There are numerous program policy and accountability agencies at the state level that create similar reports for lawmakers (and the public alike). OPPAGA, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, is one such example. I worked there for three years, and can safely say these folks are the most smart, objective folks around when it comes to issues that matter to state government. Almost all of their reports are available online in PDF format.
One of the neatest things I've read about Apple's VoiceOver is that if you are blind and installing the OS, it will start to give voice prompts on using VoiceOver after a couple minutes if there is no input.
I was told that Apple had a blind person in QA, testing Voiceover for over a year. What's more, he was using the 12" Powerbook, with the lcd removed, making it the lightest Apple laptop ever built.
I'm with you, and agree that Safari's RSS implementation is better... I wonder how the RSS interfaces will evolve with time though, as IE may very well do a unique spinoff different than Safari or Firefox. We may end up with a similar interface across all three, but it will take a few years.
Northrop Grumman is hiring engineering and CS grads like there is no tomorrow. Check out their Horizons career website for available positions. They are also starting to hire lots of folks for NASA's CEV.
This sounds too much like Phrenology and Craniometry... Some of the same stuff the Nazi party used to show the supposed inferiority of other races. Then there was Pieter Camper who likened non-European human skull shapes to that of apes. This research field is the "cold fusion" of sociology...
I just bought an iMac G5 for myself and a Mac Mini for my parents, and I have no regrets. These machines are plenty powerful for now and will be for the next few years. My only concern was that 1080i HD video playback might be slow (especially at full quality H.264), but that isn't really on the radar (yet).
Both the iMac and Mac Mini now represent the closing chapter of PPC Macs, but I see that as a good thing. The architecture is mature. I would rather own something that is time-tested and stable than owning something that requires emulation layers, lots of additional debugging work, hardware tweaking, etc.
Now, this data is obviously skewed with respect to the total distribution, since the people who run something like SETI@home are probably more technologically inclined than the average computer user.
Keep in mind though that Apple sells a lot of laptops, and most laptop users don't want their testes (or ovaries!) fried by running a CPU hog in the background. Arguably Mac users are some of the most technologically inclined folks around.
On monogon my web access logs show 12.9% of visitors are using Macs. Last month it was 14%, and I had nearly 3GB of traffic. Admittedly I am only one data point, but from my perspective the number from the SPA doesn't sound too far out of line...
Microsoft has decided to drop the "my" prefixes for Longhorn. Instead of "My Computer," it will be just just plain simple "Computer".
Next up, they will remove the words altogether, and just leave icons. No more keyboard necessary! No internationalization necessary! No more pesky spell check!
Reminds me of the quote, "MTV has devolved from a focus on music to the shiny things network."
Smell blocking?
on
Cubicle Privacy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What my cubicle needs is a smell blocking device to defend against nearby insidious cubicle dwellers...
NewScientist just ran an article that talks about "slime worlds", areas on planets that emit a near-infrared light, but amazingly there was no mention of the bright red spot on Titan. Perhaps we have found a slime world?
Whilst Natalie Portman and her highly sought-after hot grits can be seen in the big screen version of Episode III, rumor has it the download makes the grits appear mildly tepid instead.
There is talk among the Mac community that the Cell processor might be what is needed to get fast HD video decoding capability into their systems... If you check the current system recommendations for decoding HD in Quicktime, it requires a pretty fast system already. Perhaps Cell would fix that.
From what I've experienced, hardware student discounts are not honored in Apple retail stores, but software discounts are. This is different than stores at college campuses and the Apple store online, which honor both.
Ron Johnson needs to be notified of this glaring inconsistency... It is somewhat frustrating as a student to be told by retail store members to buy your product at the Apple store online. It ruins the experience.
Peter Mandleson, the EU (European Union) Trade Commissioner, spent New Year's Eve as a guest of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, in the Carribean on Mr Allen's luxury yacht.
Ah, yes, the Octopus... What a hulking beast of a ship!
Not only do I remember it, I used to mess around with XM/IT/S3M files all the time (sometimes even with NIN music!)... FastTracker II was great. There was a guy who used to put out NIN songs in S3M format, and it was always fun to play around with those. They were on the Hornet archive somewhere if I remember correctly. Indeed, those were the days!
I had a very similar problem last night as well (4/7/05), and am using Comcast as well (in Jacksonville, FL). I rebooted my Powerbook after installing some security updates, and Finder took two minutes longer than usual to start -- a result of a bad domain lookup. Upon further investigation, the DNS entry my laptop had was not the same as the Win2k PC right next to it. The Win2k PC's connection appeared to be working fine (most likely as it had the DNS entry cached), so I copied its DNS entry into the Mac's/etc/resolv.conf file, which made it work fine. Upon rebooting the Mac overwrote the resolv.conf file, so I ended up just putting the DNS address in the Network Preferences GUI settings and that has worked fine so far.
I just booted up the Ubuntu 5.0.4 live-cd on my laptop and it works very nicely! It autodetected everything including my iPod. This is coming from someone who more or less stopped using Linux three years ago for OS X (I had been using Linux since '96). Anyway, things are definitely looking good from here. I'll post a more in-depth review in my blog soon.
Slashdot Mirror
There are numerous program policy and accountability agencies at the state level that create similar reports for lawmakers (and the public alike). OPPAGA, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, is one such example. I worked there for three years, and can safely say these folks are the most smart, objective folks around when it comes to issues that matter to state government. Almost all of their reports are available online in PDF format.
Another interesting comment I saw from Jason Wong's blog:
I'm with you, and agree that Safari's RSS implementation is better... I wonder how the RSS interfaces will evolve with time though, as IE may very well do a unique spinoff different than Safari or Firefox. We may end up with a similar interface across all three, but it will take a few years.
Northrop Grumman is hiring engineering and CS grads like there is no tomorrow. Check out their Horizons career website for available positions. They are also starting to hire lots of folks for NASA's CEV.
This sounds too much like Phrenology and Craniometry... Some of the same stuff the Nazi party used to show the supposed inferiority of other races. Then there was Pieter Camper who likened non-European human skull shapes to that of apes. This research field is the "cold fusion" of sociology...
I use a similar method also... My site is currently the #1 result!
I just bought an iMac G5 for myself and a Mac Mini for my parents, and I have no regrets. These machines are plenty powerful for now and will be for the next few years. My only concern was that 1080i HD video playback might be slow (especially at full quality H.264), but that isn't really on the radar (yet).
Both the iMac and Mac Mini now represent the closing chapter of PPC Macs, but I see that as a good thing. The architecture is mature. I would rather own something that is time-tested and stable than owning something that requires emulation layers, lots of additional debugging work, hardware tweaking, etc.
On monogon my web access logs show 12.9% of visitors are using Macs. Last month it was 14%, and I had nearly 3GB of traffic. Admittedly I am only one data point, but from my perspective the number from the SPA doesn't sound too far out of line...
Reminds me of the quote, "MTV has devolved from a focus on music to the shiny things network."
What my cubicle needs is a smell blocking device to defend against nearby insidious cubicle dwellers...
So which technology fries the naughty bits more, RFID mice or laptops that use Intel CPUs? Inquiring minds must know! :^)
NewScientist just ran an article that talks about "slime worlds", areas on planets that emit a near-infrared light, but amazingly there was no mention of the bright red spot on Titan. Perhaps we have found a slime world?
Whilst Natalie Portman and her highly sought-after hot grits can be seen in the big screen version of Episode III, rumor has it the download makes the grits appear mildly tepid instead.
Now all we need is Duke Nukem Forever and flying cars, and we'll be set!
There is talk among the Mac community that the Cell processor might be what is needed to get fast HD video decoding capability into their systems... If you check the current system recommendations for decoding HD in Quicktime, it requires a pretty fast system already. Perhaps Cell would fix that.
From what I've experienced, hardware student discounts are not honored in Apple retail stores, but software discounts are. This is different than stores at college campuses and the Apple store online, which honor both.
Ron Johnson needs to be notified of this glaring inconsistency... It is somewhat frustrating as a student to be told by retail store members to buy your product at the Apple store online. It ruins the experience.
Not only do I remember it, I used to mess around with XM/IT/S3M files all the time (sometimes even with NIN music!)... FastTracker II was great. There was a guy who used to put out NIN songs in S3M format, and it was always fun to play around with those. They were on the Hornet archive somewhere if I remember correctly. Indeed, those were the days!
It's the kinder, gentler side of Google. Oh wait, it's all kind and gentle, right?! :^)
I had a very similar problem last night as well (4/7/05), and am using Comcast as well (in Jacksonville, FL). I rebooted my Powerbook after installing some security updates, and Finder took two minutes longer than usual to start -- a result of a bad domain lookup. Upon further investigation, the DNS entry my laptop had was not the same as the Win2k PC right next to it. The Win2k PC's connection appeared to be working fine (most likely as it had the DNS entry cached), so I copied its DNS entry into the Mac's /etc/resolv.conf file, which made it work fine. Upon rebooting the Mac overwrote the resolv.conf file, so I ended up just putting the DNS address in the Network Preferences GUI settings and that has worked fine so far.
I just booted up the Ubuntu 5.0.4 live-cd on my laptop and it works very nicely! It autodetected everything including my iPod. This is coming from someone who more or less stopped using Linux three years ago for OS X (I had been using Linux since '96). Anyway, things are definitely looking good from here. I'll post a more in-depth review in my blog soon.
As we "spring forward", the number of accidents between 2:00 and 3:00 AM (or whenever it changes) goes to zero, as that hour no longer exists. :^)