"It seems that all MMORPGs have a voluptuous woman who appears as the main character in all of their advertisements and posters."
Heh, my philosophy for MMOG's:
If I'm going to stare at an ass for hundreds of hours, it better be a hot ass.
When the iPod came out, the main HD-based player was the Nomad, which suffered from horrible performance. This was because the songs were just stored as files with no database.
Wrong. The Nomad HD based players have *always* used a database, but they're not MSC.
The thing is, the only people who are really interested in seeing the sixth movie (or third, depending on how you count) in the Star Wars saga are those that have seen the other five movies.
Uh, no. Right now I'm 19. When Episode I came out when I was 14, the vast majority of students wanted to go see it, even though a third of them hadn't seen the originals. Immediately before and after the mvoie came out, you'd see elementary schoolkids playing with tosy from it. Same thing with episode II. And I think it's going to be exactly the same with episode III.
Do you want to know why Ep I & II did so well despite the fact that all the original fans hated them? George Lucas managed to bring in another generation with the movies. Space combat and lightsabers will always be cool to kids, no matter the generation.
They may have taken the number system, but modern Algebra was more or less invented by Al-Khwarizmi.
I find it amusing that in every high school text that I've read about the Muslim empires, they attribute their great scientific wealth to their preservation of ancient traditions. Which is quite true, but that does not make them incapable of making scientific discoveries.
The answer you are looking for is the GNOME/OO.org/Mozilla desktops being developed by Sun, Novell, et. al. Yes, it took companies with profit motives to cherry-pick the FOSS software base and come up with a stable configuration to market against Microsoft.
Yep, hopefully things will be different since commercial companies got involved.. They're providing the one thing that Linux's varied userbase can't provide: selective pressure.
Just Right-click on program files and choose open.. Then you can create a folder called 'Media Players' and pop WinAMP, Realplayer, foobar2000, etc.. into there, one called 'internet' with Thunderbird, Firefox, IM clients, etc... It's what I do, and my program files takes up no more than 1/8th of my screen @ 1024x768.
I never understood people who loved the dock. It's always struck me as an inferior, albeit prettier substitute for the taskbar.
First, you have to scrub along to get the names of any window. Granted, you're given thumbnails of each window, but unless you're running at 1600x1200 on a 20" monitor, it doesn't help you tell the difference between two image-less word or excel documents.
Expose helps this quite a bit, but I find that the taskbar is much faster. And in the case that I want to see a picture of what I'm working on, the Alt-Tab powertoy provided by MS does the job.
I've used ObjectDock (and YzDock) on and off for a year, and I find myself uninstalling it after about a week of use. It either became a glorifed quicklaunch bar or a glorified system tray, both of which the taskbar is much better suited for.
The only thing that made it close to anywhere as useful as the taskbar was the addition of the start menu plugin, but then I realized I had just recreated the taskbar in a prettier, less useful fashion.
IMHO, Windows still has the best programs interface. The Start menu and the taskbar are the best way to deal with programs. That's why KDE and GNOME imitate it, rather than the dock. That, and Apple comes down on most people who try to create an interface like it (See YzDock). I believe Stardock talked with Apple before releasing their product, though.
Personally, I've use OS X, Linux, and Windows on a regular basis, and I always find myself coming back to Windows. Sure, it may not have Quartz Extreme, but I find its combination of program variety and usability to be perfectly suited to my needs.
I don't know what planet you're from, but 'Pure' XP has installed perfectly on every laptop I've worked with.
I definitely can't say teh same for Linux. Few fully support laptop graphics chipsets out of the box, and even afterwards, you're hard-pressed to find and install correct drivers. It took me *far* too long to find good video drivers for my Mobility 9000 after loading Kubuntu 5.04.
You also have to deal with the fact that a lot of distributions are missing essentail laptops extentions in their kernel, many are missing apmsleep, so I can't even suspend my laptop while I'm running Linux.
Yes, I could recompile the kernel, but that shouldn't be required to get something as simple as *suspending* to work.
You're also guaranteed to find good drivers. Even getting my wireless to work well in Linux is a bitch, and don't even think about getting a modem working on a Dell. I believe there are workarounds, but you'll be hard-pressed to find them.
Granted, half of the problems are hardware manufacturer issues, but it doesn't change the fact that using Linux on a laptop can be quite difficult.
" "There's big money to be made in nanotech, and if people can't do it legally, they'll do it illegally, and I'm betting that the people who are bold enough to disregard the regulations won't really put too much thought...not to mention funds...into safety."
Well thats fine then we can throw thier asses in prison where we put law breakers. Freeze thier assets for cleanup of the "lab". "
Yeah, because that really worked for the oil and power industries.
Re:I would buy a Mac...
on
Return of the Mac
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· Score: 2, Interesting
windows does not however come with iTunes (sure it includes "disappearing border" WMP), iMovie (as opposed to "how many times can i crash a 299 Dell Box" Movie Maker), GarageBand (hmm Recorder?) a calendar, cron, webserver, ssh server, perl interpreter, and let's not forget the secure and tabbed browser (Yikes!!!).
Considering you can get stuff similar to all all of that software (with the exception of GarageBand & iMovie) for *free*, I wouldn't see that as an issue.
Even then, not everyone is in a band.. I don't really see why GarageBand is part of iLife, IMHO. It seems like something only 10% of people would really use.
I never really understood why everyone always salivates over iTunes. Unless you own an iPod, it's just a pretty ram-sucking jukebox program.
Foobar2000 + ColumnsUI gives you all the same features, with 1/4 the RAM usage.
Re:Keyboard included at your house
on
Return of the Mac
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· Score: 1
Odds are you already own a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Maybe he wants a second machine? Just because you're buying a new computer doesn't mean your old one has to be nonfunctional.
The vast majority of people out there don't have an extra $150-$300 monitor just sitting around, unattached.
You know that graffiti has been art for a long time right?
Exactly. There are many (relatively) famous graffiti artists out there already, including Eric Haze. Sega used to hold graffiti art competitions as a promotional tool for their Jet Grind Radio game.
A good exhibit on graffiti as an art form and its hip-hop influences was at the Experience Music Project.
The Volvo 740, in terms of seatbelts, is about on par with a Ford Fiesta.
Wow, that analogy makes no sense. Saying something like : 'The Ford Fiesta, in terms of recalls, is on par with the Volvo 740' would make sense.' would be infinitely more accurate, if it were true.
The Mac platform in terms of security updates, is about on par with Windows XP. So I think there are definitely exploits out there that could be used for malware.
Anyone remember the Microsoft SideWinder Freestyle Pro from 2000? Didn't work out too well. Turns out using a tilt sensor for gaming was just another gimmick that quickly disappeared.
Re:How bout the blockage of sound?
on
Shufflephones 2.0
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· Score: 1
Uhhh...decent? They're $10 pieces of crap!
And I bet they sound even worse with have of a shuffle blocking the right channel. An interesting idea in concept, but a horrible idea in practice.
Two buttons are actually fairly confusing for many users. You may be surprised how many Windows users never touch that thing unless tech support tells them to do so.
I think that's just a problem with Americans in general. We're fucking lazy.
It's the same thing with cars here, too. People are confused by stick and too lazy to learn how to use it properly in the US, while in Europe, Africa, and Asia nearly everyone with a licence knows how to drive stick.
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"It seems that all MMORPGs have a voluptuous woman who appears as the main character in all of their advertisements and posters." Heh, my philosophy for MMOG's: If I'm going to stare at an ass for hundreds of hours, it better be a hot ass.
NCsoft is a Korean *publisher*. The development teams for both City of Villians and Tabula Rasa are based in the US. Do your research.
When the iPod came out, the main HD-based player was the Nomad, which suffered from horrible performance. This was because the songs were just stored as files with no database.
Wrong. The Nomad HD based players have *always* used a database, but they're not MSC.
The thing is, the only people who are really interested in seeing the sixth movie (or third, depending on how you count) in the Star Wars saga are those that have seen the other five movies.
Uh, no. Right now I'm 19. When Episode I came out when I was 14, the vast majority of students wanted to go see it, even though a third of them hadn't seen the originals. Immediately before and after the mvoie came out, you'd see elementary schoolkids playing with tosy from it. Same thing with episode II. And I think it's going to be exactly the same with episode III.
Do you want to know why Ep I & II did so well despite the fact that all the original fans hated them? George Lucas managed to bring in another generation with the movies. Space combat and lightsabers will always be cool to kids, no matter the generation.
That's irrelevant.
They may have taken the number system, but modern Algebra was more or less invented by Al-Khwarizmi.
I find it amusing that in every high school text that I've read about the Muslim empires, they attribute their great scientific wealth to their preservation of ancient traditions. Which is quite true, but that does not make them incapable of making scientific discoveries.
Microsoft could dump .JPG (and .GIF for that matter) in favor of .PNG and .MNG tomorrow without being the worse for it.
Yes, and then everyone's digital cameras which compress pictures using JPEG can magically update their firmware to compress pictures using PNG.
My experience with OOo is that it does everything that MS does, except that it's slower and wastes more screen space.
I'll gladly waste the extra $130 to buy myself the educational software than deal with being frustrated and annoyed every time I try to use it.
The answer you are looking for is the GNOME/OO.org/Mozilla desktops being developed by Sun, Novell, et. al. Yes, it took companies with profit motives to cherry-pick the FOSS software base and come up with a stable configuration to market against Microsoft.
Yep, hopefully things will be different since commercial companies got involved.. They're providing the one thing that Linux's varied userbase can't provide: selective pressure.
As long as the spam is open source, it will be modded informative.
"The open bias on Slashdot gets worse every day. I'm done with this POS site. News is supposed to be objective."
I love how the only observant post on this page was modded troll.
You know you can change it yourself, right?
Just Right-click on program files and choose open.. Then you can create a folder called 'Media Players' and pop WinAMP, Realplayer, foobar2000, etc.. into there, one called 'internet' with Thunderbird, Firefox, IM clients, etc... It's what I do, and my program files takes up no more than 1/8th of my screen @ 1024x768.
I never understood people who loved the dock. It's always struck me as an inferior, albeit prettier substitute for the taskbar.
First, you have to scrub along to get the names of any window. Granted, you're given thumbnails of each window, but unless you're running at 1600x1200 on a 20" monitor, it doesn't help you tell the difference between two image-less word or excel documents.
Expose helps this quite a bit, but I find that the taskbar is much faster. And in the case that I want to see a picture of what I'm working on, the Alt-Tab powertoy provided by MS does the job.
I've used ObjectDock (and YzDock) on and off for a year, and I find myself uninstalling it after about a week of use. It either became a glorifed quicklaunch bar or a glorified system tray, both of which the taskbar is much better suited for.
The only thing that made it close to anywhere as useful as the taskbar was the addition of the start menu plugin, but then I realized I had just recreated the taskbar in a prettier, less useful fashion.
IMHO, Windows still has the best programs interface. The Start menu and the taskbar are the best way to deal with programs. That's why KDE and GNOME imitate it, rather than the dock. That, and Apple comes down on most people who try to create an interface like it (See YzDock). I believe Stardock talked with Apple before releasing their product, though.
Personally, I've use OS X, Linux, and Windows on a regular basis, and I always find myself coming back to Windows. Sure, it may not have Quartz Extreme, but I find its combination of program variety and usability to be perfectly suited to my needs.
I don't know what planet you're from, but 'Pure' XP has installed perfectly on every laptop I've worked with.
I definitely can't say teh same for Linux. Few fully support laptop graphics chipsets out of the box, and even afterwards, you're hard-pressed to find and install correct drivers. It took me *far* too long to find good video drivers for my Mobility 9000 after loading Kubuntu 5.04.
You also have to deal with the fact that a lot of distributions are missing essentail laptops extentions in their kernel, many are missing apmsleep, so I can't even suspend my laptop while I'm running Linux.
Yes, I could recompile the kernel, but that shouldn't be required to get something as simple as *suspending* to work.
You're also guaranteed to find good drivers. Even getting my wireless to work well in Linux is a bitch, and don't even think about getting a modem working on a Dell. I believe there are workarounds, but you'll be hard-pressed to find them.
Granted, half of the problems are hardware manufacturer issues, but it doesn't change the fact that using Linux on a laptop can be quite difficult.
" "There's big money to be made in nanotech, and if people can't do it legally, they'll do it illegally, and I'm betting that the people who are bold enough to disregard the regulations won't really put too much thought...not to mention funds...into safety."
Well thats fine then we can throw thier asses in prison where we put law breakers. Freeze thier assets for cleanup of the "lab". "
Yeah, because that really worked for the oil and power industries.
windows does not however come with iTunes (sure it includes "disappearing border" WMP), iMovie (as opposed to "how many times can i crash a 299 Dell Box" Movie Maker), GarageBand (hmm Recorder?) a calendar, cron, webserver, ssh server, perl interpreter, and let's not forget the secure and tabbed browser (Yikes!!!).
Considering you can get stuff similar to all all of that software (with the exception of GarageBand & iMovie) for *free*, I wouldn't see that as an issue.
Even then, not everyone is in a band.. I don't really see why GarageBand is part of iLife, IMHO. It seems like something only 10% of people would really use.
I never really understood why everyone always salivates over iTunes. Unless you own an iPod, it's just a pretty ram-sucking jukebox program.
Foobar2000 + ColumnsUI gives you all the same features, with 1/4 the RAM usage.
Odds are you already own a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Maybe he wants a second machine? Just because you're buying a new computer doesn't mean your old one has to be nonfunctional.
The vast majority of people out there don't have an extra $150-$300 monitor just sitting around, unattached.
You know that graffiti has been art for a long time right?
Exactly. There are many (relatively) famous graffiti artists out there already, including Eric Haze. Sega used to hold graffiti art competitions as a promotional tool for their Jet Grind Radio game.
A good exhibit on graffiti as an art form and its hip-hop influences was at the Experience Music Project.
The Volvo 740, in terms of seatbelts, is about on par with a Ford Fiesta.
Wow, that analogy makes no sense. Saying something like : 'The Ford Fiesta, in terms of recalls, is on par with the Volvo 740' would make sense.' would be infinitely more accurate, if it were true.
The Mac platform in terms of security updates, is about on par with Windows XP. So I think there are definitely exploits out there that could be used for malware.
Anyone remember the Microsoft SideWinder Freestyle Pro from 2000? Didn't work out too well. Turns out using a tilt sensor for gaming was just another gimmick that quickly disappeared.
Uhhh...decent? They're $10 pieces of crap!
And I bet they sound even worse with have of a shuffle blocking the right channel. An interesting idea in concept, but a horrible idea in practice.
Two buttons are actually fairly confusing for many users. You may be surprised how many Windows users never touch that thing unless tech support tells them to do so.
I think that's just a problem with Americans in general. We're fucking lazy.
It's the same thing with cars here, too. People are confused by stick and too lazy to learn how to use it properly in the US, while in Europe, Africa, and Asia nearly everyone with a licence knows how to drive stick.
Too much money, not enough brains.
Simple, more people know how to use the windows layout. It isn't a matter of "right" and "wrong" but a matter of market share. Windows has lots.
Exactly. Microsoft 'copied' Apple in the first place for this reason.
An FM tuner is more important for a flash player. If you work out at a gym, they'll broadcast television audio on an FM band.
There's a reason the Rio Forge is the most popular flash player in gyms. Well, it has a smartmedia slot and a screen, which are both nice.
RTA, this is about Shuttle small form factor PCs, not the iPod Shuffle / Super Shuffle MP3 fiasco.