Don't get the reference? Ebeneezer Goode lyrics. The track will be available from your P2P network of choice.
(yep, we're OT - but imagine the horror of Slashdot without tangental conversation! What? You'd prefer it that way? Live the dream, my friend. Live the dream...)
Market research by drug pushers in the US discovered that 'Ecstacy' just wasn't catchy enough for users in the American market. After many focus groups were formed, it was decided to pro-actively radicalize the Ecstacy brand. In order to dynamically push the envelope of the established paradigm, it was decided to extreme-ify the Ecstacy brand by 73%.
Thus, what Europe knows as Ecstacy or 'E' is called Xstacy or simply 'X'.
Sadly, it means that by and large, the US missed out on the subtext of The Shamen's 1992 hit, "Ebeneezer Goode" -- "E's are good / E's are good / He's Ebeneezer Goode"
... this is so OT, I'm almost tempted to post anon. But what the hell. I bet there's not even enough people who remember The Shamen to mod me up....
(disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if you were aware of this and just playing along -- if so, feel free to point and laugh in my general direction)
I think grandparent meant Firefox 0.93. Not that I'm necessarily agreeing with his comment. IME, FFX renders/. ok 95% of the time (weird bug, that one), it's logged into everything I've tried (not that it doesn't fail on others I've not tried), and has been as solid as a rock in general use.
Go into Computer Management. Expand the tree on the left to show the list of services. Bring up the properties for the RPC service. Find the option to choose what Windows does when the service fails from 'Restart the computer' to something more sane.
Go online and patch yourself up to the eyeballs. Then undo the change you made. Ta-da.
(sorry for the lack of detal above - Windows is what I do for work, I'm at home with my Linux and Mac machines so can't look this stuff up.)
That's one of the funny things about the whole Blaster situation. The reboots weren't directly caused by the worm. Rather, they were a result of Windows' default response the the RPC service failing (reboot). I wonder why the default couldn't have been the much friendlier option of 'Restart the service'.
From what I've found with my friends, one of the big draws for DAB is being able to recieve otherwise local stations nationwide.
For example, London's Xfm (a traditional analogue station) also broadcasts nationwide on DAB. A number of people I know around the country like listening to this station. Of course, they can pick it up on Digital Satellite, Cable TV or the Internet... but that's not much use in the car or elsewhere away from the TV/computer. Portable and in-car DAB radios let them enjoy these stations wherever they like.
Living in London myself, there's a large number of stations on standard FM, so I'm pretty much spoilt for choice. But for elsewhere (e.g. Oxford - the city that radio forgot... Fox FM... *shudder*) DAB's handy.
The Guardian, The Independent, heck, even the Telegraph are excellent papers with incredibly thorough journalism. Even the BBC (a corporation under the *Crown* NOT the Government - major difference) is a constant bane to pretty much every post-war government. I think your real point might be that there's an increasing imbalance of power between the executive, legislature and judiciary, with the executive having undue influence over the others. The co-operation and effectiveness of the three government branches have for centuries relied upon a sort of 'gentleman's code' or set of conventions. Sadly, the current government seems hell-bent upon trampling these and making the other branches (Parliament in particular) ineffective. This has been a very hot topic in the press (serious papers, not the rags you seem to think are representative).
As for your other point on publishing, you're correct. I know this because our newspapers report on it. So I shop at Amazon.com/fr/de on occasion.
Still. Thanks for saying 'UK citizens' instead of 'subjects'. Technically, the latter may be more correct, but the current situation has no resemblance to the traditional use of the term.
Regarding drinking, of which I'm an old-hand, most pubs will stop serving at 11pm (Mon-Sat) and 10.30pm (Sun... blimmin' Christians;)...) By law, there's another 20mins 'drinking up' time. There's usually at least one late pub in each town. Licence terms may extend to 12am, 2am or 4am. Whatever, the licencing laws are due to be relaxed imminently in order to alleviate the policing problems caused by pubs emptying their plastered inhabitants at the same time the nation over.
Hope you're feelin' a bit more informed. If you're ever over here, I'd be glad to buy you a pint and a copy of the Guardian.
Curious that Apple's and Dell's R&D investments are so comparable considering the typical/. opinion that Apple is the pinnacle of innovation and Dell does none whatsoever.
Come on, that's a little disingenuous isn't it?
'Box shifting' is a much smaller proportion of Apple's R&D than Dell's. Apple are:
Client & Server OS designers/developers, usability engineers.
Application developers (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Final Cut Express/Pro/HD, Shake, Motion, iCal, iChat, iSync, Safari, GarageBand, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Pro Tools, Soundtrack, Filemaker, AppleWorks, Keynote)
Codec & media creators (Quicktime, QTSS, Pixlet),
Web services provider (.Mac), plus web development provider (WebObjects).
Developer tools creator & platform maintainer (Xcode, plus Obj-C, etc)
Media device developer + distributor (iPod, iPod Mini, iTunes Music Store).
Now, I've got nothing against Dell whatsoever, and I don't wish to belittle the work they put in to their server solutions and their desktop systems. But the scope of their business is nothing compared to Apple's line of software, hardware and services, many of which are entirely in-house creations.
Umm... find out a little more about what the browsers are doing.
There's always a trade-off between rendering speed and quality. Do you start to lay-out the page before all content has been fetched, thus incurring unsighltly redraws and reflows as new content invalidates the current best-guess display? Or do you hold off on painting somewhat to allow more content to arrive, and thus a better initial layout?
Gecko-based browsers give you full control over this, so you can tune it to your network performance. By default, it always waits 250msec (or is it less now?) before displaying anything. Of course, it ain't twiddling its thumbs during this -- it's building the page, but not showing it to avoid ugly reflows. Jump into the prefs (type about:config and find initialpaintdelay) and set it to 0 to make it render immediately.
It's psychological. That inital pause where nothing appears to be going on may make you think Gecko's slower than IE. But the time from initiating the load to a mostly-complete layout may well actually be smaller than IE.
If you really want to learn about this stuff from a guy who's as close to being a guru as you're gonna get on this subject, check out this post on Dave Hyatt's (Moziila/Apple developer) weblog.
To be honest, with current bandwidth and computing power, I rarely find myself saying 'Damn, this rendering engine is slooow...', but of course it all depends upon the nature of the site being displayed.
I generally find Firefox more responsive than IE, however. It seems to find sites quicker (resolving, initiating connection, etc.) and generally feels like it's paying more attention to me than IE.
Having said all that, I've not used IE in so long that I can't really remember...
(also... I'll name that song in your sig in two: Anna Begins - Counting Crows. Great song.)
I grew up with an Acorn Electron (later moving to Ataris, then PC, then Mac). I always coveted my uncle's BBC Model B and later, his Acorn Archimedes.
Interestingly, these machines used the ARM for *everything*. And still managed to have quite a few great games... Nevryon, f'rex.
RISCOS (from what I remember) was a really intriguing OS. IIRC, it kept applications as "bang bundles".... in much the same way as Mac OS X uses.app bundles. You could tell an application because its title started with a bang.... !Prefs, for instance.
More stuff about Archies and RISCOS emulation at: RedSquirrel
If it's an OSS package, it's probably in ye olde/etc/ -- for example, apps like Apache keep their config in the usual httpd.conf file.
The UNIX heirarchy isn't visible in the Finder by default, so take a look via Terminal -- although there's applescripts around the web that'll let you toggle the visibility of these files in the Finder.
The 'autosmtp' script referenced in the comments leads to a dead web page.
I *think* I've got a copy of this on my Mac at home. Let me know if you'd like me to send it to you -- otherwise, perhaps Google will find a copy of it somewhere for you.
Apple's Mail.app is fully scriptable. Just create an applescript that says something along the lines of:
tell application "Mail"
set smtp server of account "My Account" to smtp server "smtp.blah.com" end tell
*googles*.......ah:)
Here's a macosxhints.com article about this. One of the comments includes a script that will link your SMTP server to your Network Location (see Apple Menu -> Locations). You can then set up network settings for your two locations, and have Mail automatically adjust itself when you switch between the locations.
I'm a Brit, and seeing 'meter' used instead of 'metre' makes my brain itch. It's exactly that kind of spelling 'mistake' that'd lose us points in our exams:)
But to each their own! Personally, my electricity meter is mounted about 1.25 metres up the wall:)
Commodity Linux systems power their digital TV interactive content. So, IBM's Linux systems at Wimbledon will be feeding data to the digital interactive service -- providing live game statistics alongside the multi-screen digital service (IIRC from last year, you could access 8 or so live games and highlights at any time via interactive)
There's an article on Linux at the BBC over at LinuxPlanet here, although it's quite old and the services it discusses have advanced quite considerably in the meantime.
Excellent use of public money, not to mention the fact that the Corporation has enough in-house knowledge to support and develop their own systems. I should say 'in house... for the moment' -- the Corp. is soon to spin-off BBC Technology into a separate company.
Slashdot Mirror
Not for me - Keeping the pointer within the bounds of the scrollbar still caused the file to be copied to my startup folder.
:)
Not that I use IE. Except for when trying out these exploit proof-of-concepts
I think the grandparent was shooting for '+1, Farcical'
Laaahvvley!
Don't get the reference? Ebeneezer Goode lyrics. The track will be available from your P2P network of choice.
(yep, we're OT - but imagine the horror of Slashdot without tangental conversation! What? You'd prefer it that way? Live the dream, my friend. Live the dream...)
That's it.
... this is so OT, I'm almost tempted to post anon. But what the hell. I bet there's not even enough people who remember The Shamen to mod me up....
Market research by drug pushers in the US discovered that 'Ecstacy' just wasn't catchy enough for users in the American market. After many focus groups were formed, it was decided to pro-actively radicalize the Ecstacy brand. In order to dynamically push the envelope of the established paradigm, it was decided to extreme-ify the Ecstacy brand by 73%.
Thus, what Europe knows as Ecstacy or 'E' is called Xstacy or simply 'X'.
Sadly, it means that by and large, the US missed out on the subtext of The Shamen's 1992 hit, "Ebeneezer Goode" -- "E's are good / E's are good / He's Ebeneezer Goode"
httpmail plugin for Mac OS X's Mail.
Dunno about other platforms, but it's open source, so the chances are good.
(disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if you were aware of this and just playing along -- if so, feel free to point and laugh in my general direction)
/. ok 95% of the time (weird bug, that one), it's logged into everything I've tried (not that it doesn't fail on others I've not tried), and has been as solid as a rock in general use.
I think grandparent meant Firefox 0.93. Not that I'm necessarily agreeing with his comment. IME, FFX renders
Chris
For the rest of us...
Go into Computer Management. Expand the tree on the left to show the list of services. Bring up the properties for the RPC service. Find the option to choose what Windows does when the service fails from 'Restart the computer' to something more sane.
Go online and patch yourself up to the eyeballs. Then undo the change you made. Ta-da.
(sorry for the lack of detal above - Windows is what I do for work, I'm at home with my Linux and Mac machines so can't look this stuff up.)
That's one of the funny things about the whole Blaster situation. The reboots weren't directly caused by the worm. Rather, they were a result of Windows' default response the the RPC service failing (reboot). I wonder why the default couldn't have been the much friendlier option of 'Restart the service'.
*shrug*
Yes. In roubles.
(caution: anecdotal evidence!)
... but that's not much use in the car or elsewhere away from the TV/computer. Portable and in-car DAB radios let them enjoy these stations wherever they like.
... Fox FM... *shudder*) DAB's handy.
From what I've found with my friends, one of the big draws for DAB is being able to recieve otherwise local stations nationwide.
For example, London's Xfm (a traditional analogue station) also broadcasts nationwide on DAB. A number of people I know around the country like listening to this station. Of course, they can pick it up on Digital Satellite, Cable TV or the Internet
Living in London myself, there's a large number of stations on standard FM, so I'm pretty much spoilt for choice. But for elsewhere (e.g. Oxford - the city that radio forgot
How many UK papers do you read?
... blimmin' Christians ;)...) By law, there's another 20mins 'drinking up' time. There's usually at least one late pub in each town. Licence terms may extend to 12am, 2am or 4am. Whatever, the licencing laws are due to be relaxed imminently in order to alleviate the policing problems caused by pubs emptying their plastered inhabitants at the same time the nation over.
Or are you just repeating what you've heard?
The Guardian, The Independent, heck, even the Telegraph are excellent papers with incredibly thorough journalism. Even the BBC (a corporation under the *Crown* NOT the Government - major difference) is a constant bane to pretty much every post-war government. I think your real point might be that there's an increasing imbalance of power between the executive, legislature and judiciary, with the executive having undue influence over the others. The co-operation and effectiveness of the three government branches have for centuries relied upon a sort of 'gentleman's code' or set of conventions. Sadly, the current government seems hell-bent upon trampling these and making the other branches (Parliament in particular) ineffective. This has been a very hot topic in the press (serious papers, not the rags you seem to think are representative).
As for your other point on publishing, you're correct. I know this because our newspapers report on it. So I shop at Amazon.com/fr/de on occasion.
Still. Thanks for saying 'UK citizens' instead of 'subjects'. Technically, the latter may be more correct, but the current situation has no resemblance to the traditional use of the term.
Regarding drinking, of which I'm an old-hand, most pubs will stop serving at 11pm (Mon-Sat) and 10.30pm (Sun
Hope you're feelin' a bit more informed. If you're ever over here, I'd be glad to buy you a pint and a copy of the Guardian.
Speak for yourself!
*resumes gnawing*
Come on, that's a little disingenuous isn't it?
'Box shifting' is a much smaller proportion of Apple's R&D than Dell's. Apple are:
Client & Server OS designers/developers, usability engineers.
Application developers (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Final Cut Express/Pro/HD, Shake, Motion, iCal, iChat, iSync, Safari, GarageBand, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Pro Tools, Soundtrack, Filemaker, AppleWorks, Keynote)
Codec & media creators (Quicktime, QTSS, Pixlet),
Web services provider (.Mac), plus web development provider (WebObjects).
Developer tools creator & platform maintainer (Xcode, plus Obj-C, etc)
Technology developer (Firewire, ZeroConf)
Accessory designer/provider (iSight, Airport Extreme/Express)
Media device developer + distributor (iPod, iPod Mini, iTunes Music Store).
Now, I've got nothing against Dell whatsoever, and I don't wish to belittle the work they put in to their server solutions and their desktop systems. But the scope of their business is nothing compared to Apple's line of software, hardware and services, many of which are entirely in-house creations.
Umm... find out a little more about what the browsers are doing.
There's always a trade-off between rendering speed and quality. Do you start to lay-out the page before all content has been fetched, thus incurring unsighltly redraws and reflows as new content invalidates the current best-guess display? Or do you hold off on painting somewhat to allow more content to arrive, and thus a better initial layout?
Gecko-based browsers give you full control over this, so you can tune it to your network performance. By default, it always waits 250msec (or is it less now?) before displaying anything. Of course, it ain't twiddling its thumbs during this -- it's building the page, but not showing it to avoid ugly reflows. Jump into the prefs (type about:config and find initialpaintdelay) and set it to 0 to make it render immediately.
It's psychological. That inital pause where nothing appears to be going on may make you think Gecko's slower than IE. But the time from initiating the load to a mostly-complete layout may well actually be smaller than IE.
If you really want to learn about this stuff from a guy who's as close to being a guru as you're gonna get on this subject, check out this post on Dave Hyatt's (Moziila/Apple developer) weblog.
To be honest, with current bandwidth and computing power, I rarely find myself saying 'Damn, this rendering engine is slooow...', but of course it all depends upon the nature of the site being displayed.
...
I generally find Firefox more responsive than IE, however. It seems to find sites quicker (resolving, initiating connection, etc.) and generally feels like it's paying more attention to me than IE.
Having said all that, I've not used IE in so long that I can't really remember
(also... I'll name that song in your sig in two:
Anna Begins - Counting Crows. Great song.)
Memories...
.... in much the same way as Mac OS X uses .app bundles. You could tell an application because its title started with a bang.... !Prefs, for instance.
I grew up with an Acorn Electron (later moving to Ataris, then PC, then Mac). I always coveted my uncle's BBC Model B and later, his Acorn Archimedes.
Interestingly, these machines used the ARM for *everything*. And still managed to have quite a few great games... Nevryon, f'rex.
RISCOS (from what I remember) was a really intriguing OS. IIRC, it kept applications as "bang bundles"
More stuff about Archies and RISCOS emulation at:
RedSquirrel
If it's an OSS package, it's probably in ye olde /etc/ -- for example, apps like Apache keep their config in the usual httpd.conf file.
The UNIX heirarchy isn't visible in the Finder by default, so take a look via Terminal -- although there's applescripts around the web that'll let you toggle the visibility of these files in the Finder.
Ah, crap.
The 'autosmtp' script referenced in the comments leads to a dead web page.
I *think* I've got a copy of this on my Mac at home. Let me know if you'd like me to send it to you -- otherwise, perhaps Google will find a copy of it somewhere for you.
Apple's Mail.app is fully scriptable. Just create an applescript that says something along the lines of:
...ah :)
tell application "Mail"
set smtp server of account "My Account" to smtp server "smtp.blah.com"
end tell
*googles*....
Here's a macosxhints.com article about this. One of the comments includes a script that will link your SMTP server to your Network Location (see Apple Menu -> Locations). You can then set up network settings for your two locations, and have Mail automatically adjust itself when you switch between the locations.
Hope that's some use!
It understands 'metre' too, though.
:)
:)
I'm a Brit, and seeing 'meter' used instead of 'metre' makes my brain itch. It's exactly that kind of spelling 'mistake' that'd lose us points in our exams
But to each their own! Personally, my electricity meter is mounted about 1.25 metres up the wall
(no text)
bleh... must've mistyped the link. *slaps forehead*
The article's here
The BBC are indeed very heavy Linux users.
Commodity Linux systems power their digital TV interactive content. So, IBM's Linux systems at Wimbledon will be feeding data to the digital interactive service -- providing live game statistics alongside the multi-screen digital service (IIRC from last year, you could access 8 or so live games and highlights at any time via interactive)
There's an article on Linux at the BBC over at LinuxPlanet here, although it's quite old and the services it discusses have advanced quite considerably in the meantime.
Excellent use of public money, not to mention the fact that the Corporation has enough in-house knowledge to support and develop their own systems. I should say 'in house... for the moment' -- the Corp. is soon to spin-off BBC Technology into a separate company.
$6/mo * number_of_CRTs_in_use = BIGNUM :)
7 million digits?
That primate must have big hands...
No, it's a typo. ;-)