No, its probably more because the TV stations are Soap and Football obsessed. Alot of good shows dont come to the UK, or if they do its a year or so after they get released in the US. Sky often shows shows earlier, but the free-to-air channels are very tardy.
E.g. Really popular shows are months behind: Desperate Housewives USA:March 2004, UK:Dec 2004 Joey: USA: Sept 2004 UK: Feb 2005 Freinds last episode: USA June 2004 UK: Oct 2004
and less popular shows: Cleopatra 2525 USA:2000 UK:Not yet Stargate: USA Showing season 9, UK: just finished season 7 Atlantis: Not yet on UK screens Galactica: ditto Smallville: I think UK is in the middle of season 3
And then they'll upgrade, and find their CDs dont play anymore, or a later version of the macrovision breaks compatability, or the thing stops playing for some other reason.
Movies are very much like the Halo game. If you go to the cinema, you will be superficially involved in seeing a book rendered in moving images, only with the Final Dénouement replaced by a dissapointing halt leaving room for the sequel.
I'd probably want something that only got updates for things she has installed, plus stuff that I think she might be interested in (jack, timidity and rosegarden have recently crossed my path).
I guess I'd need to list all installed packages (rpm -something > packages.list) and get that emailed to me. Then I head off to the update mirrors and pull down any rpms that are later than what she has installed. Burn that lot to CD (basically a bunch of rpms).
You could simply say, "Mom, just leave the computer alone, I am putting a cd in the mail"
Thats actually something I would like for Mandrake.
I setup my sister with MDK-10.1-comunity. I did all the hard setup (nVidia drivers, mplayer from PLF, wine, dialup, etc).
But I still need to get updates to her, and I cant see an easy way of doing it on a CD, as I dont have a list of what she has installed, nor is a way of downloading the full updates media apparrent
My sisters boyfriend setup winXp for her in much the same way (she needed access to MS Works).
My Sister thinks Linux is as good as winXP. She doesnt worry about having to install software, cos its all there. Thats one major difference between linux and windows, she still had to have nero, Works, winDVD, etc etc installed.
Problems: winXP stopped dialing out, and sisters bf cant fix it. Wine wont run MS Works. A load of cheap games need directX, not listed for cedega. There is no obvious netnanny stuff for linux. It isnt needed yet, but it may be a problem later on.
I like to see this thing here, as it shows how inept the common user is, and also how inept alot of technical reviewers are.
I cringe every time I see a consumers association report on ISPs or anti-spam software, they always get so conused by the marketing that they miss the obvious solution like Gmail as anti-spam.
We would like to see all food come with a full ingredients list, only the snickers listed its ingredients. The other three foods must do better in this regard.
I was with them till I saw this.
We'd also like to see inbuilt antivirus software in all operating systems -- the tested operating systems don't currently include a virus checker:
Why does linux and mac need a virus checker? There are perhaps a couple of viruses for each, and they dont exactly propogate easily.
The Uk Which? magazine recently did a review of anti-spam software, yet they totally ignored the best solution which is to use a filtering ISP like demon or Gmail.
It actually quite common for small herbivores to eat thier own pellets. Rabbits need to pass grass through the system twice to break down the celulose.
Ive seen carnivours (dogs mostly) do it too, not sure why.
But you are correct, there are plenty of natural human products that are dangerous. Try injecting insulin when you dont need it, or how about a big dose of oestrogen for a man?
OGG is not so good for power consumption, it takes 3/4 hours off the battery life of my iRiver ifp390, and I hear there are similar results for other ogg supporting players (mostly iRiver).
Theres the problem that the implementations Ive seen dont support <48kbs bitrates, so quite a few of my -q3 encodings failed to play. Coding at -q6 or whatever makes the files bigger than the standard MP3s I use.
The ogg battery life problem may have been solved, but I had a similar on my ifp device.
a) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software but the manufacturer didnt tell anyone about it
b) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer tells people about it.
c) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer keeps it secret but someone reverse engineers the calls to change band and amplitude.
d) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer releases spacs on those parts of the device that are legal.
Surely any device that is capable of becoming trivially programmed is illegal, no matter who knows what about it.
No, its clear that women are safer drivers, but not necessarily 'better' drivers. You could just as easily look at competetive driving, where women have a very poor record.
Also, its pretty obvious to anyone who has seen the statistics that its young people (of both sexes) who are significantly more likely to have an accident.
They need to look at what took the mobile phone industry from startups and chip makers in the late 1990s to world domination today.
Specifically, they moved from a contracts model to pay-as-you-go, they gave a load of extra services on-top (ringtones/games), they targeted kids, and they offered a killer app (SMS).
I guess TiVo have to move to PAYG, offer downloadable content, target teenage girls, and finally offer a killer app (perhaps even SMS itself "OMG did u just c those SHoos?").
Has no-one noticed that UT2004 has become a games platform in itself? Theres loads of FPS games been created, and quite a few non-FPS games including a top down co-op game (Alien Swarm) and an RTS (Unreal Annihilation).
Have a look at the Make Something Unreal contest to see how many games there *really* are for linux.
Mostly cos Ive never noticed it before. Just looked at the homepage and it looks like it may be a bit too simple, but when urpmi completes I will see for myself.
I occassionally use Gimp under windows at work, and occasioanlly use some of the less common GIMP tools (layers, spot editing), so will probably stick with GIMP.
I cant remember hotkeys for the dozens of apps I use in the various apps I use. I only use ctrl XCV and ctrl T in mozilla.
Tear offs dont gather the functions I commonly use near each other. I would still have to navigate here to rotate, then close that dialog and colour balance, then close that dialog, locate the next dialog, etc etc etc.
E.g. I open a jpg.
Align and crop: Image -> transform -> rotate 90cw Image -> Layers -> Arbitary Transorm ( To tweak the horizon level) ( Problem 1, 2 paths to similar functionality, why cant there be a simple dialog that does the 90cw and still allows me to arbitaritly transform from the same place) Gimp window (it was hiding under mozilla!)-> Select the select tool Image window -> Select the area to crop Image -> Crop Image (problem 2 - all that navigation between 2 windows for such a simple operation)
Now for the colours: Tools -> (bloody hell, I cant even remember this from 2 seconds ago and have to refer back to the dialog!) -> Colour Tools -> Levels Tools -> Colour Tools -> Brightness/contrast (problem 3. I was picking tools via Image, but this tool is under Tools. So I'm having to keep a mental map of what Im doing and where the tool I want for it has been placed in the menu hierarchy.)
Scale image for web reducing from 2048px wide to a max side of 786x800 Image -> Scale Image ( problem 4 - I dont have easy pressy buttons for what I want to do, I have to do the maths to decide which side is going to be maxed, isnt that what computers are supposed to be good at?) and I scale the image for the web, or for printing.
Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp mask. (problem again - at web resolutions the defaults raduis/amount are always too strong. 3px and.25 are better for me.)
File -> Save as Now I get asked all kinds of questions about exporting, to which I always answer yes. Give it a new name (no autosuggest?).
1 photo edited, 49 to go.
I think what I really want is some kind of wizard that takes me through the stages one at a time without forcing me to navigate the menus and windows.
I want a simpler way of leveling horizons and aligning the verticals, pick 2 or more points and tell it to rotate them as the horizon or a vertical.
I want a simpler colour manager with contrast/brightness/desaturate/levels all done simply and in one place. Perhaps all the colour tools could be 1 big dialog with tabs to get to the specific colour tool I want.
I never seem to use the current tabs, because that all relate to viewing, and not to tools.
Now the image has a menu bar, the contextual menu could be a little more useful, containing a better set of option in a pie menu and not a drop down menu that makes Fitts cry.
I also hate playing hunt the dialog box, but others have mentioned that.
I like to do up the best of my holiday photos in one big all-nighter and put them on the web, or send a CD to those who want it.
What I hate is having to go go here to rotate, there to crop, somewhere else to fix the colours, and somewhere else again to resize and unsharp mask.
I'd like a single panel that puts all the common photo editing tools in one place. These tools will include: o Rotate (90 degrees and a rotate handle) o Crop o Colour levels o Brightness and contrast o Desaturate o Resize o Sharpen filter o Unsharp mask filter
Then I could wizz through the mass edits with only the occasional requirement to go to the layers and spot editing tools.
Slashdot Mirror
I know Sky shows stuff earlier (read what I said). But Sky isnt all that popular compared to Freeview and broadband.
m ?f useaction=ViewNewsArticle&ID=234042
http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/News/index.cf
I think thats fair, dont you?
No, its probably more because the TV stations are Soap and Football obsessed. Alot of good shows dont come to the UK, or if they do its a year or so after they get released in the US. Sky often shows shows earlier, but the free-to-air channels are very tardy.
E.g. Really popular shows are months behind:
Desperate Housewives USA:March 2004, UK:Dec 2004
Joey: USA: Sept 2004 UK: Feb 2005
Freinds last episode: USA June 2004 UK: Oct 2004
and less popular shows:
Cleopatra 2525 USA:2000 UK:Not yet
Stargate: USA Showing season 9, UK: just finished season 7
Atlantis: Not yet on UK screens
Galactica: ditto
Smallville: I think UK is in the middle of season 3
And then they'll upgrade, and find their CDs dont play anymore, or a later version of the macrovision breaks compatability, or the thing stops playing for some other reason.
Sooner or later, Joe Punter will work it out.
Movies are very much like the Halo game. If you go to the cinema, you will be superficially involved in seeing a book rendered in moving images, only with the Final Dénouement replaced by a dissapointing halt leaving room for the sequel.
Here you go.
Only a dozen times? I have to do it every time I stay up all night playing computer games.
The accident figures indicate that having passed your test recently makes you alot more likly to have an accident than any other group.
y .p df
http://www.trl.co.uk/static/dtlr/pdfs/527summar
Looks like it could work.
I'd probably have to test this first.
I'd probably want something that only got updates for things she has installed, plus stuff that I think she might be interested in (jack, timidity and rosegarden have recently crossed my path).
I guess I'd need to list all installed packages (rpm -something > packages.list) and get that emailed to me.
Then I head off to the update mirrors and pull down any rpms that are later than what she has installed.
Burn that lot to CD (basically a bunch of rpms).
Then its ls | xargs rpm -uvh time
Then its more like:
You could simply say, "Mom, just leave the computer alone, I am putting a cd in the mail"
Thats actually something I would like for Mandrake.
I setup my sister with MDK-10.1-comunity. I did all the hard setup (nVidia drivers, mplayer from PLF, wine, dialup, etc).
But I still need to get updates to her, and I cant see an easy way of doing it on a CD, as I dont have a list of what she has installed, nor is a way of downloading the full updates media apparrent
My sisters boyfriend setup winXp for her in much the same way (she needed access to MS Works).
My Sister thinks Linux is as good as winXP. She doesnt worry about having to install software, cos its all there. Thats one major difference between linux and windows, she still had to have nero, Works, winDVD, etc etc installed.
Problems:
winXP stopped dialing out, and sisters bf cant fix it.
Wine wont run MS Works.
A load of cheap games need directX, not listed for cedega.
There is no obvious netnanny stuff for linux. It isnt needed yet, but it may be a problem later on.
I like to see this thing here, as it shows how inept the common user is, and also how inept alot of technical reviewers are.
I cringe every time I see a consumers association report on ISPs or anti-spam software, they always get so conused by the marketing that they miss the obvious solution like Gmail as anti-spam.
We would like to see all food come with a full ingredients list, only the snickers listed its ingredients. The other three foods must do better in this regard.
I was with them till I saw this.
We'd also like to see inbuilt antivirus software in all operating systems -- the tested operating systems don't currently include a virus checker:
Why does linux and mac need a virus checker? There are perhaps a couple of viruses for each, and they dont exactly propogate easily.
The Uk Which? magazine recently did a review of anti-spam software, yet they totally ignored the best solution which is to use a filtering ISP like demon or Gmail.
I had it with the KT133A chipset (Abit's KT7A Mobo).
USB would occasionally lock solid, and games would occassionally lock solid too, the only time I could rely on it was when I was surfing for pr0n.
Via went onto my 'do not buy' list, but Im thinking of getting their mini-itx stuff in the future.
Im with an nforce2 now, no probs whatsoever.
Dont anthromorphosize planets, they dont like it.
It actually quite common for small herbivores to eat thier own pellets. Rabbits need to pass grass through the system twice to break down the celulose. Ive seen carnivours (dogs mostly) do it too, not sure why. But you are correct, there are plenty of natural human products that are dangerous. Try injecting insulin when you dont need it, or how about a big dose of oestrogen for a man?
OGG is not so good for power consumption, it takes 3/4 hours off the battery life of my iRiver ifp390, and I hear there are similar results for other ogg supporting players (mostly iRiver).
Theres the problem that the implementations Ive seen dont support <48kbs bitrates, so quite a few of my -q3 encodings failed to play. Coding at -q6 or whatever makes the files bigger than the standard MP3s I use.
The ogg battery life problem may have been solved, but I had a similar on my ifp device.
I dont see what the legal difference is between
a) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software but the manufacturer didnt tell anyone about it
b) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer tells people about it.
c) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer keeps it secret but someone reverse engineers the calls to change band and amplitude.
d) A device that allows the band and power to be changed in software and the manufacturer releases spacs on those parts of the device that are legal.
Surely any device that is capable of becoming trivially programmed is illegal, no matter who knows what about it.
No, its clear that women are safer drivers, but not necessarily 'better' drivers. You could just as easily look at competetive driving, where women have a very poor record.
Also, its pretty obvious to anyone who has seen the statistics that its young people (of both sexes) who are significantly more likely to have an accident.
Last I heard, boys were marginally ahead in Maths and Physics, buy significantly behind in all other areas.
Also bear in mind that girls are significantly harder working than boys at that age.
They need to look at what took the mobile phone industry from startups and chip makers in the late 1990s to world domination today.
Specifically, they moved from a contracts model to pay-as-you-go, they gave a load of extra services on-top (ringtones/games), they targeted kids, and they offered a killer app (SMS).
I guess TiVo have to move to PAYG, offer downloadable content, target teenage girls, and finally offer a killer app (perhaps even SMS itself "OMG did u just c those SHoos?").
Actually, Linux has UT2004.
Has no-one noticed that UT2004 has become a games platform in itself? Theres loads of FPS games been created, and quite a few non-FPS games including a top down co-op game (Alien Swarm) and an RTS (Unreal Annihilation).
Have a look at the Make Something Unreal contest to see how many games there *really* are for linux.
Mostly cos Ive never noticed it before. Just looked at the homepage and it looks like it may be a bit too simple, but when urpmi completes I will see for myself.
I occassionally use Gimp under windows at work, and occasioanlly use some of the less common GIMP tools (layers, spot editing), so will probably stick with GIMP.
I cant remember hotkeys for the dozens of apps I use in the various apps I use. I only use ctrl XCV and ctrl T in mozilla.
.25 are better for me.)
Tear offs dont gather the functions I commonly use near each other. I would still have to navigate here to rotate, then close that dialog and colour balance, then close that dialog, locate the next dialog, etc etc etc.
E.g.
I open a jpg.
Align and crop:
Image -> transform -> rotate 90cw
Image -> Layers -> Arbitary Transorm ( To tweak the horizon level)
( Problem 1, 2 paths to similar functionality, why cant there be a simple dialog that does the 90cw and still allows me to arbitaritly transform from the same place)
Gimp window (it was hiding under mozilla!)-> Select the select tool
Image window -> Select the area to crop
Image -> Crop Image
(problem 2 - all that navigation between 2 windows for such a simple operation)
Now for the colours:
Tools -> (bloody hell, I cant even remember this from 2 seconds ago and have to refer back to the dialog!) -> Colour Tools -> Levels
Tools -> Colour Tools -> Brightness/contrast
(problem 3. I was picking tools via Image, but this tool is under Tools. So I'm having to keep a mental map of what Im doing and where the tool I want for it has been placed in the menu hierarchy.)
Scale image for web reducing from 2048px wide to a max side of 786x800
Image -> Scale Image
( problem 4 - I dont have easy pressy buttons for what I want to do, I have to do the maths to decide which side is going to be maxed, isnt that what computers are supposed to be good at?)
and I scale the image for the web, or for printing.
Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp mask.
(problem again - at web resolutions the defaults raduis/amount are always too strong. 3px and
File -> Save as
Now I get asked all kinds of questions about exporting, to which I always answer yes. Give it a new name (no autosuggest?).
1 photo edited, 49 to go.
I think what I really want is some kind of wizard that takes me through the stages one at a time without forcing me to navigate the menus and windows.
I want a simpler way of leveling horizons and aligning the verticals, pick 2 or more points and tell it to rotate them as the horizon or a vertical.
I want a simpler colour manager with contrast/brightness/desaturate/levels all done simply and in one place. Perhaps all the colour tools could be 1 big dialog with tabs to get to the specific colour tool I want.
I never seem to use the current tabs, because that all relate to viewing, and not to tools.
Now the image has a menu bar, the contextual menu could be a little more useful, containing a better set of option in a pie menu and not a drop down menu that makes Fitts cry.
I also hate playing hunt the dialog box, but others have mentioned that.
I like to do up the best of my holiday photos in one big all-nighter and put them on the web, or send a CD to those who want it.
What I hate is having to go go here to rotate, there to crop, somewhere else to fix the colours, and somewhere else again to resize and unsharp mask.
I'd like a single panel that puts all the common photo editing tools in one place. These tools will include:
o Rotate (90 degrees and a rotate handle)
o Crop
o Colour levels
o Brightness and contrast
o Desaturate
o Resize
o Sharpen filter
o Unsharp mask filter
Then I could wizz through the mass edits with only the occasional requirement to go to the layers and spot editing tools.