For consumer level, if you want to find out what all this DVD/Home theater stuff is all about equipment, you might want to stick with Sony receivers. Make sure you look at the STR-DE 8xx or 9xx level of their AV receiver (these do 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound. I have a STR-DE915 (not the ES high audiophile series) from a couple of years ago and it works great for my apartment setup. I'm running Mirage speakers. The nice thing with going with componants from a single vendor is you can reduce the remote clutter. Another option is to pick up one of the super remotes out there (around $100) that can handle most equipment.
For higher end stuff, you might check out Klipsch speakers and McIntosh amplifiers. No, these aren't related to Macintosh computers so you'd be safe from contamination.
The Digital Theater is a good place to read up on A/V equipment.
Too bad you can't take advantage of the MP unless you are running OS X which doesn't come out until March.;)
Every Mac analyst I know recommends a faster single processor over a dual system because:
MacOS 8 and 9 all come with a multiprocessing extension (Apple CPU Plugins in the Multiprocessing folder in the Extensions folder). This extension does not provide true SMP but it does allow threads to be spread across multiprocessors. Any app that is written to correctly utilize threads per Apple spec will receive some benefit from multiprocessors. So yes, buy a multiprocessor Mac now and enjoy it. You're not 'waisting' it waiting for OSX.
Try FinderPop. It's a control panel that brings up Mac contextual menus by holding down a click on something. You don't need a second button or holding down a key combo at all. Just hope there's a way to work it in OSX and I wish it could be implimented in LinuxPPC.
What do you want? Either you like Hemmingway or you don't. 'Course, my getting into Hemmingway through the film "To Have and Have Not" colors my appreciation. I really like the movie as well as the novel, even though they're almost totally diffrent. The only saving grace for the movie is that Hemmingway had some input in the script.
Actually several elven ladies have fallen in love with human man:
Luthien - Beren
Arwen - Aragon
Don't forget Tuor and Idril Celebrindal. She was the daughter of Turgon, king of Gondolin. Their child was Earendil Halfelven who was the father of Elrond and Elros.
As far as emphasizing the love story between Arwen and Aragorn, I've been bummed that that didn't have a larger part of LOTR. I don't know about the casting, though.
Ok, I have to point out a technical problem with Amazon's list. I can almost gaurantee most of us have not read the great masterworks of human history, even the more popular ones like the Iliad.
Speak for yourself. I read the Illiad at least once a year. While it doesn't make the millinium cut, I feel it's one of the best pieces of western litereature out there. Translations of past litereature should be allowed. Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1974) is IMHO, the best English language Illiad out there. Will have to go and see if I can skew this list around.
The big thing holding back non MS OS's is the fact that Microsoft keeps changing their file formats for Office apps. The majority of business users would not care what OS their computer ran, as long as they can work with MS Word and Excel files. By keeping the file format a running target, MS even creates incomatability between their own applications. Open file formats for key business apps would allow others (Word Perfect, Star Office, Nissus Writer, etc) to offer MS Office compatability (by this, I mean, seamless, no problem openning, no problem with formating, etc) and allow other OS's a foot in the door of the business desktop. Who cares if Microsoft gets broken up as long as it's 'possible' for other companies to compete with them.
Some experienced users, who do a lot of their own work and even work on other's machines do seem to have bad luck with computers. I've seen the same thing when I was an aircraft mechanic and an auto mechanic. Machinery and computers seem to like me. This is likely because I pick up on little things going wrong and head things off before major things break down.
FLW did the Johnson Wax building, including designing the furniture. This included a three legged, wheeled chair. The chair was totally unstable. When the company went to Wright about this, he said the people needed to be trained in how to sit in the chairs. They finally got him down to the place to try the chairs himself and he fell over. In an interview later in his life, he admited that some of his furniture gave himself bruises. So there ya' go. Even fancy pants architechs can put out nice looking but impractical stuff.
I'm a tech support guy at a small college. My work entails about 60% repair and setup of computers in the 'pit', 30% calls on campus, and 10% coding and such. I require a a large desktop area with several monitors so that I can be working on several machines at once as well as my desktop machine with dual monitors. I also need at least two large shelves for parts and a bookshelf for my books as well as a filecabinet.
When I started here, there were four of us in a large room. We had a work bench running along one wall and large 'L' shaped desks blocking off each corner so that we each had a personal area with two walls as well as all facing into the center which facilitates conversation (picked up a lot of stuff about working on PC's there (I'm the Mac Guy).
Now, I'm stuck in a 6'x8' closet with hardware piled everywhere! The head of the department decided that the full time programers needed to be in one room (our 'Pit'). Of course, the programmers are now complaining about not having quiet to code in. Makes you wonder where management gets it's ideas.
First world tech countries tend to have very low birthrates. I think this is because tech/capitalist societies allow individuals to survive on their own. The need for an large or extended family as a support network has passed. In an agrarian society, it is very difficult for an individual to survive. Scratch farming requires at least two people working together, with children on the way to provide support in old age. The easier it is for people to feed themselves without having to farm the land personally, the lower the birthrate.
-Side note-
With a figure of 25% of Earth population living above poverty line (rough figure), this means that 1.5 billion people are living better than almost anyone else in history. Kings and Queens of 200 years ago do not have the options we have. Food from around the world is available to the average First Worlder. Information floods the air. Just 2000 years ago, the population of the world was about that of North America today. Of that population, it would be hard to see how any more than 5% were able to live comfortably than. It's also easy to forget just how close such living conditions were here in the US. My grandfather lives in a mud brick (adobe) house that he built himself, back in the depression. He raised sheep and my grandmother cooked in a beehive oven out back as they didn't have running water or electricity until my mother was a teenager, in the late '50's. My grandparents lived as people had lived for the last 3000 years; hand to mouth. It was only with education (my mother left the farm for the Air Force and then college) that I am able to live in the relative splendor of today (poor college student with used car, used computer, etc.). Yes, I'm doing better than 75% of the planet and it's because I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place of wealth. Now how to we bring this 'good life' to the other 75%? I like the idea of computing that doesn't require the industrial infristructure of the rich countries. Some countries in Africa are going straight to cellular, bypassing copper as it's cheaper and easier. Developement of lowpower portables and wireless networking could do wonders for people all over the world. The trick is to get manufacturing costs down to the point where a data terminal costs is equivilent to one of those cheap calculators they give away.
In Florida, public school funding is dependent on property tax money that is voted on. Florida has a large proportion of people who do not have school age children and would rather see property taxes not increased or spent on elderly/medical needs. This, when Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country, both in families and elderly. The other statistic that impacts on this is that the US elderly population is going to double in the next 30 years. There will be less working age people to do more work -or- be more productive.
Higher productivity is what has sustained the current economic boom and kept inflation down. Higher productivity entails people working smarter which means workers with more technological savvy.
Corporations know that they need a large pool of educated workers and they know that demographics are against them. So yes, they are going to turn to Universities and they are going to do what they can to get the type of workers they need. This is nothing new. Universities in the middle ages were started by patrons that wanted clerks that were not tied to the church. The increase in trade also required learned men, thus the rise of the middle class. Land grant schools in the US were started for the same reason. The founding fathers (propertied middle/upper class) knew that if the new country was going to compete with England and France, they'd need something other than farmers. Education was an investment in technological 'brain' infristructure. Always has been. Don't forget, the researchers of the past, while they frequently may have died in poverty, they were clients of Patrons, looking for someone to support them.
The processors used at my school (staff/faculty work machines) are roughly: 50% P133-166, 25% PII 300, 15% PPC 601/603/G3 66-266, 5% PIII 400, 5% G4 400-500. The majority of staff use the P133-166 machines, as well as most of the PC labs. The Mac labs have been upgraded to G3 but faculty still have slower Macs and PCs on their desks. A few professors in natural sciences (geologists, mathematicians, physicists) are using high end machines and that's about it. Students in the dorms have the fastest machines on campus. The staff and faculty mostly use their machines for word processing, email and the web. These machines (P133-166) just seem to keep chugging along. The majority of these people, who do have a lot of computers at home as well, are not into ripping mp3's, gaming, or cellular recombination. They just do the big three-word processing, surf the web, and email. How much power does one need for these tasks?
I've been using LinuxPPC2000 on my 7200/120 as the main mac server for our school with no problems. I have over 3000 users on this machine (not logged in at the same time, though). It handles all the installers for the Macs on campus as well as providing storage space to all the Mac lab machines and students using Macs in the dorms. The install took less than an hour.
Check out all these OS projects out there. Yeah, a lot of them are *nix based but some of them are clean sheet designs. http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bridges/os/distri buted.html
My college is still using 6100's in most of the labs as well as machines for faculty (we also have IIvx's in use). I've added G3 upgrades to the 6100's as money permits. I also pick up 6100's for around $200 for G3 upgrades. What can I say we're a poor college.
We're still using 68030 macs on up to new G4's here at my school. The largest Mac labs are all 6100 w/G3 upgrades. These machines came out in '94. As long as the machines hold out, they won't give me any more money to upgrade. In a way, it kinda' sucks. We get about 100 new pc's a year but less than 20 new Macs. It's used Macs the rest of the time. They just came out with upgrade cards for LC's (33MHz '040's). Might get some of those and the Project Appleseed clustering software to build a small cluster of pizza boxes. G
Being a Mac user first, who dabbles with Linux and is forced to work on WinX, I find both difficult at times. What's with all the restarting everytime you change something in Windows? Partitioning hard drives shouldn't be that complicated either (Linux), though the latest LinuxPPC release has done a lot to fix that. I also see work scholars (student aids) here who are totally baffled by Macs. It's all what you're used to. My mother is a photoshop wiz but don't ask her how a computer works. Users want to use, not run computers. Just like modern cars are being geared away from the weekend hobbiest (pain in the a** to change the oil on 98 Chevy) towards the professional mechanic, so are computers. Face it, users will always out-number pros (more jobs for us) and MS knows this and caters to them. Yes, you can drive it out the door, but be ready when it pukes it guts up.
It's their logic boards. You can use the same ingredients as a master chef but the outcome can be different.
Re:We need these in the US
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Understandable. I just lucked out meeting my wife. It's not always that easy for some of us. Time helps, though. I'm in my thirties and she's in her fourties. We'd have been way to shy to speak to each other in our twenties, at least about stuff that mattered. These could help some people. And as far as the art thing goes, I even went to art school for a year. Yeah, they're geeks too, but a different type. Didn't match up. Systems Analysts are cool, though.
It's the Geek Code in electronics
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They'll probably keep refining these things until they go cellular.
There's a lot of good books out there waiting to be made into movies. Just hope they don't fuck them up like they did with Starship Troopers. How about "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" or "Ringworld" or "Footfall". Hell, Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar" are great. Last decent S/F movie I saw was Gattica!
>I'd love to know what school you are going to, my college sell computers and computers parts, but the prices are horrible. Not to meantion the fact that a 10 base T connection here costs $250 for the year(100 base T is $500), about $32 a month... a little costly for a college student.
At my school, we have free 10 base T in all the dorms, free setup at the beginning of each semester, free repair/install/configure whatever for all the students, both in their rooms or bring your box into our shop. We'll also upgrade ram, hard drives, os's, help with sound and video cards, etc. You need to find a school that is eager to keep students around. Don't believe me, just check out Eckerd College, down in Florida.
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For higher end stuff, you might check out Klipsch speakers and McIntosh amplifiers. No, these aren't related to Macintosh computers so you'd be safe from contamination.
The Digital Theater is a good place to read up on A/V equipment.
MacOS 8 and 9 all come with a multiprocessing extension (Apple CPU Plugins in the Multiprocessing folder in the Extensions folder). This extension does not provide true SMP but it does allow threads to be spread across multiprocessors. Any app that is written to correctly utilize threads per Apple spec will receive some benefit from multiprocessors. So yes, buy a multiprocessor Mac now and enjoy it. You're not 'waisting' it waiting for OSX.
Try FinderPop. It's a control panel that brings up Mac contextual menus by holding down a click on something. You don't need a second button or holding down a key combo at all. Just hope there's a way to work it in OSX and I wish it could be implimented in LinuxPPC.
What do you want? Either you like Hemmingway or you don't. 'Course, my getting into Hemmingway through the film "To Have and Have Not" colors my appreciation. I really like the movie as well as the novel, even though they're almost totally diffrent. The only saving grace for the movie is that Hemmingway had some input in the script.
Aragorn: Liam Neeson
Arwen: Kate Winslet
Theoden: Sean Connery
Denethor: Patrick Stewart
Elrond: Peter O'Tool
Galadrial: Ursula Andrews (back in '70)
Legolas: ?
Gimli: ?
Eowyn: Lucy Lawless ? (blond, of course)
Eomir: Cary Elwes
Faramir: Kenneth Branagh
Boromir: Mandy Patinkin
Hobbits: ?
Saruman: Nigel Terry (Merlin in Excalibur)
Gandalf: Alec Guinness (one can dream, can't they?)
Luthien - Beren
Arwen - Aragon
Don't forget Tuor and Idril Celebrindal. She was the daughter of Turgon, king of Gondolin. Their child was Earendil Halfelven who was the father of Elrond and Elros.
As far as emphasizing the love story between Arwen and Aragorn, I've been bummed that that didn't have a larger part of LOTR. I don't know about the casting, though.
Speak for yourself. I read the Illiad at least once a year. While it doesn't make the millinium cut, I feel it's one of the best pieces of western litereature out there. Translations of past litereature should be allowed. Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1974) is IMHO, the best English language Illiad out there. Will have to go and see if I can skew this list around.
The big thing holding back non MS OS's is the fact that Microsoft keeps changing their file formats for Office apps. The majority of business users would not care what OS their computer ran, as long as they can work with MS Word and Excel files. By keeping the file format a running target, MS even creates incomatability between their own applications. Open file formats for key business apps would allow others (Word Perfect, Star Office, Nissus Writer, etc) to offer MS Office compatability (by this, I mean, seamless, no problem openning, no problem with formating, etc) and allow other OS's a foot in the door of the business desktop. Who cares if Microsoft gets broken up as long as it's 'possible' for other companies to compete with them.
Some experienced users, who do a lot of their own work and even work on other's machines do seem to have bad luck with computers. I've seen the same thing when I was an aircraft mechanic and an auto mechanic. Machinery and computers seem to like me. This is likely because I pick up on little things going wrong and head things off before major things break down.
FLW did the Johnson Wax building, including designing the furniture. This included a three legged, wheeled chair. The chair was totally unstable. When the company went to Wright about this, he said the people needed to be trained in how to sit in the chairs. They finally got him down to the place to try the chairs himself and he fell over. In an interview later in his life, he admited that some of his furniture gave himself bruises. So there ya' go. Even fancy pants architechs can put out nice looking but impractical stuff.
I'm a tech support guy at a small college. My work entails about 60% repair and setup of computers in the 'pit', 30% calls on campus, and 10% coding and such. I require a a large desktop area with several monitors so that I can be working on several machines at once as well as my desktop machine with dual monitors. I also need at least two large shelves for parts and a bookshelf for my books as well as a filecabinet. When I started here, there were four of us in a large room. We had a work bench running along one wall and large 'L' shaped desks blocking off each corner so that we each had a personal area with two walls as well as all facing into the center which facilitates conversation (picked up a lot of stuff about working on PC's there (I'm the Mac Guy). Now, I'm stuck in a 6'x8' closet with hardware piled everywhere! The head of the department decided that the full time programers needed to be in one room (our 'Pit'). Of course, the programmers are now complaining about not having quiet to code in. Makes you wonder where management gets it's ideas.
First world tech countries tend to have very low birthrates. I think this is because tech/capitalist societies allow individuals to survive on their own. The need for an large or extended family as a support network has passed. In an agrarian society, it is very difficult for an individual to survive. Scratch farming requires at least two people working together, with children on the way to provide support in old age. The easier it is for people to feed themselves without having to farm the land personally, the lower the birthrate.
-Side note-
With a figure of 25% of Earth population living above poverty line (rough figure), this means that 1.5 billion people are living better than almost anyone else in history. Kings and Queens of 200 years ago do not have the options we have. Food from around the world is available to the average First Worlder. Information floods the air. Just 2000 years ago, the population of the world was about that of North America today. Of that population, it would be hard to see how any more than 5% were able to live comfortably than. It's also easy to forget just how close such living conditions were here in the US. My grandfather lives in a mud brick (adobe) house that he built himself, back in the depression. He raised sheep and my grandmother cooked in a beehive oven out back as they didn't have running water or electricity until my mother was a teenager, in the late '50's. My grandparents lived as people had lived for the last 3000 years; hand to mouth. It was only with education (my mother left the farm for the Air Force and then college) that I am able to live in the relative splendor of today (poor college student with used car, used computer, etc.). Yes, I'm doing better than 75% of the planet and it's because I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place of wealth. Now how to we bring this 'good life' to the other 75%? I like the idea of computing that doesn't require the industrial infristructure of the rich countries. Some countries in Africa are going straight to cellular, bypassing copper as it's cheaper and easier. Developement of lowpower portables and wireless networking could do wonders for people all over the world. The trick is to get manufacturing costs down to the point where a data terminal costs is equivilent to one of those cheap calculators they give away.
In Florida, public school funding is dependent on property tax money that is voted on. Florida has a large proportion of people who do not have school age children and would rather see property taxes not increased or spent on elderly/medical needs. This, when Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country, both in families and elderly. The other statistic that impacts on this is that the US elderly population is going to double in the next 30 years. There will be less working age people to do more work -or- be more productive. Higher productivity is what has sustained the current economic boom and kept inflation down. Higher productivity entails people working smarter which means workers with more technological savvy. Corporations know that they need a large pool of educated workers and they know that demographics are against them. So yes, they are going to turn to Universities and they are going to do what they can to get the type of workers they need. This is nothing new. Universities in the middle ages were started by patrons that wanted clerks that were not tied to the church. The increase in trade also required learned men, thus the rise of the middle class. Land grant schools in the US were started for the same reason. The founding fathers (propertied middle/upper class) knew that if the new country was going to compete with England and France, they'd need something other than farmers. Education was an investment in technological 'brain' infristructure. Always has been. Don't forget, the researchers of the past, while they frequently may have died in poverty, they were clients of Patrons, looking for someone to support them.
The processors used at my school (staff/faculty work machines) are roughly: 50% P133-166, 25% PII 300, 15% PPC 601/603/G3 66-266, 5% PIII 400, 5% G4 400-500. The majority of staff use the P133-166 machines, as well as most of the PC labs. The Mac labs have been upgraded to G3 but faculty still have slower Macs and PCs on their desks. A few professors in natural sciences (geologists, mathematicians, physicists) are using high end machines and that's about it. Students in the dorms have the fastest machines on campus. The staff and faculty mostly use their machines for word processing, email and the web. These machines (P133-166) just seem to keep chugging along. The majority of these people, who do have a lot of computers at home as well, are not into ripping mp3's, gaming, or cellular recombination. They just do the big three-word processing, surf the web, and email. How much power does one need for these tasks?
I've been using LinuxPPC2000 on my 7200/120 as the main mac server for our school with no problems. I have over 3000 users on this machine (not logged in at the same time, though). It handles all the installers for the Macs on campus as well as providing storage space to all the Mac lab machines and students using Macs in the dorms. The install took less than an hour.
Check out The Register at register.uk.co . They have a cool article on how to hijack a domain name and how to guard against it. G
Check out all these OS projects out there. Yeah, a lot of them are *nix based but some of them are clean sheet designs. http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bridges/os/distri buted.html
My college is still using 6100's in most of the labs as well as machines for faculty (we also have IIvx's in use). I've added G3 upgrades to the 6100's as money permits. I also pick up 6100's for around $200 for G3 upgrades. What can I say we're a poor college.
We're still using 68030 macs on up to new G4's here at my school. The largest Mac labs are all 6100 w/G3 upgrades. These machines came out in '94. As long as the machines hold out, they won't give me any more money to upgrade. In a way, it kinda' sucks. We get about 100 new pc's a year but less than 20 new Macs. It's used Macs the rest of the time. They just came out with upgrade cards for LC's (33MHz '040's). Might get some of those and the Project Appleseed clustering software to build a small cluster of pizza boxes. G
Being a Mac user first, who dabbles with Linux and is forced to work on WinX, I find both difficult at times. What's with all the restarting everytime you change something in Windows? Partitioning hard drives shouldn't be that complicated either (Linux), though the latest LinuxPPC release has done a lot to fix that. I also see work scholars (student aids) here who are totally baffled by Macs. It's all what you're used to. My mother is a photoshop wiz but don't ask her how a computer works. Users want to use, not run computers. Just like modern cars are being geared away from the weekend hobbiest (pain in the a** to change the oil on 98 Chevy) towards the professional mechanic, so are computers. Face it, users will always out-number pros (more jobs for us) and MS knows this and caters to them. Yes, you can drive it out the door, but be ready when it pukes it guts up.
It's their logic boards. You can use the same ingredients as a master chef but the outcome can be different.
Understandable. I just lucked out meeting my wife. It's not always that easy for some of us. Time helps, though. I'm in my thirties and she's in her fourties. We'd have been way to shy to speak to each other in our twenties, at least about stuff that mattered. These could help some people. And as far as the art thing goes, I even went to art school for a year. Yeah, they're geeks too, but a different type. Didn't match up. Systems Analysts are cool, though.
They'll probably keep refining these things until they go cellular.
There's a lot of good books out there waiting to be made into movies. Just hope they don't fuck them up like they did with Starship Troopers. How about "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" or "Ringworld" or "Footfall". Hell, Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar" are great. Last decent S/F movie I saw was Gattica!
>I'd love to know what school you are going to, my college sell computers and computers parts, but the prices are horrible. Not to meantion the fact that a 10 base T connection here costs $250 for the year(100 base T is $500), about $32 a month... a little costly for a college student.
At my school, we have free 10 base T in all the dorms, free setup at the beginning of each semester, free repair/install/configure whatever for all the students, both in their rooms or bring your box into our shop. We'll also upgrade ram, hard drives, os's, help with sound and video cards, etc. You need to find a school that is eager to keep students around. Don't believe me, just check out Eckerd College, down in Florida.
G