Yes, I meant 'first person shooter' in that context. They rely heavily on the mouse as an input device in a way a tablet just can't do.
I never warmed to the genre once the technological coolness wore off, so losing the ability to play them when I quit using a mouse was no problem. They seem to be popular around Slashdot, though.
Have you tried opening a new account and contacting the helpstaff in-game? I have a friend who works there as a programmer, and she ends up doing support-type duty semi-regularly. Yeah, you might get someone miles away from anyone in the offices whose sole job is "helpstaff" - or you might get someone sitting there in the office, who can have a look at the account database and frob a few settings directly.
If you can hold a pen or pencil without pain I strongly suggest throwing out your mouse and getting a Wacom tablet. You'll have to give up FPSs but everything else will be great.
Back around 2000 or 2001, my right index finger decided 'clicking is bad'. I put part of the blame on me starting to use Flash back then: the easiest way to get into a symbol to tweak it is to double-click on it. This is a common task, so my double-clicking went up a lot. Or it may have just been years of mousing around coming home to roost; I dunno.
I tried more 'ergonomic' mice for a while and the pain I'd feel every time I clicked lessened. Four buttons mapped to click, double-click, click-toggle, and right-click helped. But it still hurt to use my right index finger to click.
Eventually I got a small Wacom tablet (since I'm an artist, a pen was a desierable thing anyway) and pretty much swore off mice. On the rare occasions I use one - using someone else's computer - my right index finger will start complaining very shortly. If I keep going that tendon might start complaining all the way at the other end, up in the elbow, as well.
I'm not a touch-typist; I mostly type with the second and third fingers of my hands. The week I swapped my keyboard to Dvorak and tried to learn to touch-typing was a week of constantly rising wrist pain. I listened to my body and went back to letting my hands float loosely across the keyboard!
Computers are really, really horrible for your hands, and anything that tries to encourage you to spend less time exerting force through wrists constricted by being turned ninety degrees is a very good idea.
A quick once-over of the Deskbar site suggests that DB is pretty much the same sort of application as Quicksilver.
QS's default skin (and most of its alternate skins) is really Mac-pretty.
Mostly, I use QS as an app launcher and iTunes controller. It is not a major component of my every interaction with my Mac, the way it seems to become for some people. But the fact that it knows a lot of semi-private formats means it's how I dig in a lot of things - I never open Address Book unless I'm editing a contact, for instance; I'll just double-tap the Apple key, type a few letters from the name I want until it's the top choice in QS over any file/app/bit of data with a similar name, and then use the cursor keys to navigate into the contact and copy out the info I need. Or just show it big on the screen.
Which, judging from the screenshots I've seen of its original version and its game-company-sponsored remix, has gone from bright, fun, whimsical imagery of a witch-girl walking around through demon-mouth portals, to... a convict wandering through a complex made of poured concrete.
1: Lately I've been seeing people prophesying doom and gloom for Mac Office because it will no longer support Visual Basic macros. It will, I believe, support Applescript and Automator so all-Mac shops can make Mac-style complicated semi-programmatic stuff - but if your job requires you to exchange programmatic Office documents with Windows users, you'd better raise some issues before the company decides to switch to Office 2008.
I don't use Office in my personal or professional life, aside from the very occasional client sending me reference material in Word format, so I have no sense how big a problem this really is.
I have a friend who's had the odd "webmaster" job. The bosses expect, I think, someone who will laboriously hand-edit every page, because they don't know any better. Instead, she ponders their needs, grabs a CMS... and automates herself out of a job. She's gone through at least two "webmaster" jobs by doing this, I think.
One of these days she'll figure out how to lie to her bosses about how long it takes, I suppose.
Hey, it's a slightly-more-verbose and earlier-in-life version of Quicksilver for Windows!
Interesting choice of launcher key; I wonder if it's changeable. I have Quicksilver set up to watch for double-taps of Apple. I also wonder if it requires you to always type the verb first - I'm so used to just doing appleapple S P return to launch System Preferences (for instance).
The question is, how's it stack up to the other QS-ish Windows launchers? Colibri, SlickRun, and probably others... It's got nice visual design, judging from the screenshots, which is part of QS's appeal.
Nothing about the iPod stops you from loading MP3s onto it.
For that matter, nothing about the iPod stops you from loading non-DRMed AACs onto it.
So if you don't want limited AACs, go buy a physical CD and rip it yourself, or buy cheap unlimited downloads from other sources like EMusic or the artists themselves and throw them into iTunes, and from there onto your iPod/iPhone/iWhatnot. When Jobs dies and someone else fills the niche of 'computer company that gives a shit about the user experience and style', move your MP3s/AACs/etc onto there.
So much for "always buying Apple". Yeah, if you buy music from the iTunes Store it'll be DRMed. So don't do it.
Given that Apple is the Premium Brand, I can't see them deliberately ad-enabling the OS. It's more that there will be some geolocation features, maybe some interesting integration into existing apps, maybe a map program shipped with the OS... and it's up to developers to come up with something crazy to do with it.
And up to developers to sell it. So unless rogue sleaze-installers start happening on the Mac I can't really see it being used for ads.
When Ralph's started doing the check-out commercials, I was ultimately thankful to them - because a mere two blocks past my local Ralph's was Trader Joe's. I still went to Ralph's for my Diet Coke habit, but those ads chased me away for all my other shopping, to somewhere generally better and cheaper.
I'm sure there are people in the intersection of Slashdot readers and Harry Potter fans who are cursing you for posting this news without hiding the name behind the 'Read More'. Hey, 'complicated procedure', might be one of those little treasure hunt things some people like doing, but now there's no point in solving the puzzle if you happen upon Slashdot first, is there?
Regardless: Harry Potter and the what the fuck? I think every other book had a title that made sense to the uninitiated, but "Deathly Hallows"? That just doesn't parse.
Oops, no, you can't - I just went and plugged in the webcam to check. Seems that any and all QCs that use the 'video input' or 'audio input' are now "unsafe, and cannot be viewed in WebKit", though you only get that warning when linking straight to the.qtz. Well, that's no fun!
You know, people can get audio and video through the Flash player too and nobody's gone hogshit.
I've never experienced behavior like that in myself due to a web site, but I've found myself flailing at the computer like an offended monkey when Flash starts doing its usual tricks of responding sluggishly to the mouse, starting to ignore keyboard shortcuts at random, and of course crashing and losing data. Sometimes I can just sigh, shrug, and move on, but other times I'm stressed out, under a deadline, and frustrated...
If you're in icon mode (which is the only way 'arrange' makes any sense) there will be a 'keep arranged by' checkbox with a popup menu for by what.
Make sure you check that the 'this window only/all windows' button at the top of the view options window is set properly, it tends to default to 'all windows' which is usually wrong in my experience.
I felt some need to respond to this picky list of peeves in a peevish point-by-point fashion.
15. No date display. Yeah, this bugs me. I use MenuCalendarClock to fix this, and get a hint at the stuff I've put in iCal without having to run it. But a "show the date" option in the clock prefs would be great.
14. Widgets can't be placed on the desktop. Whatever. A macosxhints.com entry on doing this is the third thing that comes up when I Google for 'widgets desktop'. And a couple more things on the first page point to a tool to make this easier. I've never had a desire to have widgets on the desktop, myself.
13. Inconsistent use of context menus. I don't know what they're talking about here. I get a dozen or so options when I ctrl-click on something in the finder. I get a handful of options when I ctrl-click a link in Safari. iTunes has a pile of stuff when I ctrl-click on something. The functionality is there and it's up to the designers of each program to decide what's appropriate. But I'm more about keyboard shortcuts, so I never really use context menus on any system.
12. Documents and app instances on the Dock. "the Dock isn't like the Windows taskbar, I want it to be like the Windows taskbar." Click on an app in the Dock, and all its windows come to the front. What's the problem here?
11. Managing Windows Size. As someone who went from the Amiga to the Mac, I've always found Windows' resize-everywhere behavior to be really, really annoying.
10. Accessing Applications. Guys, I switched from OS9 to OSX about four years ago and said "okay, the Apple menu is gone, what takes its place?" Did some of you only switch from OS9 last week? Hit the Finder, apple-shift-A. All my apps. Right there. If I use something regularly I shove it in the Dock.
9. Backspace and Delete Keys. Yeah, I wish I had a 'backspace' key on my laptop too. Can't argue with that.
8. Printer setup. I never print stuff, so I dunno.
7. Inconsistent User Interface. Yeah, I use Shapeshifter mostly to make Safari not metal.
6. Laptop Screen Dimming. I haven't ever really noticed any of this.
5, 4, 3. Managing Finder's Columns View. I've never really found any of this to be annoying.
2. Finder's Hobbled Cut Command. "It doesn't work just like Windows, make it work just like Windows". Whatever. I don't think I've ever used cut and paste to move files in my whole life - it's always been by opening two windows and drag-and-drop.
1. Dynamic Finder Refresh. I thought this got fixed in 10.4?
Reader Peeves: 1. Over-protective shutdown error trapping? Whatever. I almost never shut down or restart my machine anyway. Sleep rules.
2. Renaming Isn't Easy. "It should work just like Windows!" Hit return while a file's selected. Things behave just like the described behavior of f2 on Windows.
3. Secondary Mouse Button. Yes, dear, we know that Windows makes everything more complicated and you're confused because the Mac tries to avoid this.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I meant 'first person shooter' in that context. They rely heavily on the mouse as an input device in a way a tablet just can't do.
I never warmed to the genre once the technological coolness wore off, so losing the ability to play them when I quit using a mouse was no problem. They seem to be popular around Slashdot, though.
Have you tried opening a new account and contacting the helpstaff in-game? I have a friend who works there as a programmer, and she ends up doing support-type duty semi-regularly. Yeah, you might get someone miles away from anyone in the offices whose sole job is "helpstaff" - or you might get someone sitting there in the office, who can have a look at the account database and frob a few settings directly.
If you can hold a pen or pencil without pain I strongly suggest throwing out your mouse and getting a Wacom tablet. You'll have to give up FPSs but everything else will be great.
Back around 2000 or 2001, my right index finger decided 'clicking is bad'. I put part of the blame on me starting to use Flash back then: the easiest way to get into a symbol to tweak it is to double-click on it. This is a common task, so my double-clicking went up a lot. Or it may have just been years of mousing around coming home to roost; I dunno.
I tried more 'ergonomic' mice for a while and the pain I'd feel every time I clicked lessened. Four buttons mapped to click, double-click, click-toggle, and right-click helped. But it still hurt to use my right index finger to click.
Eventually I got a small Wacom tablet (since I'm an artist, a pen was a desierable thing anyway) and pretty much swore off mice. On the rare occasions I use one - using someone else's computer - my right index finger will start complaining very shortly. If I keep going that tendon might start complaining all the way at the other end, up in the elbow, as well.
I'm not a touch-typist; I mostly type with the second and third fingers of my hands. The week I swapped my keyboard to Dvorak and tried to learn to touch-typing was a week of constantly rising wrist pain. I listened to my body and went back to letting my hands float loosely across the keyboard!
Computers are really, really horrible for your hands, and anything that tries to encourage you to spend less time exerting force through wrists constricted by being turned ninety degrees is a very good idea.
A quick once-over of the Deskbar site suggests that DB is pretty much the same sort of application as Quicksilver.
QS's default skin (and most of its alternate skins) is really Mac-pretty.
Mostly, I use QS as an app launcher and iTunes controller. It is not a major component of my every interaction with my Mac, the way it seems to become for some people. But the fact that it knows a lot of semi-private formats means it's how I dig in a lot of things - I never open Address Book unless I'm editing a contact, for instance; I'll just double-tap the Apple key, type a few letters from the name I want until it's the top choice in QS over any file/app/bit of data with a similar name, and then use the cursor keys to navigate into the contact and copy out the info I need. Or just show it big on the screen.
And, implicitly, anyone coming up with a form-factor which is in between pocket sizes is similarly doomed to failure.
Unless they manage to successfully market to women. Who routinely carry purses. Bigger than pockets, smaller than laptop-capable bags.
Just sayin;.
Which, judging from the screenshots I've seen of its original version and its game-company-sponsored remix, has gone from bright, fun, whimsical imagery of a witch-girl walking around through demon-mouth portals, to... a convict wandering through a complex made of poured concrete.
1: Lately I've been seeing people prophesying doom and gloom for Mac Office because it will no longer support Visual Basic macros. It will, I believe, support Applescript and Automator so all-Mac shops can make Mac-style complicated semi-programmatic stuff - but if your job requires you to exchange programmatic Office documents with Windows users, you'd better raise some issues before the company decides to switch to Office 2008.
I don't use Office in my personal or professional life, aside from the very occasional client sending me reference material in Word format, so I have no sense how big a problem this really is.
"Snow Crash" is a bible around Linden Labs. They've explicitly said things like "we're trying to create the Metaverse" in the past.
Have you tried italicizing all spans with a lang attribute, then de-italicizing english-in-english, spanish-in-spanish, french-in-french, etc?
span:lang {font-style:italic}
body:lang(en) span:lang(en),
body:lang(es) span:lang(es),
body:lang(fr) span:lang(fr),
body:lang(dk) span:lang(dk) {font-style:normal}
paint with broad strokes, then carve out the exceptions.
(and check the syntax; I've never styled arbitrary xml documents, just ordinary HTML.)
Yes.
I have a friend who's had the odd "webmaster" job. The bosses expect, I think, someone who will laboriously hand-edit every page, because they don't know any better. Instead, she ponders their needs, grabs a CMS... and automates herself out of a job. She's gone through at least two "webmaster" jobs by doing this, I think.
One of these days she'll figure out how to lie to her bosses about how long it takes, I suppose.
Hey, it's a slightly-more-verbose and earlier-in-life version of Quicksilver for Windows!
Interesting choice of launcher key; I wonder if it's changeable. I have Quicksilver set up to watch for double-taps of Apple. I also wonder if it requires you to always type the verb first - I'm so used to just doing appleapple S P return to launch System Preferences (for instance).
The question is, how's it stack up to the other QS-ish Windows launchers? Colibri, SlickRun, and probably others... It's got nice visual design, judging from the screenshots, which is part of QS's appeal.
Yeah, but if you have that, you're probably not buying an iPod anyway because it won't do Ogg.
Nothing about the iPod stops you from loading MP3s onto it.
For that matter, nothing about the iPod stops you from loading non-DRMed AACs onto it.
So if you don't want limited AACs, go buy a physical CD and rip it yourself, or buy cheap unlimited downloads from other sources like EMusic or the artists themselves and throw them into iTunes, and from there onto your iPod/iPhone/iWhatnot. When Jobs dies and someone else fills the niche of 'computer company that gives a shit about the user experience and style', move your MP3s/AACs/etc onto there.
So much for "always buying Apple". Yeah, if you buy music from the iTunes Store it'll be DRMed. So don't do it.
Given that Apple is the Premium Brand, I can't see them deliberately ad-enabling the OS. It's more that there will be some geolocation features, maybe some interesting integration into existing apps, maybe a map program shipped with the OS... and it's up to developers to come up with something crazy to do with it.
And up to developers to sell it. So unless rogue sleaze-installers start happening on the Mac I can't really see it being used for ads.
When Ralph's started doing the check-out commercials, I was ultimately thankful to them - because a mere two blocks past my local Ralph's was Trader Joe's. I still went to Ralph's for my Diet Coke habit, but those ads chased me away for all my other shopping, to somewhere generally better and cheaper.
I know the word, dear.
> ASK PEGGY ABOUT "HARRY POTTER AND THE DEADLY HALLOWS"
I don't understand the word "hallows" when you use it that way.
I'm sure there are people in the intersection of Slashdot readers and Harry Potter fans who are cursing you for posting this news without hiding the name behind the 'Read More'. Hey, 'complicated procedure', might be one of those little treasure hunt things some people like doing, but now there's no point in solving the puzzle if you happen upon Slashdot first, is there?
Regardless: Harry Potter and the what the fuck? I think every other book had a title that made sense to the uninitiated, but "Deathly Hallows"? That just doesn't parse.
Oops, no, you can't - I just went and plugged in the webcam to check. Seems that any and all QCs that use the 'video input' or 'audio input' are now "unsafe, and cannot be viewed in WebKit", though you only get that warning when linking straight to the .qtz. Well, that's no fun!
You know, people can get audio and video through the Flash player too and nobody's gone hogshit.
Sorry about that. Works fine for me on Safari. I guess Firefox and/or your system doesn't like tiny Quartz compositions.
I've never experienced behavior like that in myself due to a web site, but I've found myself flailing at the computer like an offended monkey when Flash starts doing its usual tricks of responding sluggishly to the mouse, starting to ignore keyboard shortcuts at random, and of course crashing and losing data. Sometimes I can just sigh, shrug, and move on, but other times I'm stressed out, under a deadline, and frustrated...
You can still do this.
Because this would make people who've been using Macs for years scream with hate?
view->show view options (apple-j)
If you're in icon mode (which is the only way 'arrange' makes any sense) there will be a 'keep arranged by' checkbox with a popup menu for by what.
Make sure you check that the 'this window only/all windows' button at the top of the view options window is set properly, it tends to default to 'all windows' which is usually wrong in my experience.
I felt some need to respond to this picky list of peeves in a peevish point-by-point fashion.
15. No date display.
Yeah, this bugs me. I use MenuCalendarClock to fix this, and get a hint at the stuff I've put in iCal without having to run it. But a "show the date" option in the clock prefs would be great.
14. Widgets can't be placed on the desktop.
Whatever. A macosxhints.com entry on doing this is the third thing that comes up when I Google for 'widgets desktop'. And a couple more things on the first page point to a tool to make this easier. I've never had a desire to have widgets on the desktop, myself.
13. Inconsistent use of context menus.
I don't know what they're talking about here. I get a dozen or so options when I ctrl-click on something in the finder. I get a handful of options when I ctrl-click a link in Safari. iTunes has a pile of stuff when I ctrl-click on something. The functionality is there and it's up to the designers of each program to decide what's appropriate. But I'm more about keyboard shortcuts, so I never really use context menus on any system.
12. Documents and app instances on the Dock.
"the Dock isn't like the Windows taskbar, I want it to be like the Windows taskbar."
Click on an app in the Dock, and all its windows come to the front. What's the problem here?
11. Managing Windows Size.
As someone who went from the Amiga to the Mac, I've always found Windows' resize-everywhere behavior to be really, really annoying.
10. Accessing Applications.
Guys, I switched from OS9 to OSX about four years ago and said "okay, the Apple menu is gone, what takes its place?" Did some of you only switch from OS9 last week? Hit the Finder, apple-shift-A. All my apps. Right there. If I use something regularly I shove it in the Dock.
9. Backspace and Delete Keys.
Yeah, I wish I had a 'backspace' key on my laptop too. Can't argue with that.
8. Printer setup.
I never print stuff, so I dunno.
7. Inconsistent User Interface.
Yeah, I use Shapeshifter mostly to make Safari not metal.
6. Laptop Screen Dimming.
I haven't ever really noticed any of this.
5, 4, 3. Managing Finder's Columns View.
I've never really found any of this to be annoying.
2. Finder's Hobbled Cut Command.
"It doesn't work just like Windows, make it work just like Windows". Whatever. I don't think I've ever used cut and paste to move files in my whole life - it's always been by opening two windows and drag-and-drop.
1. Dynamic Finder Refresh.
I thought this got fixed in 10.4?
Reader Peeves:
1. Over-protective shutdown error trapping?
Whatever. I almost never shut down or restart my machine anyway. Sleep rules.
2. Renaming Isn't Easy.
"It should work just like Windows!"
Hit return while a file's selected. Things behave just like the described behavior of f2 on Windows.
3. Secondary Mouse Button.
Yes, dear, we know that Windows makes everything more complicated and you're confused because the Mac tries to avoid this.