Anybody with any moderate to advanced skills will turn off all of the default stupidity in Outlook. The Preview Pane(Pain) isn't just an exploitable problem, it's also damned irritating.
I've been using Outlook Express (and before that, MS Mail and News) for a very long time, and I've never been a victim to any such exploit. Of course, my install of Windows has the vast majority of the stupid bloated bullshit turned off, and as such doesn't much resemble a typical Windows machine.
Typical Users, Typical Installs, and Typical Stupidity result in the Typical Problems that people have with Windows.
Incidently, the alternative e-mail programs available for Windows blow as much goat cheese as (or in some case more than) Outlook Express for one reason or another. I've used them and I don't like them. It's that simple. It's true that a default install of Outlook is unsafe, but I don't use defaults. I configure my software. Don't you?
Keep on bashing Outlook Express if you want, but just because you don't have the ability to use Microsoft applications without problems doesn't mean there aren't people out there that operate perfectly fine with those apps.
Or, to put it another way, just because you can't do it doesn't mean there isn't someone else that very easily can.
In a slow, somewhat un-noticable sort of way, Google IS showing some signs of decision making and intelligence.
One example would be the Scientology situation.
Apparently months ago searches for Scientology resulted in the search engine displaying (first and foremost) all of the many debunking/anti-scam sites related to Scientology and if at all, would only list Scientology in the paid ads.
The Church of $cientology got a little annoyed by this and somehow pressured Google to rearrange the results so that the official sites came up first.
I'm not sure if the system has automatically sorted things back out into the order it sees fit, or if the results are just an ever-changing mish-mash of junk, but last time I did a search Operation Clambake still showed on the top page.
Is Google so smart, that it can better make decisions on what is more relevent than even the system admins?
I always used twist-flint ignitors, also found at Hardware stores. The flints are replacable and they tend to last longer than the sparking push-button grill ignitors.
I never really feared a PVC rupture while launching potatoes. It just wasn't ever an issue I considered probably, even if there was always that slight risk.
One thing you may want to try if you ever do that again is to avoid hairspray. It makes the inside a bit sticky over time, plus the residue that builds up in the barrel can actually slow down the potato.
Try WD-40.:) Not only does it leave the barrel slick, but it makes a wonderful propellant.
As my name suggests, I did a whole lot of this crap in my youth.
Doing the rough and dirty math, it takes about $1600 to build an excellent, high quality, 4 player upright Mame-Cabinet (Which I'm in the planning stages of doing right now, btw).
To download all supported ROMs (Mame supports over 3000) at an average price of roughly $4 apeice (between 2 and 6.... heh) you will have spent over $12,000 on ROMs if you planned to LEGALLY build a Mame Cabinet.
What's really funny is that for the past couple of days I've been looking for just this kind of site...
The article highlights how Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both bringing access speeds back to 3Mbps without any price increases.
I don't know what part of the country THAT person lives in, but here in Middle Tennessee the cost of cable television goes up predictably every year without fail. They sign you in with a contract for some length of time and as soon as it's over with normally the price starts to climb.
The cost of the INTERNET service might not raise, but the cable price itself does. In my area, you can't have Cable Internet without at least Basic Cable. I personally don't watch TV and don't care to.
All of my sucker TV Addicted friends have bitched constantly (for as long as I can remember) about the yearly raise the cable company demands from them.
Given that, I'll stick with my regional DSL provider. (I avoided Bellsouth FastAccess...)
Nice to know there's someone out there better able to judge my own personal opinion about what I find cool or interesting than I myself am.
Again, someone who missed key points of what I said. (You wouldn't happen to be a bad musician would you?)
I said, which you even quoted then disregarded:
but most of the time it really isn't either.
Most of the time it isn't. If you don't agree with "MOST OF THE TIME" then you must enjoy listening to anything. Or maybe you prefer the sound of disconnected hecktic random noises to actual music?
This isn't to say broken rules don't sometimes do something interesting, but MOST OF THE TIME they do not. As someone else stated earlier in his post about his girlfriend breaking rules just for the sake of breaking rules, it's normally just the composer rebelling and not actually acheiving anything. Sometimes it works, but ussually it doesn't. If the opposite were true, then good music wouldn't stand the test of time and bad music wouldn't fad into obscurity as it does.
Think of it as "natural selection" of the art world. The reason some songs get remade and replayed dozens or hundreds of years later normally is because they DID follow those rules.
By the way, steak tastes bad, you hate it.
Stupid and irrelevent bringing in taste. However, if you want to try and draw a parallel, we'll say "Steak tastes bad if you cook it this way, you'll hate it." That's an opinion, but given that we don't nkow what way that is, it just might be an opinion worth considering. What if that steak was cooked in dog-shit? Would you want to eat it then? Or would you be willing ot take someone's opinion on it sucking?
I think the general rule is, we don't cook with feces as an ingredient. Damn good rule to follow, too, if you ask me.
I don't know. The way I read it, he's not only saying that something being new and different dosn't make it good - being new and different in fact will make it bad.
Then you read it wrong.
If it weren't for new ideas, we wouldn't have so many diverse types of music. Rock would have never come along. Disco (for better or worse) would never have come along. We wouldn't have Techno or Electronica. I even see merit in some more modern R&B, Dance, and sometimes (but not often) Rap.
New ideas are great. Breaking rules can be fun and interesting.
But don't use "ART" as a defense for lacking talent. That's one of my personal pet peeves.
A: "Man, this is terrible." B: "That's just your opinion." A: "No, that person literally doesn't have any sense of beat, can't carry a tune, and the music is just a single monotonous repeating tone. That's a fact." B: "I still like it." A: "Well okay, but that doesn't save it from being bad music."
I've never felt any desire to shake anything upon hearing any music, so perhaps I'm not someone who should be having an opinion on this in the first place.
Very possible. Some people are not artistically inclined. To assume everyone has some artistic ability, and the idea that art is what you make it is an attitude I can't stand. It cheapens the value of the truely gifted people.
To say that this guy is brilliant because his voice has a wide and pure range, he has a wonderful sense of beat and harmony, and he can play 6 different instruments but then turn around and say this other guy is brilliant because he can grunt a bunch of garbage to some repeating track of rubbish that barely registers as anything more than white noise is completely unfair to the real artist of the two.
What I said: We're definately going to have less "quality control". Some of it is really going to stink, but some of it just might be really good. And that's why I'm so much for this idea.
Anon*: Well, if you're happy with the major music labels deciding for you what it good and what sucks... more power to you.
I love how people only read the first portion of my post and assume they know which side I'm on.
Point is, I think it's going to be good to have a choice to decide for myself. On the other hand, I don't think most people realize that even though there is a whole lot of mediocre crap in pop culture, there's also some really great stuff too. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's automatically mediocre garbage. Sometimes, good things become popular.
That doesn't mean I think people shouldn't be allowed to listen to whatever they want without having someone else rate it for the, it's just my pesonal experience having dealt with live bands all of my life that a great portion of garage bands remain in the garage with good reason.
And be real, if the professional entertainment industry is littered with mediocre (or sub par) performers, what on earth makes you think that something better can be said for the indie artists?
Naturally, some will be outstanding. Some will have some worthy talent. The rest (and easily the majority) are going to be fairly lousy to down right shitty.
Still, I think be able to hear even the worst of the worst will be a good thing. Maybe an overexposure to the worst of talents will help people find a higher appreciation for the truly gifted.
they don't want to release something really new, cause it's risky.
It's risky, because sometimes people "experimenting with interesting sounds" just plain suck.
The fact is Music IS a definable thing, though taste is subjective. A lot of music now days very barely falls into the definition of music. This goes for some pop music, but a whole LOT of indie music.
Indie music, on the whole, DOES suck because the people either lack talent, lack recording skills, they lack the funds to get proper equipment, or maybe they just really really universally bad taste. Whatever their excuse may be...
But when you really dig into what makes music, uhm, musical, you'll notice there are human biorhythm connections. Some things work really well, some things don't work at all.
Music that incorperates some or all of the basic principles tends to be more easily received by the listener. Random, disjointed, haphazard noise tends to irritate the body until it gets used to it, but even after becoming used to it (the same way you get used to city traffic, the sound of airplanes passing by, or the sound of a train station down the street) your body is still never really ready for it.
Some people will jump in here now to defend new and interesting sounds, or things that "break the rules" because it's cool or interesting, but most of the time it really isn't either. There are exceptions to every rule though, and that's what seperates the true artists from those who are just wailing away without any talent, which is as common today as the tasteless masses that enjoy it.
A serious music fanatic that I once knew told me that the best way to test if music is true to the nature of music is to try to hum along, clap your hands, and tap your feet. While some music makes one or more of those things difficult, as a general rule I noticed he is right. Things that do "make sense" as music tend to be more easily accepted by the senses.
He then pointed out to me that those songs that "make sense" stand the test of time. We can hear them 10, 20, or 30 years later and still enjoy them. Really, really, bad stuff from the 90's is already forgotten, probably never to be aired again (thankfully).
Back to the topic -- This Shareware Music thing hasn't any more or less potential to create good music than the current Music Business. It just has more of a chance of exposing us to the stuff that REALLY SUCKS (irrelevent of tates). Now even the really shitty artists will have some exposure, where they had only a small chance with the big lables that were afraid to bank on the masses of people with no taste at all. (People probably accepted the crap because they've been exposed to way too much hectic noise and insanity their lives and the music doesn't grate their nerves like it should...)
We're definately going to have less "quality control". Some of it is really going to stink, but some of it just might be really good. And that's why I'm so much for this idea. It gives everyone a fair chance, and if someone really wants to listen to total shit, they have that right and now they have that chance.
Of course, the phone isn't GSM exclusively in this area. My phone does GSM and one other (TDMA?) and if the GSM is failing I assume either the phone is still working in the other band, or the GSM in this area is (luckily) not down (yet).
Oh well, not that I care. If someone can't reach me online, they're probably not someone I care to speak to.
While there hasn't been any Emulator written that will connect up to a GBA for multiplayer linking using a Flash2Advance, there is no reason why theoretically it could not be done.
The GBA powers on and checks that port, and what it finds there is totally up to the PC on the other side. With some clever software trickery, it should be no major task to fool the GBA into thinking it's connected to another GBA via a link cable.
Your point almost makes sense, until you consider the fact that all people are in fact suffering from more stress and enduring more psychological problems than previous generations.
You can blame better diagnosis (or misdiagnosis) if you want, but really I'm not sure the typical human is really meant to be as smart as society now days expects it to be. A natural human living off of the land really needs to know nothing more than how to make a spear, run from big beasts, and keep out of the rain.
Technology (be it tending crops or inventing holodecks for wild endless regret-free sexual encounters), builds on technology. Each generation has tools and knowledge that previous generations didn't have. At what point will it reach a level where few people can cope? Even now days most poeple haven't got a clue what's going on inside a computer. Most people haven't got any idea how a telephone, automobile, or television works.
How many times have you heard someone say "I don't need that many features on my TV/VCR/Microwave/etc"?
Some people evolve with the times, others just learn to cope, but more and more I think we're going to see people who simply can't hack it all. As more and more people become unable to deal with it, I can honestly see us finding a name for whatever disorder they supposedly have, fiding some medication for it, and then sending them on along their way.
We'll think they're slow, or stupid, or have no common sense, but in reality, these people could probably make a spear and hide in a cave as well (maybe even better) than the other overly cereberal upright hairless apes.
1. The things he does aren't just plain good common business sense.
2. Some of the competition is actually really noteworthy.
3. When the competition stops attacking Microsoft constantly.
Those who hate Microsoft normally are just pissed off because their different (sometimes inferior, sometimes superior) views/ideas don't perfectly mesh up with those at Microsoft.
You are perfectly free to take the market away from Microsoft, don't blame Bill Gates because you're not clever enough to do it.
Canada should allow all citizens to carry a firearm for defense?
Good question, and tricky, too. Remember, I said those that are most trustworth with a gun are those that are comfortable with them, educated, and responsible enough to know the basic rules. (Never, ever, ever point a gun at a person, even an unloaded gun, not even joking, don't even THINK about it..., etc...)
If you suddenly were to toss a bunch of guns into a society where nobody had them, there would be a whole mix of different reactions. Some would take to arms and go crazy, there would be a whole lot of accidents, and fear would be rampant.
So no, I don't think it would be a good idea. At least, not unless it was done slowly and carefully.
Also think about this --
If you know I'm armed and I know how to fire my pistol, are you really going to break into my home?
Too bad most Americans now days haven't ever been properly trained with a firearm. I've also learned that even joking about shooting someone tends to drop off quite a bit around people who know the feel of pulling a trigger. Suddenly the reality of the dangers sinks in and "busting a cap in yo' ass" really isn't funny anymore.
Trillian were open source freeware who would care?
On the other hand, Trillian is a closed source commercial product, and a damned good one. It is very easily one of the best Online Message/Instant Message/Private Message (insert your prefered word) applications I've ever seen on any operating system, to include the free and opened source varients.
You can knock it for costing money. You can knock it for being for Windows. You can knock it for having a shitty default skin, and you can even knock it for profiting off of networks owned by other (evil) companies. But you can't knock it for being shitty software, because it quite simply isn't.
There haven't been any major showstopper bugs in quite a while, it's booter/punter resistant (unlike Y!M which is easily booted by any lame script kiddy), it supports MOST of the major features of all of the Message formats, and best of all it's free if you don't want to buy the Pro version.
The fact is, there really is little negative to be said about Trillian that isn't superficial or equally true of every other Message Applications, and in almost all instances, Trillian still comes out ahead.
As well they should be. In fact, I believe every citizen should be taught to properly use, care for, and respect a firearm at an early age as part of standard education. The only people who don't like guns are those that fear them. If you learn to respect the gun as a defensive tool, that fear disappears.
Also, those most properly trained and respective of the power of a firearm are statistically the least likely to use it to kill someone. The gun related problems in the US aren't that too many people have guns, it's that not enough people these days do.
Oh, and before someone gets on a high horse about having their way and taking away my guns, just remember, I'm armed, you're not. Come and get it.
Pet Peeve #843290: The new trend of prefixing comments with "Pet Peeve #i+1"
Pet Peeve #i+2 - I fed my Pet Peeve today. He ate everything. I was so proud. Then I shaved him and took him outside to play, where he was suddenly run over by some insensitive clod in an SUV.
However, your tracks are now low quality for AIFFs, since they started as 128k AACs. So even ripping that, you're at below-quality to start. Recompress (to MP3 as he was then suggesting), and you're even worse.
Granted. However, if you were to burn your iTunes songs to CD-- they would be less than CD quality but they will not have degraded any at this point.
You wouldn't see any further degradation until you pulled them off of CD and re-encoded them as MP3. I wouldn't recommend that myself.
but at that point it isn't an iTunes song, it's a below-quality CD rip.
Ripping off of a CD should not cause any sound degradation at all if done propertly. It's the process of encoding it as some lossy format that degrades the quality.
Slashdot Mirror
"New Patent Laws, By Microsoft."
Somehow this doesn't make me feel any better.
I know this is going to sound offensive
It could be offensive, and it's also ignorant.
Anybody with any moderate to advanced skills will turn off all of the default stupidity in Outlook. The Preview Pane(Pain) isn't just an exploitable problem, it's also damned irritating.
I've been using Outlook Express (and before that, MS Mail and News) for a very long time, and I've never been a victim to any such exploit. Of course, my install of Windows has the vast majority of the stupid bloated bullshit turned off, and as such doesn't much resemble a typical Windows machine.
Typical Users, Typical Installs, and Typical Stupidity result in the Typical Problems that people have with Windows.
Incidently, the alternative e-mail programs available for Windows blow as much goat cheese as (or in some case more than) Outlook Express for one reason or another. I've used them and I don't like them. It's that simple. It's true that a default install of Outlook is unsafe, but I don't use defaults. I configure my software. Don't you?
Keep on bashing Outlook Express if you want, but just because you don't have the ability to use Microsoft applications without problems doesn't mean there aren't people out there that operate perfectly fine with those apps.
Or, to put it another way, just because you can't do it doesn't mean there isn't someone else that very easily can.
SkyNet is becoming self-aware.
In a slow, somewhat un-noticable sort of way, Google IS showing some signs of decision making and intelligence.
One example would be the Scientology situation.
Apparently months ago searches for Scientology resulted in the search engine displaying (first and foremost) all of the many debunking/anti-scam sites related to Scientology and if at all, would only list Scientology in the paid ads.
The Church of $cientology got a little annoyed by this and somehow pressured Google to rearrange the results so that the official sites came up first.
I'm not sure if the system has automatically sorted things back out into the order it sees fit, or if the results are just an ever-changing mish-mash of junk, but last time I did a search Operation Clambake still showed on the top page.
Is Google so smart, that it can better make decisions on what is more relevent than even the system admins?
I always used twist-flint ignitors, also found at Hardware stores. The flints are replacable and they tend to last longer than the sparking push-button grill ignitors.
:) Not only does it leave the barrel slick, but it makes a wonderful propellant.
I never really feared a PVC rupture while launching potatoes. It just wasn't ever an issue I considered probably, even if there was always that slight risk.
One thing you may want to try if you ever do that again is to avoid hairspray. It makes the inside a bit sticky over time, plus the residue that builds up in the barrel can actually slow down the potato.
Try WD-40.
As my name suggests, I did a whole lot of this crap in my youth.
Doing the rough and dirty math, it takes about $1600 to build an excellent, high quality, 4 player upright Mame-Cabinet (Which I'm in the planning stages of doing right now, btw).
To download all supported ROMs (Mame supports over 3000) at an average price of roughly $4 apeice (between 2 and 6.... heh) you will have spent over $12,000 on ROMs if you planned to LEGALLY build a Mame Cabinet.
What's really funny is that for the past couple of days I've been looking for just this kind of site...
The article highlights how Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both bringing access speeds back to 3Mbps without any price increases.
I don't know what part of the country THAT person lives in, but here in Middle Tennessee the cost of cable television goes up predictably every year without fail. They sign you in with a contract for some length of time and as soon as it's over with normally the price starts to climb.
The cost of the INTERNET service might not raise, but the cable price itself does. In my area, you can't have Cable Internet without at least Basic Cable. I personally don't watch TV and don't care to.
All of my sucker TV Addicted friends have bitched constantly (for as long as I can remember) about the yearly raise the cable company demands from them.
Given that, I'll stick with my regional DSL provider. (I avoided Bellsouth FastAccess...)
Nice to know there's someone out there better able to judge my own personal opinion about what I find cool or interesting than I myself am.
Again, someone who missed key points of what I said. (You wouldn't happen to be a bad musician would you?)
I said, which you even quoted then disregarded:
but most of the time it really isn't either.
Most of the time it isn't. If you don't agree with "MOST OF THE TIME" then you must enjoy listening to anything. Or maybe you prefer the sound of disconnected hecktic random noises to actual music?
This isn't to say broken rules don't sometimes do something interesting, but MOST OF THE TIME they do not. As someone else stated earlier in his post about his girlfriend breaking rules just for the sake of breaking rules, it's normally just the composer rebelling and not actually acheiving anything. Sometimes it works, but ussually it doesn't. If the opposite were true, then good music wouldn't stand the test of time and bad music wouldn't fad into obscurity as it does.
Think of it as "natural selection" of the art world. The reason some songs get remade and replayed dozens or hundreds of years later normally is because they DID follow those rules.
By the way, steak tastes bad, you hate it.
Stupid and irrelevent bringing in taste. However, if you want to try and draw a parallel, we'll say "Steak tastes bad if you cook it this way, you'll hate it." That's an opinion, but given that we don't nkow what way that is, it just might be an opinion worth considering. What if that steak was cooked in dog-shit? Would you want to eat it then? Or would you be willing ot take someone's opinion on it sucking?
I think the general rule is, we don't cook with feces as an ingredient. Damn good rule to follow, too, if you ask me.
I don't know. The way I read it, he's not only saying that something being new and different dosn't make it good - being new and different in fact will make it bad.
Then you read it wrong.
If it weren't for new ideas, we wouldn't have so many diverse types of music. Rock would have never come along. Disco (for better or worse) would never have come along. We wouldn't have Techno or Electronica. I even see merit in some more modern R&B, Dance, and sometimes (but not often) Rap.
New ideas are great. Breaking rules can be fun and interesting.
But don't use "ART" as a defense for lacking talent. That's one of my personal pet peeves.
A: "Man, this is terrible."
B: "That's just your opinion."
A: "No, that person literally doesn't have any sense of beat, can't carry a tune, and the music is just a single monotonous repeating tone. That's a fact."
B: "I still like it."
A: "Well okay, but that doesn't save it from being bad music."
I've never felt any desire to shake anything upon hearing any music, so perhaps I'm not someone who should be having an opinion on this in the first place.
Very possible. Some people are not artistically inclined. To assume everyone has some artistic ability, and the idea that art is what you make it is an attitude I can't stand. It cheapens the value of the truely gifted people.
To say that this guy is brilliant because his voice has a wide and pure range, he has a wonderful sense of beat and harmony, and he can play 6 different instruments but then turn around and say this other guy is brilliant because he can grunt a bunch of garbage to some repeating track of rubbish that barely registers as anything more than white noise is completely unfair to the real artist of the two.
What I said: We're definately going to have less "quality control". Some of it is really going to stink, but some of it just might be really good. And that's why I'm so much for this idea.
Anon*: Well, if you're happy with the major music labels deciding for you what it good and what sucks... more power to you.
I love how people only read the first portion of my post and assume they know which side I'm on.
Point is, I think it's going to be good to have a choice to decide for myself. On the other hand, I don't think most people realize that even though there is a whole lot of mediocre crap in pop culture, there's also some really great stuff too. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's automatically mediocre garbage. Sometimes, good things become popular.
That doesn't mean I think people shouldn't be allowed to listen to whatever they want without having someone else rate it for the, it's just my pesonal experience having dealt with live bands all of my life that a great portion of garage bands remain in the garage with good reason.
And be real, if the professional entertainment industry is littered with mediocre (or sub par) performers, what on earth makes you think that something better can be said for the indie artists?
Naturally, some will be outstanding. Some will have some worthy talent. The rest (and easily the majority) are going to be fairly lousy to down right shitty.
Still, I think be able to hear even the worst of the worst will be a good thing. Maybe an overexposure to the worst of talents will help people find a higher appreciation for the truly gifted.
they don't want to release something really new, cause it's risky.
It's risky, because sometimes people "experimenting with interesting sounds" just plain suck.
The fact is Music IS a definable thing, though taste is subjective. A lot of music now days very barely falls into the definition of music. This goes for some pop music, but a whole LOT of indie music.
Indie music, on the whole, DOES suck because the people either lack talent, lack recording skills, they lack the funds to get proper equipment, or maybe they just really really universally bad taste. Whatever their excuse may be...
But when you really dig into what makes music, uhm, musical, you'll notice there are human biorhythm connections. Some things work really well, some things don't work at all.
Music that incorperates some or all of the basic principles tends to be more easily received by the listener. Random, disjointed, haphazard noise tends to irritate the body until it gets used to it, but even after becoming used to it (the same way you get used to city traffic, the sound of airplanes passing by, or the sound of a train station down the street) your body is still never really ready for it.
Some people will jump in here now to defend new and interesting sounds, or things that "break the rules" because it's cool or interesting, but most of the time it really isn't either. There are exceptions to every rule though, and that's what seperates the true artists from those who are just wailing away without any talent, which is as common today as the tasteless masses that enjoy it.
A serious music fanatic that I once knew told me that the best way to test if music is true to the nature of music is to try to hum along, clap your hands, and tap your feet. While some music makes one or more of those things difficult, as a general rule I noticed he is right. Things that do "make sense" as music tend to be more easily accepted by the senses.
He then pointed out to me that those songs that "make sense" stand the test of time. We can hear them 10, 20, or 30 years later and still enjoy them. Really, really, bad stuff from the 90's is already forgotten, probably never to be aired again (thankfully).
Back to the topic -- This Shareware Music thing hasn't any more or less potential to create good music than the current Music Business. It just has more of a chance of exposing us to the stuff that REALLY SUCKS (irrelevent of tates). Now even the really shitty artists will have some exposure, where they had only a small chance with the big lables that were afraid to bank on the masses of people with no taste at all. (People probably accepted the crap because they've been exposed to way too much hectic noise and insanity their lives and the music doesn't grate their nerves like it should...)
We're definately going to have less "quality control". Some of it is really going to stink, but some of it just might be really good. And that's why I'm so much for this idea. It gives everyone a fair chance, and if someone really wants to listen to total shit, they have that right and now they have that chance.
Is fine in Middle Tennessee, for the moment.
Of course, the phone isn't GSM exclusively in this area. My phone does GSM and one other (TDMA?) and if the GSM is failing I assume either the phone is still working in the other band, or the GSM in this area is (luckily) not down (yet).
Oh well, not that I care. If someone can't reach me online, they're probably not someone I care to speak to.
GBA->PC USB Cable, You mean like this one?
http://www.flash2advance.com
While there hasn't been any Emulator written that will connect up to a GBA for multiplayer linking using a Flash2Advance, there is no reason why theoretically it could not be done.
The GBA powers on and checks that port, and what it finds there is totally up to the PC on the other side. With some clever software trickery, it should be no major task to fool the GBA into thinking it's connected to another GBA via a link cable.
I use interpreted languages you insensitive clod.
:)
Apparently, so do lawyers.
Your point almost makes sense, until you consider the fact that all people are in fact suffering from more stress and enduring more psychological problems than previous generations.
You can blame better diagnosis (or misdiagnosis) if you want, but really I'm not sure the typical human is really meant to be as smart as society now days expects it to be. A natural human living off of the land really needs to know nothing more than how to make a spear, run from big beasts, and keep out of the rain.
Technology (be it tending crops or inventing holodecks for wild endless regret-free sexual encounters), builds on technology. Each generation has tools and knowledge that previous generations didn't have. At what point will it reach a level where few people can cope? Even now days most poeple haven't got a clue what's going on inside a computer. Most people haven't got any idea how a telephone, automobile, or television works.
How many times have you heard someone say "I don't need that many features on my TV/VCR/Microwave/etc"?
Some people evolve with the times, others just learn to cope, but more and more I think we're going to see people who simply can't hack it all. As more and more people become unable to deal with it, I can honestly see us finding a name for whatever disorder they supposedly have, fiding some medication for it, and then sending them on along their way.
We'll think they're slow, or stupid, or have no common sense, but in reality, these people could probably make a spear and hide in a cave as well (maybe even better) than the other overly cereberal upright hairless apes.
illecit tactics to destroy competition
I'll consider his tactics unsavory when...
1. The things he does aren't just plain good common business sense.
2. Some of the competition is actually really noteworthy.
3. When the competition stops attacking Microsoft constantly.
Those who hate Microsoft normally are just pissed off because their different (sometimes inferior, sometimes superior) views/ideas don't perfectly mesh up with those at Microsoft.
You are perfectly free to take the market away from Microsoft, don't blame Bill Gates because you're not clever enough to do it.
Canada should allow all citizens to carry a firearm for defense?
Good question, and tricky, too. Remember, I said those that are most trustworth with a gun are those that are comfortable with them, educated, and responsible enough to know the basic rules. (Never, ever, ever point a gun at a person, even an unloaded gun, not even joking, don't even THINK about it..., etc...)
If you suddenly were to toss a bunch of guns into a society where nobody had them, there would be a whole mix of different reactions. Some would take to arms and go crazy, there would be a whole lot of accidents, and fear would be rampant.
So no, I don't think it would be a good idea. At least, not unless it was done slowly and carefully.
Also think about this --
If you know I'm armed and I know how to fire my pistol, are you really going to break into my home?
Too bad most Americans now days haven't ever been properly trained with a firearm. I've also learned that even joking about shooting someone tends to drop off quite a bit around people who know the feel of pulling a trigger. Suddenly the reality of the dangers sinks in and "busting a cap in yo' ass" really isn't funny anymore.
christianity is the new messiah on the block.
Not the block, the stick. Jesus is the new Messiah on a Stick.
Trillian were open source freeware who would care?
On the other hand, Trillian is a closed source commercial product, and a damned good one. It is very easily one of the best Online Message/Instant Message/Private Message (insert your prefered word) applications I've ever seen on any operating system, to include the free and opened source varients.
You can knock it for costing money. You can knock it for being for Windows. You can knock it for having a shitty default skin, and you can even knock it for profiting off of networks owned by other (evil) companies. But you can't knock it for being shitty software, because it quite simply isn't.
There haven't been any major showstopper bugs in quite a while, it's booter/punter resistant (unlike Y!M which is easily booted by any lame script kiddy), it supports MOST of the major features of all of the Message formats, and best of all it's free if you don't want to buy the Pro version.
The fact is, there really is little negative to be said about Trillian that isn't superficial or equally true of every other Message Applications, and in almost all instances, Trillian still comes out ahead.
guns can be bought anywhere
As well they should be. In fact, I believe every citizen should be taught to properly use, care for, and respect a firearm at an early age as part of standard education. The only people who don't like guns are those that fear them. If you learn to respect the gun as a defensive tool, that fear disappears.
Also, those most properly trained and respective of the power of a firearm are statistically the least likely to use it to kill someone. The gun related problems in the US aren't that too many people have guns, it's that not enough people these days do.
Oh, and before someone gets on a high horse about having their way and taking away my guns, just remember, I'm armed, you're not. Come and get it.
As for the rest of your post, I agree completely.
Pet Peeve #843290: The new trend of prefixing comments with "Pet Peeve #i+1"
Pet Peeve #i+2 - I fed my Pet Peeve today. He ate everything. I was so proud. Then I shaved him and took him outside to play, where he was suddenly run over by some insensitive clod in an SUV.
However, your tracks are now low quality for AIFFs, since they started as 128k AACs. So even ripping that, you're at below-quality to start. Recompress (to MP3 as he was then suggesting), and you're even worse.
Granted. However, if you were to burn your iTunes songs to CD-- they would be less than CD quality but they will not have degraded any at this point.
You wouldn't see any further degradation until you pulled them off of CD and re-encoded them as MP3. I wouldn't recommend that myself.
Whew! Looks like I'm safe! I did a search for 127.0.0.1 and it came up clean. :)
but at that point it isn't an iTunes song, it's a below-quality CD rip.
Ripping off of a CD should not cause any sound degradation at all if done propertly. It's the process of encoding it as some lossy format that degrades the quality.
Why can't everybody be nice to each other ?? :-(
Life feeds on life.
Two very large spiders in my back yard -- Feeding or Fucking? You decide.
(I.e., nothing is either certainly true or certainly false.)
And everything you know is wrong!
All hail Discordia!
fnord