I'm not arguing that there is no god, as that is completely unprovable. If there was an all-powerful being, then surely he would have to power to keep his presence hidden from us. What I am arguing is that there is nothing to support the presence of a god, so anyone who does believe in one *must* have blind faith. It's not evident, as evident requires evidence (hey, imagine that!), so you must be relying on blind faith. I have no absolute faith in what other humans tell me, but I will give credence to well-supported claims. The fact that the presence of a deity has no supporting evidence makes me give very little credence to those that so vehemently assert their presence. I'm an agnostic, in that I don't believe we can ever know if there is a god, let alone a single one, so I find no point in believing one way or the other. I'm comfortable with not knowing that, as I don't believe it's a relevant question anyways. I'm a scientist (microbiologist to be exact), and so I'm inclined to believe that when I die, my conscience will die too, and that will be the end of it. In fact, I find that to be comforting, as if there is no conscience, then what is there to worry about. What I object to is religions that use fear of things like eternal suffering in the afterlife to coerce people into following their guidelines for a "good" life. The only things that are "good" to me are those that make my life more enjoyable, and those that make us able to live as a functioning society. The only reward I expect from being "good" is to be surrounded by good people, and thus live a happy life. Anything beyond that is pure speculation, and I'll give about as much credibility to whomever the Bible was written by (rather the various groups that have adapted it over the centuries) as to the local madman ranting about his crazy World view in the local park, as they both have about the same amount of supporting evidence.
Are you actually serious about those arguments, or is that just a troll or bait? Those are the worst arguments I've ever read in my life. They hold about as much water as collander, and I'm not even going to bother to refute them, as they are obviously fallacious to any reasonable person. I hope that was a bait, if not, you might brush up on your critical thinking and logic.
Machine intelligence will increase in complexity and depth to the point that it will be indistinguishable from human intelligence (and eventually surpass it, as it is much more rapidly-evolving). By that time, your ghosts and robots argument will no longer hold water, as we will find that we are merely (very complex) machines. Just because you're a robot doesn't mean you can't have emotions or what we call free will. Those will come as machine intelligence becomes more advanced and complex. As to the entropy issue, 1) the universe might not be a closed system, as it could be infinitely large (or at least not confined to a given area), and/or interacting with what we would consider to be other universes; and 2) we have no idea of the timescale (or scale - distance-wise) involved in the increase in entropy, and the current decrease in entropy (expansion of what we reffer to as the universe) could be temporary, or the result of some process we don't understand. If it were really as simple as you say, this issue would have been resolved long ago.
Obviously, there would have to be credible (and a critical mass of) witnesses, along with redundant recording with various equipment, all released to the public in a timely manner. This god would also have to demonstrate his godly power. Mere video footage wouldn't be sufficient. The more outlandish the claims, the more proof you need to get them accepted. Also, it still wouldn't preclude the possibility of the existance of other gods, or that it isn't merely a more advanced being, or one from a more technologically advanced civilization. Take today's technology back in time a couple hundred years, and you could easily be mistaken for a god (or The God, or whatever). Basically, skeptics will never be satisfied, even if there were some evidence of godlike beings, so it wouldn't really affect their World view too dramatically. The theists would be the most harmed by evidence of a godlike being, as it might refute some of their deeply-held beliefs of what their god really is, along with the scriptures upon which their faith is based. If some god showed up, and looked like a 2-foot tall monkey with a forked tongue and purple hair (thank you South Park for the reference), that would be upsetting to those who believe that humans were created in his image.
How is the existance of a deity in any way evident, let alone self-evident? A self-evident deity would be an observable one, that actively demonstrates his godlike powers. The presence of any deity isn't at all evident, and is something taken on faith by those who were either A) raised to believe in them unquestioningly since their childhood, or B) decided to accept the faith for whatever personal reasons (typically to provide some guidance or social acceptance, but never for an objectively logical reason). There are also some who pretend to have faith to escape persecution, or receive sustenance from religious aid workers in developing nations. How can you argue that the presence of a deity can be self-evident, when there is no evidence? Answer this; is there any rational reason to believe in the presence of a deity? If not, then I'd say believing in one is pretty irrational.
Well, I'm pretty sure walking on water, turning water into wine, and resurrection break a few, not to mention living in a whale, raining frogs, and countless other fantastic stories. Sounds more like some old-time sci-fi or fantasy novel, rather than some gospel of unquestionable truth. I always find it amusing that people say, "oh, it's (true, good, right, etc.) because it says so right here in the Bible". Not to mention how badly the Bible was bastardized by King James of Britain (not to mention the Greeks and Romans), to suit his needs. The Bible we read today is drastically changed from the original scrolls written in Aramaic, and has been modified by countless religious groups to suit their needs for power and control. I'll take some theories of geology, such as relative age dating using layers of soil, backed up by countless evidence and confirmation, over some cultish notions of divine creation any day of the week. One has some evidence and rational explanation, while the other is purely heresay, and hasn't a shred of supporting evidence.
People really will believe anything if they want to badly enough, or have been raised to believe something without question since childhood. If our race is to progress as a whole, we're sooner or later going to have to abandon these outdated religions as mere fantasy, and base our notions on logic and rationalization, and be comfortable not knowing certain things (like what happens to your concience when your body dies), as they can't possibly be answered through logic or experimentation. Raising children to have unquestioned faith only impairs their ability to think critically and make the best decisions on their own based on all available knowledge. Faith is really a device used to shed responsibility, and a symptom of weakness of character and free will. It really is a jail for the mind, failing to back up beliefs with rational explanations, opening a door to all sorts of abuse by those given power over your mind (namely your church or cult of choice). History has clearly demonstrated the dangers of blind faith, and it's sad to see our current leaders (in the USA) forced to call upon this faith to give themselves more credibility, as rational thinking and logic were apparently not sufficient. How many millions of people have been persecuted or killed in the name of a particular deity in the history of our race? For what? This senseless wrongdoing will have to come to an end in order for our race (there is only one human race) to achieve its potential, and end the counterproductive conflict that plagues our World. Just think of what we could have achieved had we (the World) focused all the energy spent on military supremacy in the last century on solving the basic problems that afflict us. The problem is obviously compounded by greed and corruption, but faith has played a critical role in our past missteps.
What we need to do is take the basic parts of religion useful in making society work (their original intentions), such as the golden rule (do unto others as you would have done unto yourself), and other basic niceties we take for granted in our society, and drop all the rest. I guess it's hard to fill a sermon with that basic notion, but it's a good starting point. Instead of coercing people through fear of eternal suffering in the after-life, you could just tell people to be good to others in order to surround themselves with good people and positivity, hence living a better life now. There is no need to invent notions like heaven, hell or an all-seeing eye if there is a good incentive to act decently in people's current lifetimes. In fact, the afterlife shouldn't even be touched upon by this new "religion" (other than saying, "You'll find out, don't worry about it"), as speculation only harms people, and causes conflicts when two views disagree. Old-time religions should receive no societal endorsement, and be left as a private matter for people to believe if it makes them feel better.
Gosh, you're right. I'd much rather believe what some guy named Paul wrote many centuries ago (a.k.a. the Bible), and take that for the absolute, unquestioned truth, even though much of it flies right in the face of our knowledge of the laws of physics. People are so dumb...
Not as serious as hunger and extreme poverty . . . How much good will could we have built for ourselves had we spent the hundreds of billions this war has cost us on solving some of the greatest humanitarian crises going on in the World? How many people would we have given a future to, and prevented from becoming "terrorists" in the first place? Which path is more effective at eliminating a problem such as insurgency in a very small fraction of the population. Do you honestly think invading Iraq has made us any safer from terrorists? Get a clue, man!
That's a very good point! Though the fear is often irrational, and people fail to understand that their safety is much more jeopardized by riding in an automobile, living unhealthy lifestyles, etc. than by what some group of religious extremists is capable of doing. The Patriot Act is an affront to our constitutional rights as citizens, and really sets the stage for all kinds of abuses should they need a new scapegoat someday. Our only hope is for it to be struck down as unconstitutional.
It's a criminal offense to insult a peace officer. Practially speaking, a cop has the power to bring anyone they want to the station, so it's best (unless you have a lot of time to waste) to just placate the cop by cooperating. Now, if this were to get out of hand, it could be very effective if everyone refused to cooperate with cops, so they'd have to arrest many more people, thus burdening the system with a bunch of useless arrests. Should it become necessary, this could be a very effective form of protest, if enough people went along with it.
5 minutes, plus the rest of the day trying to get all that damn ink off yer digits... The problem is that they don't have everyone's fingerprints on file to compare to, only those of people who have a drivers' license or have been arrested before. It would make it easier to determine if you've been misidentified as a perpetrator, though, like if the real perp gave false info pointing to you.
The current hot word suffix is 'Underground', with the option of adding 'Super Bling-Bling Edition'... Xtreme? Puuuuhlease, girlfriend, get with the times!:p
iTunes has a 70% share of legal downloads, much higher than Walmart's share of sales of the goods it trades in. Granted the market is in its infancy, but as (or if) competitors start falling off, and iTunes' share increases from this point, they will be in a very strong negotiating position as legal music downloads increase in popularity.
This is excellent news. I've been retransmitting live TV shows off my satellite TV subscription trough iChat with all my (no extended cable or satellite having) Mac friends using an analogue video to DV bridge box since iChat became available. Now, I will finally be able to share shows with my Windows using buddies as well. Quality has been surprisingly good, with shows perfectly watchable over my 256kbit upstream cable connection, and the recipient's similar cable connection. Now, even those poor souls who don't get Comedy Central can just get their Daily Show fix from their video chat buddies. Much more useful than actual 2-way videoconferencing.
Sounds like at least one angry cartoonist just received his pink slip . . . j/k I think the problem lies in the content of 2d animated films of late. All the money is going for 3d blockbusters with the latest hot tech, leaving only crappy kids projects to rely on 2D in the States. I think this creates an opportunity for 2D to find new niches, like more adult-oriented content. This has worked well in Japan, and there are very successful 2d movies being released there (as well as animated series on TV); that's because they target a much more diverse demographic. If all those kid movie cartoonists who get laid off from Disney decide to recycle themselves into an edgy adult-oriented animation house, they would probably do quite well. South Park was a start, but some better quality animation, and willingess to explore graphic, mature content, would be sure to attract a LOT of attention. There is a great void in this domain, and some serious money to be made.
Apple has recently issued a warranty extension for owners of iBooks made between May '02 and April '03. Here is information on this program: http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/ If you are having logic board problems, even if you didn't purchase an extended warranty, Apple will replace it for you free of charge. Apple has been good about these kinds of problems before, and with enough prodding, will do the right thing in most cases. Hopefully, people with these problems will be able to find out about this program, rather than throwing out their iBooks.
How about sticking in the CD while the iMac is booted, going to the 'startup disk' system pref (or control panel if using Classic MacOS) and choosing the OS on the CD as the startup disk, and restarting? If that doesn't work, then I'd say the particular drives in the iMacs don't support booting (not all of them do). Did you install them yourself, or are they stock? I would try booting from an external optical drive or FW hard drive if those iMacs have FireWire ports, and if not, then eBay might be your best bet, as you've got a lab full of lemons on your hand for some reason. You might also investigate the possibility of replacing the optical drives with any other IDE ones, though it gets complicated (see impossible) with those slot-loading ones. Which model iMacs are these? You can also see if netbooting over the network works, though I would recommend at least a 100 BT network for this purpose, as 10 BT can be a little slow. One other possibility is that these macs have their OpenFirmware set not to allow booting from CD. I'm not sure if in that case it would simply not work, or present you with a password to unlock that feature, but it might be something worth looking into. Either way, if you have an entire lab of iMacs, I'm sure Apple Support would be more than happy to send a tech over to fix your problem (for a hefty fee unless you're all covered with AppleCare).
The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is overrated. The quality of the recordings is really not worth paying almost as much as a CD, unless you're really in too much of a hurry to buy your CDs online, and/or too lazy to drive to the CD store. It makes better financial sense at this point to just keep buying CDs and ripping your own compressed digital audio tracks as you see fit. The quality will be noticeably better, along with the selection, ease of use and durability. Also, you get a nice CD case, with nice artwork and lyrics on occasion. I was excited about the iTMS at first, and bought a couple albums as soon as it opened. I quickly realized that 128 kbit AAC is really quite crappy, and no where near worth $1 per song. Just be happy with CDs, encode your own MP3 or AAC files at whatever bitrate you want for your iPod, and enjoy the extra fidelity.
Great, now you just provided a link to fodder for countless grammar nazis who will surely follow in your footsteps. That site is completely irrelevant to discussion in a place like/., as the English language has evolved since that spoken in whatever period the author of that site would like us to go back to. This isn't a professional community, or even one upheld to any standards whatsoever, beyond that of peer review and response (and moderation). If several million people can understand each other when they use 'to beg the question' in that manner, then guess what, that's what it means now. Strict rules only work for dead languages. Many of the so called errors on his page are so pathetically irrelevant, that it should be either a joke, or a shrine to obnoxious grammar nazis the World over. Case in point: CD-ROM disc (or DVD disc); you shouldn't add the word 'disc' after because it's part of the acronym. The problem with that is that the acronyms have gained so much common usage, that their symbols are all but forgotten. You tell someone to check their DVD, many would as soon check their DVD player as their DVD discs. Language is flexible and evolving, and there is no algorythm for determining the best way to communicate your thoughts to people. If 99.999% of the people can read and understand a phrase without thinking about it, then those 0.001% grammar nazis who take issue with it can be completely ignored. I, for one, think that people should be making up new words more often, even if perfectly good ones are available. That way, you could determine a person's age, community and location simply by the words they choose (not that you can't to a certain extent already). If everyone spoke perfect English, then you would lose one of the key methods of differentiating your community and social circle from others. Language barriers are defining characteristics of social communities. If you think less of a person because they choose to speak a certain way, even though you perfectly understand what they are saying, then you are an elitist, judging people on irrelevant criteria (unless you're looking for an editor for your respectable literary project or whatnot). In summary, get over yourself, and learn to adapt, or forever be cast as the nit-picking asshole.
Yeah, nice troll . . . laughable at best, though. I'd be interested in knowing how you came up with the millions of users data (I suspect it's from your arse). What kind of businesses use it? It sure as hell isn't publishing, and FilmGIMP doesn't count. Name a whole country that switched to the GIMP, I dare you. Pretty bold move, I'd say, forcing all your citizens and civil servants to use the GIMP. Maybe that's why that's never happened? The GIMP is by no means a replacement for Photoshop. The case could be made for competition against PS Elements, but that's about it. As much as you'd like it to be true, I have yet to see someone make the case for the GIMP as a replacement for PS for professional use in publishing. Like it or lump it, PS is the gold standard in professional image editing.
The drives are not 'laptop drives' (2.5"), but are instead much smaller 1.8" drives. Still they are robust enough for occasional use as a boot drive. It would be best to keep the game installed on the internal hard drive and use it from there, and just boot the OS from the iPod. Apps don't need to be installed on your boot drive.
Well, you're partially wrong. They are encoded by the labels and/or their distributors, but not from CD (in most cases). Apple has said that they encourage submitters to encode from the original masters, and that most are. The lowest quality you can find on the iTMS is ripped from CD, but most songs available are encoded from the DAT masters directly to 48 kHz 128 kbit AAC.
By doing this, you not only lose data by using a different encoder than the one used for the files on the iTMS, but you also downsample to 44.1 kHz from 48 kHz, which significantly degrades the audio fidelity. That is not really an option. Using SoundStudio, however, you can easily export to 48 kHz PCM in an AIFF container, and save most of the fidelity.
How about some more info? Did the installation fail? What happened exactly? Did Apple tech support say anything interesting about what might have caused this? Anything notable at all that we might watch out for? It would be nice to figure out if it's something that's avoidable in any way.
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I'm not arguing that there is no god, as that is completely unprovable. If there was an all-powerful being, then surely he would have to power to keep his presence hidden from us. What I am arguing is that there is nothing to support the presence of a god, so anyone who does believe in one *must* have blind faith. It's not evident, as evident requires evidence (hey, imagine that!), so you must be relying on blind faith. I have no absolute faith in what other humans tell me, but I will give credence to well-supported claims. The fact that the presence of a deity has no supporting evidence makes me give very little credence to those that so vehemently assert their presence. I'm an agnostic, in that I don't believe we can ever know if there is a god, let alone a single one, so I find no point in believing one way or the other. I'm comfortable with not knowing that, as I don't believe it's a relevant question anyways. I'm a scientist (microbiologist to be exact), and so I'm inclined to believe that when I die, my conscience will die too, and that will be the end of it. In fact, I find that to be comforting, as if there is no conscience, then what is there to worry about. What I object to is religions that use fear of things like eternal suffering in the afterlife to coerce people into following their guidelines for a "good" life. The only things that are "good" to me are those that make my life more enjoyable, and those that make us able to live as a functioning society. The only reward I expect from being "good" is to be surrounded by good people, and thus live a happy life. Anything beyond that is pure speculation, and I'll give about as much credibility to whomever the Bible was written by (rather the various groups that have adapted it over the centuries) as to the local madman ranting about his crazy World view in the local park, as they both have about the same amount of supporting evidence.
Are you actually serious about those arguments, or is that just a troll or bait? Those are the worst arguments I've ever read in my life. They hold about as much water as collander, and I'm not even going to bother to refute them, as they are obviously fallacious to any reasonable person. I hope that was a bait, if not, you might brush up on your critical thinking and logic.
Machine intelligence will increase in complexity and depth to the point that it will be indistinguishable from human intelligence (and eventually surpass it, as it is much more rapidly-evolving). By that time, your ghosts and robots argument will no longer hold water, as we will find that we are merely (very complex) machines. Just because you're a robot doesn't mean you can't have emotions or what we call free will. Those will come as machine intelligence becomes more advanced and complex. As to the entropy issue, 1) the universe might not be a closed system, as it could be infinitely large (or at least not confined to a given area), and/or interacting with what we would consider to be other universes; and 2) we have no idea of the timescale (or scale - distance-wise) involved in the increase in entropy, and the current decrease in entropy (expansion of what we reffer to as the universe) could be temporary, or the result of some process we don't understand. If it were really as simple as you say, this issue would have been resolved long ago.
Obviously, there would have to be credible (and a critical mass of) witnesses, along with redundant recording with various equipment, all released to the public in a timely manner. This god would also have to demonstrate his godly power. Mere video footage wouldn't be sufficient. The more outlandish the claims, the more proof you need to get them accepted. Also, it still wouldn't preclude the possibility of the existance of other gods, or that it isn't merely a more advanced being, or one from a more technologically advanced civilization. Take today's technology back in time a couple hundred years, and you could easily be mistaken for a god (or The God, or whatever). Basically, skeptics will never be satisfied, even if there were some evidence of godlike beings, so it wouldn't really affect their World view too dramatically. The theists would be the most harmed by evidence of a godlike being, as it might refute some of their deeply-held beliefs of what their god really is, along with the scriptures upon which their faith is based. If some god showed up, and looked like a 2-foot tall monkey with a forked tongue and purple hair (thank you South Park for the reference), that would be upsetting to those who believe that humans were created in his image.
How is the existance of a deity in any way evident, let alone self-evident? A self-evident deity would be an observable one, that actively demonstrates his godlike powers. The presence of any deity isn't at all evident, and is something taken on faith by those who were either A) raised to believe in them unquestioningly since their childhood, or B) decided to accept the faith for whatever personal reasons (typically to provide some guidance or social acceptance, but never for an objectively logical reason). There are also some who pretend to have faith to escape persecution, or receive sustenance from religious aid workers in developing nations. How can you argue that the presence of a deity can be self-evident, when there is no evidence? Answer this; is there any rational reason to believe in the presence of a deity? If not, then I'd say believing in one is pretty irrational.
Well, I'm pretty sure walking on water, turning water into wine, and resurrection break a few, not to mention living in a whale, raining frogs, and countless other fantastic stories. Sounds more like some old-time sci-fi or fantasy novel, rather than some gospel of unquestionable truth. I always find it amusing that people say, "oh, it's (true, good, right, etc.) because it says so right here in the Bible". Not to mention how badly the Bible was bastardized by King James of Britain (not to mention the Greeks and Romans), to suit his needs. The Bible we read today is drastically changed from the original scrolls written in Aramaic, and has been modified by countless religious groups to suit their needs for power and control. I'll take some theories of geology, such as relative age dating using layers of soil, backed up by countless evidence and confirmation, over some cultish notions of divine creation any day of the week. One has some evidence and rational explanation, while the other is purely heresay, and hasn't a shred of supporting evidence.
People really will believe anything if they want to badly enough, or have been raised to believe something without question since childhood. If our race is to progress as a whole, we're sooner or later going to have to abandon these outdated religions as mere fantasy, and base our notions on logic and rationalization, and be comfortable not knowing certain things (like what happens to your concience when your body dies), as they can't possibly be answered through logic or experimentation. Raising children to have unquestioned faith only impairs their ability to think critically and make the best decisions on their own based on all available knowledge. Faith is really a device used to shed responsibility, and a symptom of weakness of character and free will. It really is a jail for the mind, failing to back up beliefs with rational explanations, opening a door to all sorts of abuse by those given power over your mind (namely your church or cult of choice). History has clearly demonstrated the dangers of blind faith, and it's sad to see our current leaders (in the USA) forced to call upon this faith to give themselves more credibility, as rational thinking and logic were apparently not sufficient. How many millions of people have been persecuted or killed in the name of a particular deity in the history of our race? For what? This senseless wrongdoing will have to come to an end in order for our race (there is only one human race) to achieve its potential, and end the counterproductive conflict that plagues our World. Just think of what we could have achieved had we (the World) focused all the energy spent on military supremacy in the last century on solving the basic problems that afflict us. The problem is obviously compounded by greed and corruption, but faith has played a critical role in our past missteps.
What we need to do is take the basic parts of religion useful in making society work (their original intentions), such as the golden rule (do unto others as you would have done unto yourself), and other basic niceties we take for granted in our society, and drop all the rest. I guess it's hard to fill a sermon with that basic notion, but it's a good starting point. Instead of coercing people through fear of eternal suffering in the after-life, you could just tell people to be good to others in order to surround themselves with good people and positivity, hence living a better life now. There is no need to invent notions like heaven, hell or an all-seeing eye if there is a good incentive to act decently in people's current lifetimes. In fact, the afterlife shouldn't even be touched upon by this new "religion" (other than saying, "You'll find out, don't worry about it"), as speculation only harms people, and causes conflicts when two views disagree. Old-time religions should receive no societal endorsement, and be left as a private matter for people to believe if it makes them feel better.
Boy, this turned out a lot l
Gosh, you're right. I'd much rather believe what some guy named Paul wrote many centuries ago (a.k.a. the Bible), and take that for the absolute, unquestioned truth, even though much of it flies right in the face of our knowledge of the laws of physics. People are so dumb...
Not as serious as hunger and extreme poverty . . . How much good will could we have built for ourselves had we spent the hundreds of billions this war has cost us on solving some of the greatest humanitarian crises going on in the World? How many people would we have given a future to, and prevented from becoming "terrorists" in the first place? Which path is more effective at eliminating a problem such as insurgency in a very small fraction of the population. Do you honestly think invading Iraq has made us any safer from terrorists? Get a clue, man!
That's a very good point! Though the fear is often irrational, and people fail to understand that their safety is much more jeopardized by riding in an automobile, living unhealthy lifestyles, etc. than by what some group of religious extremists is capable of doing. The Patriot Act is an affront to our constitutional rights as citizens, and really sets the stage for all kinds of abuses should they need a new scapegoat someday. Our only hope is for it to be struck down as unconstitutional.
It's a criminal offense to insult a peace officer. Practially speaking, a cop has the power to bring anyone they want to the station, so it's best (unless you have a lot of time to waste) to just placate the cop by cooperating. Now, if this were to get out of hand, it could be very effective if everyone refused to cooperate with cops, so they'd have to arrest many more people, thus burdening the system with a bunch of useless arrests. Should it become necessary, this could be a very effective form of protest, if enough people went along with it.
5 minutes, plus the rest of the day trying to get all that damn ink off yer digits... The problem is that they don't have everyone's fingerprints on file to compare to, only those of people who have a drivers' license or have been arrested before. It would make it easier to determine if you've been misidentified as a perpetrator, though, like if the real perp gave false info pointing to you.
The current hot word suffix is 'Underground', with the option of adding 'Super Bling-Bling Edition'... Xtreme? Puuuuhlease, girlfriend, get with the times! :p
iTunes has a 70% share of legal downloads, much higher than Walmart's share of sales of the goods it trades in. Granted the market is in its infancy, but as (or if) competitors start falling off, and iTunes' share increases from this point, they will be in a very strong negotiating position as legal music downloads increase in popularity.
This is excellent news. I've been retransmitting live TV shows off my satellite TV subscription trough iChat with all my (no extended cable or satellite having) Mac friends using an analogue video to DV bridge box since iChat became available. Now, I will finally be able to share shows with my Windows using buddies as well. Quality has been surprisingly good, with shows perfectly watchable over my 256kbit upstream cable connection, and the recipient's similar cable connection. Now, even those poor souls who don't get Comedy Central can just get their Daily Show fix from their video chat buddies. Much more useful than actual 2-way videoconferencing.
Sounds like at least one angry cartoonist just received his pink slip . . . j/k I think the problem lies in the content of 2d animated films of late. All the money is going for 3d blockbusters with the latest hot tech, leaving only crappy kids projects to rely on 2D in the States. I think this creates an opportunity for 2D to find new niches, like more adult-oriented content. This has worked well in Japan, and there are very successful 2d movies being released there (as well as animated series on TV); that's because they target a much more diverse demographic. If all those kid movie cartoonists who get laid off from Disney decide to recycle themselves into an edgy adult-oriented animation house, they would probably do quite well. South Park was a start, but some better quality animation, and willingess to explore graphic, mature content, would be sure to attract a LOT of attention. There is a great void in this domain, and some serious money to be made.
Apple has recently issued a warranty extension for owners of iBooks made between May '02 and April '03. Here is information on this program:
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
If you are having logic board problems, even if you didn't purchase an extended warranty, Apple will replace it for you free of charge. Apple has been good about these kinds of problems before, and with enough prodding, will do the right thing in most cases. Hopefully, people with these problems will be able to find out about this program, rather than throwing out their iBooks.
How about sticking in the CD while the iMac is booted, going to the 'startup disk' system pref (or control panel if using Classic MacOS) and choosing the OS on the CD as the startup disk, and restarting? If that doesn't work, then I'd say the particular drives in the iMacs don't support booting (not all of them do). Did you install them yourself, or are they stock? I would try booting from an external optical drive or FW hard drive if those iMacs have FireWire ports, and if not, then eBay might be your best bet, as you've got a lab full of lemons on your hand for some reason. You might also investigate the possibility of replacing the optical drives with any other IDE ones, though it gets complicated (see impossible) with those slot-loading ones. Which model iMacs are these? You can also see if netbooting over the network works, though I would recommend at least a 100 BT network for this purpose, as 10 BT can be a little slow. One other possibility is that these macs have their OpenFirmware set not to allow booting from CD. I'm not sure if in that case it would simply not work, or present you with a password to unlock that feature, but it might be something worth looking into. Either way, if you have an entire lab of iMacs, I'm sure Apple Support would be more than happy to send a tech over to fix your problem (for a hefty fee unless you're all covered with AppleCare).
The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is overrated. The quality of the recordings is really not worth paying almost as much as a CD, unless you're really in too much of a hurry to buy your CDs online, and/or too lazy to drive to the CD store. It makes better financial sense at this point to just keep buying CDs and ripping your own compressed digital audio tracks as you see fit. The quality will be noticeably better, along with the selection, ease of use and durability. Also, you get a nice CD case, with nice artwork and lyrics on occasion. I was excited about the iTMS at first, and bought a couple albums as soon as it opened. I quickly realized that 128 kbit AAC is really quite crappy, and no where near worth $1 per song. Just be happy with CDs, encode your own MP3 or AAC files at whatever bitrate you want for your iPod, and enjoy the extra fidelity.
MacOS X 10.3.2 (on a shiny new 2x2GHz G5), Volvo V70 XC, Volvo V70 XC.
Great, now you just provided a link to fodder for countless grammar nazis who will surely follow in your footsteps. That site is completely irrelevant to discussion in a place like /., as the English language has evolved since that spoken in whatever period the author of that site would like us to go back to. This isn't a professional community, or even one upheld to any standards whatsoever, beyond that of peer review and response (and moderation). If several million people can understand each other when they use 'to beg the question' in that manner, then guess what, that's what it means now. Strict rules only work for dead languages. Many of the so called errors on his page are so pathetically irrelevant, that it should be either a joke, or a shrine to obnoxious grammar nazis the World over. Case in point: CD-ROM disc (or DVD disc); you shouldn't add the word 'disc' after because it's part of the acronym. The problem with that is that the acronyms have gained so much common usage, that their symbols are all but forgotten. You tell someone to check their DVD, many would as soon check their DVD player as their DVD discs. Language is flexible and evolving, and there is no algorythm for determining the best way to communicate your thoughts to people. If 99.999% of the people can read and understand a phrase without thinking about it, then those 0.001% grammar nazis who take issue with it can be completely ignored. I, for one, think that people should be making up new words more often, even if perfectly good ones are available. That way, you could determine a person's age, community and location simply by the words they choose (not that you can't to a certain extent already). If everyone spoke perfect English, then you would lose one of the key methods of differentiating your community and social circle from others. Language barriers are defining characteristics of social communities. If you think less of a person because they choose to speak a certain way, even though you perfectly understand what they are saying, then you are an elitist, judging people on irrelevant criteria (unless you're looking for an editor for your respectable literary project or whatnot). In summary, get over yourself, and learn to adapt, or forever be cast as the nit-picking asshole.
Yeah, nice troll . . . laughable at best, though. I'd be interested in knowing how you came up with the millions of users data (I suspect it's from your arse). What kind of businesses use it? It sure as hell isn't publishing, and FilmGIMP doesn't count. Name a whole country that switched to the GIMP, I dare you. Pretty bold move, I'd say, forcing all your citizens and civil servants to use the GIMP. Maybe that's why that's never happened? The GIMP is by no means a replacement for Photoshop. The case could be made for competition against PS Elements, but that's about it. As much as you'd like it to be true, I have yet to see someone make the case for the GIMP as a replacement for PS for professional use in publishing. Like it or lump it, PS is the gold standard in professional image editing.
The drives are not 'laptop drives' (2.5"), but are instead much smaller 1.8" drives. Still they are robust enough for occasional use as a boot drive. It would be best to keep the game installed on the internal hard drive and use it from there, and just boot the OS from the iPod. Apps don't need to be installed on your boot drive.
Well, you're partially wrong. They are encoded by the labels and/or their distributors, but not from CD (in most cases). Apple has said that they encourage submitters to encode from the original masters, and that most are. The lowest quality you can find on the iTMS is ripped from CD, but most songs available are encoded from the DAT masters directly to 48 kHz 128 kbit AAC.
By doing this, you not only lose data by using a different encoder than the one used for the files on the iTMS, but you also downsample to 44.1 kHz from 48 kHz, which significantly degrades the audio fidelity. That is not really an option. Using SoundStudio, however, you can easily export to 48 kHz PCM in an AIFF container, and save most of the fidelity.
How about some more info? Did the installation fail? What happened exactly? Did Apple tech support say anything interesting about what might have caused this? Anything notable at all that we might watch out for? It would be nice to figure out if it's something that's avoidable in any way.