[...] it would focus on the number of minutes or hours (not milliseconds) required to perform tasks that still fill me with dread, such as network printing, or power management, or burning a video file to a DVD that a standalone player can read. [...] I still think they're more important that mousing. I'm not sure I'd agree. Pulling down menus, clicking on stuff, etc. are things that you do all the time. Ideally, they should be fast enough that you don't even think about how to do it (things like motor-memory and such come into play here).
It reminds me of a memo I saw years and years and years ago when the place I was working was switching over to one of them newfangled PBXs that supported this crazy thing called "touch-tone dialing." Someone actually figured out that, on average, you saved 7 seconds pressing the buttons on the phone rather than dialing. 7 seconds isn't all that much, but multiply it over hundreds or thousands of phone calls and it makes a difference.
CG Jabba > Puppet Jabba Depends. I thought the CG Jabba is Star Wars Episode 1 was better than the Puppet Jabba. But when they added him to Star Wars Episode 4, it looked horrible.
I noticed this awhile ago. Essentially, behind home plate, they have a green wall. The networks can then digitally place whatever advertisement they want on there. So when you're watching the batter, you're seeing the advert behind them.
You can see it on the replays. When it's "live", there's an ad. When they show the replay of the guy striking out or getting a hit or whatever, there's no ad. Just the green.
My optometrist has a parrot in her shop. My favorite thing that parrot has learned is to emulate the sound of a FAX being received (the parrot's perch is over the by the FAX machine).
It drives her crazy because she'll hear a FAX come in, look at the machine, not see any lights blinking or paper coming out and wonder what's going on...
Mac applications would have the executable in the data fork, and any supporting 'files' in the resource fork. Minor grouse.
Originally, Mac applications had the executable and resources in the resource fork. The executable code was stored in CODE resources that could be dynamically loaded and unloaded--sort of a poor-man's MMU. The way Apple suggested doing "Fat Binary" applications (ie, 68K & PowerPC) was to put the PowerPC code in the data fork and the 68K code in the resource fork (since the PowerPC had an MMU and Apple used it).
In fact, given the convenience of Apple's resource manager, it was pretty easy to write viruses. All you had to do was renumber CODE resource 0 and replace it with your own CODE 0 resource that did something nasty and then loaded your renumbered CODE resource 0. There were lots of viruses which infected applications this way back in the old 68K days of the Mac. Of course, PowerPC worked differently and it was trickier to get your own code in, which is one reason that viruses pretty much disappeared once PowerPC Macs came out.
Just a little trivia for your Tuesday Afternoon...
"Now if Apple were to let OSX to be distributed independent of the hardware, the software would have to be sold at a higher price." This is one thing I remind people of...
Apple sells Mac OS X for $129, and a "family pack" for $199. Microsoft sells a dizzying array of Windows versions for prices ranging from $99 to $399. For Apple to succeed in the software business, they'd probably have to do something similar. Oh, and developers could probably forget about getting "free" anything from Apple--you'd have to pay for Xcode and X11 and everything else.
And I won't even get into what Apple would have to do for the Server versions...
Apple makes gorgeous machines. The iMac looks awesome and is a really nice machine. However, if Apple were to sell an iMac in PC clothing, sans monitor, for $749, I wonder how many people would pay the extra money for an iMac. Apple fans will talk about how gorgeous Macs are in comparison to Windows boxes, and they're right. But part of it also is that Mac users have no choice. "Oh, darn," they say, "I have to choose this awesome looking machine."
I remember the Power Computing clones--Macs in PC boxes. And while Apple's machines weren't as sexy back then as they are today, they did actually put a little bit of effort in machines that looked different from their PC counterparts. Didn't help them--Power Computing had them for lunch.
As noted in the wikipedia article, some of these apps that break encryption don't work with newer versions of iTunes. Also, one of the hacks--QTFairUse--uses QuickTime to play the file into a buffer--essentially, the "analog hole" issue. Since Apple cannot solve the "analog hole" problem, I'm sure there's specific wording in it's contract with record companies to absolve it from this.
...and, from his article, this is important because if Apple does not fix such problems in a "few weeks time", the record companies can pull their content.
So, if the record companies feel Apple should license FairPlay, they should be willing to adjust this timetable.
Actually, my favorite bit from the WHO report, which is what I assume you're talking about, is that second-hand smoke is actually good for children! Fewer children who were exposed to second-hand smoke ended up with smoking-related illnesses.
That said, I don't have a problem with laws banning second-hand smoke in the workplace. It's when they start extending that to outdoor malls, beaches, within n feet of a doorway, etc. that I think they've gone a bit too far.
Obviously the data will be collected. The question is where and for how long it will be stored.
For example, let's say I have a GPS. It is obviously storing where I was and when I was there. This information is uploaded to the gas pump which determines the charge and removed from my GPS. This is added onto my gas bill as "road tax." I pay it when I pay at the pump--just like the gas tax is done now. The government is then informed that I paid $10 worth of "road tax." The gas pump stores nothing.
Presto. The government doesn't know where I was.
Again, I know nothing of this plan in Oregon. But that's one way that the government wouldn't know. Now, the next question is, if the police suspect me being an evildoer, can they pull that data off the GPS? Can I be arrested for destroying evidence by filling up my car?
Of course, that just lends itself to more entertaining possibilities.
Suppose I find a GPS attached to my car. It obviously isn't mine. Therefore, I need to take it to the police and report it as "missing"--just like if I find a wallet or something. If nobody claims it after so many days, I get to keep it.
Now, how did that mirror get there? NASA has had the ability to land stuff on the moon since 1966 with the Surveyor missions. They claim that it was set up by Apollo 11. But did anybody shoot a laser at the coordinates NASA gives before 1969 to prove that something wasn't there?
[...] capable of storing around 2,000 words [...] Which words? "Antidisestablishmentarianism" or "It"? What about languages where words take up one character like Chinese and Japanese?
I doubt just by playing a game a person can give any sign of whether or not they will throw themselves on a grenade to save a comrade's life five years hence. Actually, you know the games that they give people to play to test whether video games make people violent? They just used those and reversed the results.
Interesting game idea. Think "Grand Theft Auto" type of thing, where you walk around and have a choice between giving money to homeless person or kicking him, etc. Might be fun--if nothing else, to see how low a score you could get.
If you ARE doing this then I DO want the police to KNOW about. If you think its a straight ticket to Gitmo then you seriously need to start understanding all the other processes that would land you there. And what are these other processes? Last I knew, when asked about this,
Okay, I'll bet that it's not a straight trip to Gitmo. But I'm sure it makes you a "person of interest." So anyone who hangs out with you might also become a suspect. And so on and so on and so on.
Because you're now a "person of interest," the government may now have an excuse to listen to your phone calls and read your mail. Or speak with your employer. FBI agents show up at your place of work and ask your boss about you--you're not a suspect, merely a "person of interest," they explain. Like your boss knows the difference. Think you'll get that raise you were expecting, knowing that you might be a terrorist?
How about Unicode information? One of the things I like about the iPod is it's support for just about any language I throw at it.
My roomate is Vietnamese and she asked me to rip some cassettes so that she could listen to them on her new iPod nano. So I had a grand old time entering the song names and artists in Vietnamese, complete with all the accents and such. When we moved it to her iPod, I was curious as to whether it would have a problem with this or not.
Nope. No problem. All the accents and everything else came through with flying colors.
Slashdot Mirror
It reminds me of a memo I saw years and years and years ago when the place I was working was switching over to one of them newfangled PBXs that supported this crazy thing called "touch-tone dialing." Someone actually figured out that, on average, you saved 7 seconds pressing the buttons on the phone rather than dialing. 7 seconds isn't all that much, but multiply it over hundreds or thousands of phone calls and it makes a difference.
That could be dangerous. After all, the terrorists hate Freeda...
...and the obvious question: Can you translate that into "Libraries of Congress"?
I've often chuckled about this one.
I noticed this awhile ago. Essentially, behind home plate, they have a green wall. The networks can then digitally place whatever advertisement they want on there. So when you're watching the batter, you're seeing the advert behind them.
You can see it on the replays. When it's "live", there's an ad. When they show the replay of the guy striking out or getting a hit or whatever, there's no ad. Just the green.
Personally, I think it's kind of clever.
I gotta admit, for $99, I was thinking of getting one and see if I can take it apart and fit it onto my mountain or road bike...
My optometrist has a parrot in her shop. My favorite thing that parrot has learned is to emulate the sound of a FAX being received (the parrot's perch is over the by the FAX machine).
It drives her crazy because she'll hear a FAX come in, look at the machine, not see any lights blinking or paper coming out and wonder what's going on...
Perhaps the MPAA considered it "Fair Use"--after all, they were modifying the pages for their own personal use...
Originally, Mac applications had the executable and resources in the resource fork. The executable code was stored in CODE resources that could be dynamically loaded and unloaded--sort of a poor-man's MMU. The way Apple suggested doing "Fat Binary" applications (ie, 68K & PowerPC) was to put the PowerPC code in the data fork and the 68K code in the resource fork (since the PowerPC had an MMU and Apple used it).
In fact, given the convenience of Apple's resource manager, it was pretty easy to write viruses. All you had to do was renumber CODE resource 0 and replace it with your own CODE 0 resource that did something nasty and then loaded your renumbered CODE resource 0. There were lots of viruses which infected applications this way back in the old 68K days of the Mac. Of course, PowerPC worked differently and it was trickier to get your own code in, which is one reason that viruses pretty much disappeared once PowerPC Macs came out.
Just a little trivia for your Tuesday Afternoon...
Apple sells Mac OS X for $129, and a "family pack" for $199. Microsoft sells a dizzying array of Windows versions for prices ranging from $99 to $399. For Apple to succeed in the software business, they'd probably have to do something similar. Oh, and developers could probably forget about getting "free" anything from Apple--you'd have to pay for Xcode and X11 and everything else.
And I won't even get into what Apple would have to do for the Server versions...
I've often wondered the same thing.
Apple makes gorgeous machines. The iMac looks awesome and is a really nice machine. However, if Apple were to sell an iMac in PC clothing, sans monitor, for $749, I wonder how many people would pay the extra money for an iMac. Apple fans will talk about how gorgeous Macs are in comparison to Windows boxes, and they're right. But part of it also is that Mac users have no choice. "Oh, darn," they say, "I have to choose this awesome looking machine."
I remember the Power Computing clones--Macs in PC boxes. And while Apple's machines weren't as sexy back then as they are today, they did actually put a little bit of effort in machines that looked different from their PC counterparts. Didn't help them--Power Computing had them for lunch.
I just got an iPod. It came with a couple of Apple stickers. So if I stick one of them on an a PC, is that not an "Apple-labeled" computer?
Of course, I'd also have to stick my "I'd Rather Be Driving a Macintosh" bumper sticker on it...
Minor grouse.
As noted in the wikipedia article, some of these apps that break encryption don't work with newer versions of iTunes. Also, one of the hacks--QTFairUse--uses QuickTime to play the file into a buffer--essentially, the "analog hole" issue. Since Apple cannot solve the "analog hole" problem, I'm sure there's specific wording in it's contract with record companies to absolve it from this.
...and, from his article, this is important because if Apple does not fix such problems in a "few weeks time", the record companies can pull their content.
So, if the record companies feel Apple should license FairPlay, they should be willing to adjust this timetable.
Actually, my favorite bit from the WHO report, which is what I assume you're talking about, is that second-hand smoke is actually good for children! Fewer children who were exposed to second-hand smoke ended up with smoking-related illnesses.
That said, I don't have a problem with laws banning second-hand smoke in the workplace. It's when they start extending that to outdoor malls, beaches, within n feet of a doorway, etc. that I think they've gone a bit too far.
I'm not saying this is how it will work...
Obviously the data will be collected. The question is where and for how long it will be stored.
For example, let's say I have a GPS. It is obviously storing where I was and when I was there. This information is uploaded to the gas pump which determines the charge and removed from my GPS. This is added onto my gas bill as "road tax." I pay it when I pay at the pump--just like the gas tax is done now. The government is then informed that I paid $10 worth of "road tax." The gas pump stores nothing.
Presto. The government doesn't know where I was.
Again, I know nothing of this plan in Oregon. But that's one way that the government wouldn't know. Now, the next question is, if the police suspect me being an evildoer, can they pull that data off the GPS? Can I be arrested for destroying evidence by filling up my car?
Of course, that just lends itself to more entertaining possibilities.
Suppose I find a GPS attached to my car. It obviously isn't mine. Therefore, I need to take it to the police and report it as "missing"--just like if I find a wallet or something. If nobody claims it after so many days, I get to keep it.
So the police can watch me return their GPS.
BSA = Business Software Alliance
That said, there's got to be a joke in there somewhere about getting tied up in knots...
I agree. There is a mirror set up on the moon.
Now, how did that mirror get there? NASA has had the ability to land stuff on the moon since 1966 with the Surveyor missions. They claim that it was set up by Apollo 11. But did anybody shoot a laser at the coordinates NASA gives before 1969 to prove that something wasn't there?
I'm sorry, that won't work. You need to burn them to HD-DVD+Rs!
Interesting game idea. Think "Grand Theft Auto" type of thing, where you walk around and have a choice between giving money to homeless person or kicking him, etc. Might be fun--if nothing else, to see how low a score you could get.
Okay, I'll bet that it's not a straight trip to Gitmo. But I'm sure it makes you a "person of interest." So anyone who hangs out with you might also become a suspect. And so on and so on and so on.
Because you're now a "person of interest," the government may now have an excuse to listen to your phone calls and read your mail. Or speak with your employer. FBI agents show up at your place of work and ask your boss about you--you're not a suspect, merely a "person of interest," they explain. Like your boss knows the difference. Think you'll get that raise you were expecting, knowing that you might be a terrorist?
How about Unicode information? One of the things I like about the iPod is it's support for just about any language I throw at it.
My roomate is Vietnamese and she asked me to rip some cassettes so that she could listen to them on her new iPod nano. So I had a grand old time entering the song names and artists in Vietnamese, complete with all the accents and such. When we moved it to her iPod, I was curious as to whether it would have a problem with this or not.
Nope. No problem. All the accents and everything else came through with flying colors.
How is Zune with international information?