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If you've ever been invovled in hare coursing (hopefully as a sab) then you'll know that hares run in spirals to escape the snarling teeth of the hounds.

And we all know what can happen when you put nukes on the moon. Space 1999

That's actually not the first keyboard to include a full pc. Wersi did this with the Abacus keyboard 3 years ago.

I have an ePac:

http://www.epac.uk.com/

This basically means that I can make sure my laptop is protected and use any bag I want to store my laptop in (cheap rucksack, record bag).

In practice, I'd recommend a good record bag for carrying round, as they're used to holding quite a weight and have a nice padded strap. They're also a good size and you can get a few folders, books, magazines, etc in there with the laptop in an ePac case.

All those extra resources being consumed, all that extra carbon being released to the atmosphere. Of course you've got to weigh the benefits to society against the environmental cost, or buy renewable energy.

Interesting. The Nokian Gazz has long been the tyre of choice for mountain unicyclists like myself. I always wondered if Nokian was somehow related to Nokia.

Mystery solved. +1 informative.

The bastards, its true they mostly dont care about who they piss off. However I have recently noticed supposedly reputable companies spamming, including BT and today Renault.
This spamming shithole of a company doesn't even know how to remove duplicates because i got the same spam three times today. They are spamming for Renault which is a major car manufacturer.
I'm really mad, they have my personal email address - some scumbag recruitment agency sold it a year ago from what I can tell.

Anyway for anyone in the UK or for who the call would be cheap feel free to give these bastards a ring on 01324 678100 and ask them why they are spamming people. I have allready notified Renault myself by email but doubt it will get anywhere.

I regularly obtain copyrighted material without paying for it from the local public library

In the UK, an author received two pence each time their book is borrowed. More information here. Okay, the taxpayer funds the library, but there is still a law that gives the author some chance of payment.

Agreed. Ideally, I'd like (soon to be Ogg) FLAC and Ogg Vorbis as options, rather than, or perhaps as well as, MP3. I generally prefer to encode my own Oggs, so FLAC would be the ideal starting point. I like the idea of jewel case inlays. Ideally these would be in a neutral vector format like SVG rather than a bitmap, but even just PostScript or PDF would be fine. Oh, and obviously, I'd like my kind of music to be available. The problem with pretty much all online music stores is that they don't cater to my niche tastes (mostly Euro power metal, Norwegian black metal, and a bit of goth and glam metal thrown in for good measure).

You mean like this one? [www.siliconhell.com/video/]

I suspect that is also the motive behind

W.A.S.T.E

It might as well sit in your bag and be a little bit larger with a keyboard and a monitor

Umm. As Wookie is one of the best UK garage artists, I'm sure he has a lot of fans. By the way, why should it be a fetish thing?

Oh, you were talking about the other Wookie...

Alternatively, Google for keywords like "rack mount", storage, scsi and ide, and you'll find stuff like this, this, this and these. Terribly descriptive, I know ;)

Those are all links to rack mount storage (2U to 4U) that present a SCSI interface to a host, and provide managed RAID over 12 to 16 IDE drives. Most include double- or triple-redundant power, dual host controllers, hot standby with automatic rebuild, etc.

So buy yourself a 44U 19" rack, wired for power, with a UPS at the bottom, and properly ventilated. Add in 2 4U PCs with SCSI adapters and gigabit ethernet, and 9 rack mount storage units, for a total of 144 drives. Four such enclosures should take care of 70Tb of storage.

With some careful planning, fibre and clustering, you could have two datacentres a couple of hundred meters apart, each with three enclosures, and a single server presenting a view of one virtual 80Tb drive (assuming 200Gb IDE drives in the system). Clustering allows for hot failover to the other datacentre if this master server fails. The master servers can control replication between the data centres. Not quite offsite, but a whole lot more fault tolerant.

but Dvorak is an excellent composer... have you heard his Cello Concertos? I had no idea he did the "switch"!

More importantly, in terms of realism regarding UK broadband connectivity:

ADSL-For-Ipswich | Barnt Green, Birmingham | Edenbridge, Kent | Brinscall, Lancashire | Chafford Hundred, Grays | Broxburn/Uphall, Scotland | New Mills, Stockport | Bradford-on-Avon | Antrim, Northern Ireland | Paddock Wood, Kent | Mossley, Greater Manchester | Maltby, Rotherham | Cudworth, South Yorkshire | Pembury, Kent | Telford, Shropshire | Totnes, Devon | Caister on Sea, Great Yarmouth | Broadband in the East of England | Wargrave, Berkshire | Alton, Hampshire #1 | Alton, Hampshire #2 | Frodsham, Cheshire | Atherstone, Warwickshire | Sleaford, Lincolnshire | Neston, South Wirral | Blackpool/Fleetwood, Lancashire | Colwyn Bay, Wales | Whitby, Yorkshire | Saltcoats/Ardossan/Stevenston, Strathclyde | Thornbury, South Gloucestershire | Dinnington, Sheffield | Irby, Wirral | Colwyn Bay/Old Colwyn/Rhos-On-Sea, North Wales | Hednesford, Staffs | Connahs Quay/Flint/Mold/Sealand/Queensferry, North Wales | Eastham/Wirrall, Cheshire | Worle, North Somerset | Dereham, Norfolk | Leicester Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire | Bolton Westhoughton, Lancashire | Leek, Staffordshire | Ivybridge, Devon | Attleborough, Norfolk | Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire | Montrose, Angus, Scotland | Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex | Worcester/St Johns/Fernhill Heath, Worcester | Allerton, Liverpool (and surrounding exchanges) | Buntingford, North Hertfordshire | Glastonbury, Somerset | St Budeaux, Devon | Fenland towns of Ramsey, Yaxley, Whittlesey, Chatteris, Ely and Soham | Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire | Pershore, Worcs | Yarmouth, Norfolk | Great Oakley, Corby, Northants | South Woodham Ferrers, Essex | Goring & South Stoke, South Oxfordshire and Streatley & Lower Basildon, West Berkshire | Kinross & Milnathort, Perthshire | Bolsover, Derbyshire | Elton, Ince and Helsby in Cheshire | Hanwell/Horley/Wroxton/Balscote/North Newington/Drayton, Oxfordshire | Tonyrefail/Gilfach Goch and surrounding area, Mid Glamorgan | Rotherfield Greys/Rotherfield Peppard/Shepherds Green, Oxfordshire | Heath Hayes, Staffordshire | Hednesford, Staffordshire | Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire | Adderbury (Nr. Banbury), Oxfordshire | Lydney, Gloucestershire | Knaresborough, North Yorkshire | Saltburn-By-The-Sea, Cleveland | Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire | Churchdown, Gloucestershire

In the UK, we already have this feature - even for analog VCRs. It's called PDC (Programme Delivery Control).

A google turned up this explanation of how it works.

The actual standard is also available (free registration required).

Of course, this is only for analog TV. Digital TV already has some information which could be used for this (Event Information Tables - EIT) but I don't know if any integrated digital reciever/PVR combos use it.

It's common practice for a select group of people to go buy the software, take it home, copy it then return it to the store for a refund.

In the UK, one of the biggest computer/console game retailers (Game, they even have real stores) has a no quibble refund policy, so will let you return a game even if it is just because you don't like it.

Goblin

Stupid wankers wont upgrade exchanges for ADSL! Including my town! If it wasnt for telewest I think I would of gone beserk!

No, "dog" is also correct - stands for "Digitally Originated Graphics". There are several campaigns running to try to persuade broadcasters to remove them for reasons such as burned TV screens and aesthetic damage to programmes and films infected with them. See here and here for more info.

BT STILL hasnt upgraded my town's exchange for ADSL!. But I got broadband from Telewest now so BT can rot in hell!

in today's world, the author doesn't receive a royalty everytime someone reads a book from the library

Well, actually, in the UK they do. See The Public Lending Right Website:

Under the United Kingdom's PLR Scheme authors receive payments from government funds for the free borrowing of their books from public libraries in the United Kingdom.

It would appear that the system works so well that most people haven't even heard of it ;-).

I took that screen shot that is floating around and just ran it through Photoshop 7's 'Auto Color' options and this is the result!

http://www.digitald.uk.com/storage/s-away-red.jpg

Lasers produce a very narrow collumnated beam

Oh I wish....

Hi powered gas lasers, pumped lasers etc come with a very narrow collumnated output.

Diode lasers, as used in your DVD, CD player, laser pointer etc, come with a highly divergant beam. Say +/-15 degrees in plane of substrate, +/-5 degrees perpendicular. Optics are then used to focus or collumnate the beam. Unfortunately, this is often expensive in small quantities (as much or more than the cost of the laser)

they did it over here, my life would be ruined!

Reminds me of a joke.

That sounds a lot like the Sun Ray. I can't find any info GCI from Taiwan (those who can read Chinese could look here to see if GCI==gci.com.tw. It looks like an ordinary retailer.) Does GCI sell Sun Rays, or do they have a new solution?

US $467-per-box seems surprisingly high (conversion by xe.com/ucc/) for a thin client. Thin clients (at least the ones I've seen) are usually built around stripped-down architectures -- essentially, a USB controller, a video card, a NIC, and the minimum that's needed to tie them together. Then again, if you toss in the price of an LCD monitor (space concerns) and a smart card reader, $467 may be reasonable.

Does anyone know what GCI sells? The Oracle of Google doesn't reveal anything about GCI and "smart card" or "thin client". (It does reveal a page saying that there is a "ANSWER GCI LTD", originally from Taiwan, in Telford, but supplies no details beyond the fact that they're in "computer sales.") If they're a reseller, reselling thin clients, I would be intrigued to discover which ones.

Yes but the standrd RenderMan exporter included in Maya is less than ideal for production work, mainly only exporting only geometry and not even doing a good job at that. That's why MTOR is necessary for good RenderMan connectivity.

BTW there was a Python script to export from Blender to RenderMan:

Unfortunatley BT refuses to upgrade rural exchanges for ADSL, and people are very angry at this. The town of todmorden recently made the headlines for being the first town to reach the threshhold of being upgraded. I live in an 'unupgraded' town, but I dont really care about BT, because Im happy with my cable modem from telewest. The cable companies are more determined than BT to supply broadband, but they can only cover where their cable network goes.

Satilite broadband is becoming popular too, but its expensive, one way and low latency.

The other usage for mod chips, which very few people in this thread appear to a) have mentioned or b) care about, is for playing imported games. In general this is not a big thing in the US (which is why it gets ignored) but in other places such as Europe it is a much larger issue - the US tends to get games months or even years sooner than EU countries. For example, Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball ships on 3rd December in the US, but does not come out until February 2003 in the UK. And two months is pretty quick - Final Fantasy 10 took around 9 months.

...the case where the guy induces linquid nitrogen

I get Cable From Telewest, and its only £25 month. Compared to ADSL (Which isnt avalible in my area because of BT). Compared to ADSL, which is around £28-£40 a month, its really cheap.

BT YOU SUCK. AND YOU ALWAYS WILL. INSTEAD OF WASTING £33 MILLION POUNDS WHY DONT YOU UPGRADE SOME EXCHANGES IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS!

They really need that new linux kernel Heres a mirror (NOT goatse.cx)

This would of never happened if he didn't use a 300 baud modem

Help me

The SMS company Zed used to have a contest with a space trip as a grand prize. Unfortunately that link doesn't seem to work any more, but the contest is mentioned at least here, here and here.

I don't know if anyone actually won the prize, though.

There are already scripts to use other rendering engines.

See this -

http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/export.html#usage

and for some pics of various renderers from the same site -

http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/exportmesh.html


And I also saw a while ago on the NaN site that Blender 2.26 (Publisher only maybe not that it matters any more) was supposed to support renderman rendering directly but the link is broken now (since the NaN site is closed).

There are already scripts to use other rendering engines.

See this -

http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/export.html#usage

and for some pics of various renderers from the same site -

http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/exportmesh.html


And I also saw a while ago on the NaN site that Blender 2.26 (Publisher only maybe not that it matters any more) was supposed to support renderman rendering directly but the link is broken now (since the NaN site is closed).

Classical music does use computers for composition. Many musicians use Sibelius software to write down their compositions.

True, a computer can never compare to a live performance, particularly as far as solo work is concerned. However some of the recent top British musicians have been working to produce purely synthesised classical music. As one whose father owns the main woodwind company and producer of oboes in the UK, (shameless plug for Howarths)I know that a top oboist, Malcolm Messiter, produced a totally synthesised orchestra "The Virtual Orchestra". My father brought the cd home one night and put it on. I merely thought it was an poor recording and performance on terrible instruments. We tested it out on everyone we had to dinner- nobody made comment and all were astounded that it was totally synthesised.

So computers can be used much more than you think in real "classical" music in addition to the obvious uses in popular music.

I run a website that pulls a lot of content from other servers. We use to have a newsfeed via ITN's RDF feed - until I got a call from their Director of New Media asking me to take it off. Seems they charge a hefty fee for such a feed - around £30,000 - but hadn't taken any attempts to protect it with a .htaccess file or something. How did I find it? By searching Google!

Sun -does- discontinue parts, but there's loads of places where you can get parts for old Sun boxen.

Like here or here. These are just 2 of *many* places you can get old Sun parts.

Look at the work MAME users have done with their systems, most of the stuff in The Build your own arcade controls page are keyboard hacks of some kind, from taking apart an old keyboard and changing things around, to buying a programmable keyboard encoder, such as the I-PAC and the Hagstrom electronics products. It's really easy and most of the work has already been done for you, you just need to reprogram(with their utility software, and hook up switches.

Of course the cost of this is subsumed into the total running costs of the library, so the user pays via taxes and not at the point of service.

Electronic books provided via libraries don't really fit into the existing scheme very easily. But some arrangement could be made, and of coude it would probably be EASIER to administer, as you could collect data on exactly what was being read rather than just doing a sample.

Hooking up your control is VERY easy. Here is everything you need:
An I-PAC (it is a keyboard encoder from http://www.spaceinvaders.uk.com/)
some .187" female quick disconnects (you can get these from Radio Shack Online part #910-1775)
some wire (any from 16 up to 22 gauge)
a small flat head screwdriver (for connecting the wire to the I-PAC)
a knife or wire strippers (for stripping the wire)
a pair of pliers (for crimping the quick disconnects on to the wire)

Once connected up, your controls will act like a standard keyboard.

If you have any questions head over to the message board on http://www.arcadecontrols.com and ask. Someone will happily answer them.

Use arcade controls!
Real buttons, joysticks, trackballs...
As USB, mouse

I'm not terribly surprised, I'm sure someone would do it just for the hack value. After all, you can play MAME games on some digital cameras...

Also, a message to everyone who thinks this is illegal in some way:

I understand the PSX2 (not the PS/2!) is going to do the same thing. In hardware. So pipe down, already...

Now if only the PSX2 could emulate the Dreamcast emulating the PSX...

So what then, you say? Well, then you can hack on PS-ZX, and not rest until you can play DEFENDER!!!

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