RT @futilitycloset "Do-Gooders"

From the Futility Closet:

In 1978, as part of an initiative to adopt gender-neutral language, the city council of Woonsocket, R.I., dubbed its manholes “personholes.”

After two weeks of national derision, they changed their minds.

Time reported, “The council members voted to go back to manholes, indicating that it will be a long time before a person-person delivers Woonsocket’s mail.”

Firefox's Tab On Top Delimma

An interesting video was recently posted on Surfstation that explores whether Firefox should leave tabs as they are or move them to the top of the window as in Chrome or Opera. The video also gives sneak peaks at some of the new features planned for Firefox 4. Looks impressive!

Click here for the video

It doesn't matter to me whether tabs are on top or bottom, though with the shift from larger screen size to more portability, anything that saves head room is a plus.

Merging folders on a Mac

If you're uninitiated in the Mac world, folder moving or copying on OS X doesn't work quite the same as it does on Windows. Since everything in a Mac is treated as an object, you can't, via Mac's native file manager, Finder, merge two folders as one. This presents a real problem when you're using a framework that involves, say, plugins. You've got to go to each folder's bottom and copy files in one by one... tedious?

The way around this isn't too bad, though if you've never been exposed to Linux/Unix it can be tricky. Since Mac's are built on top of Unix you can use the Terminal's cp or mv command to get the desired result (you can find the Terminal in your Applications folder). The syntax looks something like this:

cp -R [path of folder to copy] [path of destination folder]

In the above the -R stands for "recursive" and is needed for folder copying. The move command is similar, just replace 'cp' with 'mv' and remove the '-R', optionally replacing with with '-v' which will display all the files names as they are moved:

mv -v [path of folder to move] [path of destination folder]

If you're not sure how paths work, navigate to your folder and Command+click, choose the "Get Info" from the pull down and look for the text beside the "Where:" label.

Windows 7 now gives three options on a folder move: replace the folder altogether, merge the files, or cancel the action. C'mon Apple, pick up the slack? How hard can it be to tie the Finder's folder move/copy operations to the Unix commands?

Transformice

At GDC this past year I saw a presentation about how a collection of simple physics objects could be connected to create an entertaining game. At the time the presenter had some great pieces but nothing to put them together with. Well, it looks like he figured it out, because Transformice, a French game in which players compete (or sometimes cooperate) as mice to bring cheese to a hole, blends this mechanic with a multiplayer element that makes it a strong candidate for the 2010 Game Developer's Choice Awards. The controls are a little wonky at times, but the unpredictability of the game ensures a level of fun that's near perfect. A strange behavior emerges when you put a bunch of humans in the bodies of rodents and present them with obstacles - they begin to behave like mice. More than a game, Transformice is an experiment that gives insight into just how much we share in common with our little furry friends.

Warning, this is NSFW - you might not get anything done for a while after checking out this highly addictive game.

http://www.transformice.com/en