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Fab t-shirt from Reece Ward on redbubble.com
….and get laid in the process, but only if you’re a virgin!
http://dontstayvirgin.movielol.org/
Terms of Service
- applicants must be 18yrs old or above
- condom must be used, except if the applicant prefers to release his semen upon Tania’s body without any oral or vaginal contact
- Anal sex is negotiable, although Tania will cease the performance immediately if any form of ’surprise buttsex’ occurs
- multiple participants are not allowed, but applicants are entitled to have an audience observe the performance
- if anywhere along the process, it becomes clear that the applicant is not a virgin, Tania reserves the right to terminate all activity
- applicant must be able to provide sufficient evidence that clearly shows he has been defending net neutrality (eg. a print-out of a forum post, a link to a vlog)
- applicant agrees that in the event of the applicant infringing upon Terms of Service during the process of the act, Tania is not responsible for any genital injury that the applicant may suffer
- Tania may deny service for hygiene reasons
Bitchin’!
Fluid 0.7: ”
Freeware utility that lets you create your own ‘site specific browser’:
Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite webapps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any webapp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, and logical separation from your other web browsing activity.
(Via David Heinemeier Hansson at 37signals; they’ve got icons you can use for Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, and Highrise.)
“
(Via Daring Fireball.)
First impressions, having just read the spec.
For the record, I like small laptops. And I mean, I REALLY like small laptops. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a sub-notebook I’d actually consider purchasing, be it Mac or PC.
And I can’t see that changing with the announcement of the MacBook Air.
I’m using a 1.83ghz Core2 MacBook with 1.5gb RAM at the moment.
An entry level MacBook Air is running at 1.63ghz and shipping with 2gb RAM.
While there’s not a lot of difference here, it is worth noting that the Air has 4mb of L2 cache on the chip (versus 2mb on the MacBook) and an 800mhz FSB (versus 667mhz on the MacBook). I’m unsure as to how much of a performance increase we’ll see from this. Have to wait and see.
Interesting to see a PATA instead of a SATA hard disk in the Air.
Multi-touch trackpad is a nice feature too. Looking forward to playing with that!
The Air certainly looks the part. It’s small, it’s light, spec is pretty good, looks amazing. Couldn’t ask for more.
Until…….
A: No Firewire.
B: No removal/upgradeable memory.
C: No optical drive as standard (available as an option)
D: No removable battery.
E: Hefty price tag
Any one (or maybe even two or three (at a push!)) of these would be acceptable, but all five really makes me shy away a bit, which is a real shame.
I was really hoping Apple would release a sub-notebook and not the iPhone-esque tablet thing that everyone’s been praying for, so I was really excited to see the MacBook Air release news.
I’m a little disappointed on initial inspection. That may change when I actually have one in front of me.
I’ll let you know when that happens.
WTF
Following my post about the excellent Multi-Safari:
Multi-Safari is broken in Leopard, but fear not!
A fix is available from Thomas Aylott.
Nice one!
More cool Wii remote stuff!
Via the BBC Website
BBC Radio 1 has banned the word “faggot” from the Pogues’ 1987 Christmas hit Fairytale of New York to avoid offence.
…MacColl’s mother, Jean, called the ban “too ridiculous”, while the Pogues said they found it “amusing”.
It’s quite funny actually. Listen here
UPDATE
The BBC has backed down!
BBC Radio 1 has said it will allow the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York to be played on the station uncut, after criticism of a decision to censor it.
From Macworld News
A North Carolina man last week was sentenced to 110 years in prison after admitting that he and a co-conspirator hacked into computers used by young girls and used illicitly gained data to blackmail them.
If you read the article, yup, the guy’s a scumbag.
But 110 YEARS?!
From the BBC:
The consumer watchdog Which? has uncovered an ex-nurse illegally advertising Botox parties on eBay.
By posing as a potential customer, a Which? researcher heard how the ex-nurse had injected drunken customers with the facial treatment.
Sounds like a fun night out!
How many more times are we going to have to endure this kind of crap?
It’s really starting to grate on me.
Amusingly, according to Macworld:
The ad was created by Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Media Arts Lab, but unfortunately has caused some browsers to crash, leading some sites to pull the ad from their online properties.
No mention of which browsers crashed though……
Apple REALLY need to stop doing this.
Help feed the poor while brushing up on your vocabulary.
Freerice.com is a website that does just that by giving you a word and suggesting four possible definitions. For each one you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program (WFP).
Rice is paid for by advertisers, including Apple and Toshiba. It’s a cool idea and one that should be suppported.
There’s been a lot of press about the hits and misses in Leopard. But my two fave features seem to be quite low on the list!
1: Airport in the menu bar.
Yes I know it’s been there forever, but it sucked before, and now it doesn’t! Proper realtime updating of available networks, including security status. It should have been sorted a long time ago. Thankfully, now it is!
2: Finder and mounted shares.
This was my most loathed part of all previous incarnations of OS X. Mount a remote volume, put your Mac to sleep and wander to another location. Open it up and watch and wait for the spinning beachball of doom to do it’s thing.
If you’re lucky, you may get a “volume disconnected” message, albeit eventually. You may however have to forcefully reboot your machine to sort it.
This behaviour is now no more, and it’s a joy! In fact, I really like the way Leopard deals with remote servers. Authenticate to the machine, and you instantly have access to all the shares on the machine. No more multiple ‘Command-K’ing to connect to the same server.
It may seem like small fry against the behemoth Time Machine or the instantly cool Quick Look, but in terms of usability, it’s the little things that make all the difference.
I really hate reviews that misinform, and while the Macworld review of Leopard is mostly accurate, there are some gross inaccuracies!
First, if the Dock is on the bottom of the screen (where a lot of people tend to keep it), a stack will display as a curving column of icons or as a rectangular grid, depending on how many items are in the folder.
While this is true of the default behavior, it is easily rectified with a right click -> view as -> grid. Problem solved.
Interestingly, this choice is not available if the dock is positioned on the side. It’s grid or nothing!
For folders where the number of items changes regularly (such as Downloads), you never know which display you’re going to get.
Wrong again. Once again, right click invoked context menu has the answer, which happens to be the same as above!
Furthermore, stacks displayed as columns sort items alphabetically beginning at the bottom of the stack, while stacks displaying as a grid sort items alphabetically beginning at the top left.
Someone really ought to invest in a two button mouse. Context menus are a wonderful thing.
You open a Finder window in Cover Flow mode, then drag the lower-right corner of the window down to see more files. Oops! Watch instead as the Cover Flow icons grow to gargantuan size while the list of files you’re actually trying to expand remains the same size.
And you can then reduce the size of the icons by dragging the bar below them up, thus revealing more icons. 
For those who are a couple of generations behind in their hardware, the prospect of a Leopard world is bleak. For one, any Mac with a G3 chip is automatically left out. This includes all of the original translucent iMacs; you know, the ones that helped get Apple back on its feet.
Do what now?!
Other G4s that Leopard doesn’t support include Quicksilver and earlier Power Macs and Cubes released before January 2002; eMacs sold before October 2003; Titanium PowerBooks older than November 2002.
So, machines about as old as G3 hardware then…..
We were able to get an unsupported mini working that way, albeit slowly.
Which is possibly why they’re considered “unsupported”?
There are always going to be casualties in the bleeding edge market. Dropping support for the G3 was an inevitability. It struggled to run Tiger without loads of ram, and Leopard is a whole ‘nother beast.
Dan “Björn Türoque” Crane on the Air Guitar!
I consider the air guitar to be the ne plus ultra of both high and low tech, and thus find myself subservient to its power.
From Macworld
Put the Finder in all Spaces: While Spaces is a very cool feature, one thing that can get annoying is how the Finder behaves—certain Finder-related events in certain programs may shift your active space to one showing a Finder window. You can avoid this problem by assigning the Finder to every space. In Spaces’ System Preferences panel, click the plus sign to add a new assignment. When the file browser shows up, navigate to /System -> Library -> CoreServices, click on Finder, then click the Add button. Back in the Assignments window, click the Space column next to Finder, and set it to All Spaces. Now you’ll see Finder windows in all of your spaces.
Well kinda……
Porn sites that offer free movies, but you have to install a “codec” to view them.
Sound familiar? All those setup.exe files are back but with a Mac flavour.
Once installed the trojan hijacks DNS and redirects popular purchase sites to sites controlled by the hijacker to extract credit card details.
Now I hardly think this constitutes “open season” on the Mac as Wired would have you believe. Fair enough it’s a development in the “viruses on the Mac” department, but, currently, you would have to be a bit of a muppet to get duped. Macs are not invincible, and they never have been. There’s been plenty of dodgy apps that do dodgy things once authentication has been given. This is nothing new.
And as for this pearl of wisdom from “security researcher” (?) Gadi Evron:
Apple’s day has finally come, and Apple users are going to get hit hard. OS X is the new Windows 98.
Ahuh……
From The Times
Excerpt:
7.25-7.30 I sprayed, and puddled and piddled and widdled.
Even the BBC are getting excited about this game.
It does look awesome though!
The new ad for Sony Bravia. Apparently Europe only?
Anyway, it’s great!
From The Times Online
In their defence the restaurateurs say that there were actually rats in the stew.
Nice….
From The Guardian
Director Ridley Scott turned grumpy old man yesterday, declaring 97% of modern films “stupid”…..
Yup. With you so far…..
…..and claiming mobile phone and other modern technology was killing cinema.
Um?
The only quote from Ridley Scott regarding this in the article is…..
“I’m sure we’re on a losing wicket but we’re fighting technology. Whilst it is wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides.”
Yeah OK. The internet is a double edged sword for the film industry, but mobile phones?
I’d really like to read the rest of the interview…..
Oh yes please!!
Amazing artist.
I love his Rosa Parks picture.
It appears that absolute positioning in Opera 9 is broken.
Putting an absolutely positioned item within a relatively positioned div doesn’t work as it should….
The following code should place the image 10px from the top of the div, but due to the bug in Opera, it doesn’t!
<div style=”position: relative;”>
<img src=”someimage.jpg” style=”position: absolute; top: 10px;”>
</div>
The solution?
Nest the image inside another div, thus…
<div style=”position: relative;”>
<div style=”position: absolute; top: 10px;”>
<img src=”someimage.jpg”>
</div>
</div>
Problem solved.
Yeah, ok, I’m lame. Moving on…..
As a web developer working on a Mac and having to confess to running Safari 3 beta, this leads to a problem that I can’t test pages in Safari 2.0.4.
Til now.
http://www.michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/
Awesome!
UPDATE:Same thing for Windows and IE. Useful for me in Parallels!
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
From BBC News website
“A denial-of-service attack is a bit like fourteen fat men trying to get into an elevator - nothing can move,” explained Graham Cluley, senior consultant at security firm Sophos.
My initial reaction to today’s Oscar nominations.
Firstly:
Pan’s Labyrinth receiving 6 nominations:
Achievement in Art Direction
Achievement in Cinematography
Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
Achievement in Makeup
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
Original Screenplay
I loved Pan’s Labyrinth. Easily my favourite film of last year, and, if I had my way, it would walk away with Best Foreign Language Film and Original Screenplay. A real shame it’s not nominated in best film (more on that later….)
United 93 receiving two nominations:
Achievement in Directing (Paul Greengrass)
Achievement in Film Editing
Another of my favourite films from last year. I thought it might have been overlooked, and am really happy that it hasn’t been.
Children of Men gets 3 nominations:
Achievement in Cinematography
Achievement in Film Editing
Adapted Screenplay
The Best Actor in a Leading Role category is interesting:
Leonardo Di Caprio (Blood Diamond)
Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson)
Peter O’ Toole (Venus)
Will Smith (Pursuit of Happyness)
Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland)
I would love to see Peter O’ Toole take the award. He’s been nominated 6 times in the past. He has been awarded an Academy Honorary Award in 2003 which he accepted saying that he would still like to “win the lovely bugger outright”.
I can’t help but feel that he’ll be beaten to the statue again this year. Forest Whitaker’s performance as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland is simply incredible.
And then there’s Babel getting 7 nominatons:
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Achievement in Directing
Achievement in Film Editing
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Original Screenplay
I’m sorry. Maybe I’m missing something. What is so great about this film?
I found it dull, really dull. It has some of the most contrived plot points I’ve seen in a film.
Granted, the performances are good, as is the direction, but the script sucks, and without a half way decent script…….
Anyway, full list of nominations is available from the Oscars website
From The Guardian
Sci-fi thriller Children of Men yesterday won the University of Southern California’s Scripter prize.
The award recognises book-to-film adaptations, with the honours in this case going to crime writer PD James and screenwriters Alfonso Cuáron, Timothy J Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. Cuáron also directed the film.
I really enjoyed Children of Men. Having not read the book, I can’t really comment on whether or not it should have won.
Other nominations were:
- The Devil Wears Prada
- The Illusionist
- The Last King of Scotland
- Notes on a Scandal
From curbly.com :
This is a fabulous idea for reusing your wine and liquor bottles after
your holiday parties. Just spray them with chalkboard paint. After the paint dries then rub chalk all over the bottle and then erase it. This will “prime” the bottle and give it that old chalkboard look that you so love!
Looks really nice and considering I drink a lot of wine, there should be no shortage of materials!
From lab6.com
Have a look at this. It canexxors:
1×1=1
11×11=121
111×111=12321
1111×1111=1234321
11111×11111=123454321
111111×111111=12345654321
1111111×1111111=1234567654321
11111111×11111111=123456787654321
111111111×111111111=12345678987654321
Nice.
Sentor Ted Stevens’ Net Neutrality Speech has been immortalised in song!
Hear it here.
*UPDATE* Above link wasn’t working as of 17/07/06.
Here’s an alternative link.
Woohoo!
FLAC and Vorbis makes a welcome return to iTunes thanks to the lovely people at xiph.org. Hopefully this will remove the need to run 3rd party apps to listen to music encoded in these open formats.
Get it here.
*UPDATE* - Alas, still no support for native FLAC file format. Only Ogg FLAC, but at least it’s a step in the right directon.
We all know what Tetris is, what it looks like, etc.
But if you had to describe it to someone, what would you say?
Having followed a link from Daring Fireball to a Cease and Desist letter sent to the makers of Quinn, an OS X version of Tetris, I believe the question has been undeniably answered…….
Specifically, the copyrighted features of the Tetris® game include, without limitation, downward, lateral and rotating movements of the differently orientated four-brick playing pieces, as well as the shape and appearance of the four-brick playing pieces, including the configuration of the four-brick combinations comprising the playing pieces.
Oh right……..
Additional copyrighted features include, without limitation: the scoring features, the feature displaying the next four-brick playing piece that will fall down the playing field matrix, the disappearance of any completed horizontal row, the subsequent consolidation of the playing pieces remaining in the playing field as a result of the downward shift into the space vacated by the disappearing row.
Ahuh.
Further, the makeup of the playing field itself, i.e., the vertical matrix, higher than it is wide, with a base of ten individual “bricks” per horizontal row, and generally twenty individual “bricks” per vertical line, is also copyrightable expression.
Sounds great! Where can I get this awesome game?
Oh, I can’t because the makers have had to “cease display, distribution, publication or offering of the ‘Tetris’ game in question”.
Lame.
It’s a great version of a great game. Let’s hope Simon and Chris can find a way to fight this.
*UPDATE* - The game is still available to download here. Get it while you can.
As the observant among you will have noticed, I have been conspicuous by my absence of late. So where have I been?
Well, some of it it’s interesting and some of it isn’t. Firstly, been spending my free time learning PHP. I’ve become a little engrossed in a little personal project, the purpose of which is to write an app to catalog my movie collection. It’s been fun (most of the time) if a little frustrating (most of the time!).
Other than that, went to my first festival last week!
The Sunrise Celebration took place in Somerset between the 16th - 21st of June. We (as in my band, Just to Annoy Ray) played a couple of sets there, Friday on the Eartheart (Whirl-Y-Gig) Stage and Sunday in the Bimble Inn. We had a great time with both sets being really well received, though I do HAVE to give a big shout out to the guys at the Bimble Inn for all their hard work. It was touch and go for a while, but they pulled it off. Fair play guys!
Other than playing, the definite highlight was seeing Banco de Gaia play live in Friday night. It was awesome! For those of you that don’t know him, his new album, Farewell Ferengistan is worth picking up, and there are a couple of classic tunes you NEED to hear, namely Last Train to Lhasa, Heliopolis, and Drunk as a Monk (Rabbit in the Moon Mix).
So in summary, I’ve been programming, getting drunk, and dancing around to upbeat ambient dance music in a big field (though not ALL at the same time!)
Technorati Tags: Banco de Gaia, Sunrise Celebration, Just to Annoy Ray, Undulattice
Having seen a post on Daring Fireball about posting to a blog from Textmate, I thought I’d give it a go.
Since deciding to learn something about PHP a few weeks ago, I went in search of a text editor that would suit my needs and Textmate seems to be the weapon of choice. I’ve been using it as my main text editor for a few weeks now and it is the bomb, the mac, and the daddy.
Just have to see how the blogging bit works out. Not as elegant as Ecto but does a lot more besides blogging!
From pcworld.com.
Along with its new look, Vista is introducing a new Microsoft document format, XPS (XML Paper Specification). Documents created with XPS can be shared with people who don’t have the originating application but do have an XPS viewer; Microsoft showed an XPS document being viewed in Internet Explorer. While not nearly as full featured as Adobe’s popular PDF format, XPS is intended primarily to speed up and improve the quality of printing.
So what exaclty is wrong with PDFs?
I reckon “Portable Document Format” inspires a little more confidence than the roll-of-the-tongue-tastic “XML Paper Specification”!
Technorati Tags: pdf, vista, windows, xps
From Apple’s PR website:
Nike and Apple® today announced a partnership bringing the worlds of sports and music together like never before with the launch of innovative Nike+iPod products. The first product developed through this partnership is the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows Nike+ footwear to talk with your iPod® nano to connect you to the ultimate personal running and workout experience.
This is a partnership I imagine most people won’t have seen coming, and I for one wish it hadn’t. Nike’s track record is dubious to say the least. It’s not too difficult to find information regarding their use of sweatshops in various parts of the world.
Apple itself have not been immune to some rather negative commentary, notably from Naomi Klein in her book “No Logo”, a discussion about branding and it’s impact on society.
In relation to this, an article on igorinternational.com states:
The company projects a humanistic corporate culture and a strong corporate ethic, characterized by volunteerism, support of good causes or involvement in the community. Nike blundered here. Apple, on the other hand, comes across as profoundly humanist.
Until now. Or maybe the ‘magic curtain’ has just been lifted, and I’ve seen a side to Apple that I did not want to see before. Maybe we’ll have Apple powered Starbucks WIFI spots next, or maybe even a range of Gapple clothing…….
I may not go as far as some people I know who are actually considering SELLING all their Apple equipment following the announcement of this “partnership”. I will have to think long and hard about my next Apple purchase though. The branding inbreeding is becoming too much to take.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Branding, Nike, iPod
Sorry. Couldn’t resist the title!
Regarding the new glossy screen on the Macbook (optional on 15″ Macbook Pros), John Sircusa offers the following:
Glossy displays have effectively taken over the entire laptop market. Why are they so popular? Here are three possible reasons.
They are better than matte-finish displays.
They are cheaper than matte-finish displays.
People are idiots.
Sounds fair to me.
The guys at Macserendipity disagree:
I have a Sony TFT at home with an Xblack glossy screen and I love it. The colors look vibrant and deep and switching to my Belina screen at work is frankly painful.
…
So maybe not having a choice is bad. People ( that are not idiots) should have a choice as some may not like the Glossy Screen. However some do. Those people including myself are not idiots they just have a preference.
Before I begin, I will say that I am NOT a fan of glossy screens. These “more vibrant colours” that are being spoken about and “higher contrast” make the screen almost unusable for getting an ACCURATE colour representation and are therefore fairly useless to anyone wanting to attempt some colour matching. Admittedly, this is something I do only rarely and is something that most people would not have any want or need to do, but it still annoys me! :-p
Anyway.
I’m sure a Sony XBlack TFT screen would look great in a lot of rooms. After all, indoors in a environment where you can control lighting conditions, a situation which is perfect (nay essential?) for these screens. Most showrooms, for example, are just such environments.
But the Macbook is PORTABLE computer. Thus, it would be preferrable to be able to use the laptop the conditions I happen to find myself, be it on a train, in the park having lunch, whatever…..
I should dictate where I use a portable computer, not the other way around.
As for John Siracusa’s argument about people being idiots, once you eliminate the first two options:
A: Glossy screens are better - Um, no they’re not.
B: Glossy screens are cheaper - Unsure, but can’t imagine there’s much in it. As far as I’m aware it’s only the finish that differs?
there aren’t many options left.
To say that people PREFER a glossy screen is to say that they prefer an inferior product (given A and B above), which isn’t unusual these days. As I’m oft reminded, people are entitled to their opinion, but then again, I happen to think most people are idiots anyway! :-p
From USA Today
Apple Computer Inc. is entitled to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store, a judge ruled Monday, rejecting a suit filed by Apple Corps Ltd., the guardian of The Beatles’ commercial interests.
Apple Corps, which contended that the U.S. company had broken a 1991 agreement in which each side agreed not to enter into the other’s field of business, said it would appeal.
Judge Edward Mann ruled that Apple Computer used the fruit logo in association with the store, not the music, and thus did not breach the agreement.
From Blogorrhea Junior
Constantly bombarded as we are by the media with uncited cultural references, stuff creeps in. And sticks. How often have you spouted some clever signature line from a show you love? It works the same way with voracious readers. Ask any author how easy it is to escape one’s influences. I guarantee they’ll hiss at you and reach for the whiskey.
Applies to all things in life.
Blogorrhea also has a link to a site containing before and after 9/11 photos.
Very surreal. I think I prefer the landscape without them (from an aesthetic viewpoint, not in a cold and unfeeling way).
This time, from film critic Jim Emerson. His list of 102 films you must see is copied below with an asterisk next to the ones I’ve seen (a la Jason Kottke)
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* The 400 Blows
* 8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
* All About Eve
* Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
* The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
* The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
* Blue Velvet
* Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
* The Day the Earth Stood Still
* Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
* Duck Soup
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial
* Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
* The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
* Frankenstein
* The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
* Halloween
* A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life
* Jaws
The Lady Eve
* Lawrence of Arabia
* M (This is one of my favourite films of all time…..)
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
* The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
* Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
* The Night of the Hunter
* Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
* Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
* Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
*Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
* Rashomon (or indeed anything directed by Akira Kurosawa)
* Rear Window
* Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface
* The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler’s List
* The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
* Singin’ in the Rain
* Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
* A Streetcar Named Desire
* Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
* The Third Man
* Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
* Vertigo
West Side Story
* The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
So that’s 75 out of 102. There are a few films on there I’d not heard of so i reckon I’m going to have to find some DVDs to watch!
It’s nice to see two Kurosawa films on the list. I’ve yet to see a film he’s made that I haven’t liked, and I’ve seen about 19 so far. My personal favourite is Red Beard which should have made the list, but hey, can’t have everything!
Technorati Tags: movies, undulattice
From NY Daily News.
Denise Richards fears her estranged husband, Charlie Sheen, may have had a hand in the death of a porn star and alleged hooker who ratted him out to a tabloid last year, court papers reveal.
In a bombshell sworn declaration, ex-Bond Girl Richards says she flat-out asked Sheen, 40, if he had anything to do with sex star Chloe Jones’ death — and he didn’t deny it.
Technorati Tags: movies, undulattice
It is widely known that the Airport card that ships with a MacBook Pro supports 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks. It also has support 802.11a networks, though this feature is undocumented and is not supported by Apple or Applecare.
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, network, undulattice
Apple have announced the addition of the 17″ MacBook Pro to their Intel based range.
Specs include Firewire 800 and a Double Layer 8x Superdrive, which were both missing in the 15″ MacBook Pro. It also has an additional USB 2.0 port.
You also get the option of up(down)grading from a 120gb 5400rpm hard drive to a 100gb 7200rpm hard drive. Personally I’d go for speed over space!
It’s expensive though, about £200 more expensive than a 17″ Powerbook (which have been discontinued and are no longer available from the Apple Store)
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, undulattice
Having just read a recent post on Daring Fireball regarding how Boot Camp will start an exodus to Windows, I have to go one step further than John Gruber’s “Jackass of the Week” description and label USA Today’s Andrew Kantor a complete idiot!
Firstly we have this……
Boot Camp isn’t going to propel the Mac into the mainstream. If anything, it will get Mac users to switch to Windows. Sure, it’ll be terrific for Mac fans not wanting to give up their machine of choice but find more and more they need to use Windows. But Boot Camp doesn’t offer any kind of compelling argument for PC users to buy Mac hardware.
From experience, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Since switching to Mac a few years ago, I have found it LESS AND LESS that I need to use Windows, to the degree that I no longer own a machine that is even capable of running Windows. Boot Camp offers PC users the chance to try OS X and still revert to Windows if they don’t like it. So why wouldn’t you?!
Followed by……
The Macs that can currently run Boot Camp are the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro notebook. Price-wise, they can’t compete with PCs.
The Mini will set you back about $1100 for a machine with 512 MB of RAM and a 60-GB hard drive — that’s when you add in a keyboard, mouse, midrange monitor ($150), and a full copy of Windows XP.
The iMac is about $1600 (with 512 MB RAM, a 160-GB hard drive, and Windows). The MacBook Pro, with an 80-GB hard drive, is about $2000 with Windows.(All these prices come from the Apple Store. I mention the hard drive sizes in particular because you’d need the space to load two operating systems and two sets of software.)
I don’t know which “Apple Store” he’s been looking at, but iMacs currently start at $1299 and MacBook Pros at $1999. Prices exclude a copy of Windows which we can safely assume most “switchers” already own.
And “two sets of software”? Surely the idea is to only use the other operating system when it’s absolutely necessary, so the second “set of software” is most likely going to be fairly minimal.
In contrast, a 3 GHz Gateway DX210 PC with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and the same monitor I suggested for the Mac Mini — that’ll be only $900.
In contrast, a 3GHz Gateway DX210 PC has a single core, single processor Pentium 4, no Superdrive, crap video card, and ships with Windows Media Center Edition. GREAT! Way to compare like with like!
Oh, and the whole “no viruses on the Mac” business? Besides the fact that it’s no longer true, you can get this neat stuff called anti-virus software.
Now I want to punch him. If we’re gonna be pedantic about it, let’s rephrase.
“No viruses on OS X”. Better?
And given that Windows can’t read the Mac filesystem, I think the “spreading” argument is effectively null and void.
The folks at Parallels.com, however, released “virtualization software” that they say allows OS X to run any operating system, including Windows, within OS X — no rebooting required. So that’s a step above Boot Camp right off, even if it costs $50.
Rumour has it that Leopard will have this feature built in. Certainly wouldn’t surprise me. Though it would be funny if Apple treats Windows the same way they treated Classic environment.
It may not be so bad — they might even enjoy the convenience of sharing a common platform with the other 97% of the world, brought to them courtesy of Boot Camp.
A million people are not smarter than one.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, OS X, PC, technology, windows
Once I made the swap to Mac a few years ago, any Windows machine I’ve used has had its taskbar moved to the top a la OS X, a trick Peter Cohen from Macworld should learn.
One confession: I did catch myself for a short time the other day wondering why the Start menu wouldn’t appear when I kept pushing the mouse cursor to the lower left—in Mac OS X.
At first I thought it was just familiarity, but when you think about it, there is no reason to use the bottom corners of the screen for anything (though I do have hot corners set up for screensaver etc.). All the menus in all the apps are at the top of the screen, so it only seems sensible that you should place the taskbar at the top too. Proximity is everything.
Good Religion from the album “Spirit Of The Century” by Blind Boys Of Alabama
Technorati Tags: mac, OS X, PC, windows
From the BBC News Website
Home network hardware supplier D-Link has been accused of harming the net’s ability to tell the time accurately.
Detective work has found that many D-Link routers, switches and wireless access points are bombarding some net time servers with huge amounts of data
So it’s D-Link’s fault I lost that Ebay auction!
Technorati Tags: internet, technology
Now that the dust has settled on Apple’s landmark release (albeit public beta - strange how that bit gets left out……), time to reflect on what this means for Apple, Macs, and the computing community in general.
Firstly, the chasm that once existed between Macs and PCs has all but vanished. In fact, Macs have emerged in the aftermath as being undeniably more versatile machines. As John Gruber said in his Daring Fireball commentary
Instead of occupying a separate universe from that of PC hardware, it’s now a superset of PC hardware. Instead of choosing between a Windows PC or a Mac, you now get to choose between a computer that can only run Windows or a computer that can run both Windows and Mac OS X.
While this is true on initial inspection, there is still the obstacle of Apple reluctance to allow “non-apple” hardware to run on their machines. The situation has definitely improved over the last few years, but they still insist on having Apple specific firmware on devices like Superdrives and CD burners etc. Absence of this firmware does not mean that your drive will not work, just that it will not be “supported” by OS X. Obviously there are ways to make it work, but the point is that these are obstacles are unnecessary and only serve to annoy people.
Another issue that I think Apple need to address in the post-apocalyptic Intel world is support and warranty. Apple’s default warranty sucks. Plain and simple.
For example, a MacBook Pro costing £1429 comes with a standard 1 year warranty with the option of purchasing Applecare for an additional £279, bringing the total to £1708.
A comparable Dell laptop (not as nice as a Mac before you start flaming me) will come in as standard at £1549 including a 3 year warranty.
OK. So that’s about £160 so far. However, Apple’s standard warranty is return to base and usually takes 7-10 days minimum. Dell’s is next day AND on site! For some people, THAT is a deal clincher. Some people don’t mind paying extra for some peace of mind, but to pay less?! I’m convinced this is one of the main reasons that Apple’s share in the server market is so small. The hardware is great, the operating system is rock solid, but 1 YEAR RTB warranty just does not cut it when the equipment is mission critical.
Apple need to address this situation. They have traditionally always gone after the higher end of the market, which is fine when the market you’re talking about is Mac based. But as soon as the Mac and PC markets become one, these little problems could become the deal breaker for a lot of people.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, PC, technology, windows
The ongoing case of Apple Computers vs the Beatles’ Apple Corps record label.
Apple Corps say that Apple computers have broken a contract agreed between the two companies in 1991, in which Apple agreed not to move into the music industry, iPods and the iTunes Music Store being the major points of contention.
While this is old news (lawsuit was filed in 2003) and to be expected in today’s litigation friendly society, it has turned up this choice quote from one of Apple’s lawyers.
“Even a moron in a hurry could not be mistaken about that….”
the distinction between the computer company’s iTunes online music business and a recording company like Apple Corps Ltd.
Made me laugh anyway!
If you don’t like maths, don’t click this link!
Riciulous Fish - Pi
Interesting attempt to stop spam by requiring anyone leaving a comment to enter “two very large numbers”. These two numbers are then used in an equation to calculate pi.
MoRU - Advanced searching in OS X Tiger
Provides loads more functionality than Spotlight. Looks cool, but can you turn Spotlight off by default? Probably not.
From Daring Fireball
Technorati Tags: downloads, mac, os x
Well new apps to me at least!
This my first post using ecto, a “desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows”.
Initial impressions are good. The interface is clean and easy to navigate. Writing posts can be done in plain text (with html tags) or in rich text which is then converted to html.
Click to select categories for new posts, add your current itunes tunes, publish/unpublish/delete…….. all from one app. Nice.
Also new to my Mac today is Growl, a notification system for OS X.
Basically posts an alert on your desktop when a supported app does something, eg. Apple Mail receives a mail, new ICQ message, download completes, etc.
Supported apps on my machine at the moment include the above mentioned ecto, Adium (chat), Colloquy (IRC), Cyberduck (FTP), and Shiira (my new fave web browser). Growl is proving quite useful actually. It has certainly lessened the number of times I flick back to read my new ICQ “message” only to see an Emoticon! It’s worth it just for that!
Having read a lot of commentary on the new MacBook Pro (NYTimes , arstechnica) as well as comments about the brightness of the backlit keyboard and reports of unbalanced speakers, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a unit so I could see it with my own eyes.
And the first thing that hit me?
THE BOX!
It’s been totally redesigned to the degree that you look at it and think “They can’t fit a 15″ laptop in there, can they?”
But they have. Gone are the huge pieces of styrofoam that used to protect the Powerbook, replaced by a thinner styrofoam piece with circular indents and MacBook Pro embossed on the bottom. All the accessories (power supply, cable, DVI-VGA adpater) are now contained in the same section as the laptop, though separated into different compartments. First impression is a good one.
A new cloth covering protects the laptop. It’s not quite as durable as it’s predecessor, but I doubt it’ll get used too much after the first week! Clicking the lid release reveals the next new feature.
The screen catch. The single latch from the Powerbook has been replaced with a double catch system, very similar to the one seen in the 17″ Powerbook. Presumably, this has been introduced to make room for the iSight camera.
Which leads me to the top bezel.
It’s big. Very big. Probably about twice the thickness of the side bezels. It looks a little odd really, or maybe i haven’t quite gotten used to it. Personally, I would have preferred a thinner bezel and no camera, but hey……..
Minor point here.
The MacBook Pro logo at the bottom of the screen.
Why is it reflective? What possible function could having the midday sun emblazen “orP kooBcaM” across my face have?
Seriously though, I find it really distracting to have that little twinkle everytime a move my head slightly. Admittedly, I do have my back to a window when sat at my desk and am probably more likely to have a machine in direct sunlight, but i shouldn’t have to worry about such things when working on a portable computer.
Moving on.
The screen is lovely. A vast improvement over the last 15″ Powerbook revision which had nasty horizontal lines across it. It’s sharp. It’s bright. The light and colour are consistent. It’s just lovely!
The other new feature that h