No, there's nothing further to be learned until it is actually being shipped. After all, Apple could change it at their discretion before shipping it. Thus, any descriptions we get of it before it ships have an inherently high potential for inaccuracy. Now that there's a concrete shipping date, reviews would be a bit more useful, but until the final version has been released to reviewers, there's still the possibility it will be altered significantly.
I was being rather obviously sarcastic since you evidently had not looked very hard for information on it. It seemed that you had not done anything remotely resembling an actual search of Apple's site. That page that I linked to answers any and all questions I have ever had about VoiceOver that can't wait until it's out, and the ones you linked to are almost a year old now. I wasn't trying to be helpful, but instead to point out that there's some much newer information on Apple's site than that at the link you gave.
And really, no. There isn't a point in discussing them further until the final product is shipping and we know what it will actually do. I don't care about what it does in a "developer preview", and that's what the story was talking about. It has the same build number as the rumored GM, but that doesn't mean much, since there's still no official word on whether that really is the final build or not. Thus, there's no new information. Once someone has reviewed an actual copy of 10.4.0, I can see more discussion being useful, but before that, it's just speculation on our part based on the information Apple has officially released.
Furthermore, when you pay Apple that $130, you're getting a full install disk set, not just an upgrade. And when you consider that a full OS install disk of Windows NT 5.1 Pro costs $300, Apple's "tax" suddenly seems a lot cheaper.
Part of the problem with that argument is that if a virus writer was able to make a Mac virus to turn the infected machine into a bot, he would have completely uncontested control of every single Mac he could infect. As such, it really is worth the time and effort to do things like this. Current botnets can change control pretty rapidly, so a large botnet that nobody else knows how to take away from you is a very valuable resource.
Keep in mind that current botnets tend to number around 50,000. Imagine if someone figured out a way to infect just half of the Macs that are out there. For simplicity, let's say there are 100 million computers in the US. Apple supposedly has something like 2% marketshare, so that's 2 million computers. Infect half of those and you have a botnet of a million computers, all to yourself until someone else figures out how to infect them with his own virus and take them.
With regards to testing for whether we are embedded in a higher-order universe, it's impossible. See Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Essentially, it says that one cannot prove inconsistency in a set of axioms while working entirely within those axioms. Thus, while working inside our universe, we cannot possible prove that we are embedded in more complex space. I remember participating in a discussion a while ago on whether all that we perceive as reality could just be a computer simulation. The argument I used was that we could be in a more complex universe with machines of some sort powerful enough to simulate all that we perceive. Also, it isn't necessary that one second here correlate to one second outside the machine.
Anyway, as I stated earlier, there's no way to test whether we are in a subset of a more complex universe unless we are somehow able to interact with the more complex universe. Anything less would simply be perceived as a natural law here.
No, you won't have to buy an OS upgrade to keep using your old music.
iTunes 4.2 can and will still play FairPlay v1 protected tracks. So all you'll ever need to play your v1 encoded music is iTunes 4.2. Period. Of course, once FairPlay v2 was devised, they started selling songs using that instead of v1, but your v1 songs haven't changed at all.
As a matter of fact, there's no way to update songs from v1 to v2 without repurchasing them.
Thus, your FairPlay v1 songs purchased before the store updated to v2 will always work on any platform that can play v1. Your v2 songs will always work on any iTunes that supports that encoding, which (as far as I know) is 4.5 and now 4.7.
I don't think iTunes 4.2 supports FairPlay v2, but it might. Anyone know for sure?
The event horizon is relative. As you are falling into the black hole, it appears to get smaller. To a stationary observer, the radius of the event horizon remains constant, so to me standing here, you could slip beneath it, but to you falling in, you could never touch it. It has to do with the curvature of space-time in close proximity to a large mass.
Now, the Schwartzchild Radius is constant for a given mass, so it doesn't change, but apparently information can escape from inside it if given enough time.
My official Yahoo! client doesn't have any ads at all. As such, they aren't losing any advertising revenue from me using a 3rd party client. All they're doing is confusing me because last night when I tried to connect, it rejected my login.
Really, I've never had ads when using their official client. There isn't even a little space for them to show up. Do most people see ads or are we just assuming that that's the reason they're doing this?
Hah. A little while ago, I installed Microsoft's SQL server just to see how quickly I would get infected by Slammer. What can I say, I'm a curious guy. Plus I was planning on reformatting the box anyway. With my software firewall enabled (and set to warn me about any traffic), I signed on over my dialup and within five seconds, I had a warning that the SQL server was sending out packets to somewhere.
Five. Seconds.
On dialup.
I've never been infected on a clean install of Windows xp in that short a time, but that's because I've got all the updates on a CD I refresh each month, I've got a good hardware and software firewall, and I've got an up-to-date virus scanner (again, updates are burned to CD every month).
Wait a second. If they're flush with the roadway, then how do they plan to take photos of speeders' license plates? I mean, isn't that
(A) an impossible angle and (B) a very thick, slanted lens relative to the camera?
That would mean making the actual optics in the cameras much more complex to compensate, not to mention the fact that with a snowplow scraping over them, the exterior surface will be in no shape to act as a lens at all. These things would be way too expensive to be viable anywhere.
I use an Apple Newton 2100. The screen is a nice 320*480 pixels at 100 DPI, so that's 3.2" by 4.8" or 5.8" diagonal. Certainly large enough to read eBooks and such. It's got a nice anti-glare coating, only uses around 4 mA to keep the screen static, and mine's backlight is quite bright (though some of them are dimmer). The memory is a bit lacking (only 4 MB of storage), but it can use Compact Flash cards, WiFi, Bluetooth (still a work in progress), and best of all, it's got full screen handwriting recognition that actually works. Mine lasts around 15 hours of use on a charge and I've heard of people getting nearly 36.
Since I program on mine, I use a keyboard most of the time, but for real words, the HWR is fantastic. The device itself is a bit large, but you said you don't care much about size.
For more info, my E-mail is in the comment header.
OS 6 to 7 marked the change of most of the OS's source from 68k ASM to C. Version 8 was when they switched from 68k to PPC. 8.5 introduced HFS+. Version 9 introduced Carbon, and 10 has Cocoa and other Frameworks. All of these changes were under-the-hood, but they enabled revolutionary changes once programmers started to use them well.
The OS got a facelift in 7 (I think), 8 (Platinum), and 10 (Aqua and now whatever they call the brushed-metal). I'm too young to remember before OS 6, but I remember that it looked slightly different from 7.
If I'm wrong here, someone correct me. If I'm right, please confirm it.
Well, you can use the snap-back feature, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? It's the little arrow to the right of the currently playing song's information. Note, I'm talking about the arrow to the right, not the triangle to the left.
Clicking it switches to the current playlist and selects the current song.
Re:Also try Learning Cocoa, an updated NeXT book
on
Cocoa in a Nutshell
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I would think that people entirely new to Objective-C and Cocoa would be best served by Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X, which was written by Aaron Hillegass. Hillegass worked at NeXT back when Cocoa was still called OpenStep and he went to Apple when they bought NeXT to teach the Apple developers about it. He wrote the first course on OpenStep programming and he's the founder of Big Nerd Ranch, arguably the best place for Cocoa classes.
It's a very good book. In it, he goes through everything from building a basic console app through building a simple editor for SGML.
Earlier versions of MacOS are very much MDI. They just aren't Microsoft MDI. Microsoft made the decision to use container windows for the official Windows MDI whereas Apple opted to use a sort of transparent sheet MDI.
Each app has its own plane that contains all of its windows. For instance, all of the Finder windows are on the Finder plane. It's kind of odd to click on a single Finder window and have them all zip to the top, but it can also be useful.
It's been a long time since I've been able to use OSX, so I honestly don't remember whether it works the same way, but I know that the "Classic" versions of MacOS used a type of MDI.
My battery works just fine. However, it seems that iPod firmware 1.3 has broken my contrast. I have to turn it all the way up to see anything under the best of lighting conditions. When I turn the backlight on, the contrast inverts or something, such that it's only usable with the contrast all the way down. I know that my screen isn't broken because after reflashing to 1.2.6 and rebooting about a dozen times, it booted with normal contrast. However, the next time I rebooted it, the contrast problem was back. Perhaps a loose connection, but when I opened my iPod, everything seemed fine. Got it for Christmas over a year ago, so no warranty for me (I was 3 days out of warranty when I first called it in), but this problem didn't start until after I put firmware 1.3 on it.
Anyone else have this problem? I heard from a bunch of 3G iPod owners that the latest firmware for them does something similar.
Anyway, although I don't have any problems with my iPod battery, I can't honestly recomend Apple's products to people anymore. If this issue isn't fixed, I'm going to have to tell people not to buy Apple hardware because they'll be left out in the cold when Apple breaks it with an update.
To answer those questions, you have to first understand what it is that a black hole is. It isn't some magical thing that eats whatever it touches. It doesn't have infinitely strong gravity.
It's just a normal piece of matter like any other. The only difference is that a black hole is dense enough that it can catch light.
Now, as you approach a black hole, time dialation increases and the apparent event horizon of the black hole decreases. Once you hit the Schwarzchild Radius, there is no escape because there's an infinite red shift on anything moving outwards. However, for you, time would still be passing.
Black holes cause gravitational distortions sort of like shear forces on a bolt. These shear forces can break matter apart quite effectively. If the black hole is small (like a thin metal plate pushing on the bolt), then it might tear a hole in the matter. If the black hole is big (like a REALLY THICK metal plate), it will still eventually tear you apart, but much more regularly. Really, that second case is analogous to pushing a bolt into a block of metal sideways. The force is fairly even all over the bolt.
Another problem with the time dialation is that a small enough black hole (with an event horizon say, the size of a pea) would cause things to age differently. Put it near a plate of steel and the steel closest to it would age significantly more slowly than the steel at the edge of the plate.
To answer your first question, if a black hole was coming to devour us, it would take quite a while as percieved by us, the devoured. The second question is quite different. We would certainly be able to notice a black hole coming to devour us. X-Rays would probably be the best indicator, since black holes are quite powerful X-Ray sources.
And last, the third question. I don't really know. With a planet-sized or smaller black hole, I would expect the Earth to tear itself apart as the rotational inertia of the side away from the black hole would cause great internal stresses on the Earth. With a large enough black hole, it probably wouldn't be too noticible at all for quite a while. Again, internal stresses would eventually break the Earth apart. However, that would have to be one FREAKISHLY huge black hole. We're talking larger than most stars, here. If the black hole is tiny, it would rip a hole through things, but the Earth might remain intact. It all depends on mass.
Actually, they changed that. Now, he radiates a small field that protects anything within about two millimeters of his skin. I forget when they changed it, but I do remember reading that his costume was made from the cloth from Krypton. However, this raises the question, how could it be cut and tailored? If it's immune to bullets, then one would expect it to resist being cut quite well.
That's nothing. I installed MS Desktop SQL Server (comes with Visual Studio) on my machine, explicitly denied it access to the Internet, explicitly denied access to it from the Internet (both in my software firewall), and it was infected with Slammer within 15 seconds of connecting over dialup. I'm dead serious. I guess that something could have deactivated my firewall, but it claimed that it was up.
Re:Is Apple or Microsoft forcing HP to do this?
on
No WMA for HP iPod
·
· Score: 1
So, you're saying that Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers. Isn't that a bit like saying that Cisco has a monopoly on Cisco routers? There are a ton of other companies that make routers, but you can't very well load Cisco firmware into another brand and expect it to work right away. Therefore, Cisco is a monopoly!
You can buy PPC computers from several other vendors, though the vast majority of PPC based computers are marketed as servers.
I was homeschooled for my fourth, fifth, and sixth grades and I have to tell you that when I returned to public school in seventh, it was absolute hell. I wouldn't inflict that on anyone. And when I say it was hell, I mean it. If we all make our own personal hell, mine would be living through the seventh grade again.
If you're going to homeschool your child, be ABSOLUTELY SURE that he has some friends in his grade before putting him back in public school. My parents didn't and I had a grand total of one real friend in seventh and eigth grades. When he found out what religion I am, he never stopped trying to convert me, so that was esentially being declared not good enough for my only friend. Even now in college, I have a very hard time making friends. Those aren't necesarily related, but I think that they are.
On the other hand, I learned FAR more than my classmates in those three years. That probably had something to do with why I had such a horible time, what, with being so far ahead of the rest of my class that I could have passed the final on the first day.
This isn't meant to say that homeschool is awful. This is just meant to give you a firsthand account of homeschooling.
It's only possible to have a lossy transfer, not format.
The transfer from 24kbit/96kHz to 16kbit/44.1kHz is lossy. The transfer from analog to digital is lossy (unless you have such high resolution digital that you're measuring the motions of individual atoms). The transfer of 16kbit/44.1kHz CD Audio to 16kbit/44.1kHz MP3 is lossy. However, in theory, transfer from one MP3 to another of exactly the same bitrate is lossless as long as you do it right.
No format is either lossy or lossless (unless the file decays each time you play it), only the transfer into the format can have loss.
The compression can be described as lossy, meaning that it throws away some data in order to get better compression, however, the compression being lossy does not make the format lossy. The correct way to say what you seem to be trying to say would be "MP3 uses lossy compression, whereas CD Audio does not, therefore, MP3 is lossy on two levels as opposed to CDA being lossy on one".
I'm not entirely sure about the legal status of that second link when you're inside the US. If it's illegal for you to view it, then don't go there. It was also distributed in PDF form with Mandrake Linux for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
No, there's nothing further to be learned until it is actually being shipped. After all, Apple could change it at their discretion before shipping it. Thus, any descriptions we get of it before it ships have an inherently high potential for inaccuracy. Now that there's a concrete shipping date, reviews would be a bit more useful, but until the final version has been released to reviewers, there's still the possibility it will be altered significantly.
I was being rather obviously sarcastic since you evidently had not looked very hard for information on it. It seemed that you had not done anything remotely resembling an actual search of Apple's site. That page that I linked to answers any and all questions I have ever had about VoiceOver that can't wait until it's out, and the ones you linked to are almost a year old now. I wasn't trying to be helpful, but instead to point out that there's some much newer information on Apple's site than that at the link you gave.
And really, no. There isn't a point in discussing them further until the final product is shipping and we know what it will actually do. I don't care about what it does in a "developer preview", and that's what the story was talking about. It has the same build number as the rumored GM, but that doesn't mean much, since there's still no official word on whether that really is the final build or not. Thus, there's no new information. Once someone has reviewed an actual copy of 10.4.0, I can see more discussion being useful, but before that, it's just speculation on our part based on the information Apple has officially released.
Do you mean VoiceOver, perhaps? You know, the one with the video demonstrating it in use? I guess I don't see what else there is to ask.
Furthermore, when you pay Apple that $130, you're getting a full install disk set, not just an upgrade. And when you consider that a full OS install disk of Windows NT 5.1 Pro costs $300, Apple's "tax" suddenly seems a lot cheaper.
Part of the problem with that argument is that if a virus writer was able to make a Mac virus to turn the infected machine into a bot, he would have completely uncontested control of every single Mac he could infect. As such, it really is worth the time and effort to do things like this. Current botnets can change control pretty rapidly, so a large botnet that nobody else knows how to take away from you is a very valuable resource.
Keep in mind that current botnets tend to number around 50,000. Imagine if someone figured out a way to infect just half of the Macs that are out there. For simplicity, let's say there are 100 million computers in the US. Apple supposedly has something like 2% marketshare, so that's 2 million computers. Infect half of those and you have a botnet of a million computers, all to yourself until someone else figures out how to infect them with his own virus and take them.
Before update:After update:I haven't rebooted yet, so I don't know what that'll change, but already, it's changed from version 1.4.2_05-141.3 to 141.4
Presumably, every 1.4.2_05-141.3 install can be updated with this, so just run to see if it should apply and Software Update just isn't seeing it.
With regards to testing for whether we are embedded in a higher-order universe, it's impossible. See Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Essentially, it says that one cannot prove inconsistency in a set of axioms while working entirely within those axioms. Thus, while working inside our universe, we cannot possible prove that we are embedded in more complex space. I remember participating in a discussion a while ago on whether all that we perceive as reality could just be a computer simulation. The argument I used was that we could be in a more complex universe with machines of some sort powerful enough to simulate all that we perceive. Also, it isn't necessary that one second here correlate to one second outside the machine.
Anyway, as I stated earlier, there's no way to test whether we are in a subset of a more complex universe unless we are somehow able to interact with the more complex universe. Anything less would simply be perceived as a natural law here.
No, you won't have to buy an OS upgrade to keep using your old music.
iTunes 4.2 can and will still play FairPlay v1 protected tracks. So all you'll ever need to play your v1 encoded music is iTunes 4.2. Period. Of course, once FairPlay v2 was devised, they started selling songs using that instead of v1, but your v1 songs haven't changed at all.
As a matter of fact, there's no way to update songs from v1 to v2 without repurchasing them.
Thus, your FairPlay v1 songs purchased before the store updated to v2 will always work on any platform that can play v1. Your v2 songs will always work on any iTunes that supports that encoding, which (as far as I know) is 4.5 and now 4.7.
I don't think iTunes 4.2 supports FairPlay v2, but it might. Anyone know for sure?
The event horizon is relative. As you are falling into the black hole, it appears to get smaller. To a stationary observer, the radius of the event horizon remains constant, so to me standing here, you could slip beneath it, but to you falling in, you could never touch it. It has to do with the curvature of space-time in close proximity to a large mass.
Now, the Schwartzchild Radius is constant for a given mass, so it doesn't change, but apparently information can escape from inside it if given enough time.
My official Yahoo! client doesn't have any ads at all. As such, they aren't losing any advertising revenue from me using a 3rd party client. All they're doing is confusing me because last night when I tried to connect, it rejected my login.
Really, I've never had ads when using their official client. There isn't even a little space for them to show up. Do most people see ads or are we just assuming that that's the reason they're doing this?
Hah. A little while ago, I installed Microsoft's SQL server just to see how quickly I would get infected by Slammer. What can I say, I'm a curious guy. Plus I was planning on reformatting the box anyway. With my software firewall enabled (and set to warn me about any traffic), I signed on over my dialup and within five seconds, I had a warning that the SQL server was sending out packets to somewhere.
Five. Seconds.
On dialup.
I've never been infected on a clean install of Windows xp in that short a time, but that's because I've got all the updates on a CD I refresh each month, I've got a good hardware and software firewall, and I've got an up-to-date virus scanner (again, updates are burned to CD every month).
Wait a second. If they're flush with the roadway, then how do they plan to take photos of speeders' license plates? I mean, isn't that
(A) an impossible angle and
(B) a very thick, slanted lens relative to the camera?
That would mean making the actual optics in the cameras much more complex to compensate, not to mention the fact that with a snowplow scraping over them, the exterior surface will be in no shape to act as a lens at all. These things would be way too expensive to be viable anywhere.
I use an Apple Newton 2100. The screen is a nice 320*480 pixels at 100 DPI, so that's 3.2" by 4.8" or 5.8" diagonal. Certainly large enough to read eBooks and such. It's got a nice anti-glare coating, only uses around 4 mA to keep the screen static, and mine's backlight is quite bright (though some of them are dimmer). The memory is a bit lacking (only 4 MB of storage), but it can use Compact Flash cards, WiFi, Bluetooth (still a work in progress), and best of all, it's got full screen handwriting recognition that actually works. Mine lasts around 15 hours of use on a charge and I've heard of people getting nearly 36.
Since I program on mine, I use a keyboard most of the time, but for real words, the HWR is fantastic. The device itself is a bit large, but you said you don't care much about size.
For more info, my E-mail is in the comment header.
OS 6 to 7 marked the change of most of the OS's source from 68k ASM to C. Version 8 was when they switched from 68k to PPC. 8.5 introduced HFS+. Version 9 introduced Carbon, and 10 has Cocoa and other Frameworks. All of these changes were under-the-hood, but they enabled revolutionary changes once programmers started to use them well.
The OS got a facelift in 7 (I think), 8 (Platinum), and 10 (Aqua and now whatever they call the brushed-metal). I'm too young to remember before OS 6, but I remember that it looked slightly different from 7.
If I'm wrong here, someone correct me. If I'm right, please confirm it.
Well, you can use the snap-back feature, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? It's the little arrow to the right of the currently playing song's information. Note, I'm talking about the arrow to the right, not the triangle to the left.
Clicking it switches to the current playlist and selects the current song.
I would think that people entirely new to Objective-C and Cocoa would be best served by Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X, which was written by Aaron Hillegass. Hillegass worked at NeXT back when Cocoa was still called OpenStep and he went to Apple when they bought NeXT to teach the Apple developers about it. He wrote the first course on OpenStep programming and he's the founder of Big Nerd Ranch, arguably the best place for Cocoa classes.
It's a very good book. In it, he goes through everything from building a basic console app through building a simple editor for SGML.
Earlier versions of MacOS are very much MDI. They just aren't Microsoft MDI. Microsoft made the decision to use container windows for the official Windows MDI whereas Apple opted to use a sort of transparent sheet MDI.
Each app has its own plane that contains all of its windows. For instance, all of the Finder windows are on the Finder plane. It's kind of odd to click on a single Finder window and have them all zip to the top, but it can also be useful.
It's been a long time since I've been able to use OSX, so I honestly don't remember whether it works the same way, but I know that the "Classic" versions of MacOS used a type of MDI.
My battery works just fine. However, it seems that iPod firmware 1.3 has broken my contrast. I have to turn it all the way up to see anything under the best of lighting conditions. When I turn the backlight on, the contrast inverts or something, such that it's only usable with the contrast all the way down. I know that my screen isn't broken because after reflashing to 1.2.6 and rebooting about a dozen times, it booted with normal contrast. However, the next time I rebooted it, the contrast problem was back. Perhaps a loose connection, but when I opened my iPod, everything seemed fine. Got it for Christmas over a year ago, so no warranty for me (I was 3 days out of warranty when I first called it in), but this problem didn't start until after I put firmware 1.3 on it.
Anyone else have this problem? I heard from a bunch of 3G iPod owners that the latest firmware for them does something similar.
Anyway, although I don't have any problems with my iPod battery, I can't honestly recomend Apple's products to people anymore. If this issue isn't fixed, I'm going to have to tell people not to buy Apple hardware because they'll be left out in the cold when Apple breaks it with an update.
To answer those questions, you have to first understand what it is that a black hole is. It isn't some magical thing that eats whatever it touches. It doesn't have infinitely strong gravity.
It's just a normal piece of matter like any other. The only difference is that a black hole is dense enough that it can catch light.
Now, as you approach a black hole, time dialation increases and the apparent event horizon of the black hole decreases. Once you hit the Schwarzchild Radius, there is no escape because there's an infinite red shift on anything moving outwards. However, for you, time would still be passing.
Black holes cause gravitational distortions sort of like shear forces on a bolt. These shear forces can break matter apart quite effectively. If the black hole is small (like a thin metal plate pushing on the bolt), then it might tear a hole in the matter. If the black hole is big (like a REALLY THICK metal plate), it will still eventually tear you apart, but much more regularly. Really, that second case is analogous to pushing a bolt into a block of metal sideways. The force is fairly even all over the bolt.
Another problem with the time dialation is that a small enough black hole (with an event horizon say, the size of a pea) would cause things to age differently. Put it near a plate of steel and the steel closest to it would age significantly more slowly than the steel at the edge of the plate.
To answer your first question, if a black hole was coming to devour us, it would take quite a while as percieved by us, the devoured. The second question is quite different. We would certainly be able to notice a black hole coming to devour us. X-Rays would probably be the best indicator, since black holes are quite powerful X-Ray sources.
And last, the third question. I don't really know. With a planet-sized or smaller black hole, I would expect the Earth to tear itself apart as the rotational inertia of the side away from the black hole would cause great internal stresses on the Earth. With a large enough black hole, it probably wouldn't be too noticible at all for quite a while. Again, internal stresses would eventually break the Earth apart. However, that would have to be one FREAKISHLY huge black hole. We're talking larger than most stars, here. If the black hole is tiny, it would rip a hole through things, but the Earth might remain intact. It all depends on mass.
If I'm wrong here, somebody please correct me.
Actually, they changed that. Now, he radiates a small field that protects anything within about two millimeters of his skin. I forget when they changed it, but I do remember reading that his costume was made from the cloth from Krypton. However, this raises the question, how could it be cut and tailored? If it's immune to bullets, then one would expect it to resist being cut quite well.
That's nothing. I installed MS Desktop SQL Server (comes with Visual Studio) on my machine, explicitly denied it access to the Internet, explicitly denied access to it from the Internet (both in my software firewall), and it was infected with Slammer within 15 seconds of connecting over dialup. I'm dead serious. I guess that something could have deactivated my firewall, but it claimed that it was up.
So, you're saying that Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers. Isn't that a bit like saying that Cisco has a monopoly on Cisco routers? There are a ton of other companies that make routers, but you can't very well load Cisco firmware into another brand and expect it to work right away. Therefore, Cisco is a monopoly!
You can buy PPC computers from several other vendors, though the vast majority of PPC based computers are marketed as servers.
I was homeschooled for my fourth, fifth, and sixth grades and I have to tell you that when I returned to public school in seventh, it was absolute hell. I wouldn't inflict that on anyone. And when I say it was hell, I mean it. If we all make our own personal hell, mine would be living through the seventh grade again.
If you're going to homeschool your child, be ABSOLUTELY SURE that he has some friends in his grade before putting him back in public school. My parents didn't and I had a grand total of one real friend in seventh and eigth grades. When he found out what religion I am, he never stopped trying to convert me, so that was esentially being declared not good enough for my only friend. Even now in college, I have a very hard time making friends. Those aren't necesarily related, but I think that they are.
On the other hand, I learned FAR more than my classmates in those three years. That probably had something to do with why I had such a horible time, what, with being so far ahead of the rest of my class that I could have passed the final on the first day.
This isn't meant to say that homeschool is awful. This is just meant to give you a firsthand account of homeschooling.
It's only possible to have a lossy transfer, not format.
The transfer from 24kbit/96kHz to 16kbit/44.1kHz is lossy. The transfer from analog to digital is lossy (unless you have such high resolution digital that you're measuring the motions of individual atoms). The transfer of 16kbit/44.1kHz CD Audio to 16kbit/44.1kHz MP3 is lossy. However, in theory, transfer from one MP3 to another of exactly the same bitrate is lossless as long as you do it right.
No format is either lossy or lossless (unless the file decays each time you play it), only the transfer into the format can have loss.
The compression can be described as lossy, meaning that it throws away some data in order to get better compression, however, the compression being lossy does not make the format lossy. The correct way to say what you seem to be trying to say would be "MP3 uses lossy compression, whereas CD Audio does not, therefore, MP3 is lossy on two levels as opposed to CDA being lossy on one".
Funny that you would mention the 24 Hours series of books.
Sams Teach Yourself GIMP in 24 Hours
Or online here.
I'm not entirely sure about the legal status of that second link when you're inside the US. If it's illegal for you to view it, then don't go there. It was also distributed in PDF form with Mandrake Linux for a while.