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It's funny. Laugh. Businesses OS X Operating Systems Apple

Friday Apple Fun 119

Posted by pudge from the well-not-too-much-fun dept.
It's the weekend, and it's Friday the 13th (depending on when you read this), so have some fun making your Mac windows unusable and buying copyrighted (and copy-protected!) silence from iTunes Music Store. Read on for details.

Crazy Window Effects

ZackSchil writes "Open a terminal window and type on the prompt: killall Dock. Don't press return. Position a large window behind the terminal window, then shift-click on the large window's minimize button (so it goes slowly). While still holding shift, quickly hit the return key to execute the command and kill the Dock (it comes back right away). As soon as the dock's process is killed, the window will cease minimizing, leaving you with a working, draggable, active window halfway through the warping animation! While the system is at a loss how to translate mouse clicks to the window, you can still move bits that haven't changed location too much. After having some fun, just press Command-M to get the window all the way into the Dock and click to get it out again."

I had a similar experience with iChat the other day: I somehow caught a chat so the window was transparent. And more fun: open System Preferences, click on Network, and before it loads, move the window; when Network opens, the whole window moves back to where it was when you first clicked on it (this isn't new, but it annoys me).

Paying for (Copy-Protected) Silence

wayneh writes "As the Apple Turns turned out a great story about several silent tracks available via the iTunes Music Store. They are all subject to the same digital copy protection as tracks with actual sound and at least one has a thirty second preview. Interestingly, a number of them are listed as explicit and have alternate clean versions available as well. Next time you need a few minutes of quiet time, consider purchasing it from Apple."
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Friday Apple Fun More

Friday Apple Fun

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  • Silence (Score:5, Funny)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:06PM (#8275692)
    I hope the estate of John Cage is getting royalties for the silence... they would all seem to be infringing on the copyright for 4'33".

    • Re:Silence (Score:5, Informative)

      by X-wes ( 629917 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:26PM (#8275842)

      4'33" [azstarnet.com], otherwise as the Silent Sonata, was written by composer John Cage. A pianist would enter onto the stage and sit at a piano for a timed interval of four minutes and thirty-three seconds. During this period, the normally insignificant ambient noise of the audience and environment became the music itself. Of most interest, while there were no written notes for the piece, the performance produces a different sound each and every time.

      On an amusing note, it would be interesting to simply sit down at a computer and click the stop button on WinAMP to listen for four and a half minutes to the noises that are habitually ignored at a computer workstation. And besides--what kind of a world would we be in if silence becomes patented?

      • Re:Silence (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, 2004 @10:06PM (#8276878)
        This is all true. In fact, there is actually printed music to the 'piece' that simply has movement numberings and instructions like so:

        I

        (tacet)

        II

        (tacet)

        III

        (tacet)

        as you can see, the piece is in three movements. For you non-musicians, 'tacet' simply means that you do not play in this section of the piece. This term is usually used in a orchestra/band setting where certain instruments would not play in a movement.

        For my own safety, we'll call this an analysis so that I don't get sent to jail for copyright infringement. :oP

      • Re:Silence (Score:4, Insightful)

        by psxndc ( 105904 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @12:48AM (#8277675) Journal
        what kind of a world would we be in if silence becomes patented?

        A screwed up one because you don't patent creative works, you copyright them. ;-p

        psxndc

      • USA maybe? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2004 @03:00AM (#8278226)
        And besides--what kind of a world would we be in if silence becomes patented?

        USA?

      • Re:Silence (Score:4, Funny)

        by drauh ( 524358 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @05:01AM (#8278589) Journal
        what kind of a world would we be in if silence becomes patented?

        A world where SCO would win their case.

      • 4'33'', zero Kelvin (Score:5, Interesting)

        by claudebbg ( 547985 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @06:48AM (#8284872) Homepage
        Strangely, I think the article doesn't explain the 4'33'' meaning, which was 273'', as -273 Celsius, aka Absolute Zero (0 Kelvin). Like the deep calm that ends this piece representation.
        The conceptual aspect of the performance is still the fundamental of this piece and I don't believe WinAmp (or iTunes or mpg123) can't do the trick as well as a full concert hall. But perhaps the buying act can do a little, but should be organized, theatralized, like a performance.

      • Art Insanity (Score:2, Insightful)

        by SuperBanana ( 662181 )
        4'33"[azstarnet.com], otherwise as the Silent Sonata, was written by composer John Cage. A pianist would enter onto the stage and sit at a piano for a timed interval of four minutes and thirty-three seconds. During this period, the normally insignificant ambient noise of the audience and environment became the music itself. Of most interest, while there were no written notes for the piece, the performance produces a different sound each and every time.

        ...and secretly everyone thought "What the fuck was t

        • "I could take a bathroom sink from the dump, and put it in an art gallery."

          Already been done with a urinal by Marcel Duchamp. AND Brian Eno took his own piss in it!
          • Already been done with a urinal by Marcel Duchamp.

            You have, perhaps inadvertently, revealed what is wrong with much of what gets called "art" today. SuperBanana argues that taking something from the dump and hanging it on the wall of an art gallery is not creating art. You point out that Marcel Duchamp famously did just that with a urinal, which suggests that as long as you're the first one to take a particular object from the dump and hang it on the wall, then you have created art. Originality alone is b

      • Re:Silence (Score:4, Funny)

        by Moofie ( 22272 ) <leeNO@SPAMringofsaturn.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:03AM (#8292182) Homepage
        I judge art on my subjective interpretation of how difficult it would be for me to reproduce the thing. If it's something I could trivially do myself, the artist hasn't said anything meaningful to me.

        Since I replicated this Silent Sonata numerous times in time out when I was a kid, I think I can safely label John Cage a wanker.

        Just my opinion.
      • During this period, the normally insignificant ambient noise of the audience and environment became the music itself.

        And he doesn't pay the audience or give them any royalties for any live recordings of such a performance that might be sold?

        I smell a lawsuit.

      • Re:Silence (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gobbo ( 567674 )
        what kind of a world would we be in if silence becomes patented?

        Noisy.

        It doesn't really matter, anyway, silence (meaning quiet, really) has suffered the "tragedy of the commons" and barely exists. There are almost no acoustic wildernesses left (where you can't hear internal combustion, eg.) and silence has become a golden commodity reflected in real estate values and construction techniques. We're habituated to the constant hum of fans and machinery and all policy decisions on the topic are oriented towa

    • Re:Silence (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @08:12PM (#8276179) Homepage Journal
      I hope the estate of John Cage is getting royalties for the silence... they would all seem to be infringing on the copyright for 4'33".
      Someone has already 'lost' (settled out of court) in a copyright lawsuit over this piece of "music." [cnn.com]
    • I believe that they already sued the Wombles theme writer after he put out a track on his album called "A One Minute Silence", and as a joke credited it to Himself/Cage.

  • The Sounds of Piracy (Score:5, Funny)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:07PM (#8275702) Homepage Journal
    Next time you need a few minutes of quiet time, consider purchasing it from Apple.

    Nah, I prefer to pirate my silence.

    • Try looking for the Cage piece on Kazaa...there are several versions available (really!!) Just think, you would owe royalties if you performed the piece exactly as recorded on the record (with audience coughs and everything).

      And my preferred bunny:

      (Y)
      (~.~)
      (")(")

  • I don't have a sound card! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CowboyNick ( 612553 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:08PM (#8275704)
    ...you insensitive clod!

  • As funny as that is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:17PM (#8275780)
    It ought to be plainly obvious why those silent tracks are there.

    If you think it's dumb, you really should be laughing at the artists who think low enough of their fans to put silent tracks on their records.

    That's the beauty of the 9.99/album dealy thingy.

    If an album has a bunch of bs silence, and you're one of those people that has to buy the whole album (not a bad thing, I'm the same way), you aren't paying 99 cents per silent track.

    Albums like Tool's AEnima have 4 or 5 BS tracks that nobody could possibly consider music, or need (not want, need). That albums comes out to less than $10 (and far less than an hour) when you buy the tracks individually.
    • AEnima has 9 track of music that add up to 1 hour 6 minutes and 8 seconds of music. You're forgetting that Tool songs are unusually long. Third Eye is nearly 14 minutes, Pushit is almost 10 minutes and Eulogy is about 8 1/2 minutes long.

      As for the 11 minutes and 10 seconds of so-called non-music, who wouldn't want to listen Die Eier Von Satan [lyricsondemand.com] a recipe for cookies w/o eggs spoken to them in German.

      Why can't I use &AElig; on /.?

    • Re:As funny as that is (Score:5, Interesting)

      by identity0 ( 77976 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @05:37AM (#8278661) Journal
      Okay, I don't get what you're complaining about - are you saying that the slient tracks somehow lowers the value of the rest of the songs? Not trying to flame, just need an explanation...

      Other non-music tracks I can think of:

      One of Offspring's albums has an "intermission" track.

      At least one Marylin Manson album(Antichrist Superstar) has 99 tracks, the maximum allowable under the CD audio standard. The album cover only lists tracks that are actual songs.

      One Beatles album(Sgt. Pepper's I think) in vinyl form had a last track that was an endless loop which would play some noise forever until you stopped the record.

      Lots of anime soundtracks have a 'drama track' where the voice actors do a radio drama type thingy.

      And these days, a lot of CDs come with data tracks that contain extras like video and art.
      • At least one Marylin Manson album(Antichrist Superstar) has 99 tracks, the maximum allowable under the CD audio standard. The album cover only lists tracks that are actual songs.

        Not to nitpick, but the album cover doesn't list one song. Track 99 is a hidden track. Every track between 16 or 17 (whichever is the "final" track) and 99 is a 3 or 4 second blank, which serves to make track 99 that much more jarring (it's loud as hell right from the get-go, and has an extremely eerie sound to it).

        Sidenote
      • There's an album called 'Vinyl' by Dramarama that has 99 tracks also. There are 12 or 13 real songs, then there's a joke song called "Steve is Here" that takes up tracks 13 (or 14?) through 99, about 1 second of music to each track.

        And don't forget Tool's 'Undertow', with all the short silent tracks leading up to track 69, 'Disgustipated'.
      • This reminds me of my soundtrack CD "Songs in the key of X". A really good mixture of dark tunes. If you read the insert, there are a couple of things that appear extra-ordinary.

        For starters, it actually states that it doesn't adhere to the standard red-book CD audio format (I forget what is said exactly). That alone should have you thinking "why on earth not?".

        And then somewhere else in really small print: "Nick Cave and the [evil three] would like to remind that you that 0 is also a number"
        It took me

    • Every album every released is composed exclusively of tracks that no one needs (not want, need).

  • alternate method (Score:5, Informative)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:25PM (#8275838) Journal
    I had a little trouble doing the window trick (it didn't seem to take the return character), so here's another method:

    1. type "sleep 1; killall Dock" without the return
    2. Hover the mouse over the minimize button
    3. hit return
    4. You have up to a second to shift-click the minimize button. (for more time, use "sleep 2" or 3)

    • Re:alternate method (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ZackSchil ( 560462 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:45PM (#8275958)
      It's not that it isn't registering the return, it's just that the dock animation is getting priority. If your machine is too fast or too slow (I forget the way it works, probably both ways) the command will not go through in time to stop the window. A better solution is to, after executing the command to kill the dock, start clicking at the slowly moving window animation to slow it down even more to give the kill command time to execute. In addition, the effect on a window is far cooler if the dock is to the right or left, rather than at the bottom.
    • even cooler would be to option-shift click the minimize button when you have lots of windows open in that application... that way you get a bunch of squshed windows to play around with. ;)

  • silence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by venicebeach ( 702856 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:27PM (#8275850) Homepage Journal
    A great musician once said:

    "Silence is also music."

    • Re:silence (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @10:28PM (#8276990) Homepage Journal
      "A great musician once said... "Silence is also music."

      That reminds me of something that happened over at an art forum a couple of years ago. A dude there had a really good reputation for generating interesting art. Unfortunately, over time, people started getting maliciously nitpicky about some of the details of his work. He invited this form of nastiness as certain subject matter caused him to respond rather negatively. The last pic I remember him releasing was all black. The title: "The Nitpick Proof Image". Almost immediately after it, somebody responded "Put credits on it!"

    • Re:silence (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      to fit in on the Seattle scene
      you gotta do something they ain't never seen
      so thinking up a gimmick on day
      we decided to be the only band that wouldn't play
      a note
      under any circumstances
      silence
      music's original alternative
      --Todd Snider

    • Re:silence (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gqgreg ( 84354 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @09:26AM (#8279277) Homepage
      Claude Debussy said "Music is the space between the notes."

  • Yep... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:31PM (#8275869) Journal
    Nothing quite like buying worthless MP3s. The only thing that compares?

    How about making your computer malfunction on purpose?

    Just some more proof that yes, we ARE all crazy.

    • Re:Yep... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about making your computer malfunction on purpose?

      Oh come on... you're telling me you've never taken an old beat up 486 era machine and started pulling parts while it was on just to see what happens?
      • Actually, no. Haven't been that lucky yet. :)

        I just think it's dumb to make your primary computer stop working, even if it's only partially disabled.

      • well, not a 486, though I probably should since I have a bunch of old ones, but I did do that to an LC-3. Damned if those fuckers weren't durable.

    • Obligatory Gentoo... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) *
      Well I run Gentoo-unstable, does that count? I'm compiling unreleased kernels with unreleased GCC versions built on a system with a prerelease glibc version.

      What do I get out of it? Not much. I can file bug reports so the bleeding edge becomes the cutting edge in less time.
      • I can file bug reports so the bleeding edge becomes the cutting edge in less time.

        I'm not profficient enough with Linux to do that kind of work yet, but I appreciate the efforts of those who are.
        Thankyou.

      • 1) you are seriously twisted ;-)

        2) I am about to run my final set of tests to determine my distro for a production box, do you have any CFLAGS tips to get the most performance out of Gentoo before I write it off as too much work not enough gain??

        The box is a DP Athlon MP 2400, 1G RAM, 120G drives x 2

        I was planning on hitting #gentoo on freenode when the box gets here on Tuesday... but here you are

        Thanks-

        • Gentoo CFLAGS (Score:1, Offtopic)

          by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) *
          Ahh, CFLAGS. I did a lot of hitting the GCC manual and diffing binaries to see what worked best. I've been hooked on Gentoo for two years, and was building packages from .srpms for years before that.

          I've got an Athlon-XP, functionally equivalent to your CPUs, and I use:

          "-O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -march=athlon-xp -mfpmath=sse"

          I know, you're thinking I must be nuts, but I've found that -O2 is FASTER and SMALLER than -O3 in MANY instances, especially when your CPU has decent L1/2/3 caches (mine's a bar
          • One more question?

            I have been trying to get this to work, I've seen the docs and I think I'm doing it right...

            I want to use my own build of apache and php, I don't want all the bloat in the base packages.

            I built my .ebuild, named it the same as the production one and put it in my PORTDIR_OVERLAY, but every time I try to emerge something that requires apache it wants to emerge the stock one. I even tried "pinning" the version after I emerged my package.

            Any ideas?

            If you want you can reply to mi-slash at

            • Portage Overlay (Score:1, Offtopic)

              by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) *
              Hmm. I've had good luck with portdir_overlay, but I've moved mine from /usr/portage/... to /usr/portage-overlay, so it's not INSIDE the tree. also, after you edit your custom .ebuild, you may have to 'touch -acm' it. that's what the problem probably is, the access date on the portage copy is newer, so portage tries to use that instead of your custom copy.

    • Re:Yep... (Score:2, Funny)

      by hawaiian717 ( 559933 )
      How about making your computer malfunction on purpose?

      Lots of people do this every day [microsoft.com].

  • Silence is golden (or green) (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spike Spiengel ( 660622 ) <tasnyder AT charter DOT net> on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:32PM (#8275875) Homepage
    Who wouldn't pay $.99 (or a lucky Pepsi cap) to listen to the grass grow? It's such a novel idea, I imagine someone's already working on a "one-click method for buying silence".

  • Crazy window effect (Score:3, Informative)

    by timothv ( 730957 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:46PM (#8275966)
    That crazy window effect is absolutely amazing. All the window functions are still functional, the mouse clicks just mapped slightly wrong. Thanks for sharing.

  • mimizing bug (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hes Nikke ( 237581 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @07:58PM (#8276040) Journal
    at least give credit where credit is do! (me [macosxhints.com]) :)

    in case you want proof, here is my 1st publishing of the above directions [spymac.com] (including an example)

  • also works with expose (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stanza ( 35421 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @08:52PM (#8276458) Homepage Journal

    This hack works almost the same if you kill the dock while doing expose thingies. See
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story= 20040 114175611171&query=expose

  • It works (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @09:00PM (#8276505)
    I'm posting this from a very unusually shaped Firefox window. It's like drunken typing.

  • +1 Insightful (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MasterMnd ( 95596 )
    If it's Friday the 13th when your reading this, then it's Friday the 13th.
    Wow!

  • So whats better? AAC, WMA, MP3 or OGG? (Score:5, Funny)

    by naelurec ( 552384 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @09:48PM (#8276743) Homepage
    Which format is best for my silent recordings?

  • I'm Curious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FsG ( 648587 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @10:08PM (#8276892)
    How long would it take to download 5 minutes of silence on a 56k modem?

    • How do you want it encoded? :)

      • How about some variant of run-length?

        T1 T2 xx xx Byte
        03 C9 DF B0 00

        T1: number of bytes in T2
        T2: number of times to repeat "Byte"

        Or, for stereo:

        T1 T2 xx xx xx Byte
        04 01 93 BF 60 00

        I do believe that's 6-7 bytes shorter than the header on a MIDI file, thank you very much.

  • Trying to block out noisy neighbours... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zpok ( 604055 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @12:04AM (#8277423) Homepage
    As with all conceptial weird ideas, the idea itself is nice, but I can't imagine myself cranking up the stereo to have a good listen...

  • Existential Crap... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dnahelix ( 598670 ) <slashdotispieceofshit@shithome.com> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @03:52AM (#8278412)
    So if a tree falls in the woods with no one around, does it have to pay a royalty fee to John Cage?

  • Movies! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ambiguous Coward ( 205751 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @04:45AM (#8278553) Homepage
    Actually, if you want to see a *really* cool effect, trying doing this minimize/kill-dock thing with a movie in the Quicktime player. Since it plays the movie even while it's minimized in the dock, it also plays it on the way there...so you can catch it half way, and watch the movie all skewed up. Quite interesting. :P

    Here's the one I got... [asuaf.org] I'm surprised it doesn't even seem to have an effect on the framerate, either. Strange stuff. :)

    -Munki

  • Or go the other way... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cabal95 ( 673106 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @02:14PM (#8280949) Homepage
    ... and have a still usable window. Using Camino and Terminal, Minimize the Camino window (the Slashdot page is very effective). Type the killall Dock command into Terminal. After you shift-click the Camino window and can see it starting to crawl out of the Dock QUICKLY go over to the Terminal window and hit Enter. If you time it well (you can also try the sleep version if you are having timing problems), you will be left with a Camino window that is still usable, although squished. I did this and had the top part of the window full and the bottom part at about 1/3 size. I was able to browse a few websites with the window like that. It actually will draw everything to fit in that skewed perspective!

  • I would love to be able to (Score:5, Interesting)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo.cLIONom minus cat> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @05:43PM (#8282206) Journal
    scale my windows in expose, and continue to use them at the smaller size. Perfect for when I just need to see everything at the same time.

    Instant 20" display (to scale :)

    • Do the same thing! Open a terminal, type:
      sleep 2; killall Dock

      You now have two seconds to hit F9. When the Dock is finally killed, your windows will be stuck in expose mode! There are some strange issues with the windows that seem to stem from improper window coordinate updates.

      Originally found at Mac OS X Hints [macosxhints.com].

  • "crazy window" screenshot (Score:5, Informative)

    by e1en0r ( 529063 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:08PM (#8288429) Homepage
    if anyone is interested, here's a screenshot [elenor.net] of a partially minimized safari.

  • Silence (Score:2, Funny)

    by BlinkyBob ( 753609 )
    There's a whole deeper almost satanic meaning if you listen to 'em backwards.

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