Which is great until you realise you need dos/windows to install the firmware - anyone happen to know how I can flash a drive from Linux?
But the dvd players under linux all (afaik, unless there's some dodgy proprietary thing out there?) use DeCSS, so you don't need to worry about region codes. I haven't even *set* the region code on my DVD rom drive - I don't need to!!!
Can anyone explain to me why a 40 year old James Bond movie needs to be "protected" from being viewed out of region? Apart from corporate greed of course. Now we've got "fair use" in Australia does that mean I can legally shift my Region locked DVDs to region free?
Actually, IIRC, the ACCC ruled that DVD region codes violated the Trade Practices Act, which is why it's perfectly legal to sell region-free players in Australia. But I don't think you can shift your DVDs legally... mind you, it was previously illegal to tape a TV show, and that didn't stop anyone - I don't think you're going to get raided by ASIO if you dvdshrink the discs that you already own!!!
If you use Google to search for something and Google finds the finds for you, then that is just a data seach and hanpering this might be considered censoring. Suggesting implies providing some sort of judgement and giving advice. To clarify the diffeence: consider a school nurse handing out drug information vs handing out suggestions on what drugs to try.
But Google Suggest isn't actually "suggesting" what you should search for - it's just autocompleting the most common search terms. It's a stupid name, and really it's a pretty dumb feature anyway - does anyone actually use it?? I mean, wow, I could save one second's worth of typing time by spending several seconds judging whether any of the suggestions are the terms I was going to search for?? Utterly useless - a bit like Google Reader that I tried out yesterday.
Both are cute examples of AJAX; and I don't think either were developed for any other reason than to show off the potentials of AJAX.
Apple does not want you to run OSX on non-Apple hardware, because that might discourage you from buying Apple hardware, which is where they make their money.
Huzzah! Finally someone woke up to the fact that Apple is an organisation involved primarily in making a profit, not in doing pro bono work!
I don't understand why Apple and Google get worshipped as life-giving gods by some people - sure, appreciate it when they do good, but never forget that the ultimate point of their existence is to make as much cash as possible.
In any case, this smiley after that sentence would inevitably give me a very negative impression about you.
Actually, what's missing from your interpretation, and indeed from this whole discussion, is context! Interpretting the tone of a sentence in someone's writing relies just as much on what preceeds it, as it does on any emoticon or emphasis...
Until we know what that line about stealing money relates to, we don't know if the original poster was justifying the fact that he ripped off his workplace, defending himself in a don't-shoot-the-messenger attitude, or teasing his housemate who nabbed some cash from the kitty...
Because one man's common sense is another man's stupidity, and they want to avoid having the million configuration options necessary to cater for everybodys views.
That's why you hide options from general users, but provide them to the power users in about:config...
I'd like to think that there's an about:config option to turn off tab close buttons for those users mature enough to understand middle-clicking...
Why would you want to get your hands off the keyboard to manipulate the mouse?
Because sometimes it's faster when you want to manipulate blocks of code? I think it's like a CLI file-management vs GUI file-management issue - both have their strengths and weaknesses, and you're missing out if you only rely on one method.
I fail to see what's so great about that Nedit of yours.
It's not mine, thankfully! (sheesh, who'd want to code in motif!?) And I don't use it exclusively. But it makes writing and maintaining code one hell of a lot easier for me - doing the same thing in vim, for example, is noticeably slower.
But what's so great about the mouse? OK - say you want to duplicate a segment/line/block of code at your cursor... just drag over the relevant code with the middle mouse button (works between different windows, too!). Drag'n'drop? Highlight and drag with the middle mouse button. Switch/copy blocks of code around? Highlight one block, middle-mouse drag over the over whilst holding down accelerator keys... I could go on and on. It turns the middle-mouse button from a useful paste button into a serious power tool.
And for the record I'm not using "archaic editors that were designed for the days of consoles" when I code.
*grin*... yeah, that was a bit trollish of me, wasn't it??:) What are you using instead?
Hahaha. A real programmer doesn't use the mouse. He relies entirely on macros and hotkeys.
Clearly you've never tried Nedit, or seen the things you can do with selections, buttons and the mouse. Sadly it doesn't have code folding, but in almost all other aspects it leaves emacs or vim for dead, using only a fraction of the resources.
Mice are great for programming... they're just not much use if you're using archaic editors that were designed for the days of consoles.
How do thy know whether it will break any extensions? They don't know all of them. They mean *major, popular* extensions.... they think. I still want the option to opt out.
Well, no - the extensions / themes themselves specify the versions that they will work with. It's part of their code. It's why some extensions are automatically disabled upon updating Firefox - they've told Firefox that they'll no longer work with that version.
Because I'm testing code for a website/JavaScript/extension on an older version of FF, perhaps. I still want the option to opt out.
Fair enough. But in that case, just uncheck the "Check for automatic updates" feature. However, the updates so far have only been security releases, and it's not mattered. I'll be very interested to see what happens when the Firefox 1.6 release happens... I don't know whether the developers have really thought that one through. After all, some people will want to stay on a 1.5 branch with security updates and I have a feeling that that won't be an option.
Rather them than me, though, I have to say... and their response to dissenters would probably be: If you don't like it, don't use it - after all, you haven't paid for it so you've nothing to lose. Remember that Firefox is a massive piece of software with an utterly enormous user base. Hell, it's probably the most widely used piece of end-user OSS ever... while I don't approve of their methods or attitudes sometimes, you have to give them a bit of slack!
This is no bug that's resulted from them forgetting. Bugs that get filed about this are marked WONTFIX because they want to force you to install stuff. It sucks, Firefox is one of the only products that does this.
Yeah, the Firefox developers are a bit arrogant sometimes - they believe that there's only one way to do it, and their way is the right way. You can bet that they hate Perl. But then, they are the developers, and it's their prerogative to choose the way their software works...
It's poor software design, and it's a shame that they can't see it, but I'll still use Firefox and accept the limitations... after all, I know from developing software myself that you can't please all the users all the time, and sometimes you just can't be bothered implementing a solution which you know might be technically right, but won't be of any use to you and will take up lots of your precious free time...
(I remembered that direct links from Slashdot aren't allowed)
Links from/. to bugzilla aren't blocked if you don't send the HTTP referer header. Which you shouldn't on general principles anyway - disable it by setting network.http.sendRefererHeader to 0.
But looking at the bug, the report reads: "If app.update.enabled=true, and if the update will not break any installed extensions or themes (ie: there is no reason for a user to not apply the patch) Firefox should silently download and install the update without interfering with the user's taskflow." (my emphasis). Why would anyone have issue with this? - it specifically states that this situation will occur if and only if nothing is broken.
Whatsmore, there's actually no setting that lets you actually tell FF to check for updates, but not force you to install them once downloaded. Which is retarded.
Er... under Linux (and I assume it's the same under Windows, OSX or any other OS), Firefox alerts me to the fact that a new update is available and gives me options to "Download and install" or "Later", or something like that. Not too sure what you found confusing about "Download and install", but I would have thought the "Later" option was pretty clear...:)
Yes, there probably should be a "No! Don't install! I changed my mind!!" option once the update has downloaded. There should also be a check on your extensions before you download the update to advise you as to which ones will be disabled in the new version. But no software's perfect...
And they're even planning on making this happen invisibly, without even telling you. This SUCKS! Virtually no other product in existance has covert updates like this, or forces them on you.
Yeah, that sucks if it's true. Do you have a link to verify this?
I ran "Check for updates" in 1.5.0.1/win and it has chosen to download 6.1MB (even if.1->.3 is not available, FF could have downloaded incremental.2 version first...)
I doubt it - thunderbird (i.e. "fire and thunder") wasn't a twinkle in its coders' eyes when Phoenix was 0.2, IIRC. Sounds like it was written when the two products were Firebird and Thunderbird.
Clearly it needs a new reworking to explain how a fox, or rather a red panda, got in there...
two adds that i can quote from the top of my head are coke bashing adds from pepsi.
Funnily enough, here in Australia Pepsi ran a supposedly coke-bashing ad as follows:
Two young teenage boys are dreaming of what they'll be when they grow up. One is drinking Coke, the other Pepsi. We see the Coke boy's dream first: he imagines himself a brilliant, famous cricketer, bat slung nonchalantly over shoulder, girls fawning all around him.
Then we see the Pepsi-drinker's alternative: he imagines himself a gynaecologist, with lots of hot girls in bikinis coming into his practice.
Probably one of the worst ad campaigns ever - you don't have to be Einstein to know that the gynaecologist is (a) going to be spending most of his days examining the festering genitals of middle-aged women, and (b) is going to be getting a hell of a lot less sex than his sports superstar mate ("Oh! so what do you do for a living then?" "Well, I get my kicks out of doing pap-smears... wanna make an appointment, honey?")
Coke must have been laughing all the way to the bank... and strangely enough, the ads got pulled rather quickly.
The only two responses I read that defended the name were weak. Did no one stand up and say, "No comment until I've got this thing in my hands and I can really see what it's made of." Let us all make fun of Dick Butkus now for his name. Hahahaha, dick. Hahahahah, butt. Get it all out of your system.
Yes, that's all very well, we accept that you're above name calling and toilet humour. But you have to remember the target audience of the Wii... young, pubescent males. How do you think they're going to react to the Wii? Do you think they'll give it a shot, or do you think they'll... er... take the piss out of it?
It might be the greatest console ever, but the marketing dept really have ensured that it'll be laughed at before it even hits the shelves. Not the best move.
RTFA. The author is making a case *for* using OSS. He/she is *not* against OSS, rather is advocating the use of OSS on Windows, as a half-way house between Windows with proprietary software and an OSS OS that works out-of-the-box. In fact he/she points to several pieces of OSS that work extremely well.
It seems a fairly obvious point to me, and I have no idea why it's news. But it's even more obvious that no-one in this thread has actually read the article in question... *sigh*
This whole story is either one incredibly witty troll that we're all feeding, or else it's proof that the/. eds are on crack. Personally, I'm inclined to the former view... I reckon Hemos was feeling bored and wanted to see a lot of people look foolish:)
Oh, I've suggested it... but that doesn't mean that they'll pay attention.
I also suggested that the webclips interface (which as far as I know no one actually uses) could be used to alert you of your appointments - the next appointment is displayed across the top of your email, but you can use the arrow keys to scroll through them in order. Neat, huh? But I'll bet that never gets implemented...
That's great - but why not allow the user to define their own appointments? Say you get a mail that says "I want a draft by the end of the month" or "in a week's time"... Gmail doesn't seem to recognise these phrases as appointments, and that means the only way to mark that date in your schedule is to open up Google calendar and do it by hand - ie. you probably won't do it at all.
My point was simply that they haven't thought about integrating the two applications, beyond a very, very cursory level. What they've managed to do is great for showing off, but is terrible for everyday use.
I may be able to help you here! According to Gogle:... Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, and you can add those events to your calendar with just a couple of clicks
Yeah, except it doesn't work. Or perhaps the calendar data that Gmail looks for is very specific. I can cetainly say that emails sent to my Gmail account that mention specific events *do not* have any link to add events to Google Calendar.
A much better solution would have been to give the user the ability to add a calendar event via a dialogue box when reading *any* message in Gmail. That would be the only true way to have the two applications interacting. It's little bugs like this that make me think that the people who wrote the Gmail interface with Google Calendar don't actually *use* Google Calendar... or maybe they don't use Gmail.
Re:It features integration with Gmail.
on
Google Calendar
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· Score: 1
Just to point out that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released a long time after the original Wolfenstein 3d, and gamers still remembered the original that started it all...
By the original, I do hope you mean Castle Wolfenstein released in the early 80's??
Slashdot Mirror
Live Sporting Event? Is that what they're calling porn now?
Yes.
Which is great until you realise you need dos/windows to install the firmware - anyone happen to know how I can flash a drive from Linux?
But the dvd players under linux all (afaik, unless there's some dodgy proprietary thing out there?) use DeCSS, so you don't need to worry about region codes. I haven't even *set* the region code on my DVD rom drive - I don't need to!!!
Can anyone explain to me why a 40 year old James Bond movie needs to be "protected" from being viewed out of region? Apart from corporate greed of course. Now we've got "fair use" in Australia does that mean I can legally shift my Region locked DVDs to region free?
... mind you, it was previously illegal to tape a TV show, and that didn't stop anyone - I don't think you're going to get raided by ASIO if you dvdshrink the discs that you already own!!!
Actually, IIRC, the ACCC ruled that DVD region codes violated the Trade Practices Act, which is why it's perfectly legal to sell region-free players in Australia. But I don't think you can shift your DVDs legally
If you use Google to search for something and Google finds the finds for you, then that is just a data seach and hanpering this might be considered censoring. Suggesting implies providing some sort of judgement and giving advice. To clarify the diffeence: consider a school nurse handing out drug information vs handing out suggestions on what drugs to try.
But Google Suggest isn't actually "suggesting" what you should search for - it's just autocompleting the most common search terms. It's a stupid name, and really it's a pretty dumb feature anyway - does anyone actually use it?? I mean, wow, I could save one second's worth of typing time by spending several seconds judging whether any of the suggestions are the terms I was going to search for?? Utterly useless - a bit like Google Reader that I tried out yesterday.
Both are cute examples of AJAX; and I don't think either were developed for any other reason than to show off the potentials of AJAX.
Apple does not want you to run OSX on non-Apple hardware, because that might discourage you from buying Apple hardware, which is where they make their money.
Huzzah! Finally someone woke up to the fact that Apple is an organisation involved primarily in making a profit, not in doing pro bono work!
I don't understand why Apple and Google get worshipped as life-giving gods by some people - sure, appreciate it when they do good, but never forget that the ultimate point of their existence is to make as much cash as possible.
In any case, this smiley after that sentence would inevitably give me a very negative impression about you.
...
...
Actually, what's missing from your interpretation, and indeed from this whole discussion, is context! Interpretting the tone of a sentence in someone's writing relies just as much on what preceeds it, as it does on any emoticon or emphasis
Until we know what that line about stealing money relates to, we don't know if the original poster was justifying the fact that he ripped off his workplace, defending himself in a don't-shoot-the-messenger attitude, or teasing his housemate who nabbed some cash from the kitty
I've noticed that when I end a sentence in an emoticon it tends to replace the period, although that's not always a good way of doing it.
... :)
To get around this, I usually use an elipsis
Because one man's common sense is another man's stupidity, and they want to avoid having the million configuration options necessary to cater for everybodys views.
...
...
That's why you hide options from general users, but provide them to the power users in about:config
I'd like to think that there's an about:config option to turn off tab close buttons for those users mature enough to understand middle-clicking
You're right - and you see that ipods are enroaching on linux's territory too
... I always knew those damn ipods were up to no good ...
... :)
*grin*
Incidentally, has anyone found a search scoring higher than "yahoo"? It beats "google" and "windows", and is even better than "sex"
Ah, but try with "mac" rather than "OS-X" ...
... talk about Apple stealing users from Linux - just look at those lines converging!
You'll find it rather interesting
Why would you want to get your hands off the keyboard to manipulate the mouse?
... just drag over the relevant code with the middle mouse button (works between different windows, too!). Drag'n'drop? Highlight and drag with the middle mouse button. Switch/copy blocks of code around? Highlight one block, middle-mouse drag over the over whilst holding down accelerator keys ... I could go on and on. It turns the middle-mouse button from a useful paste button into a serious power tool.
... yeah, that was a bit trollish of me, wasn't it?? :) What are you using instead?
Because sometimes it's faster when you want to manipulate blocks of code? I think it's like a CLI file-management vs GUI file-management issue - both have their strengths and weaknesses, and you're missing out if you only rely on one method.
I fail to see what's so great about that Nedit of yours.
It's not mine, thankfully! (sheesh, who'd want to code in motif!?) And I don't use it exclusively. But it makes writing and maintaining code one hell of a lot easier for me - doing the same thing in vim, for example, is noticeably slower.
But what's so great about the mouse? OK - say you want to duplicate a segment/line/block of code at your cursor
And for the record I'm not using "archaic editors that were designed for the days of consoles" when I code.
*grin*
Hahaha. A real programmer doesn't use the mouse. He relies entirely on macros and hotkeys.
... they're just not much use if you're using archaic editors that were designed for the days of consoles.
Clearly you've never tried Nedit, or seen the things you can do with selections, buttons and the mouse. Sadly it doesn't have code folding, but in almost all other aspects it leaves emacs or vim for dead, using only a fraction of the resources.
Mice are great for programming
How do thy know whether it will break any extensions? They don't know all of them. They mean *major, popular* extensions.... they think. I still want the option to opt out.
... I don't know whether the developers have really thought that one through. After all, some people will want to stay on a 1.5 branch with security updates and I have a feeling that that won't be an option.
... and their response to dissenters would probably be: If you don't like it, don't use it - after all, you haven't paid for it so you've nothing to lose. Remember that Firefox is a massive piece of software with an utterly enormous user base. Hell, it's probably the most widely used piece of end-user OSS ever ... while I don't approve of their methods or attitudes sometimes, you have to give them a bit of slack!
Well, no - the extensions / themes themselves specify the versions that they will work with. It's part of their code. It's why some extensions are automatically disabled upon updating Firefox - they've told Firefox that they'll no longer work with that version.
Because I'm testing code for a website/JavaScript/extension on an older version of FF, perhaps. I still want the option to opt out.
Fair enough. But in that case, just uncheck the "Check for automatic updates" feature. However, the updates so far have only been security releases, and it's not mattered. I'll be very interested to see what happens when the Firefox 1.6 release happens
Rather them than me, though, I have to say
This is no bug that's resulted from them forgetting. Bugs that get filed about this are marked WONTFIX because they want to force you to install stuff. It sucks, Firefox is one of the only products that does this.
...
... after all, I know from developing software myself that you can't please all the users all the time, and sometimes you just can't be bothered implementing a solution which you know might be technically right, but won't be of any use to you and will take up lots of your precious free time ...
/. to bugzilla aren't blocked if you don't send the HTTP referer header. Which you shouldn't on general principles anyway - disable it by setting network.http.sendRefererHeader to 0.
Yeah, the Firefox developers are a bit arrogant sometimes - they believe that there's only one way to do it, and their way is the right way. You can bet that they hate Perl. But then, they are the developers, and it's their prerogative to choose the way their software works
It's poor software design, and it's a shame that they can't see it, but I'll still use Firefox and accept the limitations
(I remembered that direct links from Slashdot aren't allowed)
Links from
But looking at the bug, the report reads: "If app.update.enabled=true, and if the update will not break any installed extensions or themes (ie: there is no reason for a user to not apply the patch) Firefox should silently download and install the update without interfering with the user's taskflow." (my emphasis). Why would anyone have issue with this? - it specifically states that this situation will occur if and only if nothing is broken.
Whatsmore, there's actually no setting that lets you actually tell FF to check for updates, but not force you to install them once downloaded. Which is retarded.
... under Linux (and I assume it's the same under Windows, OSX or any other OS), Firefox alerts me to the fact that a new update is available and gives me options to "Download and install" or "Later", or something like that. Not too sure what you found confusing about "Download and install", but I would have thought the "Later" option was pretty clear ... :)
...
Er
Yes, there probably should be a "No! Don't install! I changed my mind!!" option once the update has downloaded. There should also be a check on your extensions before you download the update to advise you as to which ones will be disabled in the new version. But no software's perfect
And they're even planning on making this happen invisibly, without even telling you. This SUCKS! Virtually no other product in existance has covert updates like this, or forces them on you.
Yeah, that sucks if it's true. Do you have a link to verify this?
I ran "Check for updates" in 1.5.0.1/win and it has chosen to download 6.1MB (even if .1->.3 is not available, FF could have downloaded incremental .2 version first...)
Have you reported it as a bug?
I doubt it - thunderbird (i.e. "fire and thunder") wasn't a twinkle in its coders' eyes when Phoenix was 0.2, IIRC. Sounds like it was written when the two products were Firebird and Thunderbird.
...
Clearly it needs a new reworking to explain how a fox, or rather a red panda, got in there
two adds that i can quote from the top of my head are coke bashing adds from pepsi.
... wanna make an appointment, honey?")
... and strangely enough, the ads got pulled rather quickly.
Funnily enough, here in Australia Pepsi ran a supposedly coke-bashing ad as follows:
Two young teenage boys are dreaming of what they'll be when they grow up. One is drinking Coke, the other Pepsi. We see the Coke boy's dream first: he imagines himself a brilliant, famous cricketer, bat slung nonchalantly over shoulder, girls fawning all around him.
Then we see the Pepsi-drinker's alternative: he imagines himself a gynaecologist, with lots of hot girls in bikinis coming into his practice.
Probably one of the worst ad campaigns ever - you don't have to be Einstein to know that the gynaecologist is (a) going to be spending most of his days examining the festering genitals of middle-aged women, and (b) is going to be getting a hell of a lot less sex than his sports superstar mate ("Oh! so what do you do for a living then?" "Well, I get my kicks out of doing pap-smears
Coke must have been laughing all the way to the bank
The only two responses I read that defended the name were weak. Did no one stand up and say, "No comment until I've got this thing in my hands and I can really see what it's made of." Let us all make fun of Dick Butkus now for his name. Hahahaha, dick. Hahahahah, butt. Get it all out of your system.
... young, pubescent males. How do you think they're going to react to the Wii? Do you think they'll give it a shot, or do you think they'll ... er ... take the piss out of it?
Yes, that's all very well, we accept that you're above name calling and toilet humour. But you have to remember the target audience of the Wii
It might be the greatest console ever, but the marketing dept really have ensured that it'll be laughed at before it even hits the shelves. Not the best move.
RTFA. The author is making a case *for* using OSS. He/she is *not* against OSS, rather is advocating the use of OSS on Windows, as a half-way house between Windows with proprietary software and an OSS OS that works out-of-the-box. In fact he/she points to several pieces of OSS that work extremely well.
... *sigh*
/. eds are on crack. Personally, I'm inclined to the former view ... I reckon Hemos was feeling bored and wanted to see a lot of people look foolish :)
It seems a fairly obvious point to me, and I have no idea why it's news. But it's even more obvious that no-one in this thread has actually read the article in question
This whole story is either one incredibly witty troll that we're all feeding, or else it's proof that the
Oh, I've suggested it ... but that doesn't mean that they'll pay attention.
...
I also suggested that the webclips interface (which as far as I know no one actually uses) could be used to alert you of your appointments - the next appointment is displayed across the top of your email, but you can use the arrow keys to scroll through them in order. Neat, huh? But I'll bet that never gets implemented
That's great - but why not allow the user to define their own appointments? Say you get a mail that says "I want a draft by the end of the month" or "in a week's time" ... Gmail doesn't seem to recognise these phrases as appointments, and that means the only way to mark that date in your schedule is to open up Google calendar and do it by hand - ie. you probably won't do it at all.
My point was simply that they haven't thought about integrating the two applications, beyond a very, very cursory level. What they've managed to do is great for showing off, but is terrible for everyday use.
I may be able to help you here! According to Gogle: ... Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, and you can add those events to your calendar with just a couple of clicks
... or maybe they don't use Gmail.
Yeah, except it doesn't work. Or perhaps the calendar data that Gmail looks for is very specific. I can cetainly say that emails sent to my Gmail account that mention specific events *do not* have any link to add events to Google Calendar.
A much better solution would have been to give the user the ability to add a calendar event via a dialogue box when reading *any* message in Gmail. That would be the only true way to have the two applications interacting. It's little bugs like this that make me think that the people who wrote the Gmail interface with Google Calendar don't actually *use* Google Calendar
How is it integrated with gmail?
. py?answer=36592&ctx=sibling )
...
I was wondering about this too. Have a look at the help section and you'll see that in theory Gmail should include a function in the drop down menu for emails that specifies "Add event to calendar". (see, for example http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer
Unfortunately I don't see this in my gmail account yet - hopefully it'll be added soon
Just to point out that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released a long time after the original Wolfenstein 3d, and gamers still remembered the original that started it all...
By the original, I do hope you mean Castle Wolfenstein released in the early 80's??