I run Linux at home on my desktop, where I'm prepared to trade the odd boneheaded kernel bug/freeze/crash for a constant stream of updated software packages. I run Solaris (on SPARC) at work on e-commerce servers, where proven stability and support are priority no.1 (and fully-integrated enterprise features like Zones are no.2).
Very true. Academics, particularly senior professors who should know better, can be bitchy as hell when it comes to climbing the rungs of the (fairly meaningless) academic ladder. Competition over Chairs and who gets to be department poobah is intense, and some pretty underhand spoiler tactics are frequently deployed.
Fortunately, as a lowly grunt you will be fairly peripheral to their schemes (although they might impinge on your work occasionally) and below their lofty viewpoint. Although it might rankle that many won't even condescend to return a casual greeting in the corridor.
A more effective solution would be to remove the comment system from your blog. You won't get spam. You won't get argued with or corrected. You won't endure lesser intellects (cough) posting their inarticulate garbage (cough, cough) on your site. And you won't have those embarrassing "Comments [0]" links all over your home page anymore. Sorted.
If anyone still wants to take issue with your sterling advice, let 'em put it in an email, where it can be deleted more easily.
Actually, no. Sun took the approach that anywhere Solaris was slower than Linux was a (formally logged) bug, and therefore required fixing.
Re:Multizilla and Googlbox make Mozilla my choice
on
Mozilla 1.7.5 Released
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· Score: 1
Too right! You can get some of the Multizilla functionality in Firefox by cobbling together extensions, but it still doesn't do everything and it's less convenient.
That said, I really, really wish Mozilla supported something like Sage for RSS browsing. That would make it perfect.
Ack, so many flames... Let me tell you what I use to process photos under Linux (not professionally).
First, either buy a better flatbed or get a film scanner. Even the low end film scanners are decent for 35mm (e.g. Minolta, Benq); try eBay for secondhand.
Second, buy VueScan - it's worth the money.
Third, blast your slides with compressed air and wipe with an antistatic cloth prior to scanning; this should remove most of the dust.
If you're going to scan at 2700dpi or higher, reckon on 512Mb RAM and at least an Athlon XP or equivalent Intel CPU, otherwise doing anything with the output files will take aeons. On a lower spec, try halving the output file resolution in VueScan, which gives a better 1350dpi image than one natively scanned at that res. With some cleaning up, you can get away with 10x8" prints from this.
Colour management problems: this isn't going to help you but - shoot black and white.:-) Or stop obsessing over it. A decent scan gets you close anyway.
The GIMP works fine for the minimal set of manipulations you need, namely cloning out dust, levels adjustment, maybe some minor tweaks in curves and finally some unsharp mask. Read the GIMP Guru tutorials or GIMP FAQ to learn how to use it better (grab John Hall's scripts from the latter site too - the smart sharpening one is excellent).
Where the GIMP falls down is the lack of 16 bit image handling. Without this, extreme curves manipulations tend to produce evident posterisation. If you're desperate, you can try doing the contrast adjustments in CinePaint (flaky and limited but it just about works) and then writing out an 8 bit file to finish off with the GIMP.
Alternatively, forget the GIMP and install the Crossover product to use Windows Photoshop under Linux.
On the printing side, most people talk about Epson but I've had good results out of the box from a recent HP Photosmart (particularly for B/W with their grey ink cartridge).
Summary: you can do this stuff under Linux if you learn to make the best of what's available and stop caring about what it doesn't support (the "don't worry, be happy" approach). Whether the results meet "professional" standards is arguable (but in my experience, most amateurs have no real clue what that requires, myself included).
Here in the UK, Hornby has just launched a live steam model of the Flying Scotsman in OO gauge. At 500UKP though, it's probably aimed more at dads with disposable income, which is just as well unless you want to burden your kids for life with the stigma of railway enthusiasm.
Let's see: FC3 is released in October and Solaris 10 is due around the same time. And...I'm more excited about the one I use at work! Something's wrong here.
I mean, Fedora doesn't even have DTrace which, as many here assured us in the recent Slashdot post, isn't a particularly new idea...
Ade_ / (ha, admire my shiny brass troll balls and tremble!!)
I realise that OpenNap is probably no longer fashionable, but I still occasionally browse it using the Linux Napster Client (nap). It has to be kept up to date though, as various OpenNap changes seem to break it with some frequency (the last was the disappearance of Napigator).
rlwrap is a great program for adding history and editing to braindead database vendors' command line clients (e.g. DB2, Sybase).
The nice thing about w3m is it works so well as a HTML viewer for mutt and snownews. In fact, even on my X11 desktop I keep a w3m window open next to Mozilla for quick lookups.
Still, I pray that this guy has to log a support call with Sun about this. Given that they object if you move a server between data centres using your trunk, I can't wait to hear what they say when they find out the box is actually housed in one.
Amen. As I Unix/X user for over ten years, I still get frustrated with mouse cut 'n' paste. Highlight selection, click on title bar of destination window to bring it to the front...boom, lost my selection! Using KDE isn't the answer here because I mostly use terminal applications and, as has been noted, CTRL-C for copy conflicts with keyboard interrupt.
I'm thinking maybe I should change the xterm keyboard/mouse bindings to use the CLIPBOARD instead of PRIMARY selection, and run xclipboard.
Lots of photographers are now buying their supplies from 7dayshop - good for film, paper, ink carts, memory cards, accessories and all kinds of interesting bits and bobs (e.g. LED conversion kit for Maglites).
Slashdot Mirror
> "Sun holds it all behind the firewall."
Trans.: "I know a techie word and I'm going to use it."
Ade_
/
> Script-Fu which also simplifies the process of creating scripts
There speaks someone who has never used it. Here's a hint: no debugger.
Ade_
/
So he spent, what, a month longer developing his site than the Flickr guys did? Hmmm, could be a lot more stable then. Nice work, kid.
This is one of those celebrations that starts with raising a glass and ends when one passes out holding the empty, tear-stained bottle.
Ade_
/
I run Linux at home on my desktop, where I'm prepared to trade the odd boneheaded kernel bug/freeze/crash for a constant stream of updated software packages. I run Solaris (on SPARC) at work on e-commerce servers, where proven stability and support are priority no.1 (and fully-integrated enterprise features like Zones are no.2).
I wouldn't EVER seek to swap these scenarios.
Ade_
/
Very true. Academics, particularly senior professors who should know better, can be bitchy as hell when it comes to climbing the rungs of the (fairly meaningless) academic ladder. Competition over Chairs and who gets to be department poobah is intense, and some pretty underhand spoiler tactics are frequently deployed.
/
Fortunately, as a lowly grunt you will be fairly peripheral to their schemes (although they might impinge on your work occasionally) and below their lofty viewpoint. Although it might rankle that many won't even condescend to return a casual greeting in the corridor.
Ade_
Are you guys still talking about Eccleston? Jeez, let it go, quit living in the past.
That Wired quote should have come from the Life-imitates-Springfield dept. It had Kent Brockman all over it.
/
Ade_
A more effective solution would be to remove the comment system from your blog. You won't get spam. You won't get argued with or corrected. You won't endure lesser intellects (cough) posting their inarticulate garbage (cough, cough) on your site. And you won't have those embarrassing "Comments [0]" links all over your home page anymore. Sorted.
/
If anyone still wants to take issue with your sterling advice, let 'em put it in an email, where it can be deleted more easily.
Ade_
Actually, no. Sun took the approach that anywhere Solaris was slower than Linux was a (formally logged) bug, and therefore required fixing.
Too right! You can get some of the Multizilla functionality in Firefox by cobbling together extensions, but it still doesn't do everything and it's less convenient.
/
That said, I really, really wish Mozilla supported something like Sage for RSS browsing. That would make it perfect.
Ade_
Ack, so many flames... Let me tell you what I use to process photos under Linux (not professionally).
:-) Or stop obsessing over it. A decent scan gets you close anyway.
/
First, either buy a better flatbed or get a film scanner. Even the low end film scanners are decent for 35mm (e.g. Minolta, Benq); try eBay for secondhand.
Second, buy VueScan - it's worth the money.
Third, blast your slides with compressed air and wipe with an antistatic cloth prior to scanning; this should remove most of the dust.
If you're going to scan at 2700dpi or higher, reckon on 512Mb RAM and at least an Athlon XP or equivalent Intel CPU, otherwise doing anything with the output files will take aeons. On a lower spec, try halving the output file resolution in VueScan, which gives a better 1350dpi image than one natively scanned at that res. With some cleaning up, you can get away with 10x8" prints from this.
Colour management problems: this isn't going to help you but - shoot black and white.
The GIMP works fine for the minimal set of manipulations you need, namely cloning out dust, levels adjustment, maybe some minor tweaks in curves and finally some unsharp mask. Read the GIMP Guru tutorials or GIMP FAQ to learn how to use it better (grab John Hall's scripts from the latter site too - the smart sharpening one is excellent).
Where the GIMP falls down is the lack of 16 bit image handling. Without this, extreme curves manipulations tend to produce evident posterisation. If you're desperate, you can try doing the contrast adjustments in CinePaint (flaky and limited but it just about works) and then writing out an 8 bit file to finish off with the GIMP.
Alternatively, forget the GIMP and install the Crossover product to use Windows Photoshop under Linux.
On the printing side, most people talk about Epson but I've had good results out of the box from a recent HP Photosmart (particularly for B/W with their grey ink cartridge).
Summary: you can do this stuff under Linux if you learn to make the best of what's available and stop caring about what it doesn't support (the "don't worry, be happy" approach). Whether the results meet "professional" standards is arguable (but in my experience, most amateurs have no real clue what that requires, myself included).
Cheers,
Ade_
I believe gthumb also does lossless JPEG rotation.
/
Ade_
Comment from friend to whom I just emailed this link:
/
> Does this come with a tube of preparation H and a blow up ring?
Ade_
Here in the UK, Hornby has just launched a live steam model of the Flying Scotsman in OO gauge. At 500UKP though, it's probably aimed more at dads with disposable income, which is just as well unless you want to burden your kids for life with the stigma of railway enthusiasm.
/
Ade_
Jeff Minter's history of Llamasoft at Way Of The Rodent? Quick search of their site suggests it's up to part five.
/
Ade_
Let's see: FC3 is released in October and Solaris 10 is due around the same time. And...I'm more excited about the one I use at work! Something's wrong here.
/
I mean, Fedora doesn't even have DTrace which, as many here assured us in the recent Slashdot post, isn't a particularly new idea...
Ade_
(ha, admire my shiny brass troll balls and tremble!!)
I realise that OpenNap is probably no longer fashionable, but I still occasionally browse it using the Linux Napster Client (nap). It has to be kept up to date though, as various OpenNap changes seem to break it with some frequency (the last was the disappearance of Napigator).
/
rlwrap is a great program for adding history and editing to braindead database vendors' command line clients (e.g. DB2, Sybase).
The nice thing about w3m is it works so well as a HTML viewer for mutt and snownews. In fact, even on my X11 desktop I keep a w3m window open next to Mozilla for quick lookups.
Ade_
Last time I was reading USENET (some years ago), I was using TIN.
/
Ade_
> My only complaint is that it does not support Javascript, which makes it
> unusable on many sites.
Really? My complaint is with the sites that require JavaScript support.
Ade_
What, and lose my coffee table?!
/
Still, I pray that this guy has to log a support call with Sun about this. Given that they object if you move a server between data centres using your trunk, I can't wait to hear what they say when they find out the box is actually housed in one.
Ade_
Amen. As I Unix/X user for over ten years, I still get frustrated with mouse cut 'n' paste. Highlight selection, click on title bar of destination window to bring it to the front...boom, lost my selection! Using KDE isn't the answer here because I mostly use terminal applications and, as has been noted, CTRL-C for copy conflicts with keyboard interrupt.
/
I'm thinking maybe I should change the xterm keyboard/mouse bindings to use the CLIPBOARD instead of PRIMARY selection, and run xclipboard.
Ade_
On Mozilla, Multizilla provides a similar button next to the URL bar. (Plug: it's a great extension, almost like having a new browser.)
/
Ade_
Bruce Willis was a ROBOT?!! Oh man, I have to go back and watch that whole frickin' movie again!
/
Ade_
Lots of photographers are now buying their supplies from 7dayshop - good for film, paper, ink carts, memory cards, accessories and all kinds of interesting bits and bobs (e.g. LED conversion kit for Maglites).
Ade_
/