick in an application or two on desktops that aren't frequently used(and can resort to mouse use).
Going back to tabbed windows, they help because they keep multiple instances nicely in one "app container", especially in the case of web browsers where I can have anywhere from 3 to 10 windows open at a given time. Also I love kde's konsole as you can also have tabbed xterms and switch between them quite fast(shift+arrow keys). I guess my point with tabbed browsing is they help to keep things organized and my WM uncluttered.
YMMV though.
Great. That means you can now burn a 74-minute long CD in 111 seconds instead of 139. Just think what you could do with those extra 28 seconds!
Huh? My 16x burner can burn 700MB in roughly 4 minutes. So to think a 40X takes 2 minutes to burn...when it *should* be lower sucks.
I have a firm commitment from the CFO, read wife, that when Doom 3 comes out I get a brand new PC the next day. :-) I'm happy.
Aren't you lucky? By the time Doom3 comes out I'll be married by then...the last thing my wife will want to see is me playing video games like a child.
That whole 'spiraling into the sun' thing bugs me.
That's when you know people used to watch Superman too much.
... 'cause then you'd be... um.... reading your villagers and um.... slaughtering your e-mail... yeah... that makes sense.....
Are you talking about Black and White? IIRC, it has the ability to open your address book and assign the names in it to your little villagers:)
Its even better, as you get to slaughter your email buddies in a tomagotchi-like world. Perfect for the afternoon deathmatch at the office.
The single player isn't that great
I humbly disagree. Unlike most of the other Bioware RPGs(BG1/2 are the ones I have played), NWN for some reason makes me feel like I'm playing the old Final Fantasy games.
The reason? A tighter story-line where most of the main quests are *actually* related to the main plot(duh), and the side quests help develop and deepen the plot. What I mean is in the previous BG games, you have hundreds of side quests, but they had nothing to do with the main plot, and neither did those quests develop/deepen the plot any further. In my opinion that made the game tedious in some cases, and even in one of the developer feedbacks they acknowledged this problem a lot in BG2.
Gone are the stupid quests like "Take my loaf of bread to my son is the southern city" or "Kill the big spiders in my house". In NWN, its more like "Investigate why my brother turned into a werewolf"...which in turn ties back to the plot of finding a hidden cult.
To me NWN has all the action/power-up/etc of Diablo2 coupled with traditional RPG gameplay.
Meanwhile, pirates continue to find ways to circumvent copyrights. Sales keep dropping. The Supreme Court eventually shoots down key parts of the DMCA--and the DMCA is so screwy, this isn't a matter of if, but when--and suddenly we're allowed to _legally_ circumvent copyrights. DMCA was invented by guys in black trench coats, black hats, with hairy faces. They couldn't fight hackers, so they bought legislation. Any corporations knows this--
I've been using the CVS version for a while now to run WCIII; it runs at 100% full speed, with nvidia cards you get even faster framerate than on windows.
Really? Do you have any informal comparison numbers to backup your claims? Because if you check the WineX 2.0 article, it clearly shows that direct3d games do NOT run at "full speed" nor "faster" in WineX/Linux than Windows.
At lower resolutions, games like Quake3 and Max Payne run 1/3 the speed compared to Windows 2000. Crank up the resolution, and watch the gap decrease a bit...but it is still half the speed of its Windows counterparts.
Of course, I think the merits of WineX are its game compatability; it's absolutely awesome that it can run recent games like WC3.
A better virus would be one that makes a mating call out through your speakers when it infects your computer...in no time would you attract horny little critters. Though one would have to find out mating calls that: a) us humans can't hear, b) require time-of-year stats(call play period), and c) are most receptive to certain species(read most horny)
BTW, Duck/bird hunters use whistles that make such calls to ease their hunting. Take this with a grain of salt 'cause I saw it on some TV show I can't remember(Simpsons?).
Forgive me for being blunt, but Nintendo doesn't give a shit about its customers who want to back-up their cd/cart. These customers are a small minority in Nintendo eyes.
Nintendo is far more afraid of piracy. They don't want to provide an easy way for backing-up and restoring cd/carts. The ratio to legally backed up software to pirated is something like 1:1000(made up figure).
They don't give a fuck about the small minority, because believe it or not, it doesn't affect their business. Big wow huh? Most corporations don't _really_care_ about the customer, they only care to the point of making a damn buck.
As soon as they find out, "make customer x happy == $$$ lost", they go "screw x, protect $$$". Remember, you are just a variable in a money equation.
Next you'll see "Wear this vibrating belt, and see your weight go down 2% immediately!!" on your favorite infomercial channel:)
Little did buyers know that the vibrating was a superconducting ceramic disk rotating over powerful electromagnetics within the belt's buckle, causing the belt wearer to lose weight almost immediately.
Companies are free from litigation, because technically weight is "force of gravity" and not *mass*...so the belt works 'as advertised' and no one can sue them!
But it might eat a lot of batteries...
Have a coding contest...
1st place is a new Cadillac
2nd place is a set of steak knives
3rd place is "you're fired"...
Between the new Cadillac and "you're fired", I'd put, "get Escort Services". Or even better, "get laid in your new cadillac".
Want to get appreciated even more Skyshadow?
/*;
1. Backup all critical data and hide backup somewhere.
2. Cause data catastrophe: rm -rf
3. Cry to boss, "Oh no! Critical hardware failure! Your pictures..err..data is lost sir! CVS codebase gone!"
4. Mess up your hair, throw water on your face looking like madly trying to recover the data.
5. Wait until everyone panics, and starts running around like mad! And you hear screams, "Oh no! My new algorithm I worked since yesterday...all gone!"
6. While everyone is in a state of frenzy, restore all data.
7. Boss will be very,very happy.
8. Ask for raise the next day for your superior risk-analysis and data-recovery skills.
9. Repeat 1-7 twice a year, and you'll recieve a bonus too!
KDE.org loves misspelling with K too...do you think...? Nah, KDE team couldn't be funded by this store...or could it? No! no!
Here in Canada we have people advertising in the Computer Paper(major canada-wide computer newspaper) to willing to install PS/PS2 modchips for $40 bucks canadian.
I've seen them advertising a year ago, and they still advertise today. Hell if selling modchips was 'really' illegal, the posters of those adverts should go to jail first.
Therefore, I don't really think the guy in the article went to jail because of modchipping. The sucker was fined and jailed because he actually made a PROFIT from selling pirating games(which btw, is clearly illegal)!
We may never see Mozilla 2.0.
Or GNU Hurd...
Stallman, time to change that logo!
Manpages are the last place I would go for documentation, they are next to worthless
Worthless? Hardly. They give you the precise specs on any piece of info you need; typical for some function calls in the exec family or some obscure function you rarely use.
Now if you want to learn something new, for example, how to code in X Windows using motif, then yes its not good for that purpose. However when you have a general idea of how everything works, but just need the full reference information...nothing beats man pages.
Nuff said.
If you happen to want a full-fledged high-quality IDE and an amazing documentation browser along with it, you'll need to dish out a few dollars for Visual Studio.NET
Pfft. Personally I hate Microsoft's doc browser. Sure it has a LOT of information spanning googles of CDs and MSDN web content. Plus they have a bucket load of tutorials, examples, etc.
But it is not an amazing documentation browser. *NIX OSs already have the perfect doc browser: man pages. You can swiftly search to grab full reference info on some function. All without lifting your hand off the keyboard. I love the standard of man pages too; they give the FULL specs on almost every command, function, file format, , etc. Yes I do agree that man pages are not wonderful for learning new stuff though.
Going back to why I hate Microsoft's method: its just too damn slow to look-up reference information. You need to click click click click, type your search, then click click click click click click. Up pops a window, where then you need to click click click to pick the relevant topic. It's really bad for looking-up reference information, as it takes too much time to find specific info on some function/command/etc. When you finally find the reference info you need, I find it is not as complete as a typical full-fledged man page. Meaning, you need to read a couple of knowledge base articles too. So I wouldn't call it an amazing doc browser, but rather an amazing repository of information.
Still, nothing can beat the beauty of man pages: elegant, simple, and fast. Don't believe me? Run "man X" to see what I mean.
Actually cash-deprived college souls would pirate rather than shelling hundreds "educational-version" of Apps.
Sorry, but its true. Its either $0 or $500 for a Microsoft App like Office. In most other markets, companies are smart enough to know to introduce multiple product lines of varying prices. For example, Nvidia sells their Geforce4 at different price points from their 4600,4400,4200, G4Mx, etc. Games can run on any of those cards; number of features depends on how much the customer is willing to spend.
Why couldn't software be like that? I mean wouldn't you love to use a strip-down version of MS Word without all the insane,stupid, features you never use, but it still saves in a Word-compatible format? This way a strapped college student can take their word-compatible file and print it from a full featured version of Word at college, saving money on software(and a printer)!
Actually my brother works at Turbo Labs too. He worked on High Availability project for Linux...which he said never really raked in profits for TL(didn't have the 5 nines nor sold hardware with it).
Also many of the projects are being cancelled due to some murky waters at the corporation. My brother recieved his last paycheck--but only half of it. He's still waiting for the other half to come through.
It says it all.
As I game player since my wee little ages, I think you hit the mark. I find that when I come home from work, playing games just 'soothes' me. Even though it occupies a fixed chunk of my time, as I need to learn other stuff(Unix).
However there is one problem in your analysis: you assume all type of games will cause an avid gamer to relax. I can tell you that this is not always the case, as it depends on the game. Personally for me, a game like System Shock 2 or Aliens vs. Predators 2 does NOT relax me. Primarily because you have to be very alert of your surroundings within the game. For example is AVP2, you are creeping in the dark with faint alien murmors, and suddenly a fuckin' alien drops out of no where. Or in System Shock 2 where everything is so hush hush that out of no where(respawn system) a mutant-humaniod comes running right at you.
I guess you could say both of these games have a creepy/horror environment, where you need to be on your toes, alert, and get an adrenaline rush when enemies pop out of no where. It leaves me tense and not relaxed. On the other hand when I play a game like Grand Theft Auto 3 or Soldier of Fortune2(I love the satisfaction of unloading my shotgun onto an enemy...only those who have played it can understand what I mean), they don't keep me tense(environment is different) and don't throw constant suprises every 60 seconds.
Of course that doesn't mean such games arent fun; they are great to play when you are NOT looking to relax but rather are killing time.
Would you like your Pentium in Original or Extra Crispy?
I'd prefer Cajun style. Oh btw, can you put some Artic thermal compound on the side topped with a crispy fan?
Thanks, and what is my total?
If someone could use Windows XP's "Remote Desktop" where the remote desktop protocol is mapped to the x-protocol.
Then all users would have to do is double-click here 'n there to get into their fav. Unix/Linux box.
Wouldn't M$ just love that?