I'd recommend HDD Sheriff it is the standard in Ontario for public libraries and internet kiosks. It's hardware based so it doesn't slow down the PC. It does have software, but it's only running when you are making changes. When not logged in with HDD Sheriff enabled for updates you can do whatever you want to the PC, but as soon as it reboots everything gets put back exactly how it was when the last image was made by the admin.
One last point: those airwaves are not really public - the stations, via their broadcast license, "owns" a frequency in their market.
Actually they LICENSE the frequency from the government who represent the public who OWN tne airwaves. That License can be revoked at any time if the licensee violates the terms of the license. Thankfully the terms have more to do with decency, technical aspects, and ability to pay the license fees than what people say about politics over the air.
I'd like to see more talk shows of a non-conservative slant, but as long as they stick to the terms of their license I'm ok with them being there.
Speaking of VLC, I know a guy at the cable co where I used to work who uses VLC running on $800 Dell servers with capture cards to digitize analog channels to a format that the digital boxes can read. He saved the company $9000/channel for each of the channels they didn't have already piped to them in digital format (the lowest cost purpose built digitizer was $10,000)
Noone but Gentoo buffs loads a new kernel ever 2 weeks. My webservers when I ran them for an ISP didn't get a reboot, let alone a new kernel install for 6-12 months at a time....and yes, those reboots were usually either kernels or hardware re-locations.
You got screwed on the Barracuda. It's a piece of shit.
I have to disagree with you there, our Barracuda (used in a municipal govt. setting) filters out 2 spams for every 1 legit e-mail. This far out performs our previous Symantec/Microsoft solution (which WAS a piece of junk) it lets hardly any spam through and very rarely quarantines something legit. (2 pieces of mail in the last year)
Sure it's not perfect, and I'd prefer if they allowed me to set up some classification rules, but then it'd be harder for them to sell their subscriptions after a while.
Take a look at the results of the past 24hrs: Blocked: 4827 Allowed: 2287
I have never been happier with any commercial antispam product I've used. My personal setup with SpamAssassin let a few less spams through, but I was only 1 person, so I could take a lot more liberties with the rules and block out a lot of things I just can't in the work environment.
oops, should be "dot pitch number like 0.25mm" not "dot pitch number like 0.25dpi" messed up on the units. I've gotta pay more attention to what I'm typing.
Maybe you are too young to have ever shopped for a CRT, but let me modify my language in hopes that you may have at one time bought a CRT monitor.
It seems you are thinking in terms of bad divx compression not in terms of dot pitch.
In the old CRT days you used to have 2 resolution measurements that in concert told you not only how many pixels you could fit on the screen, but the quality of the pixels. You would have a max res number like 1024x768 but you also had a dot pitch number like 0.25dpi which told you how many physical dots of phosphor there were. More and smaller dots are better, they give better quality pixels at a wide variety of resolutions. This is why CRTs look good at more than one resolution. There are way more dots than pixels. In LCDs we don't use dot pitch any more because at the native resolution one pixel= one dot and since these monitors are such low resolution devices in dot pitch terms anything other than native resolution is a kludge that looks horrible because different parts of the screen are using different numbers of dots to make up a pixel.
With a 7680 x 4320 array of dots you can have a 1080p image or a 720p image or a 480p image and you will be guaranteed that every row and column of pixels is using the same number of dots per pixel and so your pixels are all the same size and you aren't losing info by trying to use a 2x array of dots to do 720 pixels (which would be 1440 dots high) when you only have 1080 dots of height to work with... in that kind of scenario you have a choice to make, you can discard some pixels so you fit the image into the 1080 dot height restriction and stay at a constant 2x2 dots per pixel ratio or you can make some lines of pixels smaller than others either way your picture looks worse than on a 720p monitor of the same size beacuse you are effectively making it a 540p image, but just on a better dot pitch monitor.
Now I just have to wait for it to come down in price and I'll finally be able to have an HDTV LCD that displays ALL 3 common resolutions without doing funky scaling tricks 1080i/p pixels = 4x4 pixel block of real pysical pixels, 720p pixels = 6x6 block of physical pixels, 480i/p pixels = 9x9 block of physical pixels. 1080i pip is still 1080i at 1/4 of the screen. no down scaling.
THIS folks is what I've been waiting for ever since HDTV was announced.
If only I could afford to be an early adopter on this technology.
I was very diappointed when I saw the back of the box actually referred to the original material as non-digitally remastered 4:3 letterbox. (C-mon people just want to go back to the original version, not the old 80's tape master... couldn't we get the THX digital remaster that we have on tape on DVD? is that too much to ask? Animorphic would be nice too. I was all set to buy them (yet again) till I saw that. I want to re-create the original theater experience, not the original rental experience.
Tell that to the GM who tried to run Exalted for me. (and most of the rest of the group I was trying to play with) I was strongly discouraged from taking Ride even though my character concept was a sort of Conan character because "Ride charms suck", they are not powerful enough. Never mind that riding horseback was a key part of my character concept.
You must live in the states. I'm still waiting for something other than music videos trailers and Pixar shorts to be downloadable from iTunes' Canadian store. I once wanted to buy a copy of a Lost episode I missed and would have been quite happy to shell out 1.99 for the lowres version on iTunes, but they wouldn't let me. (at least not without creating a Fake identity with a US address and US issued credit card)...so my only choice was to get on a torrent site and download it.
DRMed videos won't play on the DVI connector. That would be a hole in the DRM protection.
You need DVI with HDCP on both the computer and the monitor or HDMI to do digital transfer of the video. Most people with mediacenter PCs still don't have that kind of "secure" video setup.
Dr Who episodes are $1.99 (and most are 3-4 parts, so $6-$8 per full episode) and you only get to keep them for 7 days Escaflowne (one of the few anime choices) is $3.99 per episode ($95 if you want to download the whole series) and they are missing episode #9....but at least you get to keep them once you've bought them
He did say he wanted to create a non-functioning mockup. This is normally done in Photoshop. for some reason he's finding it hard to do radio buttons in GIMP (which I really don't understand) but he could concieveably do a mockup in NVU, but it'd be hard and he'd never get it to look as nice as if he used a graphics proram. I still think GIMP would be a better mockup program, but the point of my post is that the kind of code NVU creates is irrelevent for this purpose, as it is never going to be used/looked at. he's just making a screenshot of a non-existant website so the programmer has an idea of what this guy is talking about. Designers do this all the time in ways that have nothing at all to do with HTML.
Of course once you are done railing on Apple (and yes I think they deserve some criticism for not making the iPod a standard USB drive and letting the iPod import the songs itself into it's database) take a look at YamiPod. It runs on Windows, MacOSX and Linux and is a self contained binary (no real install needed) that will import your songs for you. I formatted my ipod to FAT32 by connecting it to a windows laptop from work with iTunes and iPod Update installed on it, but with the newer ones this step isn't needed as they are all FAT32 now) then accessed it like a regular drive, dropped all 3 versions of YamiPod on it and now I can import and export songs from it on any machine I want.
Actually the way you phrased that "direct ancestral animated enities" it sounds more like you bought your parents a dog. wouldn't children be direct decendant animated entities??
Actually the solution we've come to on our windows network is a combination of Propalms (a citrix-like program) and Vmware server. The workstations connect to a load balancer which assigns them to a server (actually a VM on a server machine) with their software. The reason for putting the Servers in VMWare is if there is a need to do a hardware upgrade we just duplicate the VM on another box, shut down the original, boot up the copy work away and switch them back at the end of the day. The biggest problem we had was printer issues (which I hear is also the biggy for Citrix) but the uniprint driver we use now solved that. It PDFs the print job and passes it off to the local workstation to print rather than printing from the server directly. I know that sounds crazy but it solved all of the little problems we had with printers not offering all the features or printing to the wrong tray, or the printer in the wrong department etc. Sure some of that was a staff training issue, but now it's a non-issue.
I think the biggest concern in the short run would be Gen-Con's relative openness compared to E3 and other video game industry conventions, which are ostensibly supposed to be difficult for the great unwashed to get into.
Were you trying to set someone up for a joke? Come on, you had to have seen the jokes about the unwashed at game conventions looming on the horizon when you wrote that.
I've got a logitech one with a nice little recharging stand. I stick the mouse in the recharging stand whenever I think to do so (it goes about 2 weeks for me without recharging) and the keyboard works on regular AA batteries, which I haven't ever had to change in over a year of use.
Having the convenience of being able to use the keyboard and mouse in more casual positions, like leaning back in the chair with the keyboard in my lap, without worrying about the mess of cables is worth having to remember to stick the mouse on the charger once in a while.
I had a Microsoft cordless before that and I hated it, and I'm usually a big fan of microsft mice.
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I'd recommend HDD Sheriff it is the standard in Ontario for public libraries and internet kiosks.
It's hardware based so it doesn't slow down the PC. It does have software, but it's only running when you are making changes.
When not logged in with HDD Sheriff enabled for updates you can do whatever you want to the PC, but as soon as it reboots everything gets put back exactly how it was when the last image was made by the admin.
All I can say is if a CGO makes the same $$ as other CxOs who else is hiring them and where do I put in my application?
One last point: those airwaves are not really public - the stations, via their broadcast license, "owns" a frequency in their market.
Actually they LICENSE the frequency from the government who represent the public who OWN tne airwaves. That License can be revoked at any time if the licensee violates the terms of the license. Thankfully the terms have more to do with decency, technical aspects, and ability to pay the license fees than what people say about politics over the air.
I'd like to see more talk shows of a non-conservative slant, but as long as they stick to the terms of their license I'm ok with them being there.
Mods please mark parent informative, I fear this one is going to get out of control if this comment gets buried
Speaking of VLC, I know a guy at the cable co where I used to work who uses VLC running on $800 Dell servers with capture cards to digitize analog channels to a format that the digital boxes can read. He saved the company $9000/channel for each of the channels they didn't have already piped to them in digital format (the lowest cost purpose built digitizer was $10,000)
Noone but Gentoo buffs loads a new kernel ever 2 weeks. ...and yes, those reboots were usually either kernels or hardware re-locations.
My webservers when I ran them for an ISP didn't get a reboot, let alone a new kernel install for 6-12 months at a time.
You got screwed on the Barracuda. It's a piece of shit.
I have to disagree with you there, our Barracuda (used in a municipal govt. setting) filters out 2 spams for every 1 legit e-mail.
This far out performs our previous Symantec/Microsoft solution (which WAS a piece of junk) it lets hardly any spam through and very rarely quarantines something legit. (2 pieces of mail in the last year)
Sure it's not perfect, and I'd prefer if they allowed me to set up some classification rules, but then it'd be harder for them to sell their subscriptions after a while.
Take a look at the results of the past 24hrs:
Blocked: 4827
Allowed: 2287
I have never been happier with any commercial antispam product I've used.
My personal setup with SpamAssassin let a few less spams through, but I was only 1 person, so I could take a lot more liberties with the rules and block out a lot of things I just can't in the work environment.
don't forget the chrome trim, that is easily worth the upgrade. Ask any Harley rider.
oops, should be "dot pitch number like 0.25mm" not "dot pitch number like 0.25dpi" messed up on the units. I've gotta pay more attention to what I'm typing.
Maybe you are too young to have ever shopped for a CRT, but let me modify my language in hopes that you may have at one time bought a CRT monitor.
It seems you are thinking in terms of bad divx compression not in terms of dot pitch.
In the old CRT days you used to have 2 resolution measurements that in concert told you not only how many pixels you could fit on the screen, but the quality of the pixels. You would have a max res number like 1024x768 but you also had a dot pitch number like 0.25dpi which told you how many physical dots of phosphor there were. More and smaller dots are better, they give better quality pixels at a wide variety of resolutions. This is why CRTs look good at more than one resolution. There are way more dots than pixels. In LCDs we don't use dot pitch any more because at the native resolution one pixel= one dot and since these monitors are such low resolution devices in dot pitch terms anything other than native resolution is a kludge that looks horrible because different parts of the screen are using different numbers of dots to make up a pixel.
With a 7680 x 4320 array of dots you can have a 1080p image or a 720p image or a 480p image and you will be guaranteed that every row and column of pixels is using the same number of dots per pixel and so your pixels are all the same size and you aren't losing info by trying to use a 2x array of dots to do 720 pixels (which would be 1440 dots high) when you only have 1080 dots of height to work with... in that kind of scenario you have a choice to make, you can discard some pixels so you fit the image into the 1080 dot height restriction and stay at a constant 2x2 dots per pixel ratio or you can make some lines of pixels smaller than others either way your picture looks worse than on a 720p monitor of the same size beacuse you are effectively making it a 540p image, but just on a better dot pitch monitor.
Now I just have to wait for it to come down in price and I'll finally be able to have an HDTV LCD that displays ALL 3 common resolutions without doing funky scaling tricks
1080i/p pixels = 4x4 pixel block of real pysical pixels, 720p pixels = 6x6 block of physical pixels, 480i/p pixels = 9x9 block of physical pixels.
1080i pip is still 1080i at 1/4 of the screen. no down scaling.
THIS folks is what I've been waiting for ever since HDTV was announced.
If only I could afford to be an early adopter on this technology.
I was very diappointed when I saw the back of the box actually referred to the original material as non-digitally remastered 4:3 letterbox. (C-mon people just want to go back to the original version, not the old 80's tape master... couldn't we get the THX digital remaster that we have on tape on DVD? is that too much to ask?
Animorphic would be nice too. I was all set to buy them (yet again) till I saw that. I want to re-create the original theater experience, not the original rental experience.
A good comparison would be to MythTV
your Mac = the Myth Backend/Frontend
Your iTV = your Myth Frontend (like a hacked Xbox is to MythTV)
You can record or import on the backend, you can only playback on the frontend.
Tell that to the GM who tried to run Exalted for me. (and most of the rest of the group I was trying to play with)
I was strongly discouraged from taking Ride even though my character concept was a sort of Conan character because "Ride charms suck", they are not powerful enough.
Never mind that riding horseback was a key part of my character concept.
You can but only if you know a good fast proxy server in the US.
You must live in the states. I'm still waiting for something other than music videos trailers and Pixar shorts to be downloadable from iTunes' Canadian store. ...so my only choice was to get on a torrent site and download it.
I once wanted to buy a copy of a Lost episode I missed and would have been quite happy to shell out 1.99 for the lowres version on iTunes, but they wouldn't let me. (at least not without creating a Fake identity with a US address and US issued credit card)
DRMed videos won't play on the DVI connector. That would be a hole in the DRM protection.
You need DVI with HDCP on both the computer and the monitor or HDMI to do digital transfer of the video. Most people with mediacenter PCs still don't have that kind of "secure" video setup.
Are they nuts??
...but at least you get to keep them once you've bought them
Dr Who episodes are $1.99 (and most are 3-4 parts, so $6-$8 per full episode) and you only get to keep them for 7 days
Escaflowne (one of the few anime choices) is $3.99 per episode ($95 if you want to download the whole series) and they are missing episode #9.
FWIW that sound when a mac starts isn't even part of OSX it is part of the Open Firmware.
(or EFI in the Intel Macs)
And to my ears it is far more pleasant than the peizo beeps of most IBM PC BIOSs.
He did say he wanted to create a non-functioning mockup.
This is normally done in Photoshop. for some reason he's finding it hard to do radio buttons in GIMP (which I really don't understand) but he could concieveably do a mockup in NVU, but it'd be hard and he'd never get it to look as nice as if he used a graphics proram. I still think GIMP would be a better mockup program, but the point of my post is that the kind of code NVU creates is irrelevent for this purpose, as it is never going to be used/looked at. he's just making a screenshot of a non-existant website so the programmer has an idea of what this guy is talking about. Designers do this all the time in ways that have nothing at all to do with HTML.
Of course once you are done railing on Apple (and yes I think they deserve some criticism for not making the iPod a standard USB drive and letting the iPod import the songs itself into it's database) take a look at YamiPod. It runs on Windows, MacOSX and Linux and is a self contained binary (no real install needed) that will import your songs for you. I formatted my ipod to FAT32 by connecting it to a windows laptop from work with iTunes and iPod Update installed on it, but with the newer ones this step isn't needed as they are all FAT32 now) then accessed it like a regular drive, dropped all 3 versions of YamiPod on it and now I can import and export songs from it on any machine I want.
Actually the way you phrased that "direct ancestral animated enities" it sounds more like you bought your parents a dog. wouldn't children be direct decendant animated entities??
Actually the solution we've come to on our windows network is a combination of Propalms (a citrix-like program) and Vmware server.
The workstations connect to a load balancer which assigns them to a server (actually a VM on a server machine) with their software. The reason for putting the Servers in VMWare is if there is a need to do a hardware upgrade we just duplicate the VM on another box, shut down the original, boot up the copy work away and switch them back at the end of the day. The biggest problem we had was printer issues (which I hear is also the biggy for Citrix) but the uniprint driver we use now solved that. It PDFs the print job and passes it off to the local workstation to print rather than printing from the server directly. I know that sounds crazy but it solved all of the little problems we had with printers not offering all the features or printing to the wrong tray, or the printer in the wrong department etc. Sure some of that was a staff training issue, but now it's a non-issue.
I think the biggest concern in the short run would be Gen-Con's relative openness compared to E3 and other video game industry conventions, which are ostensibly supposed to be difficult for the great unwashed to get into.
Were you trying to set someone up for a joke?
Come on, you had to have seen the jokes about the unwashed at game conventions looming on the horizon when you wrote that.
I've got a logitech one with a nice little recharging stand. I stick the mouse in the recharging stand whenever I think to do so (it goes about 2 weeks for me without recharging) and the keyboard works on regular AA batteries, which I haven't ever had to change in over a year of use.
Having the convenience of being able to use the keyboard and mouse in more casual positions, like leaning back in the chair with the keyboard in my lap, without worrying about the mess of cables is worth having to remember to stick the mouse on the charger once in a while.
I had a Microsoft cordless before that and I hated it, and I'm usually a big fan of microsft mice.