Yes, it's a British term. "A cup of tea" in various local accents becomes shortened into "a cuppa tea". Over decades, this eventually became known as just "a cuppa." So you're right in that there was a next term coming, but it's no longer required, since a "cuppa" is implicitly tea — saying "a cuppa [something else]" would probably cause a mildly confused look followed by a (probably) correct assumption of what you meant.
Long live the cuppa. Usually with milk, and sometimes sugar.
Warning: Fanboy plot reinforcement ahead. Don't take it too seriously - I don't. My point is merely that there can be explanations, not that these are necessarily "correct" ones (it's fiction, after all).
If Rose was able to destroy the Daleks by simply having a long look at the TARDIS core, then why did the entire Gallifreyian species die out in the Dalek conflict? Were none of them able to do the same?
This is indeed one of the less strongly reinforced plot points. There may be more explanation to come - the writers don't always tie up every loose end immediately. Continuity works both ways - sometimes you leave hooks for future use or explanation. Perhaps the Doctor's old-model TARDIS, which has been in (active) service far longer than any other known one, has grown stronger?
Why was the Doctor able to survive the exposure?
He wasn't. He had to regenerate. OK, so it's survival of a sort, but not to be taken lightly. Some past plot points suggest the regeneration process isn't entirely stable, and has elements of mortal risk, sort of like chemotherapy today. You'll heal or die, and you can never be quite sure which.
If the captured Dalek destroyed itself because of the contamination from Rose, then why did the God Dalek consent to use humans as raw material?
Rose's DNA wasn't "sifted and filtered" like the processed Human-Dalek material. You may also notice that the mutant Kaled creature inside the Dalek engine destroyed in the TARDIS looked noticeably different from the two original-species Daleks we saw in the series (the captured one and the self-appointed god).
Why did Rose choose the words "Bad Wolf?" Why were they significant? Was there any useful meaning?
There was no meaning in itself. But it's a paradox. It was the words she saw (which just happened to be "Bad Wolf") which made her realise there was still a connection, a possibility, that she was still involved in the Doctor's world. When she made her desparate attempt and gained the powers to do what she did, she realised that the thing that had led her here was those words. So she took the words - the same ones which she knew worked - and scattered them where she'd find them, thus completing the circle. If she'd scattered different words - even meaningful ones - the timeline might have played out differently, and that would have led to a paradox which didn't come full circle, leaving loose ends, which would be inviting the reapers in.
Why would the Autons, the Rift, the Slovenes, the gas creatures, and Rose's home all be in Cardiff? I'd never heard of this place before; the coincidence strains credulity.
They weren't.
Rose's flat and the auton invasion were both in London. Some of it was filmed in Cardiff, some of it wasn't, but it was set in London. You might as well ask why all Trek adventures take place in a studio on Paramount's lot. Within the context of the story, they don't.
The Gelth (gas creatures) were at the same location as the rift because they found it there and were using it to get to Earth. The rift was in Cardiff by pure chance - it had to be somewhere, and as it happens, it was there. This is even a plot point... the rift caused strange things which freaked people out, and were this reality it might be precisely why you hadn't heard of Cardiff... it's a place where Weird Shit happens and people don't want to have much to do with it, despite business prosperity there. Think Sunnydale, in Buffy - why wasn't that place broadcast to the world?
The Slitheen were originally in London. The one surviving Slitheen needed to move far away from London after the destruction of 10 Downing Street, but it would make sense to stay within a culture she'd come to know and gain influence in, as it would be quicker to rebuild than to start again in another culture. Wales was one option, and also had the rift, which might present other opportunities f
The information linked below is out of date by a decade, but the industry hasn't changed in essence very much except for the very recent introductions of online music shopping (which the RIAA is still involved in) and podcasting/torrenting (which it isn't much, *yet*).
I think the title sums it up well: "Some of your friends are already this fucked."
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic. html
The financial breakdown on this page indicates a rather bleaker picture than $2 per album.
Mine arrived 48 hours ago. I've already got a 40G non-Photo iPod, and I love it, but don't use it that often as it's still a little big to stick in a pocket, and a little vulnerable on a belt clip.
This little baby, however, is just great. Not just gorgeous, fortunately, but also slim and light enough to pop in a shirt breast pocket and and genuinely forget it's there until I think "I want some music".... and then it's got enough capacity to have a wide choice of moods. If I travel, I'll take the iPod. Day-to-day, I'll carry the Nano.
The photo functionality is kinda nice in the same way that carrying a couple of tiny photos in the wallet is nice, but it's not particularly useful since postage stamp sized images just can't show much visible detail, even on the Nano's rather good screen. But the form factor and music capabilities, IMHO, hit the sweet spot, and the price is highish but not unreasonable, especially for such a desirable device.
Of course, my main fear is that I'll mislay it one day and then realise it's in the pocket of the shirt I've just put in the washing machine. Flash-based memory usually survives such treatment, but I doubt the iPod's controls, screen and interfaces would...
Crap. the more I think about it, the more certain I am that it'll happen. Now I'm getting too scared to carry it!:-(
....some moron has defaced the page already (and is apparently deleting archived hostorical versions of it).
Life expectancy of unlocked Wiki page when slashdotted: 15-20 seconds.
Unfortunately, and unusually for Apple, some of the changes to the iTunes user interface are somewhat confusing.
Going to a category subsection of the podcast list on the iTunes Music Store results in a browser window that lists genres, yet clicking any genre goes back to music listings, without any way to return. Podcast genres are in fact listed under the "Artist" column, and podcast titles under "Album".
There is now a subgenre column in the iTMS browser, which could be helpful if I could find any way to read or set the subgenres of music I already own.
The "All" item sometimes disappears from the top of the Artist column, meaning that you have to change genre/subgenre in order to change artist.
There are "[x>" icons beside some podcasts which aren't explained (though they could just be part of the feed name).
iPod/iTunes's strength is partly in its simplicity - it's a good app for many people's music archival and retrieval needs. Perhaps it's being pushed to do too much? Some of the recent additions such as photo browsing (which can't be anything but mediocre on a 2" screen) and the new podcasting facilities might be better suited to a different GUI rather than being shoehorned into the existing ones. I love the idea of Podcasting in iTunes, but it's different enough from album browsing to warrant a bit more GUI work.
I felt the same way about MacOS X Tiger's slightly premature release - although it was quickly improved with updates, the "release as beta, fix afterwards" approach is one I'd come to expect more from one of Apple's chief competitors. I hope Apple don't continue down this path - their software has often been a comparative joy to use, and these annoyances reduce that enjoyment.
It generates more duff network traffic. Sure, this isn't a massive amount per PC, and it specifically prevents itself from bringing down the target machine completely, but it's still sending cumulative traffic through the networks of every client machine... client machines that are probably operating in breach of terms and conditions designed to prevent DDOS attacks (which this is - even if the machine isn't completely down, it's still denying service to some users).
Spammers these days are aware of the vulnerability of their single-point-of-failure (central server) model, and many use zombie PCs taken over by trojans and other nasties. The SpamCop list which the screensaver uses to decide on servers to bombard won't usually contain these (unless they're serious threats, perhaps) so this program is only really any use against yesterday's spamming methods, not today's.
Putting aside comments on vigilante justice (mainly because on the 'net there's precious little other justice, and most seems misguided or uncomprehending) this seems on the surface like a good idea, and indeed I've heard several moderately techie people I know extolling its virtues. To explain why it's a bad idea I had to go into some depth, explaining network structures, server operations, and how spammers operate. When you consider these things (which come from a wide range of fields and thus are only immediately apparent to techie "lifers" - those who have a personal interest, not just a job-related focus on the field), it's soon apparent that the downsides outweigh the ups.
How long before someone designs viruses and trojans to remove the Lycos program? And then Lycos (or someone else) retaliates... it's just like the antivirus-viruses. An unscalable model.
If you got the sort of random flickering I got, then don't worry. This is because the monitor isn't precisely sync'ed to the pixel clock of the display card. Doesn't happen on DVI systems where it's an all-digital connection.
What you're seeing is effectively a close-up of a moiré pattern between the two slightly-different scan rates. Although it's ugly as sin, it'll do no harm to your monitor. If you auto-recalibrate the monitor with the black-and-white pixel image tiled to fill the screen, you should see this problem reduced to almost nothing, as the monitor resyncs. If your monitor doesn't auto-calibrate, and you have to tweak by hand, remember that the goal state is one in which all the black and white pixels are visible at once, with no bands of all-black or all-white. For the best results, you *must* do this in the monitor's native resolution - anything higher won't work as it's downscaled, and anything lower will produce an inferior result due to scaling (assuming your monitor is set to scale the image - should be OK if not!).
Incidentally, if there are any Windows users out there with nVidia graphics cards, you might be interested to know that their current drivers include a calibration screen for LCD panels which is ideal for this, and includes other items such as large colour blocks for the monitor to calibrate to. It leads to quite an improvement!
Some of the small plastic feet you can get for sticking to the bases of monitors and other heavy objects (often made of low-friction materials such as PTFE) are about 2-3mm thick, 6-10mm in diameter, and translucent.
While this won't completely hide the light, thus diminishing its functionality, sticking one of them over the LED will diffuse its light through the translucent material, thus making the light source unfocussed and less likely to dazzle/wake you at night.
Also, during the day, the entire "foot" glows the colour of the LED, which is raised above the surface of the machine. If you've ever had the design-flaw situation of a tower case on the floor by your feet with LEDs you can't actually see from your seated position, this helps immensely - the raised plastic bump is far more visible and glows an even colour quite clearly, even in medium-bright light.
I've even convinced a design-guru Mac person to use this, and he agreed it solved his DVD-distraction problem while not spoiling the modern, clean look of his Apple hardware.
I can't quote a reliable source, unfortunately, but I *think* I found them somewhere in a DIY store such as Homebase or B&Q (both UK) somewhere in the woodwork section.
I'd not come across that one before. I hunted down a preview here.
They don't seem to know quite how to classify it, but it seems to have a similarly quirky nature to some of their other games. Unfortunately, its official site appears to have been closed down. Was the game ever released?
It sounds fascinating, and I might go hunt for more about it. Have you played it? How would you describe it?
It'll be interesting to see if Monolith get hold of any of the game rights for some of Warner's other films. What other films has Warner produced lately which might benefit from a decent, respectful game treatment?
There are many game studios who chuck out any old rubbish, and sometimes it breaks the geeky little hearts of fans of the source material ("Reign Of Fire" comes to mind - looked like a dragon, sounded like a dragon, steered like a cow). These people, though, seem to know what they're talking about and produce the sorts of games that we want to see. The sales haven't been as impressive as they should have been given the quality of the products. Have they actually produced anything which *wasn't* good?
Monolith's "Tron 2.0" was one of the most perfect film-based games I've ever played - any fan of the film should check it out (heck, any/. geek should!). It was immersive, imaginative, captured the unique look, sounds and feel of the film *perfectly*... all in all it was a damn fine thing. "No-One Lives Forever" was OK visually, but had a unique quirky style and humour which raised it above some competitors. Even their Anime/Mecha game, "Shogo: Mobile Armour Division" was an excellent piece of work despite its limited commercial response.
This positive track record makes me cautiously optimistic about The Matrix Online. It's a universe I want to play in, and Monolith have made others that I loved: I hope they'll do it again.
You can instruct XP (and probably 2K) to not page the executive and to use more memory as cache space. This reduces the amount of paging significantly.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
*Change DisablePagingExecutive to 1
*Change LargeSystemCache to 1
*Reboot
True, but doing this disables standby and hibernate modes, since the kernel can't be unloaded any more.
If that's not a problem for you, go ahead of course, but it's worth being aware. I did this, and kept finding my system going into standby on request, but never resuming, and it took me ages to find out why...
Re:A non-literal translation
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did they really have to use a female voice actor for the wolf when the original voice actor was male?
It may have been jsut an excuse to get Gillian Anderson in there, for the value of her name to the audience. But on the other hand, the wolf is slightly more acceptable to us as a mother-figure than a father-figure... in our western cynicism plus recent media witch-hunts (whether right or wrong is a discussion for another time), we'd probably assume the latter was some kind of sexual perversion.
the R1 DVD was not at first supposed to have the Japanese soundtrack. It was only after a massive petition effort on this very web site
Interesting. I knew of the petition, but not that it was/. that did it. I wasn't very active here at that time.
They had to delay the DVD by several weeks to add it, if I recall.
Hopefully the feedback they received justified that decision for not only that, but future discs.
The Japanese portion used seamless branching to play back both audio and video bit-identically to the original version
I haven't compared in detail - were there scenes edited from the English version?
The only other excellent dub I've seen from Ghibli is the French language dub of "Porco Rosso".
Still haven't watched that. Must get a Round Tuit.
the French "Porco" track is the only dub that I actually prefer over the original Japanese
Impressive.
The Warner Brothers dub of Totoro (which I've only ever seen on NTSC laserdisc - wish they'd release it on DVD!) isn't bad, IMHO. But it's at best "quite good", not "excellent".
A non-literal translation
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One of the things that made the US release of "Princess Mononoke" more accessable to Western audiences was the excellent translation by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman didn't just make a literal translation (try comparing the soundtrack to the "literal translation" subtitles if you have the Region 1 DVD), he also adapted the narrative slightly so that some assumed cultural references were replaced with ones which would be more familiar to us, and conversations would flow in a way more natural to English speakers. He even went as far as to use words that would roughly lip-sync to the film, unlike the literal version. This is a heck of a lot of work to do, and shows real dedication.
True anime fans, used to subtitles, might balk at this - they'll get the cultural references and know the background. But think back to when you saw your first anime, and how alien some concepts seemed, and don't forget that the R1 DVD edition also contains the original soundtrack and literal translation subtitles, so you still have that option as well as the greater audience appeal resulting from the (respectfully done) Westernisation.
I hope future dub projects get this kind of attention... it makes quite a big difference. Gaiman said he'd have to be mad to ever do it again. Not an easy job, it seems.
Has anyone seen other well-done dubs from studio Ghibli on DVD? My other half and I love their work, and want the option of the literal sub/japanese dub, but would also like an English soundtrack if possible...
But the marketroids' evidence that it works isn't really relevant. They say more people are buying medium portions. Yet, if you named the sizes "aardvark, lemming and hatstand" instead of "small, medium and large", they'd say that the "aardvark" size was a success as n% of people are choosing it.
When you're given a limited set of options, you select the most appropriate from those available. It doesn't mean that they're the ideal options. Heck, they're not even as described - how often do you find that your 0.5litre diet coke is actually 0.3 litres of coke and 0.2 litres of ice and frozen-in bubbles?
The thing that makes it nasty here is that they don't just rename to arbitrary size names, they also hide or eliminate the small ones, so that even if you only want to wash the bad taste out of your mouth, you have to buy 50 litres of hypermegaexpensive latte to do it. Even if it does taste nice, you might not want to - so they remove your choices.
B'Stards!
I haven't tried these yet, as they're expensive. But SofaBeanBags seem promising.
A word of warning - when I said they're expensive, I meant it. If I recall correctly from my enquiries a year or two ago, the sofa size bag is around £350.
But I have to admit, they looks like the mutt's nuts.
Here in the UK, in the editing department of the university where I work, mandatory breaks of 20 minutes away from the keyboard out of every two hours are enforced.
The idea is that this will prevent RSI complaints (whether or not you believe in RSI, the complaints are still real) and eye fatigue.
If a reboot is caused by a crash or hung application (as it often is) then although the break is only 5 minutes or so, the loss in productivity due to breaking one's train of thought is likely to be significantly longer...
I run various desktop and server machines running various OSs. Many of these are kept in as clean a state as possible for software testing (the systems are totally reinstalled from an image CD every now and then).
I'd probably have to rate Linux as the most stable (but also the most work!), very closely followed by NT4 (not enough experience of Win2K to have an opinion - I can't relly count the betas). Then, fairly closely, MacOS 8 (with Appleshare IP 6, stability drops a bit). Then 95, which is a bit iffy when you install much on it. Then 98SE - pretty flaky - then 98 (first ed) which is evil trash from hell.
The Mac is the easist to run, but its security features for intranet use are limiting. NT's security is well known for being VERY granular, but the default security tools make it a real chore. I haven't done enough on Linux security to give it a full and fair evaluation. They're all around equal for web-only security.
I'm purely speaking from personal opinion, of course!
I have to be fair and say that in ALL the above cases, it's the apps that crash most, and not often the OS, and not all app crashes are (directly) the OS's fault. At least Linux and NT are resistant to an app bringing the entire system down, which is useful for a server. Our Mac servers don't do this - YET! MacOS-X is looking promising........
It has a web browser *and* server. Last time I checked it, the network version only supported two types of card, though admittedly they were two of the most popular. Now, I gather by reading the website that the range has increased. Personally, I find this quite useful when I'm running demos and conferences - I can set up a browsing station safe in the knowledge that although people can surf, they can't screw up the filesystem on the machine without rebooting it (and there's a BIOS password to get past!). -Jef.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's a British term. "A cup of tea" in various local accents becomes shortened into "a cuppa tea". Over decades, this eventually became known as just "a cuppa." So you're right in that there was a next term coming, but it's no longer required, since a "cuppa" is implicitly tea — saying "a cuppa [something else]" would probably cause a mildly confused look followed by a (probably) correct assumption of what you meant. Long live the cuppa. Usually with milk, and sometimes sugar.
Warning: Fanboy plot reinforcement ahead. Don't take it too seriously - I don't. My point is merely that there can be explanations, not that these are necessarily "correct" ones (it's fiction, after all).
If Rose was able to destroy the Daleks by simply having a long look at the TARDIS core, then why did the entire Gallifreyian species die out in the Dalek conflict? Were none of them able to do the same?
This is indeed one of the less strongly reinforced plot points. There may be more explanation to come - the writers don't always tie up every loose end immediately. Continuity works both ways - sometimes you leave hooks for future use or explanation. Perhaps the Doctor's old-model TARDIS, which has been in (active) service far longer than any other known one, has grown stronger?
Why was the Doctor able to survive the exposure?
He wasn't. He had to regenerate. OK, so it's survival of a sort, but not to be taken lightly. Some past plot points suggest the regeneration process isn't entirely stable, and has elements of mortal risk, sort of like chemotherapy today. You'll heal or die, and you can never be quite sure which.
If the captured Dalek destroyed itself because of the contamination from Rose, then why did the God Dalek consent to use humans as raw material?
Rose's DNA wasn't "sifted and filtered" like the processed Human-Dalek material. You may also notice that the mutant Kaled creature inside the Dalek engine destroyed in the TARDIS looked noticeably different from the two original-species Daleks we saw in the series (the captured one and the self-appointed god).
Why did Rose choose the words "Bad Wolf?" Why were they significant? Was there any useful meaning?
There was no meaning in itself. But it's a paradox. It was the words she saw (which just happened to be "Bad Wolf") which made her realise there was still a connection, a possibility, that she was still involved in the Doctor's world. When she made her desparate attempt and gained the powers to do what she did, she realised that the thing that had led her here was those words. So she took the words - the same ones which she knew worked - and scattered them where she'd find them, thus completing the circle. If she'd scattered different words - even meaningful ones - the timeline might have played out differently, and that would have led to a paradox which didn't come full circle, leaving loose ends, which would be inviting the reapers in.
Why would the Autons, the Rift, the Slovenes, the gas creatures, and Rose's home all be in Cardiff? I'd never heard of this place before; the coincidence strains credulity.
They weren't.
Rose's flat and the auton invasion were both in London. Some of it was filmed in Cardiff, some of it wasn't, but it was set in London. You might as well ask why all Trek adventures take place in a studio on Paramount's lot. Within the context of the story, they don't.
The Gelth (gas creatures) were at the same location as the rift because they found it there and were using it to get to Earth. The rift was in Cardiff by pure chance - it had to be somewhere, and as it happens, it was there. This is even a plot point... the rift caused strange things which freaked people out, and were this reality it might be precisely why you hadn't heard of Cardiff... it's a place where Weird Shit happens and people don't want to have much to do with it, despite business prosperity there. Think Sunnydale, in Buffy - why wasn't that place broadcast to the world?
The Slitheen were originally in London. The one surviving Slitheen needed to move far away from London after the destruction of 10 Downing Street, but it would make sense to stay within a culture she'd come to know and gain influence in, as it would be quicker to rebuild than to start again in another culture. Wales was one option, and also had the rift, which might present other opportunities f
The information linked below is out of date by a decade, but the industry hasn't changed in essence very much except for the very recent introductions of online music shopping (which the RIAA is still involved in) and podcasting/torrenting (which it isn't much, *yet*). I think the title sums it up well: "Some of your friends are already this fucked." http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic. html
The financial breakdown on this page indicates a rather bleaker picture than $2 per album.
Mine arrived 48 hours ago. I've already got a 40G non-Photo iPod, and I love it, but don't use it that often as it's still a little big to stick in a pocket, and a little vulnerable on a belt clip.
:-(
This little baby, however, is just great. Not just gorgeous, fortunately, but also slim and light enough to pop in a shirt breast pocket and and genuinely forget it's there until I think "I want some music".... and then it's got enough capacity to have a wide choice of moods. If I travel, I'll take the iPod. Day-to-day, I'll carry the Nano.
The photo functionality is kinda nice in the same way that carrying a couple of tiny photos in the wallet is nice, but it's not particularly useful since postage stamp sized images just can't show much visible detail, even on the Nano's rather good screen. But the form factor and music capabilities, IMHO, hit the sweet spot, and the price is highish but not unreasonable, especially for such a desirable device.
Of course, my main fear is that I'll mislay it one day and then realise it's in the pocket of the shirt I've just put in the washing machine. Flash-based memory usually survives such treatment, but I doubt the iPod's controls, screen and interfaces would...
Crap. the more I think about it, the more certain I am that it'll happen. Now I'm getting too scared to carry it!
....some moron has defaced the page already (and is apparently deleting archived hostorical versions of it). Life expectancy of unlocked Wiki page when slashdotted: 15-20 seconds.
I should add, the above issues were noticed on the Mac version - I haven't had time to examine the Windows version yet.
- Going to a category subsection of the podcast list on the iTunes Music Store results in a browser window that lists genres, yet clicking any genre goes back to music listings, without any way to return. Podcast genres are in fact listed under the "Artist" column, and podcast titles under "Album".
- There is now a subgenre column in the iTMS browser, which could be helpful if I could find any way to read or set the subgenres of music I already own.
- The "All" item sometimes disappears from the top of the Artist column, meaning that you have to change genre/subgenre in order to change artist.
- There are "[x>" icons beside some podcasts which aren't explained (though they could just be part of the feed name).
iPod/iTunes's strength is partly in its simplicity - it's a good app for many people's music archival and retrieval needs. Perhaps it's being pushed to do too much? Some of the recent additions such as photo browsing (which can't be anything but mediocre on a 2" screen) and the new podcasting facilities might be better suited to a different GUI rather than being shoehorned into the existing ones. I love the idea of Podcasting in iTunes, but it's different enough from album browsing to warrant a bit more GUI work.I felt the same way about MacOS X Tiger's slightly premature release - although it was quickly improved with updates, the "release as beta, fix afterwards" approach is one I'd come to expect more from one of Apple's chief competitors. I hope Apple don't continue down this path - their software has often been a comparative joy to use, and these annoyances reduce that enjoyment.
...the main problems with this idea are twofold:
Putting aside comments on vigilante justice (mainly because on the 'net there's precious little other justice, and most seems misguided or uncomprehending) this seems on the surface like a good idea, and indeed I've heard several moderately techie people I know extolling its virtues. To explain why it's a bad idea I had to go into some depth, explaining network structures, server operations, and how spammers operate. When you consider these things (which come from a wide range of fields and thus are only immediately apparent to techie "lifers" - those who have a personal interest, not just a job-related focus on the field), it's soon apparent that the downsides outweigh the ups.
How long before someone designs viruses and trojans to remove the Lycos program? And then Lycos (or someone else) retaliates... it's just like the antivirus-viruses. An unscalable model.
ObIMHO: IMnotsoHO
If you got the sort of random flickering I got, then don't worry. This is because the monitor isn't precisely sync'ed to the pixel clock of the display card. Doesn't happen on DVI systems where it's an all-digital connection. What you're seeing is effectively a close-up of a moiré pattern between the two slightly-different scan rates. Although it's ugly as sin, it'll do no harm to your monitor. If you auto-recalibrate the monitor with the black-and-white pixel image tiled to fill the screen, you should see this problem reduced to almost nothing, as the monitor resyncs. If your monitor doesn't auto-calibrate, and you have to tweak by hand, remember that the goal state is one in which all the black and white pixels are visible at once, with no bands of all-black or all-white. For the best results, you *must* do this in the monitor's native resolution - anything higher won't work as it's downscaled, and anything lower will produce an inferior result due to scaling (assuming your monitor is set to scale the image - should be OK if not!). Incidentally, if there are any Windows users out there with nVidia graphics cards, you might be interested to know that their current drivers include a calibration screen for LCD panels which is ideal for this, and includes other items such as large colour blocks for the monitor to calibrate to. It leads to quite an improvement!
Some of the small plastic feet you can get for sticking to the bases of monitors and other heavy objects (often made of low-friction materials such as PTFE) are about 2-3mm thick, 6-10mm in diameter, and translucent.
While this won't completely hide the light, thus diminishing its functionality, sticking one of them over the LED will diffuse its light through the translucent material, thus making the light source unfocussed and less likely to dazzle/wake you at night.
Also, during the day, the entire "foot" glows the colour of the LED, which is raised above the surface of the machine. If you've ever had the design-flaw situation of a tower case on the floor by your feet with LEDs you can't actually see from your seated position, this helps immensely - the raised plastic bump is far more visible and glows an even colour quite clearly, even in medium-bright light.
I've even convinced a design-guru Mac person to use this, and he agreed it solved his DVD-distraction problem while not spoiling the modern, clean look of his Apple hardware.
I can't quote a reliable source, unfortunately, but I *think* I found them somewhere in a DIY store such as Homebase or B&Q (both UK) somewhere in the woodwork section.
I'd not come across that one before. I hunted down a preview here.
They don't seem to know quite how to classify it, but it seems to have a similarly quirky nature to some of their other games. Unfortunately, its official site appears to have been closed down. Was the game ever released?
It sounds fascinating, and I might go hunt for more about it. Have you played it? How would you describe it?
It'll be interesting to see if Monolith get hold of any of the game rights for some of Warner's other films. What other films has Warner produced lately which might benefit from a decent, respectful game treatment?
/. geek should!). It was immersive, imaginative, captured the unique look, sounds and feel of the film *perfectly*... all in all it was a damn fine thing. "No-One Lives Forever" was OK visually, but had a unique quirky style and humour which raised it above some competitors. Even their Anime/Mecha game, "Shogo: Mobile Armour Division" was an excellent piece of work despite its limited commercial response.
There are many game studios who chuck out any old rubbish, and sometimes it breaks the geeky little hearts of fans of the source material ("Reign Of Fire" comes to mind - looked like a dragon, sounded like a dragon, steered like a cow). These people, though, seem to know what they're talking about and produce the sorts of games that we want to see. The sales haven't been as impressive as they should have been given the quality of the products. Have they actually produced anything which *wasn't* good?
Monolith's "Tron 2.0" was one of the most perfect film-based games I've ever played - any fan of the film should check it out (heck, any
This positive track record makes me cautiously optimistic about The Matrix Online. It's a universe I want to play in, and Monolith have made others that I loved: I hope they'll do it again.
You can instruct XP (and probably 2K) to not page the executive and to use more memory as cache space. This reduces the amount of paging significantly.o l\Session Manager\Memory Management
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contr
*Change DisablePagingExecutive to 1
*Change LargeSystemCache to 1
*Reboot
True, but doing this disables standby and hibernate modes, since the kernel can't be unloaded any more. If that's not a problem for you, go ahead of course, but it's worth being aware. I did this, and kept finding my system going into standby on request, but never resuming, and it took me ages to find out why...
The Warner Brothers dub of Totoro (which I've only ever seen on NTSC laserdisc - wish they'd release it on DVD!) isn't bad, IMHO. But it's at best "quite good", not "excellent".
One of the things that made the US release of "Princess Mononoke" more accessable to Western audiences was the excellent translation by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman didn't just make a literal translation (try comparing the soundtrack to the "literal translation" subtitles if you have the Region 1 DVD), he also adapted the narrative slightly so that some assumed cultural references were replaced with ones which would be more familiar to us, and conversations would flow in a way more natural to English speakers. He even went as far as to use words that would roughly lip-sync to the film, unlike the literal version. This is a heck of a lot of work to do, and shows real dedication.
True anime fans, used to subtitles, might balk at this - they'll get the cultural references and know the background. But think back to when you saw your first anime, and how alien some concepts seemed, and don't forget that the R1 DVD edition also contains the original soundtrack and literal translation subtitles, so you still have that option as well as the greater audience appeal resulting from the (respectfully done) Westernisation.
I hope future dub projects get this kind of attention... it makes quite a big difference. Gaiman said he'd have to be mad to ever do it again. Not an easy job, it seems.
Has anyone seen other well-done dubs from studio Ghibli on DVD? My other half and I love their work, and want the option of the literal sub/japanese dub, but would also like an English soundtrack if possible...
But the marketroids' evidence that it works isn't really relevant. They say more people are buying medium portions. Yet, if you named the sizes "aardvark, lemming and hatstand" instead of "small, medium and large", they'd say that the "aardvark" size was a success as n% of people are choosing it.
When you're given a limited set of options, you select the most appropriate from those available. It doesn't mean that they're the ideal options. Heck, they're not even as described - how often do you find that your 0.5litre diet coke is actually 0.3 litres of coke and 0.2 litres of ice and frozen-in bubbles?
The thing that makes it nasty here is that they don't just rename to arbitrary size names, they also hide or eliminate the small ones, so that even if you only want to wash the bad taste out of your mouth, you have to buy 50 litres of hypermegaexpensive latte to do it. Even if it does taste nice, you might not want to - so they remove your choices. B'Stards!
I haven't tried these yet, as they're expensive. But SofaBeanBags seem promising.
A word of warning - when I said they're expensive, I meant it. If I recall correctly from my enquiries a year or two ago, the sofa size bag is around £350.
But I have to admit, they looks like the mutt's nuts.
Here in the UK, in the editing department of the university where I work, mandatory breaks of 20 minutes away from the keyboard out of every two hours are enforced.
The idea is that this will prevent RSI complaints (whether or not you believe in RSI, the complaints are still real) and eye fatigue.
If a reboot is caused by a crash or hung application (as it often is) then although the break is only 5 minutes or so, the loss in productivity due to breaking one's train of thought is likely to be significantly longer...
-Jef.
I run various desktop and server machines running various OSs. Many of these are kept in as clean a state as possible for software testing (the systems are totally reinstalled from an image CD every now and then).
I'd probably have to rate Linux as the most stable (but also the most work!), very closely followed by NT4 (not enough experience of Win2K to have an opinion - I can't relly count the betas). Then, fairly closely, MacOS 8 (with Appleshare IP 6, stability drops a bit). Then 95, which is a bit iffy when you install much on it. Then 98SE - pretty flaky - then 98 (first ed) which is evil trash from hell.
The Mac is the easist to run, but its security features for intranet use are limiting. NT's security is well known for being VERY granular, but the default security tools make it a real chore. I haven't done enough on Linux security to give it a full and fair evaluation. They're all around equal for web-only security.
I'm purely speaking from personal opinion, of course!
I have to be fair and say that in ALL the above cases, it's the apps that crash most, and not often the OS, and not all app crashes are (directly) the OS's fault. At least Linux and NT are resistant to an app bringing the entire system down, which is useful for a server. Our Mac servers don't do this - YET! MacOS-X is looking promising........
It has a web browser *and* server. Last time I checked it, the network version only supported two types of card, though admittedly they were two of the most popular. Now, I gather by reading the website that the range has increased. Personally, I find this quite useful when I'm running demos and conferences - I can set up a browsing station safe in the knowledge that although people can surf, they can't screw up the filesystem on the machine without rebooting it (and there's a BIOS password to get past!). -Jef.