>> I'd rather have my music player "integrated" with my PC with drag and drop functionality and not the iTunes lock-in (which is because Apple wants more money selling music files, naturally).
Of course, because everybody knows that iTunes will not rip your CDs or import any other song, video, or ipod except what you buy from ITMS.
For your information, you can put music and videos from any source into your iPod, and iTunes will play music in a variety of formats, including MP3, MPEG, WAV, and FLAC (not to mention music CDs). You can even use your own music player instead of iTunes, as long as you point iTunes to your library directory, and use it purely to sync your iPod. It is perfectly possible to own an iPod and use it extensively without ever opening an account with the iTunes Music Store. I know I do, and I've never even seen the ITMS.
>> Because last time Apple went without it's founder it went in the sh*thole. Not really. Jobs and Scully disagreed on the direction of the company, there was a big power struggle, and the board picked Scully's plan. Steve Jobs then left Apple in a hissy-fit, when he was stripped of most of his power.
The few years right after he left were some of the most profitable ones for Apple, at the time. Eventually, years later, that new direction proved flawed and unsustainable, and the company tanked. Yes, it happened after Steve Jobs left the company, but not specifically because of it. Some argue that due to the way the company was going at the time, and to his destructive behaviour, Jobs' plan of betting everything on the Mac and other high-end products would have drained Apple even sooner.
Of course that's just conjecture. But the fact that over a decade later he came back and brought the company back from the brink of death does not prove that it's not true. He had by then aged some, perhaps matured, and honed his business and management skills in at least two other (arguably) successful endeavors.
Screw the space elevator, let's build teleporters! They're orders of magnitude* more efficient and safer than even the space elevator! We'd build teleporters if we only knew how to implement the technology. But that's just a minor detail, we should build them because they're better.
Oh and while we're at it, I want my fscking jet pack as promised, and I wish everyone here gets a pony too!
-dZ.
* or is it order of magnitudes, or maybe orders of magnutides?
Shadow of the Colossus was indeed a majestic and beautiful game. I remember trying to explain the game to share the experience with my co-workers and friends. Attempting to convince them to play the game was rather, er, weird.
It went something like this:
Me: "You have to play this game! It's awesome!! it's beautiful and great and lots of fun!"
Friend: "Wow! That good, uh? What's it about? What do you do?"
Me: "Well, you, hum... you ride this horse, and... well you ride this horse through the entire landscape..."
Friend: "yeah?"
Me: "Well, you ride around, looking for these monsters. They can be anywhere, but you don't know where they are, so you just ride and ride and ride, until you find one!"
Friend: "Just riding?"
Me: "Uh, yeah... it can take about 15 or 30 minutes sometimes, if you get lost."
Friend: "but what do you do while riding?"
Me: "you just ride."
Friend: "But you level up?"
Me: "no."
Friend: "Find new weapons?"
Me: "er, no."
Friend: "Talk to people? track down the monster? save a village?"
Me: "no, no, and no. Er, you just... ride."
Friend: "Just ride. hum."
Me: "But then you find the monster!! And you must figure out how to kill him!"
Friend: "Do you learn any special abilities to kill him?"
Me: "Well, no. You have a sword. And sometimes they are so big, you have to climb them, and figure out how to do so... And then you kill them!! and they drop so majestically, it's awesome!"
Friend: "Cool! Then you go to the next level?"
Me: "Well, you continue."
Friend: "With the riding?"
Me: "er... you have to look for the next one."
Friend: "and how many are there?"
Me: "16, I think. But they're all different!"
Friend: "and you ride to find all of them?"
Me: "Yes, but the landscape is beautiful, and expansive."
Friend: "But you just ride."
Me: "er.. Just play the damn fscking game! Trust me, it's awesome"
Because some people find the actual gameplay of some games enjoyable, and are perfectly content to just wander around the virtual world performing actions, interacting with the environment, discovering new locations, and collecting coins or whatever; regardless of existential status.
I find that playing the Lego Star Wars games is a lot of fun, especially when you play with someone else. And part of the fun is discovering where all the hidden treasures are--though this is only secondary. "Brute-forcing" through the levels, as you call it, is just part of the enjoyment.
Some things in life are not about reaching an ultimate goal.
I seem to remember this very same concept in an old (though wonderfully good) game for the PS2 called "Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey". It was also highly regarded by reviewers, and many commented on the "new" technique of not letting the user "die" finally in the game.
Gosh, I liked that game. I know what I'm doing this weekend.
I know that people like to make fun of them like that, and I know it's a bit funny, but I just don't get it: it's not a homonym, nor do they rhyme. Or do people really don't know that "faux" is pronounced "foh"?
Don't knock AOL and their disc distribution strategy. It's because of people like you, complaining about it all the time, that I am right now two discs short of a complete 160-piece drink coaster set for entertaining guests.
You don't seem to get it. Sudo restricts access to the executable: the user needs to make the decision that the application is or is not trustworthy, so that once the application is trusted, it is implied that its operations are trusted.
On the other hand, UAC restricts the operations that the application is performing. So even if the user trusts the application, he will still be prompted every time that program accesses another process, or communicates with the system in any way.
The latter is a more granular model, sure, but the grand-parent poster's gripe was that there are no specific policies defined for what is trusted or untrusted behaviour: how is the user supposed to understand each and every nuanced operation his application performs to decide whether it should be trusted? The user then resigns to accepting the requests all the time, and eventually decides to disable the darn thing.
I guess his reasoning, misguided as it may be, was that the rightmost lanes would normally have more people driving at mismatched speeds, merging onto traffic, or crossing over in order to make it out through an exit ramp. Therefore, the left lane would have less opportunity of collisions.
Ha! What enabled me to move beyond C64 Basic was the C=64 Programmer's Reference Guide and it's focus on machine architecture and Assembly. I still have a copy somewhere, complete with the included machine's schematics!
Yes, but in Linux or OS X, whenever I try to perform an action to which I have no privileges, by mere fact that I am in the Adminstrators group (or sudoers file), I get prompted for my password immediately. I do not have to ask special permission to "run as admin"; if it requires to be "admin" to run, then run the damn thing as admin already and demand authentication or confirmation from the user, and then abort if they fail to respond accordingly.
That is not really accurate. When the transition to OS X started, for instance, all new Macs came with a version of OS 9 called "Mac Classic", which could be installed to run all your old applications on the new machine. There was also an interim development framework that allowed developers to easily port their programs to the new OS, until they were able to re-write them in native code.
As far as I remember, this was adequate for most users, and it helped make the transition virtually seamless.
Moreover, when Apple switched from the PowerPC to an Intel architecture, they also allowed for emulated modes and transitional frameworks, in order to ease not only users, but developers also, into the new platform. For a time, most applications for download or purchase came as "universal packages", which was just a file containing a binary for each platform. The OS launcher then could pick whichever it recognized, when executing the application. This all worked fairly seamless.
So, if anything, Mac users are conditioned to expect their applications--and their OS--to work reasonably consistent across versions, platform changes and operating system upgrades.
Slashdot Mirror
No, for that you pay extra. It comes with a lipstick print on the back, and a certificate of authenticity.
-dZ.
Great! More power to you.
Now, does it bother you when others form their own opinions and choose differently? Really?
-dZ.
>> I'd rather have my music player "integrated" with my PC with drag and drop functionality and not the iTunes lock-in (which is because Apple wants more money selling music files, naturally).
Of course, because everybody knows that iTunes will not rip your CDs or import any other song, video, or ipod except what you buy from ITMS.
For your information, you can put music and videos from any source into your iPod, and iTunes will play music in a variety of formats, including MP3, MPEG, WAV, and FLAC (not to mention music CDs). You can even use your own music player instead of iTunes, as long as you point iTunes to your library directory, and use it purely to sync your iPod. It is perfectly possible to own an iPod and use it extensively without ever opening an account with the iTunes Music Store. I know I do, and I've never even seen the ITMS.
-dZ.
>> Because last time Apple went without it's founder it went in the sh*thole.
Not really. Jobs and Scully disagreed on the direction of the company, there was a big power struggle, and the board picked Scully's plan. Steve Jobs then left Apple in a hissy-fit, when he was stripped of most of his power.
The few years right after he left were some of the most profitable ones for Apple, at the time. Eventually, years later, that new direction proved flawed and unsustainable, and the company tanked. Yes, it happened after Steve Jobs left the company, but not specifically because of it. Some argue that due to the way the company was going at the time, and to his destructive behaviour, Jobs' plan of betting everything on the Mac and other high-end products would have drained Apple even sooner.
Of course that's just conjecture. But the fact that over a decade later he came back and brought the company back from the brink of death does not prove that it's not true. He had by then aged some, perhaps matured, and honed his business and management skills in at least two other (arguably) successful endeavors.
-dZ.
Or AppleSoftGoo.
On second thought, ewwww!
-dZ.
I think you meant: w00t?
-dZ.
I don't think Woz ever left. As far as I know (and according to his auto-biography), he is still in the payroll.
But, true, it's too bad he won't play the part of the over-controlling, tyrant CEO.
-dZ.
Hey I like that!
Screw the space elevator, let's build teleporters! They're orders of magnitude* more efficient and safer than even the space elevator! We'd build teleporters if we only knew how to implement the technology. But that's just a minor detail, we should build them because they're better.
Oh and while we're at it, I want my fscking jet pack as promised, and I wish everyone here gets a pony too!
-dZ.
* or is it order of magnitudes, or maybe orders of magnutides?
So you download the game, double-click it (or "poke" it, on the iPhone version), and the words "You Win!" pop up on the screen.
-dZ.
Shadow of the Colossus was indeed a majestic and beautiful game. I remember trying to explain the game to share the experience with my co-workers and friends. Attempting to convince them to play the game was rather, er, weird.
It went something like this:
-dZ.
Because some people find the actual gameplay of some games enjoyable, and are perfectly content to just wander around the virtual world performing actions, interacting with the environment, discovering new locations, and collecting coins or whatever; regardless of existential status.
I find that playing the Lego Star Wars games is a lot of fun, especially when you play with someone else. And part of the fun is discovering where all the hidden treasures are--though this is only secondary. "Brute-forcing" through the levels, as you call it, is just part of the enjoyment.
Some things in life are not about reaching an ultimate goal.
-dZ.
I seem to remember this very same concept in an old (though wonderfully good) game for the PS2 called "Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey". It was also highly regarded by reviewers, and many commented on the "new" technique of not letting the user "die" finally in the game.
Gosh, I liked that game. I know what I'm doing this weekend.
-dZ.
I know that people like to make fun of them like that, and I know it's a bit funny, but I just don't get it: it's not a homonym, nor do they rhyme. Or do people really don't know that "faux" is pronounced "foh"?
-dZ.
Actually, their most popular show is Morning Edition, which, at last time I checked, was the radio show with the largest audience in all the nation.
-dZ.
Don't knock AOL and their disc distribution strategy. It's because of people like you, complaining about it all the time, that I am right now two discs short of a complete 160-piece drink coaster set for entertaining guests.
-dZ.
Exactly.
*Whoosh!*
-dZ.
You don't seem to get it. Sudo restricts access to the executable: the user needs to make the decision that the application is or is not trustworthy, so that once the application is trusted, it is implied that its operations are trusted.
On the other hand, UAC restricts the operations that the application is performing. So even if the user trusts the application, he will still be prompted every time that program accesses another process, or communicates with the system in any way.
The latter is a more granular model, sure, but the grand-parent poster's gripe was that there are no specific policies defined for what is trusted or untrusted behaviour: how is the user supposed to understand each and every nuanced operation his application performs to decide whether it should be trusted? The user then resigns to accepting the requests all the time, and eventually decides to disable the darn thing.
-dZ.
>> I hope the circuit court takes this up en blanc and either reverses the 3-judge panel in favor of the 2002 Supreme Court ruling [...]
I think you meant en banc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_banc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_en_Blanc
There's a big, BIG, difference.
-dZ.
>> The odd thing is nowhere can I find any informatation on the original case or even why the defendent was searched and arrested in the first place.
And by "nowhere" you mean Google.
-dZ.
I guess his reasoning, misguided as it may be, was that the rightmost lanes would normally have more people driving at mismatched speeds, merging onto traffic, or crossing over in order to make it out through an exit ramp. Therefore, the left lane would have less opportunity of collisions.
-dZ.
Ha! What enabled me to move beyond C64 Basic was the C=64 Programmer's Reference Guide and it's focus on machine architecture and Assembly. I still have a copy somewhere, complete with the included machine's schematics!
-dZ.
I'll check it out then. Sounds a lot like my personal assessment of High Order Perl, by Mark Jason Dominus.
Except that the jokes are just as lame (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) than in the Camel Book.
-dZ.
Yes, but in Linux or OS X, whenever I try to perform an action to which I have no privileges, by mere fact that I am in the Adminstrators group (or sudoers file), I get prompted for my password immediately. I do not have to ask special permission to "run as admin"; if it requires to be "admin" to run, then run the damn thing as admin already and demand authentication or confirmation from the user, and then abort if they fail to respond accordingly.
-dZ.
I agree: I've been using Qemu on my PowerPC Mac for a few years to run DOS and Windows 95, to play some old classic games of the period.
-dZ.
That is not really accurate. When the transition to OS X started, for instance, all new Macs came with a version of OS 9 called "Mac Classic", which could be installed to run all your old applications on the new machine. There was also an interim development framework that allowed developers to easily port their programs to the new OS, until they were able to re-write them in native code.
As far as I remember, this was adequate for most users, and it helped make the transition virtually seamless.
Moreover, when Apple switched from the PowerPC to an Intel architecture, they also allowed for emulated modes and transitional frameworks, in order to ease not only users, but developers also, into the new platform. For a time, most applications for download or purchase came as "universal packages", which was just a file containing a binary for each platform. The OS launcher then could pick whichever it recognized, when executing the application. This all worked fairly seamless.
So, if anything, Mac users are conditioned to expect their applications--and their OS--to work reasonably consistent across versions, platform changes and operating system upgrades.
-dZ.