Having a smoking area in a restaurant or bar is like having a peeing area in a swimming pool
Like many nonsmokers, I enjoy being able to breathe and smell properly. Smokers are welcome to smoke whatever they want as long as they don't inflict its byproducts on me.
I think that the bans will stay in place and even spread. Heck, didn't I just hear that FRANCE, long considered a smoker's paradise, is thinking of instituting public smoking bans?
If they want my laptop, they'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
If somehow that manages to get lost, anyone who is going to offer assistance that would require proof of identity is going to have a reasonably late-model computer with USB ports.
As for laminated copies, they have no security at all, and when you think of the stuff you'd need, you could carry dozens of USB drives more conveniently. In fact, that's a good idea--having several drives with the info would provide a good level of redundancy.
Developers: Reuse Engineering for Society of Actuaries
An anonymous reader writes "In most development organizations, software reuse occurs on a regular basis in at least an ad hoc manner. Code is shared across projects in an informal manner. The Society of Actuaries provides the mechanism for more formal reuse. So what are the issues? This article examines some of the challenges associated with the creation and usage of reusable services."
... most non-electricity places in the world use kerosine run fridges...
And back in my wasted youth, my grandfather had a natural gas-powered refrigerator that still worked. I am sure It used the same principle you described, though I am pretty sure that ammonia was not the refrigerant. It is funny, the refrigerator was still technically an electric one, because it had an electric light.
I also got a kick out of the fact that the refrigerator had a pilot light that occasionally had to be re-lit.
On SourceForge, look up Webwork, Moodle, AIM (Assessment In Mathematics), and LON-CAPA, or look at STACK
here. Webwork, AIM and STACK are primarily geared towards delivering math homework and I know that Webwork in particular can deliver fairly sophisticated problems. Webwork is entirely free and has several large free problem libraries, AIM is costly in that it uses Maple as one of its components, but STACK is similar and replaces Maple with Maxima or Octave (I think).
Moodle and LON-CAPA are more general. Moodle looks mangageable, but LON-CAPA looks huge and bulky to me and is probably very much a group project.
In the proprietary realm, I like the ALEKS online system for teaching basic mathematics, and their statistics looks good, too. No, I don't work for them or own their stock. I don't care at all for any of the other proprietary systems I've come into contact with, and I've seen many of them.
You do know that you can get a USB extension cable, right? They can be found for $1.99 at newegg, $3-$4 at Target, and for considerably more at Staples or Radio Shack. Also very handy to use with flash drives, if you have a computer that only has USB ports on the back.
(Yes, I know this sounds just like the usual response to the "Why do Apples come with a one-button mouse" complaints, i.e., buy some add-on, but most users ARE going to plug the mouse into their keyboard, in which case a longer cord would be an irritation.)
I'll leave it to someone else to make the far too obvious jokes about the sweaty palms issue.
Parent and GP make good points. In addition, on a multi-boot machine, there is the security concern of using one OS to gain malicious access to another OS the next time it is booted into. In effect, every remote Windows vulnerability would then become an OS X vulnerability (and vice-versa, though I am not so worried about that).
A reasonably fast virtual machine sounds like the way to go to me. In addition to not having to reboot, with VirtualPC you have the option of reverting to your last archived system state, which is great from a software testing standpoint. It is rare to encounter a Windows software uninstaller that doesn't leave some garbage behind, but with VPC, I can try out the software title and then after I'm done, roll back my system state to before the software is installed.
I too would like to see some alternative to MS, if only because they don't support Linux installations at all. You can install Linux on VPC, but you have to look everywhere but MS to get support on how to do it.
What version of iTunes are you using? I tried selecting and deselecting the Show Genre when Browsing option and still can't get anything that looks like their exhibit screen while browsing the library (which is what is shown in their exhibit). I can only get something that comes close by browsing the iTMS and selecting "Browse Music," and even then there is a browser toolbar in the top pane. I have tried this in version 4.8 of iTunes, both the Windows and Mac versions.
If older versions of iTunes do give the exhibit screen, then it looks like Apple may have discovered they were infringing and made some attempt to fix it before the Contois suit was filed. I have no idea if this helps Apple or Contois.
The story says they are suing APple for iTunes, not ITMS.
Then they really don't have a case, because they faked their key
exhibit, as you can see here . In their representation of iTunes, the left side is what you would see if you were browsing the library, and the right side is what you would see if you used the "Browse Music" link in iTMS, except that the browser toolbar has been edited out.
This is like accusing Britney Spears of indecency and using as evidence an image with her head photoshopped onto a nude body.
The Mac Platform is about to go through serious changes, I'm not about to invest $3,000 on a cool PPC Mac because I haven't been assured the transition will work smoothly.
Let me get this straight: you are not going to by a computer that you know for sure works splendidly, because you are worried that the next model may not work as well? It would seem to me that your argument makes a case for going out and buying that "cool PPC Mac" ASAP.
I predict that because of this uncertainty in how the Mac-Intel computers will perform, PPC Mac sales will be decent or even high until just before the Mac-Intel models come out and buyers wait to see if the new models are everything that has been promised.
I haven't seen anyone speculating on this yet, but what if Apple wants to come out with a Windows compatibility card similar to the one they used to offer many, many years ago? That is, a pci card with an Intel CPU that would allow them to run Windows natively inside OS X? This would free them from being so dependent on VirtualPC for Windows compatibility. They would probably have to use a cool, slow notebook processor to cope with heat issues, but even that would run many times faster than VirtualPC can.
This would make an interesting Windows -> Mac migration path for users of older windows machines. The licenses for older versions of Windows are not tied to the processor, so the users of these older machines could just transfer their existing license to their new mac without having to pay for a new copy of Windows. This really could induce a flood of "switchers". There seem to be a significant number of people who would like to use a Mac, but are held back because an essential application they use is Windows only and VirtualPC is too slow.
The thing I like about this theory is that it explains why Apple might be looking to use Intel CPU's and still not have OS X on Intel.
How about an option to rescan a directory?... Ideally, I could drop the whole folder on itunes and it would find the new items. Instead, it reimports all of them so I end up w/ duplicates in my library.
As others have pointed out, the File > Add to Library... menu item is the rescan function that you seek. In the preferences, under the "Advanced" tab, uncheck "Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized", and when you use the Add to Library..." menu item, the files will get added to the library list without new copies being made in the iTunes Music folder. You can keep whatever personal organizational scheme you want for your music this way. Of course, if you store your music all over your hard disk, you are likely to accidentally delete something one day and then you'll be sorry.
This basic functionality has been with iTunes for some time.
Look at the O'Reilly
article referred to by wargolem above, comparing Bonjour with UPnP. Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that one reason Apple developed Bonjour is to avoid the risk of being locked out by Microsoft somewhere down the line. For this to work, Bonjour will have to be nearly universally adopted, so of course it has to be free. Add to that the fact that Bonjour is easy to develop for and is not patented (unlike Microsoft's monolithic standard), and the prospects look good that Bonjour will be widely adopted.
The open-source statistics package R makes all kinds of graphs, has all kinds of great extensions for sophisticated statistical manipulations, has a following among professional statisticians, and is in active development. It is also pretty fast for large datasets, too. The language is a bit of a pain to use at first, though.
Java 1.5 won't come with Tiger but will be one of the early updates. You'll be able to get the development version from the start, though.
Sorry, I'm too burned out at the moment to remember where exactly I read this.
In 10.3 you can make a folder shortcut in a finder window by dragging the folder's icon onto the sidebar. To me, this makes more sense than having a shortcut all the way up there under the apple menu. This also serves essentially the same purpose as tabbed folders in 8.5, except it is more convenient. To connect to network shares at login, configure your startup items in the Accounts System Preferences. You are right about OS X too often stalling while talking to network shares, but I think that you are wrong that 8.5 -- 9.2.2 was any better at this.
I think that most of what you miss from 8.5+ is actually in OS X, it's just attained in a different way than what you are used to.
Re:Probably worth mentioning...
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Informative
the two big things I wish my powerbook had were pageup/down keys (it's the 17" - there's plenty of room!) and a higher resolution screen.
While we're at it: home = fn + left arrow
end = fn + right arrow.
You can also use (command OR ctrl)+ left arrow to go to the
beginning of a line, (command OR ctrl)+ right arrow to go to the end of
a line, (command OR ctrl) + uparrow to go to the beginning of a
document, and (command OR ctrl) + downarrow to go to the end of a
document. Admittedly, these are key combinations rather than dedicated keys, but where would you put the extra keys? There really is no other logical place for the speakers be.
As for higher screen resolutions, it looks like they
may be coming (as you point out), and I suppose that some people may really need them, but
1440 × 900 works quite well for me, and I wonder (I really do
wonder, I don't know) if the toll a higher screen resolution would take on the battery would really be worth it.
One last thought - the one thing that I'd like to see in future versions of iTunes is a group/family system.
You can already get the functionality you want by changing the iTunes preferences (under the advanced tab) so that the music storage location is in a folder in/Users/Shared instead of the default/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music . If you do this, everything you rip will be available to all the other users,
except that in order to update their library list to see music added by some other user, they will have to use the menu item File>Add to Library... and navigate to the shared music folder, in which case they need either to have the same folder as their default storage location or else they should uncheck the Advanced Option "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to Library", so that the music doesn't get moved out of/Users/Shared. This way, everyone who uses the computer has access to the entire music collection, but can keep their own playlists separate in their own accounts. I believe that DRM is linked to the machine, not the user account, so music purchased by one user is available to all without having to De-DRM it first.
This scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene from the Incredibles where victims of crimes start suing the superheroes for helping them.
Actually, it is more reminiscent of the scene in the old radio version of The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the philosophers confront
Deep Thought:
Philosopher 1: We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about
this problem. Deep Thought:IF I MAY MAKE AN
OBSERVATION? Philosopher 1: <interrupting>
We'll go on strike! Philosopher 2: That's right, you'll have a national
philosopher's
strike on your hands! Deep Thought:WHO WILL THAT
INCONVENIENCE? Philosopher 2: Never you mind who it will inconvenience, you box
of
black legging binary bits, it'll hurt, buster, it'll hurt!
Go to the Apple
Store and take a look. All their dvd drives burn both formats now. And it is only recently that I would see PCs at Staples or CompUSA that would burn anything besides DVD+R. Apple switched to the dual-format drives only a little after the PC industry did. I personally wish that manufacturers had extended their ecumenicalism to DVD-RAM as well, it's a good data format.
Slashdot Mirror
Like many nonsmokers, I enjoy being able to breathe and smell properly. Smokers are welcome to smoke whatever they want as long as they don't inflict its byproducts on me.
I think that the bans will stay in place and even spread. Heck, didn't I just hear that FRANCE, long considered a smoker's paradise, is thinking of instituting public smoking bans?
Your username made me realize:
This article gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "fish and chips," doesn't it?
Not to mention "chipped beef."
If they want my laptop, they'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
If somehow that manages to get lost, anyone who is going to offer assistance that would require proof of identity is going to have a reasonably late-model computer with USB ports.
As for laminated copies, they have no security at all, and when you think of the stuff you'd need, you could
carry dozens of USB drives more conveniently. In fact, that's a good idea--having several drives with the info would provide a good level of redundancy.
Developers: Reuse Engineering for Society of Actuaries
An anonymous reader writes "In most development organizations, software reuse occurs on a regular basis in at least an ad hoc manner. Code is shared across projects in an informal manner. The Society of Actuaries provides the mechanism for more formal reuse. So what are the issues? This article examines some of the challenges associated with the creation and usage of reusable services."
I also got a kick out of the fact that the refrigerator had a pilot light that occasionally had to be re-lit.
On SourceForge, look up Webwork, Moodle, AIM (Assessment In Mathematics), and LON-CAPA, or look at STACK here. Webwork, AIM and STACK are primarily geared towards delivering math homework and I know that Webwork in particular can deliver fairly sophisticated problems. Webwork is entirely free and has several large free problem libraries, AIM is costly in that it uses Maple as one of its components, but STACK is similar and replaces Maple with Maxima or Octave (I think).
Moodle and LON-CAPA are more general. Moodle looks mangageable, but LON-CAPA looks huge and bulky to me and is probably very much a group project.
In the proprietary realm, I like the ALEKS online system for teaching basic mathematics, and their statistics looks good, too. No, I don't work for them or own their stock. I don't care at all for any of the other proprietary systems I've come into contact with, and I've seen many of them.
You do know that you can get a USB extension cable, right? They can be found for $1.99 at newegg, $3-$4 at Target, and for considerably more at Staples or Radio Shack. Also very handy to use with flash drives, if you have a computer that only has USB ports on the back.
(Yes, I know this sounds just like the usual response to the "Why do Apples come with a one-button mouse" complaints, i.e., buy some add-on, but most users ARE going to plug the mouse into their keyboard, in which case a longer cord would be an irritation.)
I'll leave it to someone else to make the far too obvious jokes about the sweaty palms issue.
Parent and GP make good points. In addition, on a multi-boot machine, there is the security concern of using one OS to gain malicious access to another OS the next time it is booted into. In effect, every remote Windows vulnerability would then become an OS X vulnerability (and vice-versa, though I am not so worried about that).
A reasonably fast virtual machine sounds like the way to go to me. In addition to not having to reboot, with VirtualPC you have the option of reverting to your last archived system state, which is great from a software testing standpoint. It is rare to encounter a Windows software uninstaller that doesn't leave some garbage behind, but with VPC, I can try out the software title and then after I'm done, roll back my system state to before the software is installed.
I too would like to see some alternative to MS, if only because they don't support Linux installations at all. You can install Linux on VPC, but you have to look everywhere but MS to get support on how to do it.
What version of iTunes are you using? I tried selecting and deselecting the Show Genre when Browsing option and still can't get anything that looks like their exhibit screen while browsing the library (which is what is shown in their exhibit). I can only get something that comes close by browsing the iTMS and selecting "Browse Music," and even then there is a browser toolbar in the top pane. I have tried this in version 4.8 of iTunes, both the Windows and Mac versions.
If older versions of iTunes do give the exhibit screen, then it looks like Apple may have discovered they were infringing and made some attempt to fix it before the Contois suit was filed. I have no idea if this helps Apple or Contois.
I don't support this kind of patent either.
Then they really don't have a case, because they faked their key exhibit, as you can see here . In their representation of iTunes, the left side is what you would see if you were browsing the library, and the right side is what you would see if you used the "Browse Music" link in iTMS, except that the browser toolbar has been edited out.
This is like accusing Britney Spears of indecency and using as evidence an image with her head photoshopped onto a nude body.
I predict that because of this uncertainty in how the Mac-Intel computers will perform, PPC Mac sales will be decent or even high until just before the Mac-Intel models come out and buyers wait to see if the new models are everything that has been promised.
That should be complement, as in something that makes the other thing more complete, and not compliment, as in an expression of admiration.
Sorry, I try not to respond to little mistakes like these, but sometimes the pressure just builds up and I overflow.
I haven't seen anyone speculating on this yet, but what if Apple wants to come out with a Windows compatibility card similar to the one they used to offer many, many years ago? That is, a pci card with an Intel CPU that would allow them to run Windows natively inside OS X? This would free them from being so dependent on VirtualPC for Windows compatibility. They would probably have to use a cool, slow notebook processor to cope with heat issues, but even that would run many times faster than VirtualPC can.
This would make an interesting Windows -> Mac migration path for users of older windows machines. The licenses for older versions of Windows are not tied to the processor, so the users of these older machines could just transfer their existing license to their new mac without having to pay for a new copy of Windows. This really could induce a flood of "switchers". There seem to be a significant number of people who would like to use a Mac, but are held back because an essential application they use is Windows only and VirtualPC is too slow.
The thing I like about this theory is that it explains why Apple might be looking to use Intel CPU's and still not have OS X on Intel.
As others have pointed out, the File > Add to Library
This basic functionality has been with iTunes for some time.
Look at the O'Reilly article referred to by wargolem above, comparing Bonjour with UPnP. Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that one reason Apple developed Bonjour is to avoid the risk of being locked out by Microsoft somewhere down the line. For this to work, Bonjour will have to be nearly universally adopted, so of course it has to be free. Add to that the fact that Bonjour is easy to develop for and is not patented (unlike Microsoft's monolithic standard), and the prospects look good that Bonjour will be widely adopted.
The open-source statistics package R makes all kinds of graphs, has all kinds of great extensions for sophisticated statistical manipulations, has a following among professional statisticians, and is in active development. It is also pretty fast for large datasets, too. The language is a bit of a pain to use at first, though.
Pirates like it, too.
Java 1.5 won't come with Tiger but will be one of the early updates. You'll be able to get the development version from the start, though. Sorry, I'm too burned out at the moment to remember where exactly I read this.
In 10.3 you can make a folder shortcut in a finder window by dragging the folder's icon onto the sidebar. To me, this makes more sense than having a shortcut all the way up there under the apple menu. This also serves essentially the same purpose as tabbed folders in 8.5, except it is more convenient. To connect to network shares at login, configure your startup items in the Accounts System Preferences. You are right about OS X too often stalling while talking to network shares, but I think that you are wrong that 8.5 -- 9.2.2 was any better at this.
I think that most of what you miss from 8.5+ is actually in OS X, it's just attained in a different way than what you are used to.
pageup = fn + uparrow
pagedown = fn + downarrow.
While we're at it:
home = fn + left arrow
end = fn + right arrow
You can also use (command OR ctrl)+ left arrow to go to the beginning of a line, (command OR ctrl)+ right arrow to go to the end of a line, (command OR ctrl) + uparrow to go to the beginning of a document, and (command OR ctrl) + downarrow to go to the end of a document. Admittedly, these are key combinations rather than dedicated keys, but where would you put the extra keys? There really is no other logical place for the speakers be.
As for higher screen resolutions, it looks like they may be coming (as you point out), and I suppose that some people may really need them, but 1440 × 900 works quite well for me, and I wonder (I really do wonder, I don't know) if the toll a higher screen resolution would take on the battery would really be worth it.
Philosopher 1: We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about this problem.
Deep Thought: IF I MAY MAKE AN OBSERVATION?
Philosopher 1: <interrupting> We'll go on strike!
Philosopher 2: That's right, you'll have a national philosopher's strike on your hands!
Deep Thought: WHO WILL THAT INCONVENIENCE?
Philosopher 2: Never you mind who it will inconvenience, you box of black legging binary bits, it'll hurt, buster, it'll hurt!
Go to the Apple Store and take a look. All their dvd drives burn both formats now. And it is only recently that I would see PCs at Staples or CompUSA that would burn anything besides DVD+R. Apple switched to the dual-format drives only a little after the PC industry did. I personally wish that manufacturers had extended their ecumenicalism to DVD-RAM as well, it's a good data format.