I don't care for your usage of the term "the left", but I'm not surprised by it.
I personally don't think that Europe or Japan (or Canada for that matter) is more left than the US, which I think is what you are implying. Instead I think that Europe and Japan are more reasoned. That they are more rational societies than the US.
Watching the election, watching the US media coverage of it, listening to voters, journalists, and pundits commenting on it, I was frightened and disappointed. And not because of any particular winner of any particular election or any particular ballot measure (though I did find all the anti-gay marriage measures chilling).
What I found truly frightening was the apparent decline of reason that seemed like an undercurrent of the entire electoral process. People in the United States of America no longer seem to be making fewer and fewer decisions based on rational analysis of the situation. Instead decisions are being made based on irrational belief systems. And I am in no way singling out Christianity here. Animal rights, environmentalism, gay rights, anti-nuclear, you name it, all have become extreme belief systems that people blindly attach to and allow to make all of their decisions for them.
This seems very apropos to the parent's point that Japan and Europe use nuclear power. It's not because they're more left (which the parent seems to find hard to reconcile with their apparent "leftness"), it's because they're a more reasoned society. They don't just scream "Three Mile Island!" when someone discusses nuclear power, instead they make a reasoned analysis of the situation (power needs, costs, available resources) and then pick the most logically sound option.
On my machine (running Panther) ctrl-F1 turns Full Keyboard Access on and off. To get to the menu, use ctrl-F2.
Also interesting:
ctrl-F3 focuses on the Dock
ctrl-F4 focuses on the Next Window
For a list of all of them check out the system prefs pane mentioned in the parent. Also note that all of these keyboard shortcuts can be customized by the end user. Pretty cool.
Not exactly nefarious stuff. The "iTunes on Campus" FAQ has nice little bits like "The site-license is free to higher education institutions".
To me this is just another demonstration of how different Apple's approach is to this issue.
The Ruckus MS DRM stuff probably is limited content, has all kinds of craptacular restrictions on the downloaded files, and costs lots of money.
The Apple stuff is free (a University can spend money to buy 10,000 or more songs at a discount for its students). The files you get are yours forever, and they're real content - not a couple of gems and a bunch of bargain bin crap with loads of restrictions on usage (i.e. limited number of burns, only usable on one machine, etc.). Did I mention the license was free?
So please stop screaming "it's EVIL, it's DRM, it's freakin' DRM". Just like anything else, there are shades of gray. After all, extortion gangs are almost always broken up by the cops. And what are cops? Pretty much a civically accepted extortion gang. We don't necessarily like them, sometimes they hassle us, but overall we benefit by the cops being there. Apple is trying very hard to stay on the light gray side (be the cops we sanction) - where as Ruckus (hmm, what's that rhyme with?) looks like it might as well be pitch-black.
I followed the engenius link, was reading about the product, and started to get really excited...
Then I noticed that the engenius has been discontinued, and the only phones they had available were the same crap available at office slax or wurst buy. Too bad.
Actually - The issue is that there is too much data to drive the screen over one cable connection/channel (don't know the right technical term) - so there are two DVI connectors for each screen (four on the card).
Only the 30 inch display requires the two connections per screen - so this card is really only for the 30 inch.
IANAE - so I have no idea if the card could ever be hacked to drive four displays - but that would be pretty cool.
What a great way to encourage even bigger losses in CD sales. As a consumer, I see this as a CD with design obsolescence. And what about copies of copies? Am I now supposed to keep my original in a hermetically sealed vault, only to bring it out when my most recent copy dies? One more tick towards total failure?
And wouldn't this make tracks I buy from the iTunes music store superior to physical CDs? After all, I can burn them as many times as I want.
Since physical CDs are supposed to be a cash cow for the record industry, I don't see why they'd be excited to make them less attractive to consumers than they already are?!?
I think a good option to get someone's feet wet in programming is FileMaker Pro (I'm talking about version 5 or 6 'cuz I haven't tried 7).
FileMaker is very rewarding for a beginner user because they can make something useful, that looks pretty professional, in a short amount of time. Mom's might like to make a birthday database with a mail merge/envelope/label generation feature.
A big plus is the way scripts are created, all your data fields, operators, and functions are right there in the scripting window, and you can just double-click to drop a function (or field or operator) right into your script. This lets the person focus on the logic rather than getting frustrated by a barrage of syntax errors.
Another big plus is that interface design, scripting, etc. are all done in a single environment (no firing up a separate db designer tool, or a separate layout tool). I think this is less confusing to the beginner.
FileMaker also has a built in web server (runs on port 591 by default) and a markup language (CDML) that has identical function names to the built-in scripting language. So as the budding programmer gets more comfortable, he/she can play around with building a data-driven web page.
I think FMPro's combination of easy GUI stuff, basic scripting, and basic DB skills (defining data types, doing basic validations) makes for a quick, rewarding introduction to a lot of basic programming concepts.
FYI. Alice is available for Mac OS X here from top-notch game publisher Aspyr. Though I'm not sure it would fly in the poster's "very conservative community"
The better question is why does Windows XP Home only have two user types, a totally crippled limited user (i.e. sh*t doesn't work half the time - so nobody uses it) or a full power, overwrite anything, viruses-be-damned administrator.
Basically, by having only these two types of users (and not a happy compromise like Win 2K's "Power User"), Microsoft has virtually guaranteed that home users on their newest OS will remain vulnerable to exploits.
If MS wants to do something really helpful to Windows security in their next Service Pack, they should add a "Power User" account type to Windows XP Home.
Warner Brothers Execs are cleary morons...
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
who have never been excited about the show.
If you have ever been to the Warner Brothers Television site it's always had zip about Angel. But plenty of crap about worthless shows like Celebrity Justice. I know they don't make the show, but they could at least have a link?!?
And if you go to "The WB's" chat site, you'll see that the Angel forum has more posts than any other forum - including the "The WB General" forum. Are they just blind to the fact that the show generates more invested fans than any other property they own?
I also know that many people (myself included) only watch that turd-of-a-show Smallville because it's on right before Angel. I hope they're prepared to watch it's viewership decline.
Finally, I think Joss Whedon put it best in his paraphrasing of Robert Frost:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."
First off, Panther Server is an awesome product. I find it markedly better compared to Jaguar server (esp. the mail, Cyrus IMAP kicks butt over the old Apple Mail Server).
One area that's still week is NAT, specifically port forwarding. The server admin app configures natd by parsing a plist file called natd.plist located in etc/nat/. And the only way to set up port forwarding is to manually edit this plist file or not manage natd with Apple's Server Admin app.
First boo is having to even go and configure the natd.plist file (a plist file is an XML file that many OS X apps use as a preferences file) instead of just being able to edit NAT settings in Server Admin.
Second boo is that I have never personally, nor have I heard of anyone being able to get a natd.plist file with port forwarding instructions (you have to set up an array of dictionary keys for port forwarding... for more info read the natd.plist.default file located in/etc/nat/) working. My experience is that Server Admin always incorrectly parses the natd.plist file, only parsing the alias IP objects but never the target IP objects.
Now I know that there are plenty of easy workarounds (like an airport sitting on the outside, handling the port forwarding) - but it would be nice if this worked, it would make using an older Mac as a firewall/router much more feasible IMHO.
On the other hand, the fact that this is my only gripe with Panther Server speaks volumes to how pleased I am overall with Panther Server.
Hmm, you'd think a "free lance, computer repair guy" would know that freelance was one word. Anyway...
I mostly do "freelance" software development, but I am always willing to help out good customers who are having some "Windows problems".
The thing is, in the last month I've had to help out eight different clients with "Windows problems". And guess what OS they were using. That's right, Windows XP!
So where is the improvement?!? All I know is:
On Win 98 almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win ME almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win 200 almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win XP almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
Check out the system requirements on those kids games and educational software, there's a good chance they'll run on a Mac. You can buy a refurbished eMac for as little as $529.00 from the Apple Store. This let's you have the benefits of a new, stable, secure OS, avoid MS Taxes, and use your old software.
And unlike M$, Apple has very strong support for those old programs in their new OS (via Classic mode in "OS X").
Plus, if you buy a new Mac, odds are it will run any older "win95/98 only" educational software just fine in Virtual PC (note-Virtual PC does not currently work with G5s).
I also find Virtual PC really useful for testing software I've written on older OSs. I also find I HAVE TO build some software (for win95 especially) in Virtual PC running the target OS or there end up being all kinds of.dll incompatibility problems (double-especially if Windows Media Player is involved).
PHB's at large corporations, at least that's my experience.
I had a large corporate client where I personally knew 5+ managers who basically spent all day receiving and sending e-mail every second they weren't in meetings.
There was definitely an element of CYA involved. After all, they wouldn't want to lose their six-figure incomes by not chiming in on the latest-invented-crisis now would they?
Needless to say, if you had to do anything with the e-mail settings on their laptops or help transfer their mail to a new machine - they would hover around you the whole time with a look of quiet terror in their eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't care for your usage of the term "the left", but I'm not surprised by it.
I personally don't think that Europe or Japan (or Canada for that matter) is more left than the US, which I think is what you are implying. Instead I think that Europe and Japan are more reasoned. That they are more rational societies than the US.
Watching the election, watching the US media coverage of it, listening to voters, journalists, and pundits commenting on it, I was frightened and disappointed. And not because of any particular winner of any particular election or any particular ballot measure (though I did find all the anti-gay marriage measures chilling).
What I found truly frightening was the apparent decline of reason that seemed like an undercurrent of the entire electoral process. People in the United States of America no longer seem to be making fewer and fewer decisions based on rational analysis of the situation. Instead decisions are being made based on irrational belief systems. And I am in no way singling out Christianity here. Animal rights, environmentalism, gay rights, anti-nuclear, you name it, all have become extreme belief systems that people blindly attach to and allow to make all of their decisions for them.
This seems very apropos to the parent's point that Japan and Europe use nuclear power. It's not because they're more left (which the parent seems to find hard to reconcile with their apparent "leftness"), it's because they're a more reasoned society. They don't just scream "Three Mile Island!" when someone discusses nuclear power, instead they make a reasoned analysis of the situation (power needs, costs, available resources) and then pick the most logically sound option.
On my machine (running Panther) ctrl-F1 turns Full Keyboard Access on and off. To get to the menu, use ctrl-F2.
Also interesting:
ctrl-F3 focuses on the Dock
ctrl-F4 focuses on the Next Window
For a list of all of them check out the system prefs pane mentioned in the parent. Also note that all of these keyboard shortcuts can be customized by the end user. Pretty cool.
You're school probably signed up for this.
Not exactly nefarious stuff. The "iTunes on Campus" FAQ has nice little bits like "The site-license is free to higher education institutions".
To me this is just another demonstration of how different Apple's approach is to this issue.
The Ruckus MS DRM stuff probably is limited content, has all kinds of craptacular restrictions on the downloaded files, and costs lots of money.
The Apple stuff is free (a University can spend money to buy 10,000 or more songs at a discount for its students). The files you get are yours forever, and they're real content - not a couple of gems and a bunch of bargain bin crap with loads of restrictions on usage (i.e. limited number of burns, only usable on one machine, etc.). Did I mention the license was free?
So please stop screaming "it's EVIL, it's DRM, it's freakin' DRM". Just like anything else, there are shades of gray. After all, extortion gangs are almost always broken up by the cops. And what are cops? Pretty much a civically accepted extortion gang. We don't necessarily like them, sometimes they hassle us, but overall we benefit by the cops being there. Apple is trying very hard to stay on the light gray side (be the cops we sanction) - where as Ruckus (hmm, what's that rhyme with?) looks like it might as well be pitch-black.
I followed the engenius link, was reading about the product, and started to get really excited... Then I noticed that the engenius has been discontinued, and the only phones they had available were the same crap available at office slax or wurst buy. Too bad.
No Apple does not own AAC - but Apple does own FairPlay.
This is why FairPlay is listed in Apple's Trademark List
That's where I got the idea - thanks to angrist for the clarification.
Actually - The issue is that there is too much data to drive the screen over one cable connection/channel (don't know the right technical term) - so there are two DVI connectors for each screen (four on the card).
Only the 30 inch display requires the two connections per screen - so this card is really only for the 30 inch.
IANAE - so I have no idea if the card could ever be hacked to drive four displays - but that would be pretty cool.
First - the Asus WL-330 does not do audio playback, so it's not really a comparable product.
Second - More elegant? The thing has a f*cking wall-wart!
'nuff said.
I always thought the name was a play on Scheherazade, the heroine from "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights".
Kind of like she told a thousand stories, there are a thousand (metaphorically) adventures in P2P downloading awaiting you, oh humble user.
What a great way to encourage even bigger losses in CD sales. As a consumer, I see this as a CD with design obsolescence. And what about copies of copies? Am I now supposed to keep my original in a hermetically sealed vault, only to bring it out when my most recent copy dies? One more tick towards total failure?
And wouldn't this make tracks I buy from the iTunes music store superior to physical CDs? After all, I can burn them as many times as I want.
Since physical CDs are supposed to be a cash cow for the record industry, I don't see why they'd be excited to make them less attractive to consumers than they already are?!?
I think a good option to get someone's feet wet in programming is FileMaker Pro (I'm talking about version 5 or 6 'cuz I haven't tried 7).
FileMaker is very rewarding for a beginner user because they can make something useful, that looks pretty professional, in a short amount of time. Mom's might like to make a birthday database with a mail merge/envelope/label generation feature.
A big plus is the way scripts are created, all your data fields, operators, and functions are right there in the scripting window, and you can just double-click to drop a function (or field or operator) right into your script. This lets the person focus on the logic rather than getting frustrated by a barrage of syntax errors.
Another big plus is that interface design, scripting, etc. are all done in a single environment (no firing up a separate db designer tool, or a separate layout tool). I think this is less confusing to the beginner.
FileMaker also has a built in web server (runs on port 591 by default) and a markup language (CDML) that has identical function names to the built-in scripting language. So as the budding programmer gets more comfortable, he/she can play around with building a data-driven web page.
I think FMPro's combination of easy GUI stuff, basic scripting, and basic DB skills (defining data types, doing basic validations) makes for a quick, rewarding introduction to a lot of basic programming concepts.
I think he was referring to this.
I hate to say this, but another alternative is to use IE5 (yuck) for the Mac.
Go into user preferences.
Expand the "Network" hierarchical menu item (by clicking its disclosure triangle).
Select the "Protocol Helpers" menu item.
Now change the "Protocol Helper Settings" for the help protocol to something innocuous like "TextEdit".
This defeats the sample exploit ("TextEdit" is open but nothing is executed).
I hope this will make Apple consider adding a "Protocol Helper" option in Safari preferences.
The parent's link points to VERY disturbing pictures. It does NOT have anything to do with Gmail.
Um, this looks like a screenshots page to me.
And I've never seen a machine running Windows (98,2000,XP) have this problem. Oh wait, I have...
As well as the laptop resolution getting screwed up after detaching from a projector (Win2k).
Having the screen on the laptop go black and stay that way until a reboot (WinXP).
Or having the machine just freeze and die (win2k).
FYI. Alice is available for Mac OS X here from top-notch game publisher Aspyr. Though I'm not sure it would fly in the poster's "very conservative community"
The better question is why does Windows XP Home only have two user types, a totally crippled limited user (i.e. sh*t doesn't work half the time - so nobody uses it) or a full power, overwrite anything, viruses-be-damned administrator.
Basically, by having only these two types of users (and not a happy compromise like Win 2K's "Power User"), Microsoft has virtually guaranteed that home users on their newest OS will remain vulnerable to exploits.
If MS wants to do something really helpful to Windows security in their next Service Pack, they should add a "Power User" account type to Windows XP Home.
who have never been excited about the show.
If you have ever been to the Warner Brothers Television site it's always had zip about Angel. But plenty of crap about worthless shows like Celebrity Justice. I know they don't make the show, but they could at least have a link?!?
And if you go to "The WB's" chat site, you'll see that the Angel forum has more posts than any other forum - including the "The WB General" forum. Are they just blind to the fact that the show generates more invested fans than any other property they own?
I also know that many people (myself included) only watch that turd-of-a-show Smallville because it's on right before Angel. I hope they're prepared to watch it's viewership decline.
Finally, I think Joss Whedon put it best in his paraphrasing of Robert Frost:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."
First off, Panther Server is an awesome product. I find it markedly better compared to Jaguar server (esp. the mail, Cyrus IMAP kicks butt over the old Apple Mail Server).
/etc/nat/) working. My experience is that Server Admin always incorrectly parses the natd.plist file, only parsing the alias IP objects but never the target IP objects.
One area that's still week is NAT, specifically port forwarding. The server admin app configures natd by parsing a plist file called natd.plist located in etc/nat/. And the only way to set up port forwarding is to manually edit this plist file or not manage natd with Apple's Server Admin app.
First boo is having to even go and configure the natd.plist file (a plist file is an XML file that many OS X apps use as a preferences file) instead of just being able to edit NAT settings in Server Admin.
Second boo is that I have never personally, nor have I heard of anyone being able to get a natd.plist file with port forwarding instructions (you have to set up an array of dictionary keys for port forwarding... for more info read the natd.plist.default file located in
Now I know that there are plenty of easy workarounds (like an airport sitting on the outside, handling the port forwarding) - but it would be nice if this worked, it would make using an older Mac as a firewall/router much more feasible IMHO.
On the other hand, the fact that this is my only gripe with Panther Server speaks volumes to how pleased I am overall with Panther Server.
The page linking to the NPR audio is here
Hmm, you'd think a "free lance, computer repair guy" would know that freelance was one word. Anyway...
I mostly do "freelance" software development, but I am always willing to help out good customers who are having some "Windows problems".
The thing is, in the last month I've had to help out eight different clients with "Windows problems". And guess what OS they were using. That's right, Windows XP!
So where is the improvement?!? All I know is:
On Win 98 almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win ME almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win 200 almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
On Win XP almost all the problems end users had was from some junk software they downloaded, that took advantage of poor OS design to muck up the whole system.
Yeah, it's great idea to upgrade to Windows XP.
Check out the system requirements on those kids games and educational software, there's a good chance they'll run on a Mac. You can buy a refurbished eMac for as little as $529.00 from the Apple Store. This let's you have the benefits of a new, stable, secure OS, avoid MS Taxes, and use your old software.
.dll incompatibility problems (double-especially if Windows Media Player is involved).
And unlike M$, Apple has very strong support for those old programs in their new OS (via Classic mode in "OS X").
Plus, if you buy a new Mac, odds are it will run any older "win95/98 only" educational software just fine in Virtual PC (note-Virtual PC does not currently work with G5s).
I also find Virtual PC really useful for testing software I've written on older OSs. I also find I HAVE TO build some software (for win95 especially) in Virtual PC running the target OS or there end up being all kinds of
Who spends most of their day in the inbox?
PHB's at large corporations, at least that's my experience.
I had a large corporate client where I personally knew 5+ managers who basically spent all day receiving and sending e-mail every second they weren't in meetings.
There was definitely an element of CYA involved. After all, they wouldn't want to lose their six-figure incomes by not chiming in on the latest-invented-crisis now would they?
Needless to say, if you had to do anything with the e-mail settings on their laptops or help transfer their mail to a new machine - they would hover around you the whole time with a look of quiet terror in their eyes.
While you're waiting for Apple to patch this why not check out Mozilla Firebird 0.7 for OS X.
It is a great, feature rich browser. Of course you could also check out Mozilla 1.5, Camino, Netscape, iCab, Omni Web, Opera, or even IE 5 or MSN for the Mac
All of these can be downloaded from their respective sites, or from the Internet Utilities section of Apple's Mac OS X Downloads page.