Hmmm. Good point. But the students aren't the ones spending the money. The corporations will buy what they want and hire people to attend to it. Although... I was in a new employee's office today giving her a quick overview of our system. The guy nextdoor strolled in and said -
"These guys are brilliant. They're our bosses of tomorrow. Anybody that knows how to run all this stuff is going to be on top of the world."
So give it a while I guess... the old fogies will slowly disperse with their retirement checks and the geeks will rise to power. We shall slay the Microsoft beast yet!
Does the company you work for (if you don't work for yourself) switched to a Linux solution with all the free tools you have mentioned? If so, I'm really surprised and rather impressed. Who do you work for - I want to be there!
I'm sure this will be lost in the shuffle and consumed by the abundance of posts - but here goes...
There's a little thing called "Industry Standard". Whether it's the best way, the right way, the cheapest way, or the most effective way doesn't really mean dick when you hit the corporate level. They want the stuff that everybody else is using. Talking someone into using a new product that isn't very compatible with everyone else is rather difficult.
Example:
Quark Inc makes a layout program called QuarkXpress. It's the industry standard. It costs over $800. Adobe Systems Inc makes a competetive (some say better) layout program called InDesign. It costs $700. The really big difference is that Adobe GIVES its software to design classes to be taught to the students, Quark requires the school to purchase their software.
This has been happening (PageMaker before InDesign) for about six years. Quark is still the industry standard and I don't see it changing for another year. Fortunately Quark screwed the pooch and didn't make Xpress native for OS X, and everyone is dumping them. It'll take time to filter through the entire graphic arts arena.
The same thing is going to happen with Microsoft. Their products are industry standard. They're going to have to make a MAJOR mistake before anyone else comes along to take the lead.
A friend of mine (ZettaMatrix) and I were in our usual "Wouldn't it be cool if..." mode the other night and came up with a rather interesting proposal.
If you could find roughly 35,000 volunteers who would be willing to spend no less than four years in something similar to a city wide 'Bio-Dome', we could learn a lot about our technology and where we need to go next. They would have to be willing to give up everything they've got to live in this place though.
A city the size of my town, powered by nuclear energy, and chalkful of all of today's coolest technologies. The only energy source would be nuclear electricity. Housing complexes (modern appartments only) would be wired with fiber, power, and plummed (water in, sewage out). There would be no copper or coax. The city would have a massive server to monitor all the automated mass transit systems (maglev, electic monorail, electric bus...), and store the citizen's accounts. There would be no personal transit other than Segway (ha ha), bicycle, and sneakers. And it could all be run on IPv6. Every device in the home, every device on workplace, and every device in the 'big blue room' would be managed on a very fast, very stable, very redundant IPv6 network.
Finding enough employement and generating an economy would be difficult, but I think it could be done. It could use the "Heaven's Gate" approach and use web design as its primary source of external income. Or technology consulting - because you know it'd be 75% geeks. "We're testing the future so you don't have to. Now give us some money!"
It would have to be a fully functioning city - almost completely independant of outside resources. It would have to supply the majority of its own food, and deal with the majority of its own waste. SimCity 3000 - full scale.
The issue would be getting it all started. I'd be one of the first to sign up, as long as it's not named after what I'm sure would be one of the biggest funding companies. "The Microsoft City"... no way man.
I just told one of my friends that is trying to get into web design these exact same things. He's using way too much javascript and html to get a very simple task done. KISS - it saves everyone a lot of trouble.
Yeah, I totally know what you're talking about. I've been going over details with a Perl-scripter friend of mine and we're going to try to create something at some point in the near future. If you'd like me to share my results, just let me know.
"I actually like ads in games, whether they're spoofs or real, so long as they fit the context of the game."
GranTurismo is about the Grand Touring racing industry. The advertising is how they keep the sport alive. The game is filled with advertisements, even the cars are modeled after real cars and have the stickers from the real advertisers. I've always thought it gave the game a hightened sense of reality and wondered if the original spooncer had something to do with game funding. Apparently not (after a little research) but it still makes you wonder how much money they (Sony) could make if they had chosen to charge some nominal fee for advertisements in the game.
That's an interesting site! Too bad that of the first five or six pages of movies (60 movies), I had only seen eight of them. That doesn't help the system tell me what movies I will like. And someone spent a lot of time putting those movies into a database and including information about them to build cross-referancable data.
It's close to what I was talking about. I live in a small town (population roughly 50,000), but there are three colleges (total of about 45,000 students) and a few large corperations that bring people in from neighboring cities (probably 15,000). So we have lots of resturants for lunch. Basically I thought it would be a cool idea for all the guys in our 'lunch group' to have a database that listed the resturants (in order) that we would like to eat at for lunch with the group. The server would keep track of where each of the individuals had eaten recently, and suggest where they should go next.
Ordered list of resturants for each individual including last date/time they dined there
Page to update information, including times the indivudual may have eaten there without the group
Main page would include a list of everyone in the group with a checkbox next to each name. Before lunch, you check everyone's name that is in your group for the day. The server checks the database, and makes a few suggestions of where to eat that will make everyone happy. Then you tell it which one your group has chosen and it updates all the individuals in the database automagically.
If you have 15 to 20 people that usually group up to go to lunch, and everyone has 20 to 30 resturants in their 'personal favorites' list, I think the system would work quite well.
I thought it was cool, so did everyone else... but they're too lazy to make such a cool idea happen. Oh well... loosers.
I realize this is the same thing that everyone else is saying, but it's just HTTP (a protocal...) on a different port. Woop-dee-doo. Have any of you watched Morpheus traffic on a firewall, though? It's rather amusing how close they got to being completely oblivious to a casual sys admin like myself. The client appears to change mp3 file names to.jpg, and send them as http requests on a different port. If they had put it on port 80 I probably wouldn't have caught it 'back in the day'.
If you really want to make a 'hidden service', you'd make the client break the files up into smaller packages (much like warez RARs), name them random files from the Internet Cache folder, send them on port 80, include a file that tells the receiving end how to put them back together, and you'd be set. It would just look like someone was browsing the Internet. It would be four megabytes worth of webdata... but I've been known to pull that much webdata from a website before. And if you really want to get hardcore (for the hardcore content checking firewalls) you could change the header information in the files so that they appeared as jpgs, or html files. Super shneeky.
The old (very old) Deskmate DOS menu system from Tandy had a really spiffy grocery list and inventory system. Of course, it couldn't interact with your fridge and pantry, nore could it automatically order groceries for you from the web. It also had a recipie program for keeping track of your recipies, and if you wanted to make something, it would check the inventory and tell you what you needed to buy by starting a new grocery list. Amazing stuff for a simple DOS program (:
The 'random mean' thing that someone else mentioned would be cool. I'm trying to talk some of my friends into writing a nice web script/database that keeps track of the individuals in the group; ie: where they will eat, where they have eaten recently... and then pick a place for 'todays' group to go to. It seems pretty simple to me, and it would save hours a week of seven or eight guys arguing about "so what do you want today?", "I dunno, I picked yesterday and everyone yelled at me..."
Very good information, and I can see why there are still only one on motherboards. But this doesn't mean there has to only be one. How about comm ports? Or parallel ports? I think it would be important to keep each AGP on its own bus, which would make the task even easier... that coming from my very uneducated electrical-engeniering self.
Ah yes, one gets a little slower RAMDAC, but I think the refresh rate comes out the same. You're right about the color issue, though. One is a slight blue and the other comes out a bit red. VERY ANNOYING and I'm just your average geek. I do, however, work at an advertising agency... maybe their desire for the finer visuals has started rubbing off on me. (:
Well, I'm a bit nit-picky on wording, and I assume things I probably shouldn't - so don't hessitate to call me arogant. I think you might have bad information regarding the video signal.
There is no such thing as a "Mac signal". VGA is VGA is VGA... it doesn't matter what computer the signal is coming from, as long as the signal is standard, non-interupted, and the hardware isn't malfunctioning. If it's a newer Mac (good ole clear plastic model), it will conform to the standard with no problems. I highly suggest checking the monitor first, then getting a different monitor to test the output of the Mac. One of them is malfunctioning because your setup is 'ideal'... by my standards (:
Absolutely right. And that statement can be extended to my parents (who, by the way, are not Joe Sixpack).
In addition to this, I would say that general knowledge of the existance of TiVo is rather minimal in the non-geek catagory of TV viewers. We know about it because of articles like this one being posted on the `Net, but as the article pointed out, the networks stopped running commercials for TiVo because they realized its potential threat to kill their advertising revenue. People just don't know it exists in the first place. Before you go home, or tomorrow morning at work, ask your non-geek co-workers if they've ever heard of TiVo. I bet less than half even know what you're talking about.
Also, I know about it, but hear so little news that I quickly forget about it. I've intended to research the Sony TiVo pictured in the article for some time now and keep forgetting. I'll be swinging by Best Buy tonight to get another 'hands on' demo before I head to the house. This is really something we should all be jumping at.
I believe the G450 can seperate them as well, but when I saw that they could act as one I quickly clicked that option. For some reason it just works better for me - probably the way I organize myself on a computer - if that makes any sense...
Heh heh, a friend of mind has said the very same thing, "sure would be nice to have two AGP slots!" We were later informed that it's not physically possible with current motherboard specifications, but it wasn't explained in detail to me. Oh well.
You know, the monitor might just be bad. Have you tried it on other computers? I've seen this before and it turned out there was a problem with the power system in the monitor.
If your monitor is the flat CRT Trinitron, then it's the one a bunch of people are using. Dell, HP, Compaq, Sun, SGI... everyone uses it because it's so amazing. I've got two of the 19" version (Dell branded) of the same thing. I didn't have the desk space nore the funding for such a beast, but they sure are nice (:
Very good point. I actually have two identical monitors on a huge desk (cumberson at times...) so I can situate them side by side. Your situation did cross my mind when I was getting into this whole endevor, but I decided that I could find a way to get the two monitors side by side no matter where I took them. It's also nice having one resolution setting for both monitors. It actually shows up as 3200 x 1200 in the Display Properties.
Before this I was running a GeForce 256 and an ATI All-In-Wonder (PCI), with a 19" and a 17". It was very nice being able to set different resolutions and position the smaller monitor at any point along side the larger monitor. It allowed me to keep a [near] consistant 'pixel per inch' ratio across both displays.
A) I don't think that guy even read your first comment... heh heh.
B) What kind of CRT are you using on your Mac? I purchased a whole slew of Sony G500s for my Agency's G4 workstations. They eat up a bunch of desk space, but the color, resolution, refreshrate, and expense are far and away better than any pannel I've ever seen.
I have two 19" flat CRT Trinitrons at home connected to a Matrox G450. I highly suggest this card (or the G550) because it comes with good software for possitioning popup windows correctly instead of splitting it in the middle of two displays. It's nice not wasting an addition PCI slot as well, and both monitors have equal hardware pushing video to them. It also makes the display appear as one monitor to Windows, where as having two video cards actually show up as multiple devices to Windows. This allows the Tasktray to span across both monitors, and my active desktop as well. With multiple video cards, you have a master desktop that is just like a single desktop, then all the rest are just additional space to move windows to. I guess it depends on your personal taste, but I like having the displays appear as one to Windows.
My only word of caution: Having an odd number of displays is highly recommended as you won't have the border of two displays in the center of your vision. It's very distracting.
I think you might be surprised how quick a company is willing to shell out money for something that comes in a pretty package. I had to fight pretty hard to keep my company from buying a service to transfer files across the internet to clients and vendors. They were going to pay hundreds of dollars a month for something that essentially does file sends over http, and makes Acrobat PDFs. Both of these tasks we already have the capability in house.
If it's marketted well, it will catch on, and when people see that they have to upgrade their software to keep fullfilling their video needs, they'll jump on it. I wouldn't be surprised if this takes off without a snag.
But like another comment pointed out, the article is over a year old. I wonder where this stands now?
Slashdot Mirror
"Maybe now some of the lazy admins of these spam-spewing mail servers will clean up their acts."
Maybe some of these admins ARE the spam-spewing individuals.
~LoudMusic
Tonight I will fire up the ole PC Server 704 in salute to their wonderful work.
Yes it is installed, yes it does boot, yes it is quite bad ass (: (yes I leave it off due to emense power consumption)
IBM PC Server 704 (image) - I'll make some webcam shots of the bad boy tonight too.
~LoudMusic
Hmmm. Good point. But the students aren't the ones spending the money. The corporations will buy what they want and hire people to attend to it. Although ... I was in a new employee's office today giving her a quick overview of our system. The guy nextdoor strolled in and said -
... the old fogies will slowly disperse with their retirement checks and the geeks will rise to power. We shall slay the Microsoft beast yet!
"These guys are brilliant. They're our bosses of tomorrow. Anybody that knows how to run all this stuff is going to be on top of the world."
So give it a while I guess
~LoudMusic
Does the company you work for (if you don't work for yourself) switched to a Linux solution with all the free tools you have mentioned? If so, I'm really surprised and rather impressed. Who do you work for - I want to be there!
~LoudMusic
I'm sure this will be lost in the shuffle and consumed by the abundance of posts - but here goes ...
There's a little thing called "Industry Standard". Whether it's the best way, the right way, the cheapest way, or the most effective way doesn't really mean dick when you hit the corporate level. They want the stuff that everybody else is using. Talking someone into using a new product that isn't very compatible with everyone else is rather difficult.
Example:
Quark Inc makes a layout program called QuarkXpress. It's the industry standard. It costs over $800. Adobe Systems Inc makes a competetive (some say better ) layout program called InDesign. It costs $700. The really big difference is that Adobe GIVES its software to design classes to be taught to the students, Quark requires the school to purchase their software.
This has been happening (PageMaker before InDesign) for about six years. Quark is still the industry standard and I don't see it changing for another year. Fortunately Quark screwed the pooch and didn't make Xpress native for OS X, and everyone is dumping them. It'll take time to filter through the entire graphic arts arena.
The same thing is going to happen with Microsoft. Their products are industry standard. They're going to have to make a MAJOR mistake before anyone else comes along to take the lead.
~LoudMusic
Only slightly off-topic.
...), and store the citizen's accounts. There would be no personal transit other than Segway (ha ha), bicycle, and sneakers. And it could all be run on IPv6. Every device in the home, every device on workplace, and every device in the 'big blue room' would be managed on a very fast, very stable, very redundant IPv6 network.
... no way man.
A friend of mine (ZettaMatrix) and I were in our usual "Wouldn't it be cool if..." mode the other night and came up with a rather interesting proposal.
If you could find roughly 35,000 volunteers who would be willing to spend no less than four years in something similar to a city wide 'Bio-Dome', we could learn a lot about our technology and where we need to go next. They would have to be willing to give up everything they've got to live in this place though.
A city the size of my town, powered by nuclear energy, and chalkful of all of today's coolest technologies. The only energy source would be nuclear electricity. Housing complexes (modern appartments only) would be wired with fiber, power, and plummed (water in, sewage out). There would be no copper or coax. The city would have a massive server to monitor all the automated mass transit systems (maglev, electic monorail, electric bus
Finding enough employement and generating an economy would be difficult, but I think it could be done. It could use the "Heaven's Gate" approach and use web design as its primary source of external income. Or technology consulting - because you know it'd be 75% geeks. "We're testing the future so you don't have to. Now give us some money!"
It would have to be a fully functioning city - almost completely independant of outside resources. It would have to supply the majority of its own food, and deal with the majority of its own waste. SimCity 3000 - full scale.
The issue would be getting it all started. I'd be one of the first to sign up, as long as it's not named after what I'm sure would be one of the biggest funding companies. "The Microsoft City"
~LoudMusic
Excellent
I just told one of my friends that is trying to get into web design these exact same things. He's using way too much javascript and html to get a very simple task done. KISS - it saves everyone a lot of trouble.
~LoudMusic
Yeah, I totally know what you're talking about. I've been going over details with a Perl-scripter friend of mine and we're going to try to create something at some point in the near future. If you'd like me to share my results, just let me know.
~LoudMusic
"I actually like ads in games, whether they're spoofs or real, so long as they fit the context of the game."
GranTurismo is about the Grand Touring racing industry. The advertising is how they keep the sport alive. The game is filled with advertisements, even the cars are modeled after real cars and have the stickers from the real advertisers. I've always thought it gave the game a hightened sense of reality and wondered if the original spooncer had something to do with game funding. Apparently not (after a little research) but it still makes you wonder how much money they (Sony) could make if they had chosen to charge some nominal fee for advertisements in the game.
~LoudMusic
It's close to what I was talking about. I live in a small town (population roughly 50,000), but there are three colleges (total of about 45,000 students) and a few large corperations that bring people in from neighboring cities (probably 15,000). So we have lots of resturants for lunch. Basically I thought it would be a cool idea for all the guys in our 'lunch group' to have a database that listed the resturants (in order) that we would like to eat at for lunch with the group. The server would keep track of where each of the individuals had eaten recently, and suggest where they should go next.
If you have 15 to 20 people that usually group up to go to lunch, and everyone has 20 to 30 resturants in their 'personal favorites' list, I think the system would work quite well.
I thought it was cool, so did everyone else
~LoudMusic
I realize this is the same thing that everyone else is saying, but it's just HTTP (a protocal ...) on a different port. Woop-dee-doo. Have any of you watched Morpheus traffic on a firewall, though? It's rather amusing how close they got to being completely oblivious to a casual sys admin like myself. The client appears to change mp3 file names to .jpg, and send them as http requests on a different port. If they had put it on port 80 I probably wouldn't have caught it 'back in the day'.
... but I've been known to pull that much webdata from a website before. And if you really want to get hardcore (for the hardcore content checking firewalls) you could change the header information in the files so that they appeared as jpgs, or html files. Super shneeky.
If you really want to make a 'hidden service', you'd make the client break the files up into smaller packages (much like warez RARs), name them random files from the Internet Cache folder, send them on port 80, include a file that tells the receiving end how to put them back together, and you'd be set. It would just look like someone was browsing the Internet. It would be four megabytes worth of webdata
~LoudMusic
The old (very old) Deskmate DOS menu system from Tandy had a really spiffy grocery list and inventory system. Of course, it couldn't interact with your fridge and pantry, nore could it automatically order groceries for you from the web. It also had a recipie program for keeping track of your recipies, and if you wanted to make something, it would check the inventory and tell you what you needed to buy by starting a new grocery list. Amazing stuff for a simple DOS program (:
... and then pick a place for 'todays' group to go to. It seems pretty simple to me, and it would save hours a week of seven or eight guys arguing about "so what do you want today?", "I dunno, I picked yesterday and everyone yelled at me ..."
The 'random mean' thing that someone else mentioned would be cool. I'm trying to talk some of my friends into writing a nice web script/database that keeps track of the individuals in the group; ie: where they will eat, where they have eaten recently
~LoudMusic
Very good information, and I can see why there are still only one on motherboards. But this doesn't mean there has to only be one. How about comm ports? Or parallel ports? I think it would be important to keep each AGP on its own bus, which would make the task even easier ... that coming from my very uneducated electrical-engeniering self.
~LoudMusic
Ah yes, one gets a little slower RAMDAC, but I think the refresh rate comes out the same. You're right about the color issue, though. One is a slight blue and the other comes out a bit red. VERY ANNOYING and I'm just your average geek. I do, however, work at an advertising agency ... maybe their desire for the finer visuals has started rubbing off on me. (:
~LoudMusic
Well, I'm a bit nit-picky on wording, and I assume things I probably shouldn't - so don't hessitate to call me arogant. I think you might have bad information regarding the video signal.
... it doesn't matter what computer the signal is coming from, as long as the signal is standard, non-interupted, and the hardware isn't malfunctioning. If it's a newer Mac (good ole clear plastic model), it will conform to the standard with no problems. I highly suggest checking the monitor first, then getting a different monitor to test the output of the Mac. One of them is malfunctioning because your setup is 'ideal' ... by my standards (:
There is no such thing as a "Mac signal". VGA is VGA is VGA
~LoudMusic
Absolutely right. And that statement can be extended to my parents (who, by the way, are not Joe Sixpack).
In addition to this, I would say that general knowledge of the existance of TiVo is rather minimal in the non-geek catagory of TV viewers. We know about it because of articles like this one being posted on the `Net, but as the article pointed out, the networks stopped running commercials for TiVo because they realized its potential threat to kill their advertising revenue. People just don't know it exists in the first place. Before you go home, or tomorrow morning at work, ask your non-geek co-workers if they've ever heard of TiVo. I bet less than half even know what you're talking about.
Also, I know about it, but hear so little news that I quickly forget about it. I've intended to research the Sony TiVo pictured in the article for some time now and keep forgetting. I'll be swinging by Best Buy tonight to get another 'hands on' demo before I head to the house. This is really something we should all be jumping at.
~LoudMusic
I believe the G450 can seperate them as well, but when I saw that they could act as one I quickly clicked that option. For some reason it just works better for me - probably the way I organize myself on a computer - if that makes any sense ...
~LoudMusic
Heh heh, a friend of mind has said the very same thing, "sure would be nice to have two AGP slots!" We were later informed that it's not physically possible with current motherboard specifications, but it wasn't explained in detail to me. Oh well.
~LoudMusic
You know, the monitor might just be bad. Have you tried it on other computers? I've seen this before and it turned out there was a problem with the power system in the monitor.
... everyone uses it because it's so amazing. I've got two of the 19" version (Dell branded) of the same thing. I didn't have the desk space nore the funding for such a beast, but they sure are nice (:
If your monitor is the flat CRT Trinitron, then it's the one a bunch of people are using. Dell, HP, Compaq, Sun, SGI
~LoudMusic
Hey cool, a review page. Still need a Japanese to English translater though (:
o g/ pc/cf-81/cf-81.jsp
...
I figured out the problem, somehow there was a space in the address.
http://www.sense.panasonic.co.jp/shop/ncpo/catl
Someone else posted it and got modded to 5 already. I guess mine will wither away into nothing ness
~LoudMusic
Very good point. I actually have two identical monitors on a huge desk (cumberson at times ...) so I can situate them side by side. Your situation did cross my mind when I was getting into this whole endevor, but I decided that I could find a way to get the two monitors side by side no matter where I took them. It's also nice having one resolution setting for both monitors. It actually shows up as 3200 x 1200 in the Display Properties.
...
Before this I was running a GeForce 256 and an ATI All-In-Wonder (PCI), with a 19" and a 17". It was very nice being able to set different resolutions and position the smaller monitor at any point along side the larger monitor. It allowed me to keep a [near] consistant 'pixel per inch' ratio across both displays.
I'm glad you brought that up
~LoudMusic
I'm glad there are people like you still around.
... heh heh.
A) I don't think that guy even read your first comment
B) What kind of CRT are you using on your Mac? I purchased a whole slew of Sony G500s for my Agency's G4 workstations. They eat up a bunch of desk space, but the color, resolution, refreshrate, and expense are far and away better than any pannel I've ever seen.
~LoudMusic
I have two 19" flat CRT Trinitrons at home connected to a Matrox G450. I highly suggest this card (or the G550) because it comes with good software for possitioning popup windows correctly instead of splitting it in the middle of two displays. It's nice not wasting an addition PCI slot as well, and both monitors have equal hardware pushing video to them. It also makes the display appear as one monitor to Windows, where as having two video cards actually show up as multiple devices to Windows. This allows the Tasktray to span across both monitors, and my active desktop as well. With multiple video cards, you have a master desktop that is just like a single desktop, then all the rest are just additional space to move windows to. I guess it depends on your personal taste, but I like having the displays appear as one to Windows.
My only word of caution: Having an odd number of displays is highly recommended as you won't have the border of two displays in the center of your vision. It's very distracting.
Dell 19" Trinitron
Matrox G450 (because it has dual VGA instead of dual DVI like the G550)
Image of my 3200 x 1200 desktop (with GTPlanet active desktop (that I made))
~LoudMusic
Well, thanks to the hoards of slashdotters, the english site is down and out.
o g/ pc/cf-81/cf-81.jsp
http://www.sense.panasonic.co.jp/shop/ncpo/catl
Anyone read Japanese?
~LoudMusic
I think you might be surprised how quick a company is willing to shell out money for something that comes in a pretty package. I had to fight pretty hard to keep my company from buying a service to transfer files across the internet to clients and vendors. They were going to pay hundreds of dollars a month for something that essentially does file sends over http, and makes Acrobat PDFs. Both of these tasks we already have the capability in house.
If it's marketted well, it will catch on, and when people see that they have to upgrade their software to keep fullfilling their video needs, they'll jump on it. I wouldn't be surprised if this takes off without a snag.
But like another comment pointed out, the article is over a year old. I wonder where this stands now?
~LoudMusic