"But I guess if Google were being a search engine only for warez and illegal content, they would be shutdown quite fast too."
Yeah, but... ThePirateBay is not a search engine only for warez and illegal content. In fact, it's considered "the" torrent site, that "everyone" uses. As such it's totally loaded with peoples' own content, even high profile users such as Nine Inch Nails releasing their content via ThePirateBay. Not to mention countless numbers of independent bands, record labels, software companies, people sharing old documents and obscure stuff that would be otherwise hard to find.. etc. etc.. it's effectively the Google of Torrent sites. I know people who run net labels who distribute their entire discography via torrents on all the popular torrent sites. I know an author who posts his books on TPB and other torrent sites. It's THE distribution model for today's internet, basically. And it's not inherently "piracy" or "illegal" or "warez". It's just a totally killer awesome digital distribution model which gets a bad rap for not upholding the copyright laws of many countries.:P
What do you mean? Did they develop the game for Win/Linux on 500mhz Pentium IIIs? If they can't afford a $1000 Mac, they can't afford a $1000 Windows PC. Since you can run OS X on Intel x86, these guys could be theoretically running OS X on the very same machine they're developing in Windows on. There's just no longer the argument that "We can't afford Macs, so we can't make Mac software"...
So, basically, what you're saying is... It's just as well that it's not succesfully ported to OS X?:P Sounds like usability epic failsauce, to me.
Maybe if they hadn't ignored the Mac platform and checked out some of Apple's industry-leading guidelines on usability, UI and "UX", it wouldn't have turned out that horrible. Seriously, I believe strong adherence to good guidelines will make every aspect of your software of a higher quality.
Then again, I wager this game was developed by coders, with graphics/audio and "design sense" (thus usablity/UI) taking a back-burner position.
Well, not that I mean to be insensitive, but when you're messing with that kind of stuff, you want to be as anonymous as humanly possible.
Like, purchasing hosting somewhere else in the world, with a one-time VISA/MasterCard cash card that you bought at a corner store with cash. You know? Uploading everything from your laptop while you're chilling at a coffee shop well distanced from your home.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but man, I would not be dealing with this kinda scenario where people are getting killed in the night and shit, unless I was doing it ultra un-traceable style. Because I would absolutely anticipate this kind of harsh backlash from the same crazy fuckers that are doing the same thing in Iran.
I actually considered setting up an anonymous web-form -> twitter gateway, but it was just not worth the hassle to set that kind of thing up with the kind of anonymity I would require to be OK with doing that.:P
"I've been jumping into every MMO beta I could ever since asheron's call, and frankly TR had the worst quality beta and launch I've ever seen."
Damn.. did you play Hellgate London beta? I thought it was freaking horrible. I was honestly surprised that the game I was playing, was one that was supposed to be launched/live in like 2 or 3 weeks. Wasn't even slightly surprised when I heard the servers would be getting shut down...
Man, that is freaking hardcore. I consider it to be excessive if I have more than a few lattes (or variants like mocha/etc.) in a day. I can notice the difference in energy/alertness on weekends where I don't really have any coffee. Did you work 7 days a week? Otherwise you must have been totally out of it or zombie-style on the weekends!
It's worth noting that Boardmaker is available for OS X as well.;)
Of course that family with the 11 year old son could always make their own "tags" using clip art off the net. I've seen it done firsthand as an alternative to using apps like Boardmaker. It's not as convenient or elegant, of course.
I feel a bit surprised Logitech has made 1 billion mice now, considering even the absolute newest mice of theirs I've bought have had show-stopping failures, specifically the physical button-clicks.
The last two Logitech mice I've used (I mean "last" in both relevant senses) have developed this problem where a single left-click very often results in the mouse sending a very fast double-click.
Obviously this causes a lot of problems, like unintentionally opening documents (and thus launching applications I wasn't planning on opening), overwriting local files when accidentally downloading a remote file in an FTP client, closing two programs instead of just the one I was trying to close (because the "underlying" window would have had its close-window button clicked as well)... etc. etc. Had a pretty hard time not throwing the mouse across the freaking room, after a certain point.
The most frustrating thing is that I've had the most recent mouse well under a year. I'll send it back for RMA, because it's unacceptable to have this kind of hardware defect, but the fact that it keeps happening is the most frustrating aspect.
I'm curious to hear if other people experience this problem. I've read it on forums (seems like a huge problem of Logitech's actually), but wondering to hear some anecdotes in response to mine...
I've been trying to right click with it for 2 weeks, with no luck, and its been driving me nuts. I just went upstairs and tried by lifting my index finger when I clicked, and voila: context menu! My reaction: "stupidest mouse ever."
I guess.. While I agree it happens relatively often that it treats your intended right-click as a regular left-click, I also became aware very quickly that it happens when your left finger is pressing down to a fair degree. What this means is, a simple adjustment of holding the mouse to cause less pressure on your fingers will make it pick up the right-click properly.
My complaint with the Mighty Mouse was the "scroll ball" which would get jammed incessantly. I started using my ancient, second-hand crappy old Logitech USB optical mouse.
However, Logitech isn't a lot better, at least in terms of hardware that works reliably. My less-than-year-old mouse from the $150~ MX5500 keyboard/mouse duo, no longer left clicks properly. It double clicks very very often, when I only click the button once. Needless to say this caused a lot of unintentional app launches, unintentional overwriting of local files when double-clicking in an FTP program instead of single clicking, etc. etc. etc. Same thing was happening with the previous Logitech mouse I used at work (MX5000 keybd/mouse duo).
Idunno man. User-updated spam lists kinda piss me off. I pretty regularly notice that email newsletters I have explicitly signed up for, end up being marked as "spam" because other users on gmail or yahoo have marked the email as spam on their end. So, my stuff that I not only consented to but specifically signed up for by filling out a form often gets marked as spam. Look, people - if you don't want to continue getting a newsletter you signed up for, freaking spend a few seconds to click the "click here to unsubscribe" button!!!!!
Frankly, it doesn't surprise me. As far as I've ever determined, if someone with extremely sophisticated knowledge of computer networks and OSes wants to get into a system, they will find a way. Especially a country with the population of China - can you imagine the size of computer-based espionage departments they could have going no problem? I used to know guys who were insanely skilled with finding exploits by just browsing through source code. I thought it was insane - I'd never know how to figure that out, but they would always find some minor flaw that was exploitable. Imagine a freaking team dedicated to doing that. Or even a team that takes network hardware components that are known to be used by this bank (that information can be easily gained via social engineering, no question). Reverse engineer the network hardware's firmwares etc., or even better, social-engineer the manufacturer to get in-detail system specs. I mean.. seriously, I'm not surprised at all, because someone (or some group of people) who's determined, organized and skilled enough could break into any damn system they wanted. That said, it's still fucking horrible and frustrating that such ultra-sensitive data is basically a "free-for-all" for someone for the past year or however long.
Well, if I can play Quake 1 on my iPhone at far far better framerate than I played it on my Mac at 320x200 in 1997 or whenever it first came out for Mac OS, it's definitely a freaking solid offering. There's nothing "dreamlike" about it other than that it's something people HAVE dreamed about for ages, and it's finally becoming possible. Consider that some dudes got straight-up Quake 3 running on iPod Touch/iPhone. No joke, check out the videos here. It's pretty damn surprising, honestly.
Also it's pretty safe to say the iPhone 3d hardware acceleration rivals that of a lot of onboard graphics chips even on today's motherboards.;)
Hmm good point. My band's music is on iTunes, as well as that of tons of other bands I know, who are completely independent. We got our stuff onto iTunes through TuneCore who charge a pretty nominal yearly fee. No record label involved. They also don't take any cut of royalties sent from Apple. So, if any of that $0.99 is going to anyone other than either Apple or my band, somethin is screwed up there:P
Wow. Deepak Chopra and Eva Longoria? Sounds about right for a Microsoft ad. Just the right amount of famous-ness to seem cool to your average "lowest-common-denominator" audience, but mediocre enough for probably anyone here on/. to be like "Uh, wow, so they just grabbed whatever recognizable figure they could get?"...
Maybe I'm biased, but I mean, when Apple used the likeness of significant figures in the past for their "Think Different" campaign, they had photos of like, Gandhi, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Picasso, etc.. Not that Apple could get those people as actors in their commercials (so it's not the most fair comparison), but my general feeling about these new ads is that they're just throwing together some ads with some famous people to get peoples' attention. Whereas, well, people today still remember the "Think Different" thing from Apple. Microsoft is wasting their time if they're going to try to play Apple's game, in my opinion..
When I first read it, I thought, "Oops! Someone copied the wrong file over"... After I read that some internal documents about key issues in the company were on the disc? That makes it sound like an intentional act... Wonder if we'll hear some news about a developer getting fired/sued/etc....
Nice, I want a copy of that. Sounds like Asus is including some pretty useful utilities along with their new machines! Now there's a software bundle that for once might actually be of some use to me!;)
What the hell is up with the UK Government that they constantly are all about shitting all over peoples' rights to privacy (perceived or otherwise)? It's like every few months there's some new story about the insane ideas they've come up with most recently about how to become as Orwellian as possible or something. These tards of narrow perspective need to take a step back and stop making national unilateral decisions (or proposals) based on their power-centric views that are endlessly apathetic/indifferent towards the thoughts and feelings of "the people". Even though I single out the UK government here because it's on-topic to the story, this seems to be a trend that's just about constant with the so-called "civilized world". I can see it doing no more than alienating the crap out of the general populous.
What else is new with MS? They'll do anything they possibly can to trick users into adopting their technologies so as to shut out competitors and lock people into their products... As troll-ish as I sound, after years and years of watching this same behaviour, it's just getting really old..
Slashdot Mirror
"But I guess if Google were being a search engine only for warez and illegal content, they would be shutdown quite fast too." Yeah, but... ThePirateBay is not a search engine only for warez and illegal content. In fact, it's considered "the" torrent site, that "everyone" uses. As such it's totally loaded with peoples' own content, even high profile users such as Nine Inch Nails releasing their content via ThePirateBay. Not to mention countless numbers of independent bands, record labels, software companies, people sharing old documents and obscure stuff that would be otherwise hard to find.. etc. etc.. it's effectively the Google of Torrent sites. I know people who run net labels who distribute their entire discography via torrents on all the popular torrent sites. I know an author who posts his books on TPB and other torrent sites. It's THE distribution model for today's internet, basically. And it's not inherently "piracy" or "illegal" or "warez". It's just a totally killer awesome digital distribution model which gets a bad rap for not upholding the copyright laws of many countries. :P
What do you mean? Did they develop the game for Win/Linux on 500mhz Pentium IIIs? If they can't afford a $1000 Mac, they can't afford a $1000 Windows PC. Since you can run OS X on Intel x86, these guys could be theoretically running OS X on the very same machine they're developing in Windows on. There's just no longer the argument that "We can't afford Macs, so we can't make Mac software"...
So, basically, what you're saying is... It's just as well that it's not succesfully ported to OS X? :P Sounds like usability epic failsauce, to me.
Maybe if they hadn't ignored the Mac platform and checked out some of Apple's industry-leading guidelines on usability, UI and "UX", it wouldn't have turned out that horrible. Seriously, I believe strong adherence to good guidelines will make every aspect of your software of a higher quality.
Then again, I wager this game was developed by coders, with graphics/audio and "design sense" (thus usablity/UI) taking a back-burner position.
Well, not that I mean to be insensitive, but when you're messing with that kind of stuff, you want to be as anonymous as humanly possible.
Like, purchasing hosting somewhere else in the world, with a one-time VISA/MasterCard cash card that you bought at a corner store with cash. You know? Uploading everything from your laptop while you're chilling at a coffee shop well distanced from your home.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but man, I would not be dealing with this kinda scenario where people are getting killed in the night and shit, unless I was doing it ultra un-traceable style. Because I would absolutely anticipate this kind of harsh backlash from the same crazy fuckers that are doing the same thing in Iran.
I actually considered setting up an anonymous web-form -> twitter gateway, but it was just not worth the hassle to set that kind of thing up with the kind of anonymity I would require to be OK with doing that. :P
"I've been jumping into every MMO beta I could ever since asheron's call, and frankly TR had the worst quality beta and launch I've ever seen."
Damn.. did you play Hellgate London beta? I thought it was freaking horrible. I was honestly surprised that the game I was playing, was one that was supposed to be launched/live in like 2 or 3 weeks. Wasn't even slightly surprised when I heard the servers would be getting shut down...
Heh, you wanna talk about PTSD from a video on the net, there's way worse, "NEDM" comes to mind. :(
Man, that is freaking hardcore. I consider it to be excessive if I have more than a few lattes (or variants like mocha/etc.) in a day. I can notice the difference in energy/alertness on weekends where I don't really have any coffee. Did you work 7 days a week? Otherwise you must have been totally out of it or zombie-style on the weekends!
It's worth noting that Boardmaker is available for OS X as well. ;)
Of course that family with the 11 year old son could always make their own "tags" using clip art off the net. I've seen it done firsthand as an alternative to using apps like Boardmaker. It's not as convenient or elegant, of course.
Damn. Subject line was supposed to say "they still last <1 year". As in, less than one year. :P
I feel a bit surprised Logitech has made 1 billion mice now, considering even the absolute newest mice of theirs I've bought have had show-stopping failures, specifically the physical button-clicks.
The last two Logitech mice I've used (I mean "last" in both relevant senses) have developed this problem where a single left-click very often results in the mouse sending a very fast double-click.
Obviously this causes a lot of problems, like unintentionally opening documents (and thus launching applications I wasn't planning on opening), overwriting local files when accidentally downloading a remote file in an FTP client, closing two programs instead of just the one I was trying to close (because the "underlying" window would have had its close-window button clicked as well)... etc. etc. Had a pretty hard time not throwing the mouse across the freaking room, after a certain point.
The most frustrating thing is that I've had the most recent mouse well under a year. I'll send it back for RMA, because it's unacceptable to have this kind of hardware defect, but the fact that it keeps happening is the most frustrating aspect.
I'm curious to hear if other people experience this problem. I've read it on forums (seems like a huge problem of Logitech's actually), but wondering to hear some anecdotes in response to mine...
I've been trying to right click with it for 2 weeks, with no luck, and its been driving me nuts. I just went upstairs and tried by lifting my index finger when I clicked, and voila: context menu! My reaction: "stupidest mouse ever."
I guess.. While I agree it happens relatively often that it treats your intended right-click as a regular left-click, I also became aware very quickly that it happens when your left finger is pressing down to a fair degree. What this means is, a simple adjustment of holding the mouse to cause less pressure on your fingers will make it pick up the right-click properly.
My complaint with the Mighty Mouse was the "scroll ball" which would get jammed incessantly. I started using my ancient, second-hand crappy old Logitech USB optical mouse.
However, Logitech isn't a lot better, at least in terms of hardware that works reliably. My less-than-year-old mouse from the $150~ MX5500 keyboard/mouse duo, no longer left clicks properly. It double clicks very very often, when I only click the button once. Needless to say this caused a lot of unintentional app launches, unintentional overwriting of local files when double-clicking in an FTP program instead of single clicking, etc. etc. etc. Same thing was happening with the previous Logitech mouse I used at work (MX5000 keybd/mouse duo).
Idunno man. User-updated spam lists kinda piss me off. I pretty regularly notice that email newsletters I have explicitly signed up for, end up being marked as "spam" because other users on gmail or yahoo have marked the email as spam on their end. So, my stuff that I not only consented to but specifically signed up for by filling out a form often gets marked as spam. Look, people - if you don't want to continue getting a newsletter you signed up for, freaking spend a few seconds to click the "click here to unsubscribe" button!!!!!
Frankly, it doesn't surprise me. As far as I've ever determined, if someone with extremely sophisticated knowledge of computer networks and OSes wants to get into a system, they will find a way. Especially a country with the population of China - can you imagine the size of computer-based espionage departments they could have going no problem? I used to know guys who were insanely skilled with finding exploits by just browsing through source code. I thought it was insane - I'd never know how to figure that out, but they would always find some minor flaw that was exploitable. Imagine a freaking team dedicated to doing that. Or even a team that takes network hardware components that are known to be used by this bank (that information can be easily gained via social engineering, no question). Reverse engineer the network hardware's firmwares etc., or even better, social-engineer the manufacturer to get in-detail system specs. I mean.. seriously, I'm not surprised at all, because someone (or some group of people) who's determined, organized and skilled enough could break into any damn system they wanted. That said, it's still fucking horrible and frustrating that such ultra-sensitive data is basically a "free-for-all" for someone for the past year or however long.
Well, if I can play Quake 1 on my iPhone at far far better framerate than I played it on my Mac at 320x200 in 1997 or whenever it first came out for Mac OS, it's definitely a freaking solid offering. There's nothing "dreamlike" about it other than that it's something people HAVE dreamed about for ages, and it's finally becoming possible. Consider that some dudes got straight-up Quake 3 running on iPod Touch/iPhone. No joke, check out the videos here. It's pretty damn surprising, honestly.
Also it's pretty safe to say the iPhone 3d hardware acceleration rivals that of a lot of onboard graphics chips even on today's motherboards. ;)
Hmm good point. My band's music is on iTunes, as well as that of tons of other bands I know, who are completely independent. We got our stuff onto iTunes through TuneCore who charge a pretty nominal yearly fee. No record label involved. They also don't take any cut of royalties sent from Apple. So, if any of that $0.99 is going to anyone other than either Apple or my band, somethin is screwed up there :P
"bleh... that'll teach me to post when awake..."
As opposed to what, posting when asleep? I don't know that that would turn out much better... ;)
Not their target audience? Everyone who uses computers is their target audience, really.
You're a Mac? I think you've been watching those commercials too much... ;)
Wow. Deepak Chopra and Eva Longoria? Sounds about right for a Microsoft ad. Just the right amount of famous-ness to seem cool to your average "lowest-common-denominator" audience, but mediocre enough for probably anyone here on /. to be like "Uh, wow, so they just grabbed whatever recognizable figure they could get?" ...
Maybe I'm biased, but I mean, when Apple used the likeness of significant figures in the past for their "Think Different" campaign, they had photos of like, Gandhi, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Picasso, etc.. Not that Apple could get those people as actors in their commercials (so it's not the most fair comparison), but my general feeling about these new ads is that they're just throwing together some ads with some famous people to get peoples' attention. Whereas, well, people today still remember the "Think Different" thing from Apple. Microsoft is wasting their time if they're going to try to play Apple's game, in my opinion..
When I first read it, I thought, "Oops! Someone copied the wrong file over"... After I read that some internal documents about key issues in the company were on the disc? That makes it sound like an intentional act... Wonder if we'll hear some news about a developer getting fired/sued/etc. ...
Nice, I want a copy of that. Sounds like Asus is including some pretty useful utilities along with their new machines! Now there's a software bundle that for once might actually be of some use to me! ;)
No, I am in Canada, but that doesn't make your point less valid ;)
What the hell is up with the UK Government that they constantly are all about shitting all over peoples' rights to privacy (perceived or otherwise)? It's like every few months there's some new story about the insane ideas they've come up with most recently about how to become as Orwellian as possible or something. These tards of narrow perspective need to take a step back and stop making national unilateral decisions (or proposals) based on their power-centric views that are endlessly apathetic/indifferent towards the thoughts and feelings of "the people". Even though I single out the UK government here because it's on-topic to the story, this seems to be a trend that's just about constant with the so-called "civilized world". I can see it doing no more than alienating the crap out of the general populous.
Can we all say "fuck this shit, I will never fly at an airport that has this absolute BS?"
What else is new with MS? They'll do anything they possibly can to trick users into adopting their technologies so as to shut out competitors and lock people into their products... As troll-ish as I sound, after years and years of watching this same behaviour, it's just getting really old..