It's worth pointing out that the article talks about a gravity wave, which is a material wave that arises out of a disturbance due to gravity. This should not be confused with gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime due to the movement of masses. (The article and summary aren't wrong, but the terminology itself is confusing.)
The effect observed on Venus is in fact quite massive, while gravitational waves are tiny and difficult to observe.
I've been playing a French MMORPG, Dofus, for ages.
It's quite different from other MMORPGS, as it's turn-based and the graphics are 2D. It's a bit like an MMO version of FF Tactics, though the world and lore are vastly different. It's grindy, but has a nice sense of humour and a tonne of content.
And I saw the Japan Pavillion, which is where the robot performs. The pavillion is divided into three sections. The first shows the clean technologies that are being used in Japan. The second is where the robot performs, along with some other technology demos. The third is a Chinese opera performance about the crested ibis, an endangered bird whose numbers have increased as a result of a joint breeding programme by China and Japan.
The expo will be on until 31 Oct, by the way. But beware the crowds.
I grant that hallucinations need not be visual only - for example, there could be aural hallucinations, hearing something that isn't there; but hallucinations are always perceptual. Since `sensing a presence' without the use of sight or hearing isn't a perceptual experience, having the feeling of euphoria can't strictly be classified as a hallucination. Yet, we can't just put it down to a person's imagination, either, since the cause of the feeling can be identified.
It's just another example where our usual linguistic notions are challenged by a special case. Interesting stuff.:)
Bloglines has a web-based interface, but makes sense if you will be using several different computers at different times. Unless RSS feeds develop an IMAP-like protocol, I will not be willing to download all my 100+ subscriptions once for every computer I use.
You may not appreciate using a web interface, but give it a try. In short, the benefits are:
Automatically synchronized subscription list
Consistent interface on all platforms
Availability on any platform with a web browser
Easy keyword searching for new feeds
Free (beer)
Read the news just once
OPML import and export
Balanced against
Web interface is relatively slow, but you can download a platform-native notifier (available for Windows, Mac OS X, Konfabulator, KDE, Mozilla/Firefox, and Web)
Not Free (speech)
Bloglines recently introduced a few new features, such as the ability to publish your own blog with them, but I think Wordpress or Typepad is better suited to that. No harm checking out their About page, anyway.
I love RPGs because I can become godlike, and kill random monsters with a single blow... and once I can do that I can get into mroe random battles and resolve them more easily, gain exp more easily, kill monsters more easily... ad infinitum.
I have an Acer 13.7" monitor that I use every day with my iBook, which is enabled for dual-monitor display. It works, and it was free. I'm not sure how old it is, but the person who passed it to me said that it had come with his old 486, so I think ten years would not be a terrible estimate.
Although it works fine (by and large), Mac OS X doesn't seem to be able to detect its refresh rate, so I have to set it automatically. Works fine on 800x600 at 85 Hz, though.
When I first saw the way Omni had implemented tabs in OW, I thought they were trying to be different for its own sake.
On this thread, Tim2, who's on the team at Omni, explains the reasoning behind their tabs implementation (vertical tabbing, drawer as opposed to hotlist a la Mozilla). I reproduce it here:
So, there have been some people wondering why we chose to use a drawer instead of just doing the more traditional Safari/Mozila thing. Here's the deal with the drawer:
I've found that thumbnails generally convey much more useful information than page titles. Most page titles are junk anyway (go to eBay and you'll see what I mean). I can switch between tabs much more accurately when I can actually see the page I'm switching to. And in those cases where the thumbnail really is not a distinguishing factor, such as when multiple tabs are open to these forums, then the page title is usually enough supplimentary information for me to figure it out.
The tabs were put vertically in a drawer for a number of reasons:
First, you can get more vertical space in a drawer than in an in-window sidebar. This is because the drawer overlaps the main window's toolbar, while a view inside the window could only stretch from the bottom of the toolbar to the bottom of the window. That's like 50 extra pixels.
Second, they are oriented vertically instead of horizontally so that you don't have to deal with truncated page titles if you don't want to. If you load fifty tabs in Safari, they will have incomprehensibly short titles and will run off the end of the window. OmniWeb does not have this problem. It's also easier on your eyes to scan a list of items that are arranged in rows (as opposed to Safari's single row, multiple column implementation). On top of all that, you can view more tabs at once than you can with Safari -- In OmniWeb's list mode, I can create 20 tabs in a single window before a scroll bar appears (this is on my dinky 12" PowerBook). In Safari, however, I can only fit 11 tabs in a window before they start running off the screen into that annoying menu thing.
And finally, you can hide and show a drawer without having to resize the content area of the window. If we put the tabs in an in-window side bar, then we would have to resize the page every time the tab sidebar was hidden or shown. This can have detrimental effects on page layout and can make the user feel cramped, especially when reading pages which lay out best when the window is wide.
Essentially, the Omni implementation scales better with a large number of tabs. This is the first great improvement to tabbed browsing that I have seen in a long time. I can definitely see myself $30 for this thing.
It's pretty surreal to re-read that thread two years later. I remember thinking `Apple said it would be revolutionary. An MP3 player is hardly revolutionary!'
Two years later I own an iPod and look---it has been (if not revolutionary on its own) certainly instrumental in accelerating the opening up of the industry to digital music distribution.
I'll attempt to narrate a short passage from a famous Chinese kungfu novel, `The Return of the Condor Heroes'. These and other novels, written by Louis Cha, were responsible for the interest in swordfighting themes that ultimately led to films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
A very highly- skilled character who spent most of his life killing has become a monk in order to curb his murderous desires. One day, he comes across a snowman, and in order to satisfy his craving to kill, he attacks the snowman with a mighty blow and destroys it.
Initially unbeknownst to him, the snowman was a live person who had been immobilised and left standing in the snow, and so this person perished at the hands of the murderous monk.
So said the monk's teacher: When you destroyed the snowman, you did so because you did not want to kill a real human being. And yet, when you destroyed it, did you not have killing on your mind?
The article states (near the bottom) that the files used in the test were encoded using iTunes' `best' setting, while iTunes uses the `better' setting. Presumably, this only affects the amount of time taken, since it's all 128kbps anyway.
Now, does anyone know how to encode using Quicktime's `best' setting? I have Quicktime Pro 6.3, which is supposed to have an `enhanced AAC encoder', but I see no difference in iTunes' preference panels. I've assumed that the encoder has been transparently upgraded, but have no way _knowing_ this to be the case.
Hope someone here can shed some light. And also, yeah, I can't tell the difference. I just wanna know.
I think that the more significant war is with the credibility of the GPL. The repercussions of this case will probably not be about specific companies, but Linux adoption in general. If IBM crushes SCO in court, then the GPL *may* in the process be strangthened. But if IBM loses and has to buy out SCO, the strength of the GPL as a legally recognised license will be weakened.
Even if this weakening or strengthening is only in the US, other countries' IT industries will be influenced in a similar way, since the nature of open source is that national boundaries cannot (totally) insulate effects in one country from another.
That's definitely an overstatement. There haven't been so many Mozilla news items of late.
Still, I used to like Opera, but back then the rendering engine didn't quite cut it (lousy CSS support), and I'm sure they've improved it tremendously but I'm not on Mac OS X, and Opera was never a good Mac browser-- it runs at about the same speed as Mac IE on my comp.
I have to say, it looks like CD Baby is being very fair to the artists with this deal. The artists can even sell their music via other means, just not to the same store, and they can end the contract with 30 days' notice.
Also, this could bring a fair amount of indie music to the iTMS. Personally, I'm all for it. Hopefully, CD Baby can get the word out effectively.
I read the article, but don't understand why it would be necessary to embed a whole browser. Why not just the rendering engine? Wouldn't embedding Mozilla create a lot of overhead?
That's an interesting idea. I think it's technically feasible, but there are of course game balance issues. If player killing is allowed on the same server, newer characters will never have a chance to advance.
Harsh death penalties put people off. I can't remember which developer said that, but it was in a developer interview somewhere, not necessarily on DAoC. Maybe what we're thinking of is really the kind of system that has been implemented in games like NWN.
But I wouldn't give up hope. The gaming industry has shown more innovation than most other parts of the computing world in recent years.
It's not just that adventure gamers are `ruining' the experience.
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. Excellent MMORPG, as well designed as they come. But I've long since stopped playing, because the experience was just too artificial.
In a pen and paper or even a computer RPG, the world changes in epic ways as you advance through the story. But because the world of an MMORPG has to be consistent for players, the world cannot change too much. For example, the king of the fairies will have to always be there, you can't guide empires to ruin, buildings stand forever-- the sense of changeability that is otherwise present in RPGs is lost. So is mortality, because you respawn. You might be penalised, but your character can't be dead and gone. Where then is the comradeship? Can you really feel for an immortal character as you would for a real companion (well, RPG companion)? There's a good reason D&D players become very attached to their characters, and spend a lot of time mourning their deaths, but it is partly that mortality that makes their journey perilous and exciting.
I think some of the MMORPGs out there really are very good, but they lack a certain je ne sais quoi that story- driven RPGs have. And that is a problem with the melding of genres, rather than who's playing them. I recognise that there are many more issues to consider, but i feel that this is one of the major ones.
Here's a link to a freeware app that already enables Cocoa applications to do a similar thing, but with text only: AntiWord Service. It works on Mac OS X 10.1.5 and higher.
Apple could surely use code from Openoffice.org to create an LGPL component that could do the conversion for them... couldn't they? It would be so much better than firing up Oo.O for a simple Word document.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth pointing out that the article talks about a gravity wave, which is a material wave that arises out of a disturbance due to gravity. This should not be confused with gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime due to the movement of masses. (The article and summary aren't wrong, but the terminology itself is confusing.)
The effect observed on Venus is in fact quite massive, while gravitational waves are tiny and difficult to observe.
I've been playing a French MMORPG, Dofus, for ages.
It's quite different from other MMORPGS, as it's turn-based and the graphics are 2D. It's a bit like an MMO version of FF Tactics, though the world and lore are vastly different. It's grindy, but has a nice sense of humour and a tonne of content.
And I saw the Japan Pavillion, which is where the robot performs. The pavillion is divided into three sections. The first shows the clean technologies that are being used in Japan. The second is where the robot performs, along with some other technology demos. The third is a Chinese opera performance about the crested ibis, an endangered bird whose numbers have increased as a result of a joint breeding programme by China and Japan.
The expo will be on until 31 Oct, by the way. But beware the crowds.
his inability to acknowledge that the Internet has changed everything makes me think he's a very confused man
He's not confused, just plain mistaken.
Point taken, but a minor quibble.
:)
I grant that hallucinations need not be visual only - for example, there could be aural hallucinations, hearing something that isn't there; but hallucinations are always perceptual. Since `sensing a presence' without the use of sight or hearing isn't a perceptual experience, having the feeling of euphoria can't strictly be classified as a hallucination. Yet, we can't just put it down to a person's imagination, either, since the cause of the feeling can be identified.
It's just another example where our usual linguistic notions are challenged by a special case. Interesting stuff.
I guess you have to send it to a quantum mechanic.
All I want to know is ...
:)
which format does Apple back?
Bloglines has a web-based interface, but makes sense if you will be using several different computers at different times. Unless RSS feeds develop an IMAP-like protocol, I will not be willing to download all my 100+ subscriptions once for every computer I use.
You may not appreciate using a web interface, but give it a try. In short, the benefits are:
Balanced against
Bloglines recently introduced a few new features, such as the ability to publish your own blog with them, but I think Wordpress or Typepad is better suited to that. No harm checking out their About page, anyway.
I love RPGs because I can become godlike, and kill random monsters with a single blow... and once I can do that I can get into mroe random battles and resolve them more easily, gain exp more easily, kill monsters more easily... ad infinitum.
I have an Acer 13.7" monitor that I use every day with my iBook, which is enabled for dual-monitor display. It works, and it was free. I'm not sure how old it is, but the person who passed it to me said that it had come with his old 486, so I think ten years would not be a terrible estimate.
Although it works fine (by and large), Mac OS X doesn't seem to be able to detect its refresh rate, so I have to set it automatically. Works fine on 800x600 at 85 Hz, though.
When I first saw the way Omni had implemented tabs in OW, I thought they were trying to be different for its own sake.
On this thread, Tim2, who's on the team at Omni, explains the reasoning behind their tabs implementation (vertical tabbing, drawer as opposed to hotlist a la Mozilla). I reproduce it here:
Essentially, the Omni implementation scales better with a large number of tabs. This is the first great improvement to tabbed browsing that I have seen in a long time. I can definitely see myself $30 for this thing.
This could accelerate a native Mac port, since Qt has been ported to Mac OS X.
It's pretty surreal to re-read that thread two years later. I remember thinking `Apple said it would be revolutionary. An MP3 player is hardly revolutionary!'
Two years later I own an iPod and look---it has been (if not revolutionary on its own) certainly instrumental in accelerating the opening up of the industry to digital music distribution.
Am feeling pretty amused right now.
It was a really good theory. And I had to do it again so it wasn't as good.
... bummer.
It was a
I'll attempt to narrate a short passage from a famous Chinese kungfu novel, `The Return of the Condor Heroes'. These and other novels, written by Louis Cha, were responsible for the interest in swordfighting themes that ultimately led to films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
A very highly- skilled character who spent most of his life killing has become a monk in order to curb his murderous desires. One day, he comes across a snowman, and in order to satisfy his craving to kill, he attacks the snowman with a mighty blow and destroys it.
Initially unbeknownst to him, the snowman was a live person who had been immobilised and left standing in the snow, and so this person perished at the hands of the murderous monk.
So said the monk's teacher: When you destroyed the snowman, you did so because you did not want to kill a real human being. And yet, when you destroyed it, did you not have killing on your mind?
The article states (near the bottom) that the files used in the test were encoded using iTunes' `best' setting, while iTunes uses the `better' setting. Presumably, this only affects the amount of time taken, since it's all 128kbps anyway.
Now, does anyone know how to encode using Quicktime's `best' setting? I have Quicktime Pro 6.3, which is supposed to have an `enhanced AAC encoder', but I see no difference in iTunes' preference panels. I've assumed that the encoder has been transparently upgraded, but have no way _knowing_ this to be the case.
Hope someone here can shed some light. And also, yeah, I can't tell the difference. I just wanna know.
I think that the more significant war is with the credibility of the GPL. The repercussions of this case will probably not be about specific companies, but Linux adoption in general. If IBM crushes SCO in court, then the GPL *may* in the process be strangthened. But if IBM loses and has to buy out SCO, the strength of the GPL as a legally recognised license will be weakened.
Even if this weakening or strengthening is only in the US, other countries' IT industries will be influenced in a similar way, since the nature of open source is that national boundaries cannot (totally) insulate effects in one country from another.
> I see Mozilla news almost daily on Slashdot
That's definitely an overstatement. There haven't been so many Mozilla news items of late.
Still, I used to like Opera, but back then the rendering engine didn't quite cut it (lousy CSS support), and I'm sure they've improved it tremendously but I'm not on Mac OS X, and Opera was never a good Mac browser-- it runs at about the same speed as Mac IE on my comp.
I have to say, it looks like CD Baby is being very fair to the artists with this deal. The artists can even sell their music via other means, just not to the same store, and they can end the contract with 30 days' notice.
Also, this could bring a fair amount of indie music to the iTMS. Personally, I'm all for it. Hopefully, CD Baby can get the word out effectively.
I read the article, but don't understand why it would be necessary to embed a whole browser. Why not just the rendering engine? Wouldn't embedding Mozilla create a lot of overhead?
That's an interesting idea. I think it's technically feasible, but there are of course game balance issues. If player killing is allowed on the same server, newer characters will never have a chance to advance.
Harsh death penalties put people off. I can't remember which developer said that, but it was in a developer interview somewhere, not necessarily on DAoC. Maybe what we're thinking of is really the kind of system that has been implemented in games like NWN.
But I wouldn't give up hope. The gaming industry has shown more innovation than most other parts of the computing world in recent years.
Translation:
SCO Obtains New Masturbation Toy, Wanks
It's not just that adventure gamers are `ruining' the experience.
:)
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. Excellent MMORPG, as well designed as they come. But I've long since stopped playing, because the experience was just too artificial.
In a pen and paper or even a computer RPG, the world changes in epic ways as you advance through the story. But because the world of an MMORPG has to be consistent for players, the world cannot change too much. For example, the king of the fairies will have to always be there, you can't guide empires to ruin, buildings stand forever-- the sense of changeability that is otherwise present in RPGs is lost. So is mortality, because you respawn. You might be penalised, but your character can't be dead and gone. Where then is the comradeship? Can you really feel for an immortal character as you would for a real companion (well, RPG companion)? There's a good reason D&D players become very attached to their characters, and spend a lot of time mourning their deaths, but it is partly that mortality that makes their journey perilous and exciting.
I think some of the MMORPGs out there really are very good, but they lack a certain je ne sais quoi that story- driven RPGs have. And that is a problem with the melding of genres, rather than who's playing them. I recognise that there are many more issues to consider, but i feel that this is one of the major ones.
Just my 2 cents.
Here's a link to a freeware app that already enables Cocoa applications to do a similar thing, but with text only: AntiWord Service. It works on Mac OS X 10.1.5 and higher.
Apple could surely use code from Openoffice.org to create an LGPL component that could do the conversion for them... couldn't they? It would be so much better than firing up Oo.O for a simple Word document.