You might use the search more if it were useful. I'm running Linux (so I don't use Windows search much either), but I use the "slocate" command to search a database for file names all the time. When I want to know if I even have the file I'm looking for it's much easier to to an instant search than it would be to look in all the likely places.
Mod parent up; not troll: there's a damn good reason that Apple won't license their DRM to anyone. Apple understands how to lock people in to their product line.
Then maybe these people should get their resident gurus to install Linux. Then they can just let it run without all the "routine maintenance" that Windows users put up with.
You should be able to find a similar utility for Linux. I use dmenu to launch my programs. It doesn't do everything Slickrun does (intentionally), but my setup does mean that I don't need to manually add shortcuts for every program on the system. I know there are more powerful Linux apps too, even though I don't know their names off the top of my head.
What I can't understand is why they chose to make people hold the caps lock key while typing commands. I'm familiar with Jef Raskin's belief in the superiority of non-modal interfaces, but I think that forcing people to make hand-crippling motions over and over is worse than entering "command mode" for a few seconds before you press enter. A foot pedal I could get behind, or possibly thumb-activated buttons, but people need their pinky fingers for typing. A palm-activated press-bar would even be okay (with the added benefit of discouraging poor typing posture, since you couldn't bend your wrists down to the desk).
They couldn't very well ship hardware to each person who buys their $25 program, but it might be viable to sell a special toggle for a few dollars more and bundle the software (which doesn't strike me as a great engineering feat) with it.
Firefox is terrible about this, but you might want to check whether your window manager has a stricter focus stealing policy you could select. Fvwm could probably give Firefox its own focus policy.
More like xbindkeys + dmenu with a few fancy scripts. Come to think of it, this wouldn't be too hard to replicate without writing a bunch of fancy software on your own. Dmenu can easily be used to launch programs (I've bound my menu key to run it with a list of all programs in my path). It would be easy to write a script to pass the current primary selection to aspell and pop up some alternatives. A little trickier would be switching to a window based on its name, but I'm not especially eager to have that one. It's probably quicker to move to the proper desktop and point at it.
That's why there are two shift keys. Those of us not eagerly awaiting injuries alternate between them rather than keeping our pinky on one and stretching.
Re:Switching XP - Amiga
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 2, Informative
Under Linux you can tune this with/proc/sys/vm/swappiness. Set it to a lower value and you shouldn't see much swapping. This may or may not improve your overall performance, but it should at least make the system feel more responsive.
But no games would work without driver support for OpenGL/DirectX, you mean. If the chips can handle rendering duties, then they can presumably render something like the average card's output as well.
Intel isn't that bad. A 915 plays Halo fine, and it *is* a budget chip. Point taken, Intel chips don't do what the brawnier ones do, but I don't think Intel has demonstrated incompetence in the field yet.
"Is it because I grew up using this thing and have learnt to live with it's quirks and whims that I've become desensitized to its treatment of me?"
I'm going to go with yes. All the major OSes have their own WTFs, but Windows takes the cake in my opinion. It's the only one that makes moment-to-moment tasks difficult (mostly by being extremely slow to start programs and switch between them and by not offering basic window management features -- in other OSes you don't switch between programs so much as you use another one for a while). OS X is second for its mind-bogglingly bad window management operations, and Linux third for its hairy "easy if you already know how" configuration.
Yes! Jack is the way to go if you're looking to do any audio work in Linux. As a bonus, it's an amazing system by any measure. It will let you pipe audio between programs however you like with a "virtual patch bay".
Parent has given you about the best answer you could get. Seq24 is a neat little program if you're just looking to set up some MIDI loops to play with. Csound and CLM (Common Lisp Music) are worth a look if you'd like to do things programmatically. Also Pure Data, which does much the same thing graphically.
As if that changes anything -- the record companies may also want it, but one of Apple's reasons for using it is clearly to limit people to using their hardware. If it weren't at all for that, then why would they do it, smartypants?
"And the music store only has DRM at the insistence of the record labels."
I don't believe that for a minute. My guess is that Fairplay is at least as much about keeping people using iPods as it is about preventing copyright infringement. If it weren't then Apple would have licensed it. More people buying from iTMS is a good thing, right? Not if you're more worried about selling your mp3 players than the music.
Re:Implementations (lack of)
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
CLISP? And Emacs has mouse support. You may have to make it work the way you want, but you probably would have had to do that anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You might use the search more if it were useful. I'm running Linux (so I don't use Windows search much either), but I use the "slocate" command to search a database for file names all the time. When I want to know if I even have the file I'm looking for it's much easier to to an instant search than it would be to look in all the likely places.
It's a good thing the researchers thought of and dealt with this obvious ambiguity.
Bah. Everyone knows that a true game doesn't have an ending: it just gets harder. I don't see what everyone is complaining about.
Mod parent up; not troll: there's a damn good reason that Apple won't license their DRM to anyone. Apple understands how to lock people in to their product line.
Then maybe these people should get their resident gurus to install Linux. Then they can just let it run without all the "routine maintenance" that Windows users put up with.
More likely the Linux driver simply works properly. I have hardware that works perfectly in Linux yet crashed windows regularly myself.
They're pretty clear:
"A symbolic link (also known as a soft link) may point to an existing file or to a nonexistent one; the latter case is known as a dangling link."
Why in the world didn't they make short presses respond as normal, and only repurpose the hold action?
You should be able to find a similar utility for Linux. I use dmenu to launch my programs. It doesn't do everything Slickrun does (intentionally), but my setup does mean that I don't need to manually add shortcuts for every program on the system. I know there are more powerful Linux apps too, even though I don't know their names off the top of my head.
That makes sense. Suffer unpleasantness all the time so that you just become blinded to it.
What I can't understand is why they chose to make people hold the caps lock key while typing commands. I'm familiar with Jef Raskin's belief in the superiority of non-modal interfaces, but I think that forcing people to make hand-crippling motions over and over is worse than entering "command mode" for a few seconds before you press enter. A foot pedal I could get behind, or possibly thumb-activated buttons, but people need their pinky fingers for typing. A palm-activated press-bar would even be okay (with the added benefit of discouraging poor typing posture, since you couldn't bend your wrists down to the desk).
They couldn't very well ship hardware to each person who buys their $25 program, but it might be viable to sell a special toggle for a few dollars more and bundle the software (which doesn't strike me as a great engineering feat) with it.
Firefox is terrible about this, but you might want to check whether your window manager has a stricter focus stealing policy you could select. Fvwm could probably give Firefox its own focus policy.
More like xbindkeys + dmenu with a few fancy scripts. Come to think of it, this wouldn't be too hard to replicate without writing a bunch of fancy software on your own. Dmenu can easily be used to launch programs (I've bound my menu key to run it with a list of all programs in my path). It would be easy to write a script to pass the current primary selection to aspell and pop up some alternatives. A little trickier would be switching to a window based on its name, but I'm not especially eager to have that one. It's probably quicker to move to the proper desktop and point at it.
That's why there are two shift keys. Those of us not eagerly awaiting injuries alternate between them rather than keeping our pinky on one and stretching.
Under Linux you can tune this with /proc/sys/vm/swappiness. Set it to a lower value and you shouldn't see much swapping. This may or may not improve your overall performance, but it should at least make the system feel more responsive.
But no games would work without driver support for OpenGL/DirectX, you mean. If the chips can handle rendering duties, then they can presumably render something like the average card's output as well.
Intel isn't that bad. A 915 plays Halo fine, and it *is* a budget chip. Point taken, Intel chips don't do what the brawnier ones do, but I don't think Intel has demonstrated incompetence in the field yet.
"Is it because I grew up using this thing and have learnt to live with it's quirks and whims that I've become desensitized to its treatment of me?"
I'm going to go with yes. All the major OSes have their own WTFs, but Windows takes the cake in my opinion. It's the only one that makes moment-to-moment tasks difficult (mostly by being extremely slow to start programs and switch between them and by not offering basic window management features -- in other OSes you don't switch between programs so much as you use another one for a while). OS X is second for its mind-bogglingly bad window management operations, and Linux third for its hairy "easy if you already know how" configuration.
Yes! Jack is the way to go if you're looking to do any audio work in Linux. As a bonus, it's an amazing system by any measure. It will let you pipe audio between programs however you like with a "virtual patch bay".
Parent has given you about the best answer you could get. Seq24 is a neat little program if you're just looking to set up some MIDI loops to play with. Csound and CLM (Common Lisp Music) are worth a look if you'd like to do things programmatically. Also Pure Data, which does much the same thing graphically.
Commander Keen! Thief!
All in all, this is a good list. Hits some of my favorites like Descent and Fallout.
As if that changes anything -- the record companies may also want it, but one of Apple's reasons for using it is clearly to limit people to using their hardware. If it weren't at all for that, then why would they do it, smartypants?
"And the music store only has DRM at the insistence of the record labels."
I don't believe that for a minute. My guess is that Fairplay is at least as much about keeping people using iPods as it is about preventing copyright infringement. If it weren't then Apple would have licensed it. More people buying from iTMS is a good thing, right? Not if you're more worried about selling your mp3 players than the music.
CLISP? And Emacs has mouse support. You may have to make it work the way you want, but you probably would have had to do that anyway.
Yeah, that's an awful big chance you're taking. Think what you could do if you just had those two hours and few dollars to spend on something else.