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I agree, i'm not into circular dock thingies, but the principal is sound; I mean Fitts' law works.  I can see this concept better suited to touch screens, and large ones.  Rectangular elements fit the bounded space of a phone, tablet, or under-21-inch monitor better IMO.  When technology finally ends up with entire surfaces (desks, windows, walls, etc.) being the interaction space, interfaces that utilize organic forms like circular menus and ZUIs^w will make more sense.

In my humble opinion, that is. 

Hey, it's not just mid-20th:

Seattle Times article: Dinner gets very local for squirrel-eating Seattleite
Best quote?  "It did not taste like chicken." 

And she's also on Youtube:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s89TUfY5Ahw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s89TUfY5Ahw</a>

My wife said if the economy did not get better, she was going to buy a 22 caliber pellet gun and supplement our shopping with a little tree rat protein. 

Well, that's pretty much one of the big draws of internet sales, but I figure many folks have the attitude of "well, it was going to happen sooner or later" so those numbers are not surprising.  
I hate sales tax not because of taxes per se, but because I personally think it's idiotic that no-one has the fecking common decency to tell me how much a thingamabob is after taxes until it's already rung up and I've committed to purchasing the item.  Coming from Oregon to Washington, that was royal pain in the seat.  I mean, how forking hard would it be for merchants to just charge the price listed and figure the taxes afterwards?  Maybe even post how much it was before taxes in the small print or on the receipt, I wouldn't mind, and folks like me prolly wouldn't get so upset.  
  Seems logical to ME anyways...

Call me a skeptic, but all these missing details just screams "Hoax" or "Fake news" a la WWN.  It would be pretty cool to be proven wrong, though.

  Well, either way, I posted it because it was interesting, not because I believe it.....

Well, thank heaven for that, I was beginning to worry... 
I have to admit, I also find it interesting to think "what if..." on things of this nature.  I used to be a regular listener to Coast to Coast while Art Bell was still the host, and enjoyed it immensely, though I had to constantly reset my BS meter for "stun".
 

Lower right hand corner of the video, at 0:29.
 
I did a brief search about this, and in all the stories I found there's a lot of vague references to "research teams", "scientists", pictures and video being shown at "a conference", etc.  Notice the lack of specifics there.  The names mentioned don't turn up anything significant either, except for this History Channel show about the discoverer:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Ohu5PLKwM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Ohu5PLKwM</a>

Call me a skeptic, but all these missing details just screams "Hoax" or "Fake news" a la WWN.  It would be pretty cool to be proven wrong, though.

Aw jeez, it's the Weekly World News, the folks who brought us "Bat Boy" and "Aliens meeting with Bill Clinton". 

That I'm a freekin' toy robot, out for a stroll in the grass, what else?

I've wondered lately about changing it, though.  Maybe to keep with the robot theme, but with a beachy twist:

[attach=1]


BTW - Source for my avatar: http://www.flickr.com/pho...s/microcosmos/1265783338/

Actually, according to Wikipedia^w the original intent was to prohibit federal government from taxing products unique to a state or region and exported internationally.

This provision was an important protection for the southern states secured during the Constitutional Convention. With the grant of absolute power over foreign commerce given to the federal government, the states whose economies relied chiefly on exports realized that any tax laid by the new central government upon a single item of export would apply very unevenly amongst all the states and favor states which did not export that good.

Think cotton from the southern states, or maple syrup from the northern ones.

Either way, in a perfect world (see wut i did thar?) it wouldn't matter two flips who consents, if it's unconstitutional, it either shouldn't happen or can be successfully challenged in court.  But then again, when was the last time we were residents in Perfect World? 

The best solution I have personally come up with is to get a USB keypad, like so:

[attach=1]

Personally, I've considered getting one and scraping off the characters so I can re-map all the keys to make a poor man's MIDI controller.  


Or, you can use something like StrokesPlus or Just Gestures to make mouse movements into shortcuts for 'Home' and 'End', or find some keys you don't use and re-map them with AutoHotkey.

Does selling from one state to another count as an export?  Because if so, my son pointed out that this tax would be unconstitutional:

Article I, Section 9, Clause 5:
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

Very nice, Iain.  I found the Musical Illusions site interesting, though I thought a mention of Shepard Tones^w would have fit right in. I was especially interested in the Phantom Voice.  Though not what I expected, it reminded me very much of the song "Opus 4" by the Art of Noise. 

What I was expecting was that peculiar phenomenon whereby a subject will hear voices or music in white/pink noise,appearing just below the threshold of comprehension.  I personally find this especially noticeable when combined with a coherent sound (any regular tone or rhythm), first discovered out fishing with a friend; the sound of rushing water + the sound of my friend humming produced the illusion of voices, in fact a conversation between two parties, which would cease when my friend stopped humming.  Since then, I have heard it in the humming of a case fan, in the wind when a car passes by, etc.  I have also read somewhere that shamans of many cultures would produce this phenomenon by various means, most commonly the use of different types of rattles or objects shaken in a bowl.
More about that here (never mind the paranormal slant if it's not your thing, the description of the phenomenon is exactly as I have experienced):
http://atransc.org/research/voices_in_noise.htm

Try different windows startup sounds, the 98SE one is quite nice:
http://www.winhistory.de/.../winstart/winstart.htm.en

App, those are awesome!  

I'm making this for breakfast tomorrow:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc2J_Ay8fCQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc2J_Ay8fCQ</a>

Great for when you run out of filters, and I hear you can add the shells as well to cut the cloudiness. :shrug:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ia13f72-4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ia13f72-4</a>

 

My signature was inspired by signs like these below, particularly one I saw in an aquarium on the Oregon coast when I was 7 years old which read: "Children unsupervised by parents will be fed to the sharks".  I never stuck so close to my mom in a public place before...  

Several iterations of my sig can be found in many places public and virtual, most of them saying something like "Children left unattended will be given a/an espresso/red bull/candy and a free puppy/kitten"
In the interest of better semantics, I pared that down to "a mocha(1) and a puppy(2)".
1- Because a mocha contains chocolate, therefore appealing to children, but would have more "kick" than a simple candy bar.
2- Because puppies require much more responsibility to care for than a kitten, hence a scenario with a greater potential for difficulty.
Also, the word "free" (in the original) makes the statement more 'wordy' than it needs to be in describing the situation, as associating it with the second object implies the first object (espresso) was not free, when the verb "given" clearly implies it and/or both as being gratis.

WAAAAYYY too much thinking put into that.  o_O
Enjoy the pics:

[attachthumb=1]   [attachthumb=2]

[attachthumb=3]   [attachthumb=4]

[attachthumb=5]

Infectious tune, played on a one-string guitar.  Damn.  I can barely do as well with six! 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8H-67ILaqc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8H-67ILaqc</a>

I agree with CoolCat26: FreeOffice is a great free office suite and in many points better than LibreOffice, but still relatively unknown, thanks for the recommendation. Especially it's SoftMaker filters for Microsoft Office formats are fantastic.

@Edvard: Which Linux distribution do you use? Maybe there might be issues with some, but I use Debian and everything works and looks fine. Btw., try to change some settings, maybe that helps:

tools > options > appearance > dialog style

For the record, I'm running Debian "Wheezy" 64-bit with Xfce 4.8.  Changing appearance helped some (no more blank menus), but didn't fix everything.  Overall, these issues just make it 'feel' sketchy and amateurish.

+1. I have it running on Debian plus a few Debian derivatives and I'm not running into any of those interface or display issues. Sounds like you're having a video driver or compositor issue.
 

I am running the normal radeon driver, not the accelerated one (doesn't install on my system, never has), and no compositor.  Everything else runs great.  Only this one office suite is having these issues.

...
About the only minor complaint I have is that Softmaker's Linux installer places shortcuts on the desktop like a Windows installer often will. And to add insult, it does so without asking. A definite platform faux pas on Softmaker's part AFAIC. Especially since most Linux users soon discover there are far better ways to keep their favorite apps readily at hand. As a result, very few ever develop the Windows habit of keeping program shortcuts on their desktops.

This is hardly a show stopper issue. But I still find it annoying.

+1.  Noticed that too. >_<

Like I said before, SM Office may actually be great software, but I can't use it without distraction from the GUI, which is a big  turn-off.  Maybe it IS just my system, and it's rebelling against closed-source software  

In 1984, coffee was essential to success:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rea-yBgOSo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rea-yBgOSo</a>

 

Running the Linux preview of the Spotify client from terminal so I can see the error messages, I found this:

01:19:20.671 E [watchdog.cpp:174                ] Deadlock detected (Thread: network)
01:19:21.141 E [watchdog.cpp:194                ] The deadlock was a lie! (network, 4469)

Spotify deadlocks made out of cake? 

I thought Apple software did this by default for some unknown reason, and there was no way around it.  You mean there's a way to shut that off? 

Here's a few:
http://cybernetnews.com/h...without-ds_store-on-a-mac
http://stackoverflow.com/...ess-without-macosx-folder
http://stackoverflow.com/...s-db-files-in-compression

Tao, I'm in full agreement.  Physical copies have a number of advantages that have already been re-hashed elsewhere.  Otherwise, I'm clear by the list. 

For me, it doesn't have to look pretty or be a masterpiece of GUI design as long as it's reliable and works without any bad surprises.

For the most part, I agree, though software with a well-laid out GUI (minimal or no) goes a long way towards productivity and usability, which immediately registers it in my mind as a superior product.  On the flip side, no matter how nice the GUI, prettiness cannot hide missing functionality or outright flaws for long.
The Softmaker Office GUI is just downright buggy.  As in, actual bugs in how it behaves, which not only affects my perception, but restricts how I might use it.  I just re-installed it to remind myself of what was wrong and yep, it's still bad.

A few items to mention, in "TextMaker":

• Dat Gray

All the toolbars and flat areas are that weird gray color brilliantly showcased by default in most of the *step window managers and the TCL ToolKit.  Blah.  Bleah.

• Is that a highlighted toolbar item? Or playing peekaboo?

When I mouse over icons on the toolbar, it shows the top of a square shape popping up behind the toolbar.  Weird.

• Now you see it, now you don't

When I mouse over the Paragraph Style drop-down, the arrow and 3-D parts of the widget simply go away, and can be brought back if I Minimize/Maximize the window (this only happens on the Paragraph Style dropdown).

• Show me the menu

OK, those were cosmetic, now we get to where it borders on unusable.
When I actually click on a dropdown (Paragraph Style, Font, Font Size), a blank menu drops down.  Blank.  White.  When I move the mouse down the menu (that isn't there), menu items show up highlighted under the mouse pointer.  If I click on one, the menu goes away as expected, but my selection doesn't show in the box.  If I highlight it, it's there, but it flashes until I remove the mouse and it's back to nothing.  

Admittedly, those are UI bugs, they can be worked around, though I didn't mention them all.  But why should I have to put up with something that is difficult to use, may have even deeper bugs, and is closed-source when there is a better alternative?
Maybe the Windows version is the bee's pants, but it's just not doing it for me here in Tux-land.  

Softmaker has one of the worst GUIs I have ever seen on Linux IMHO, and that is saying a lot.  Not about my opinion, but... yeah.  Horrid.  LibreOffice has come a LONG way since it's roots in StarOffice, and it doesn't burn my eyeballs. 

Maybe SM is a decent suite at heart, but I just couldn't get past the initial shock.

There is a Windows version of Ghostscript: http://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html
Use this at the command line, replacing "gs" with 'C://path/to/ghostscript/bin/gswin32c.exe' and your filenames where obvious:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

OR... PdfTK

pdftk in-file.pdf output out-file.pdf compress

YMMV

^Hehe, now mine as well. 

^I was curious how coffee is decaffeinated. I find I often dont react well to the dacafs I've tried but that could be more to do with me than the coffee.
Came across this site talking about the various processes - methods are interesting, worth a read:
How is coffee decaffeinated?

(FWIW apparently they're aiming to produce a GMO decaf coffee.)

Yes, there are quite a lot of ways to decaffeinate coffee, all with the aim of extracting the caffeine but not the flavor.

[attach=1]

... and the naturally decaffeinated coffee I heard of is not GMO, but a naturally occurring species know as Coffea Charrieriana^w.  Can't wait to try some. [attach=2]

If they weren't already, I believe Google is now evil. 

Essentially, no one but the intended recipient is allowed to use Glass or Google will shut it down remotely. Ownership is tracked based on each Explorer’s Google account, so it may still be possible for a quick demo with your friends, as long as they don’t sign in. It may seem absurd, but this was bound to happen. Companies can now retain control of hardware after its sold.

http://www.digitaltrends....sale-or-lending-of-glass/

[attach=1]

from random web meandering