Moving parts usually fail first; get some solid state hard drives. Avoid fans by using components with passive cooling; most importantly get an integrated video card and a passively cooled power supply. Running DOS software? Use freedos. No need to bother with full-blown Windows. Keep to name brand components and you should be fine. As long as you buy standard components, they should be easy enough to replace 15 years from now, don't go hog-wild stocking up on replacement parts. Good luck!
You already can. Some cameras let you shoot against a blank white area to compensate for dust particles on the CCD. It's called "Dust Reference" in Nikon Capture, which works with most of their DSLRs.
Actually, the Wacom tablet is NOT pressure sensitive.
It uses RF to track your mouse (and/or) pen. Pressure is actually reported to the tablet by the pen through RF along with other parameters on fancier models (tilt, rotation).
The Wacom mouse and pen can be tracked by the tablet without contacting it at all. (Good for tracing)
Netgear phone support for my PCI Ethernet (FA311) card conflicting with the AMD 761 Chipset INSISTED that I upgrade my drivers for the card....For problems that appeared during POST.
(Yes I had already upgraded the drivers. And I was using Linux. And Windows. 98 and 2000.)
The brother of FinalScratch is Traktor DJ Studio. Both can be found on Native Instruments
Traktor gives you all the capability of final scratch but instead of specially encoded vinyl, you control with with any combination of keyboard mouse and MIDI. Plug in an Oxygen 8 or even a $15 DM2 through DM2-midi and you can use "toys" to run a serious gig.
If this thing can send midi commands, and if latency can be fixed by driver settings, this has the potential to be a very useful and powerful tool in Traktor.
This will never totally replace vinyl, but it's great being able to lug around a laptop instead of huge crates of wax. The new version also plays VERY well with my iPod and iTunes.
Runs on my XP, also runs on Mac.
(and I love my Game Theater XP)
The Seagate barracuda IV had a problem when connected in RAID-0; it actually performed worse than as a single drive. There was a problem with caching on them that made RAID controllers gag. There is a firmware fix; you can contact Seagate and they will replace your drives for you! I currently have 5 Barracuda IV drives connected to my highpoint RAID controller (abit at7) but they are running as single; I use the speed advantage of each being on their own IDE channel.
Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.
I use alot of machines from both sides of the war (Win/Mac) at school, but I've never really seen any two systems that are worthy of comparing. Obviously my desktop with an XP2100 starts/runs Photoshop much faster than my friend's TiBook (we both have 1gb ram) But then again, the new imac is shockingly snappy out of the box for what it costs and those two machines combined are easier to carry around than something housed in a full-sized Antec. Speed can be achieved by anything as long as you have the cash for it, and alot of the bottlenecks that show up in the sort of applications that I run on a daily basis are more dependent on the video card than the OS.
I'm using dual and I'll never go back. It's great just being able to throw things on the second monitor that aren't worthy of running right in front of your face all the time, (eg. winamp, trillian, task manager, etc.)
Works GREAT in Photoshop (Window > Documents > New Window) so you have one preview full-size image and one that you can zoom/pan around in and work on.
Also a life saver in Director where my secondary has the Lingo Dictionary that I can scan through for all those "obscure" commands and references.
I started running dual in Win98 with a Voodoo Banshee and a PCI Matrox Millennium, then a GF2mx in win2k, currently using a Quadro4 700xgl in XP.
You can get a "tweaked" bios that adds the ACPI on/off feature again. I got one for my KG7-RAID to fix some quirky hardware issues. Check www.biosmods.com Then, get a floppy disk, reboot, flash, and you're all set to go.* I found a great wealth of info (even for non-abit owners) at Paul's KG7FAQ
*Flashing the BIOS can be risky for the inexperienced. Don't lose power! (how?).
FiringSquad posted their XP review and say that XP performs "on par, or better" than 2K.
They also posted full system specs, I am curious to see how much RAM the Infoworld machines had.
HOWEVER: Note that XP did lag behind in a couple benchmarks, including 100 points in 3DMark and a couple FPS in some games. (also: 98SE beat out both 2K and XP in 3DMark 2000)
There are (I admit, pricey) alternatives to inkjet printing of digital photos.
For example, here at RIT we can crank them out on a Gretag Sphera, which actually puts digital images on true photo paper using a photographic process involving colored lasers. Not only do they last, they don't have the half-tone dots or dithering of inkjet and gravure prints. (Yes, it looks better than the prints in National Geographic)
Or, we can use a Kodak LVT to put digital photos directly onto color negatives at an amazing 2032dpi so they can be archived and printed just like a regular analog photo that you get back from your K1000.
Of course, a single 8x10 print off the Sphera costs $4.50, but that's another story.
Slashdot Mirror
...Your router's activity light blinks every time you press a key on the keyboard.
I assume it's trivial to detect this type of keylogging.
Moving parts usually fail first; get some solid state hard drives. Avoid fans by using components with passive cooling; most importantly get an integrated video card and a passively cooled power supply. Running DOS software? Use freedos. No need to bother with full-blown Windows. Keep to name brand components and you should be fine. As long as you buy standard components, they should be easy enough to replace 15 years from now, don't go hog-wild stocking up on replacement parts. Good luck!
You already can. Some cameras let you shoot against a blank white area to compensate for dust particles on the CCD. It's called "Dust Reference" in Nikon Capture, which works with most of their DSLRs.
Imagine that, considering it started off as a prison colony...
This reminds me of the unwieldly Nintendo 64 controller. Nintendo ergonomics skips a generation.
Nunchuku configuration? Imagine using a traditional controller that's been broken in half and is now only held together by a dangling fragile wire.
In a game like tekken or halo, for example, I'm rough on the controller, and I like to grip onto something solid. This does not provide.
Actually, the Wacom tablet is NOT pressure sensitive.
It uses RF to track your mouse (and/or) pen. Pressure is actually reported to the tablet by the pen through RF along with other parameters on fancier models (tilt, rotation).
The Wacom mouse and pen can be tracked by the tablet without contacting it at all. (Good for tracing)
Netgear phone support for my PCI Ethernet (FA311) card conflicting with the AMD 761 Chipset INSISTED that I upgrade my drivers for the card. ...For problems that appeared during POST.
(Yes I had already upgraded the drivers. And I was using Linux. And Windows. 98 and 2000.)
The brother of FinalScratch is Traktor DJ Studio. Both can be found on Native Instruments
Traktor gives you all the capability of final scratch but instead of specially encoded vinyl, you control with with any combination of keyboard mouse and MIDI. Plug in an Oxygen 8 or even a $15 DM2 through DM2-midi and you can use "toys" to run a serious gig.
If this thing can send midi commands, and if latency can be fixed by driver settings, this has the potential to be a very useful and powerful tool in Traktor.
This will never totally replace vinyl, but it's great being able to lug around a laptop instead of huge crates of wax. The new version also plays VERY well with my iPod and iTunes.
Runs on my XP, also runs on Mac.
(and I love my Game Theater XP)
The Seagate barracuda IV had a problem when connected in RAID-0; it actually performed worse than as a single drive. There was a problem with caching on them that made RAID controllers gag. There is a firmware fix; you can contact Seagate and they will replace your drives for you! I currently have 5 Barracuda IV drives connected to my highpoint RAID controller (abit at7) but they are running as single; I use the speed advantage of each being on their own IDE channel.
OSX: needs nVidia Quadro
*nix: needs Photoshop native
I get the power of the PC platform, and all the graphic apps I want.
Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.
Two-person college dorm combined equipment:
5 towers
3 portables
3 trinitrons
655gb combined hard drive space
160 unopened cans of pepsi
Ergh. I'm busted. (seriously, I don't play games exclusively... but I'm busy with Vice City right now so I'll write a longer post later)
I use alot of machines from both sides of the war (Win/Mac) at school, but I've never really seen any two systems that are worthy of comparing. Obviously my desktop with an XP2100 starts/runs Photoshop much faster than my friend's TiBook (we both have 1gb ram) But then again, the new imac is shockingly snappy out of the box for what it costs and those two machines combined are easier to carry around than something housed in a full-sized Antec. Speed can be achieved by anything as long as you have the cash for it, and alot of the bottlenecks that show up in the sort of applications that I run on a daily basis are more dependent on the video card than the OS.
I'm using dual and I'll never go back. It's great just being able to throw things on the second monitor that aren't worthy of running right in front of your face all the time, (eg. winamp, trillian, task manager, etc.)
Works GREAT in Photoshop (Window > Documents > New Window) so you have one preview full-size image and one that you can zoom/pan around in and work on.
Also a life saver in Director where my secondary has the Lingo Dictionary that I can scan through for all those "obscure" commands and references.
I started running dual in Win98 with a Voodoo Banshee and a PCI Matrox Millennium, then a GF2mx in win2k, currently using a Quadro4 700xgl in XP.
It's listed on their bills... I just hope they weren't charged for it.
You can get a "tweaked" bios that adds the ACPI on/off feature again. I got one for my KG7-RAID to fix some quirky hardware issues. Check www.biosmods.com Then, get a floppy disk, reboot, flash, and you're all set to go.* I found a great wealth of info (even for non-abit owners) at Paul's KG7FAQ
*Flashing the BIOS can be risky for the inexperienced. Don't lose power! (how?).
FiringSquad posted their XP review and say that XP performs "on par, or better" than 2K.
They also posted full system specs, I am curious to see how much RAM the Infoworld machines had.
HOWEVER: Note that XP did lag behind in a couple benchmarks, including 100 points in 3DMark and a couple FPS in some games. (also: 98SE beat out both 2K and XP in 3DMark 2000)
There are (I admit, pricey) alternatives to inkjet printing of digital photos.
For example, here at RIT we can crank them out on a Gretag Sphera, which actually puts digital images on true photo paper using a photographic process involving colored lasers. Not only do they last, they don't have the half-tone dots or dithering of inkjet and gravure prints. (Yes, it looks better than the prints in National Geographic)
Or, we can use a Kodak LVT to put digital photos directly onto color negatives at an amazing 2032dpi so they can be archived and printed just like a regular analog photo that you get back from your K1000.
Of course, a single 8x10 print off the Sphera costs $4.50, but that's another story.