As a teenager, I used to try controlling my dreams, and it actually sort of worked. I was sometimes able, in my dream, to realize it's a dream and decide about stuff happening in it, or decide waking up. I can't quite remember details now, but I do remember I was fascinated with all that was possible.
Video games didn't exist at the time.
I think this has nothing to do with video games, and everything to do with age and the mental ability and desire to experiment with stuff like that.
I have the impression that you are implying that the bits per channel are related to the color gamut. That more bits per pixel or channel produce a wider color gamut. That is not the case, and the 2 are unrelated. More bits per pixel only give you more shades within a given gamut. In practice, more bits per channel are desirable in video production to allow finer control over color correction, without producing artifacts like banding.
I got the latest Chrome beta, and was met with a very annoying new "feature": it constantly asks me if I want the page I'm viewing translated into it's incomprehensible English-like gibberish.
NO I don't want any ridiculous automated translation. Either I understand the language or I search for another page in a language I understand. I don't mind Google playing with automated translations, and letting people use them. I really appreciate all the cool stuff they offer unobtrusively through their search (calculator, conversions, exchange rates, definitions,...). That's great. But their trying to push their stupid translations down my throat is really annoying.
Somehow, I missed the original story. Must have been on travels at the time. Would someone help me with these basic questions? (I can't help being interested in the trivia. I love Sarah Palin stories. US politics would be so dull without her...)
- How did he hack the account? Guess the password? Do we know what the password was?
- Were funny email bits published on the net? Are they still available somewhere?
Maybe it wouldn't scale to your needs, but I find Tomboy Notes pretty handy. I use it keeps notes of whatever, including follow-ups with contacts (not as an address book). It does full text indexing, making it easy to find the note(s) I'm looking for.
I hoped to find some new information about database frontends, but the first paragraph makes it absolutely clear there won't be any, and makes you wonder why the reviewer even bothered with filling the rest of the page:
First off, I am not a database user. [...] MS Access isn't the industry-dominating title that Excel is. So, we won't be looking for Access replacements here.
So what will he be lookiing for ? An Excel replacement ? Well, that is suposed to be covered on another page.
we're comparing these apps to Access, something similarly clean, user-friendly, and scalable.
So he's not looking for an Access replacement, but will compare to Access??
Anyway, the result is still that there is no Access equivalent on Linux, and that is the main problem I have since i switched to Ubuntu some 7 months ago.
There are several great databases for big and small uses (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQlite, etc.), but there is no decent frontend to design forms and build applications which require a database. I have successfully used Access->ODBC->PostgreSQL on several projects, and I'm about to install Access in a VM for my own use because Base and Kexi are just much too limited (and Kexi kept crashing when I tried to make a query with a simple join).
And such stupid reviews will certainly not motivate coders to build a great database front-end for Linux.
Last time I looked at Google Docs, I couldn't create a new style or modify the properties of an existing style. So it seemed to me that it was quite useless as a word processing app. Like Wordpad but slow.
The possibility to collaboratevily edit a document is really cool. But the situations in which this one feature outweighs the disadvantage of having to use some slow Wordpad alternative are quite rare for me. Last time I had a use for a shared doc it was spreadsheet over a year ago.
I guess most update servers are local mirrors which are not under Canonical's control, s they don't have access to these stats. For example, my sources.list has ch.archive.ubuntu.com, which is really an alias to the Switch mirror:
$ host ch.archive.ubuntu.com ch.archive.ubuntu.com is an alias for mirror.switch.ch. mirror.switch.ch is an alias for mimas-nxge0.switch.ch. mimas-nxge0.switch.ch has address 130.59.10.36 mimas-nxge0.switch.ch has IPv6 address 2001:620:0:8::20
I disagree. OS X is the only platform where Songbird is really useful. Because it supports various formats (like FLAC) which iTunes does not. On Windows and Linux, Songbird doesn't have anything compelling many other music players, but on the Mac it does.
While Linux doesn't have a player I like as much as Winamp, it has many which are adequate. I tried Songbird on Linux, and cannot remember what I thought of it or why I didn't continue using it, so I guess I have nothing to regret if they drop Linux (where I mainly use gmusicbrowser now).
Songbird is mainly useful on Macs, where iTunes doesn't support Flac or many other formats, and there is not a lot of choice of music players as there is on Windows or Linux.
Have you ever considered that public water in some areas just tastes bad?
Yes, it does in some places. I have lived in Brussels where tap water was terrible, and I used to buy bottled water there.
Where I live now, the tap water is excellent, yet supermarkets have huge displays of bottled water (some even imported), so I guess many suckers actually do buy it, even though it probably doesn't taste as good as the tap water.
Given the existence of OpenOffice.org, I can't imagine how anyone could justify buying this software.
I did. Several years ago already, for Windows at the time.
I hated MS Word, and was longing for the simplicity of old Lotus Ami Pro. OpenOffice felt like just an even more bloated bad clone of MS-Word: the same, but worse.
It is true that TextMaker (2008) doesn't integrate well in my current Ubuntu, and doesn't "look" nice. But I do hope they improve the Linux version and will definitely try the 2010 version. On Windows, it is the best word processor I know (fast, simple, easy to use, with good management of styles; exactly the opposite of Word or OOo). Despite it's defects in the Linux version, it is still what I use in Ubuntu. It is much better (for me) than OOo Writer.
Well, they actually did (mostly). Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, doesn't use the same standard, and actually has a much better one (much smaller and simpler plugs at same Ampere ratings). Now it's a total mess in Switzerland, with the better local plugs and cables, and the European ones, and lots of adapters in between. (Switzerland is very small; if you need to rent trucks full of electrical equipment, chances are some of them will come from a neighboring EU country, with the EU power standards).
why is a completely general video container format actually useful? [...] rather than a file that is decoder specific?
A container format is needed because media files contain many different things using different codecs: video stream(s) using some video codec, audio streams using audio codecs, subtitles in various forms, timecode tracks, metadata, etc. Without a container format to bring all these together, your videos would be without sound unless you also have the audio file and manage to start both at the same time so they start in sync. If you also need subtitles, that would be 3 files to find and start at the same time.
A few days ago, there was an article in the NYT (titled "Are there secular reasons?") which is closely related, and worth reading. Basically, it argues that secular reasons alone (which we call "reason" here) cannot lead to any action. Science tells us facts, but they are useless without beliefs which set goals and allow us to use the facts to act in the pursuit of these goals.
Also related, the very old (16th century) quote from Rabelais: "Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme" ("Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul").
We are made of both beliefs and reason, and need both. It's no surprise that different people mix these two aspects in different ways, and that many give so much more weight to beliefs that it blurs their view of facts.
I completely agree. But I would go further. Do NOT "start transitioning friends and family from XP to Linux" unless they specifically ask you to. Or at least specifically ask you something for which you feel that Linux would be the right solution.
You can recommend and install Linux for people who have no previous experience like (small) children. For others, make sure they understand what they gain and what they lose, and they really want it.
For most normal people I know who are fed up with viruses and Windows complexity, the right answer is usually a Mac.
And don't forget that many people who are quite computer-illiterate and only seem to use the web and email, actually do want and use much more. Like the Outlook address book and calendar, synced to their mobile phone...
Now for the people for whom you do install Linux, Ubuntu, Suse and others are all fine. KDE is more like Windows while Gnome is a bit more like Mac. One is more configurable and may seem more complex, while the other is simpler. I installed Ubuntu (which uses Gnome) for someone who seems happy with it, but who was already using Firefox and Thunderbird in Windows.
Yes, it's the Intel WiFi Link 5300 (in a Thinkpad), using the iwlagn driver (in Ubuntu 9.04). Not sure if it's because of the chipset, the driver or their combination, but it doesn't support master mode:
# iwconfig wlan0 mode master Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
Seriously! That is exactly what I wanted to do a few months ago, but it seems I can't with my WiFi Link 5300. Hostap seems to be for Prism chipsets. Easily creating an AP to share files or to play with neighbors was one of the bonuses I expected from my switch to Ubuntu. What is going on? Is Windows now becoming the fun OS for geeks and Linux the boring Desktop for the average users?
May be a good time to discuss alternatives
on
20 Years of Photoshop
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not being a graphics designer, I never liked Photoshop which was too slow, bloated and complicated (and expensive) for my simple uses. In my Windows days, I first found Paint Shop Pro (of which I still have some prehistoric version somewhere), and finally ended up mostly using IrfanView and XnView, + occasionally PhotoFiltre.
While I'm sure Photoshop is a fantastic program for professionals, let's try a list of things normal users (like myself) mainly need in a graphics program:
- Rotate (losslessly for Jpeg) - Resize - Crop - Print - Convert to another format (Save as) - Adjust brightness, contrast, white balance
Then maybe - Edit metadata (Jpeg comments, Exif description, maybe IPTC tags) - rarely convert a color scan to black and white. - and maybe once or twice a year add something on a picture like text or a circle etc.
Obviously, Photoshop is really too much for this.
For Windows users, I know what to recommend (usually XnView; + PhotoFiltre if needed)
But I still don't know what to use on my Ubuntu desktop which has been my main machine for over 6 months. The Gimp feels just like Photoshop: too heavy and complicated (though the price is fine), and all the others I tried too limited (gThumb and the like). Is there a gem I missed somewhere?
Slashdot Mirror
As a teenager, I used to try controlling my dreams, and it actually sort of worked. I was sometimes able, in my dream, to realize it's a dream and decide about stuff happening in it, or decide waking up. I can't quite remember details now, but I do remember I was fascinated with all that was possible.
Video games didn't exist at the time.
I think this has nothing to do with video games, and everything to do with age and the mental ability and desire to experiment with stuff like that.
I have the impression that you are implying that the bits per channel are related to the color gamut. That more bits per pixel or channel produce a wider color gamut. That is not the case, and the 2 are unrelated. More bits per pixel only give you more shades within a given gamut. In practice, more bits per channel are desirable in video production to allow finer control over color correction, without producing artifacts like banding.
I got the latest Chrome beta, and was met with a very annoying new "feature": it constantly asks me if I want the page I'm viewing translated into it's incomprehensible English-like gibberish.
NO I don't want any ridiculous automated translation. Either I understand the language or I search for another page in a language I understand. I don't mind Google playing with automated translations, and letting people use them. I really appreciate all the cool stuff they offer unobtrusively through their search (calculator, conversions, exchange rates, definitions, ...). That's great. But their trying to push their stupid translations down my throat is really annoying.
There used to be one which would have been advising YOU. But I heard it doesn't exist anymore so you should be safe...
Somehow, I missed the original story. Must have been on travels at the time. Would someone help me with these basic questions? (I can't help being interested in the trivia. I love Sarah Palin stories. US politics would be so dull without her...)
- How did he hack the account? Guess the password? Do we know what the password was?
- Were funny email bits published on the net? Are they still available somewhere?
- How did the guy actually get caught?
Maybe it wouldn't scale to your needs, but I find Tomboy Notes pretty handy. I use it keeps notes of whatever, including follow-ups with contacts (not as an address book). It does full text indexing, making it easy to find the note(s) I'm looking for.
I hoped to find some new information about database frontends, but the first paragraph makes it absolutely clear there won't be any, and makes you wonder why the reviewer even bothered with filling the rest of the page:
First off, I am not a database user. [...] MS Access isn't the industry-dominating title that Excel is. So, we won't be looking for Access replacements here.
So what will he be lookiing for ? An Excel replacement ? Well, that is suposed to be covered on another page.
we're comparing these apps to Access, something similarly clean, user-friendly, and scalable.
So he's not looking for an Access replacement, but will compare to Access??
Anyway, the result is still that there is no Access equivalent on Linux, and that is the main problem I have since i switched to Ubuntu some 7 months ago.
There are several great databases for big and small uses (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQlite, etc.), but there is no decent frontend to design forms and build applications which require a database. I have successfully used Access->ODBC->PostgreSQL on several projects, and I'm about to install Access in a VM for my own use because Base and Kexi are just much too limited (and Kexi kept crashing when I tried to make a query with a simple join).
And such stupid reviews will certainly not motivate coders to build a great database front-end for Linux.
Last time I looked at Google Docs, I couldn't create a new style or modify the properties of an existing style. So it seemed to me that it was quite useless as a word processing app. Like Wordpad but slow.
The possibility to collaboratevily edit a document is really cool. But the situations in which this one feature outweighs the disadvantage of having to use some slow Wordpad alternative are quite rare for me. Last time I had a use for a shared doc it was spreadsheet over a year ago.
I guess most update servers are local mirrors which are not under Canonical's control, s they don't have access to these stats. For example, my sources.list has ch.archive.ubuntu.com, which is really an alias to the Switch mirror:
$ host ch.archive.ubuntu.com
ch.archive.ubuntu.com is an alias for mirror.switch.ch.
mirror.switch.ch is an alias for mimas-nxge0.switch.ch.
mimas-nxge0.switch.ch has address 130.59.10.36
mimas-nxge0.switch.ch has IPv6 address 2001:620:0:8::20
I disagree. OS X is the only platform where Songbird is really useful. Because it supports various formats (like FLAC) which iTunes does not. On Windows and Linux, Songbird doesn't have anything compelling many other music players, but on the Mac it does.
While Linux doesn't have a player I like as much as Winamp, it has many which are adequate. I tried Songbird on Linux, and cannot remember what I thought of it or why I didn't continue using it, so I guess I have nothing to regret if they drop Linux (where I mainly use gmusicbrowser now).
Songbird is mainly useful on Macs, where iTunes doesn't support Flac or many other formats, and there is not a lot of choice of music players as there is on Windows or Linux.
Have you ever considered that public water in some areas just tastes bad?
Yes, it does in some places. I have lived in Brussels where tap water was terrible, and I used to buy bottled water there.
Where I live now, the tap water is excellent, yet supermarkets have huge displays of bottled water (some even imported), so I guess many suckers actually do buy it, even though it probably doesn't taste as good as the tap water.
Given the existence of OpenOffice.org, I can't imagine how anyone could justify buying this software.
I did. Several years ago already, for Windows at the time.
I hated MS Word, and was longing for the simplicity of old Lotus Ami Pro. OpenOffice felt like just an even more bloated bad clone of MS-Word: the same, but worse.
It is true that TextMaker (2008) doesn't integrate well in my current Ubuntu, and doesn't "look" nice. But I do hope they improve the Linux version and will definitely try the 2010 version. On Windows, it is the best word processor I know (fast, simple, easy to use, with good management of styles; exactly the opposite of Word or OOo). Despite it's defects in the Linux version, it is still what I use in Ubuntu. It is much better (for me) than OOo Writer.
The price will probably drop as demand increases
I believe I learned that it was the other way around in school. But well, maybe that was too long ago, and economists changed their mind since then...
If the EU decided to standardize power outlets
Well, they actually did (mostly). Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, doesn't use the same standard, and actually has a much better one (much smaller and simpler plugs at same Ampere ratings). Now it's a total mess in Switzerland, with the better local plugs and cables, and the European ones, and lots of adapters in between. (Switzerland is very small; if you need to rent trucks full of electrical equipment, chances are some of them will come from a neighboring EU country, with the EU power standards).
I tried the video mentioned here, but it just tells me "Captions are not availabel". Strange.
Is it because I'm in Europe?
Because I use Firefox on Linux?
The video mentioned a few posts before that is even weirder: it seems to have captions, I can turn them on, but no captions are displayed.
why is a completely general video container format actually useful? [...] rather than a file that is decoder specific?
A container format is needed because media files contain many different things using different codecs: video stream(s) using some video codec, audio streams using audio codecs, subtitles in various forms, timecode tracks, metadata, etc. Without a container format to bring all these together, your videos would be without sound unless you also have the audio file and manage to start both at the same time so they start in sync. If you also need subtitles, that would be 3 files to find and start at the same time.
[...] Why can't a browser support two more simple little formats? What's so hard about that?
You can find answers to these questions in the article linked in the summary
[...] OGG is positively SIMPLE compared to the rest [...]
the author of that article disagrees with your view, and explains why.
A few days ago, there was an article in the NYT (titled "Are there secular reasons?") which is closely related, and worth reading. Basically, it argues that secular reasons alone (which we call "reason" here) cannot lead to any action. Science tells us facts, but they are useless without beliefs which set goals and allow us to use the facts to act in the pursuit of these goals.
Also related, the very old (16th century) quote from Rabelais: "Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme" ("Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul").
We are made of both beliefs and reason, and need both. It's no surprise that different people mix these two aspects in different ways, and that many give so much more weight to beliefs that it blurs their view of facts.
Wanted to click informative, but slipped on funny. So I have to post to undo. Too bad you can't correct mods...
I completely agree. But I would go further. Do NOT "start transitioning friends and family from XP to Linux" unless they specifically ask you to. Or at least specifically ask you something for which you feel that Linux would be the right solution.
You can recommend and install Linux for people who have no previous experience like (small) children. For others, make sure they understand what they gain and what they lose, and they really want it.
For most normal people I know who are fed up with viruses and Windows complexity, the right answer is usually a Mac.
And don't forget that many people who are quite computer-illiterate and only seem to use the web and email, actually do want and use much more. Like the Outlook address book and calendar, synced to their mobile phone...
Now for the people for whom you do install Linux, Ubuntu, Suse and others are all fine. KDE is more like Windows while Gnome is a bit more like Mac. One is more configurable and may seem more complex, while the other is simpler. I installed Ubuntu (which uses Gnome) for someone who seems happy with it, but who was already using Firefox and Thunderbird in Windows.
Yes, it's the Intel WiFi Link 5300 (in a Thinkpad), using the iwlagn driver (in Ubuntu 9.04). Not sure if it's because of the chipset, the driver or their combination, but it doesn't support master mode:
# iwconfig wlan0 mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
Seriously! That is exactly what I wanted to do a few months ago, but it seems I can't with my WiFi Link 5300. Hostap seems to be for Prism chipsets. Easily creating an AP to share files or to play with neighbors was one of the bonuses I expected from my switch to Ubuntu. What is going on? Is Windows now becoming the fun OS for geeks and Linux the boring Desktop for the average users?
Not being a graphics designer, I never liked Photoshop which was too slow, bloated and complicated (and expensive) for my simple uses. In my Windows days, I first found Paint Shop Pro (of which I still have some prehistoric version somewhere), and finally ended up mostly using IrfanView and XnView, + occasionally PhotoFiltre.
While I'm sure Photoshop is a fantastic program for professionals, let's try a list of things normal users (like myself) mainly need in a graphics program:
- Rotate (losslessly for Jpeg)
- Resize
- Crop
- Print
- Convert to another format (Save as)
- Adjust brightness, contrast, white balance
Then maybe
- Edit metadata (Jpeg comments, Exif description, maybe IPTC tags)
- rarely convert a color scan to black and white.
- and maybe once or twice a year add something on a picture like text or a circle etc.
Obviously, Photoshop is really too much for this.
For Windows users, I know what to recommend (usually XnView; + PhotoFiltre if needed)
But I still don't know what to use on my Ubuntu desktop which has been my main machine for over 6 months. The Gimp feels just like Photoshop: too heavy and complicated (though the price is fine), and all the others I tried too limited (gThumb and the like). Is there a gem I missed somewhere?
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gnuwin32/wget-1.11.4-1-setup.exe