smackthud - Slashdot User

New Nintendo DS to Include Camera, Music 261

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 29, 2008 @10:03AM from the and-it-fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.

BobB-nw writes "Watch out Apple, here comes Nintendo. Nintendo plans to launch a new version of its popular DS portable gaming device with a camera and music player function, according to a report in the Sunday edition of The Nikkei Business Daily. The new version will have better wireless capability for connecting to the Internet and will cost under $189, the report said. It will be offered first in Japan, it said. The DS first went on sale in 2004, and a second version, called the DS Lite, debuted two years later in 2006. Both have sold extremely well, with worldwide sales of the DS products at 77.5 million units as of the end of June this year."

GTA IV On PC Goes Exclusive With 'Games For Windows Live' 132

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @11:27PM from the yeah-thanks dept.

Erik J writes "Microsoft has announced that the PC version of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV will exclusively use Games for Windows Live for its multiplayer mode when it hits shelves November 18th. Rockstar founder Sam Houser explained the decision: 'As we work toward the release of the PC version, Games for Windows Live affords us the opportunity to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers, the service is a natural fit for the platform and we strongly believe it will help in building a strong online community around GTA IV PC.'" Wired is running a story suggesting that this release could save the rather unpopular Microsoft PC gaming platform.

Debunking the Google Earth Censorship Myth 294

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 27, 2008 @10:26PM from the just-what-they-want-you-to-think dept.

waderoush writes "There's a persistent Web meme to the effect that Google obscures sensitive or top-secret locations in Google Maps and Google Earth at the insistence of national governments. A July IT Security article promoted on Digg, 'Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps,' revived this notion. But the article has been widely criticized, and I did some fact-checking this week on the six Boston-area locations mentioned in the IT Security list. As it turns out, not one of the allegedly blurred locations has degraded imagery in Google Maps, as my screen shots demonstrate. My post looks into the sources of the misleading IT Security piece, and of other mistaken rumors about Google Maps."

Matching Up Hotkeys for OS X and Linux GUIs? 83

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 27, 2008 @03:17PM from the bringing-on-the-singularity dept.

I use a MacBook Pro for my main machine, but also have a Ubuntu desktop. I get irritated about switching between command-oriented hotkeys and ctrl-oriented hotkeys (cmd-a on OSX = ctrl-a on Linux/windows). I've looked over a lot of forums and have found that Gnome doesn't seem capable of changing hotkeys, while xfce and fluxbox can. The ideal solution would be a way to change system keys in X, or at the system level — that way I can keep compiz. Does anyone have any ideas or know a trick to change system hot keys?

Bookmark Managing the Java classpath (UNIX and Mac OS X) (ibm.com)

by smackthud on Thursday December 14, 2006 @04:50PM

Comment Excessive (Score 4, Informative) 305

by smackthud on Thursday April 27, 2006 @12:17PM (#15213085) Attached to: Apple Dumps Most of Aperture Dev. Team

I use Aperture daily, along with photoshop and the other programs you'd expect a professional photographer to use heavily. Since the release of the 1.1 update several weeks ago, I can honestly say that Aperture is one of the nicer apps I use on a regular basis. But prior to that, Aperture was already saving me more time (read: $$) than any other tool I have.

Aperture is designed to let me import hundreds of photos from a shoot, in RAW, jpeg, whatever, QUICKLY add metadata, rate, sort, color correct for white balance, exposure etc.. This gets me to the point where I can now proof the images to my clients. The photos haven't been retouched, they are just in the form that lets a client see my skill as a photographer, and what images they have to choose from.

No matter who the client is, commercial, fashion, wedding, headshot... the faster I can let them see the proofs the better. From the 500 images in an average session... the client will only choose a few, which are then retouched in photoshop. I think this is what is hard for non-photographers to grasp; the sheer number of images NOT used. The workflow is designed to select only a few choice images, and then begin your post production processing of those selected images.

In many cases, especially with studio sessions, nothing really needs retouching after the image has been "tuned" in Aperture. Many times I'm sending the image versions directly from aperture to my lab printer. It is wonderful to use the Soft Proofing built-in to Aperture. It works great.

An important, but often overlooked core feature of Aperture is its top notch asset management system with versioning. Sure Subversion and CVS do version management better, but many of my colleagues have trouble with the concepts behind webmail, so Apertures simplicity in this area is admirable. I expect many new features will be added to the versioning and Vault system (like multiple library support), but much of what it does already is a major time saver. There are certainly alternatives, like lightroom, and bibble, which are each excellent in their own ways, but Aperture is more complete, and meets my needs better for now. Your mileage mat vary.

Lastly, I'm running Aperture on a G4 Powerbook. It runs fine. My RAW files are between 15Mb and 20Mb in size, and Aperture handles the hundreds of images per session fine. Could it be faster? Sure, what couldn't. But its not the nightmare that some report.

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