Keep in mind, though, that quite a few ATX power supplies will not work properly unless they are loaded. Usually they require that you draw few Amps on +5 or +3.3V lines. Without sufficient load output voltage may be not what you'd expect to see.
Sure, Quattro4 beats old good matrox in performance and would probably beat it in the quality department on the *second* display.
But! The problem with Nvidia cards (as well as with Radeons) is that right between high-speed RAMDAC and your trusty high-end monitor thay put a low-pass filter that smoothes the high-quality signal (i.e. with sharp edges, hence with a lot of high-frequency harmonics) that RAMDAC generates. What you see on the screen is *slightly* fuzzy image. The problem is that it has to be sharp. In my experience matrox G400MAX gives the best picture quality. G450 is similar, but it's a bit slower. G550 is a bit faster but it's RAMDAC is on an add-on board and that slightly degrades signal quality.
I tried Radeon with it's 350MHz ramdac which, according to some reviews supposed to beat nvidia in image quality. Yuck! I've plugged my g400max back 20 minutes later because I couldn't stand that annoyingly fuzzy (compared to matrox) picture radeon produced.
Once in a while I give new cards a chance to replace my old matrox, but so far g400 bets everyone in quality department on primary monitor. Maybe I shall try 200nvs.
Here's what I found about taxes in Ireland on http://www.emigrant.ie/living/tax.htm.
Individual Taxpayer:
Up to £17,000 22%
Further earnings 44%
Doesn't sound that much better than those I pay in California... Considering that top tax bracket in Ireland starts at 17000 (~$25k?) it even seems quite a bit worse... On the positive side rent must be so much lower than in Bay Area...
I've been using SL-9000 and I'm pretty happy about it. It's programmable - if SL-9000 does not have built-in codes for your device, it can always learn the trick from original remote.
It can assign a sequence of commands to some of the buttons. It comes pretty handy when you want to turn on/off cable box/TV/ VCR all at once.
The most useful feature is that you can assign any function to any button if you have original remotes. I've set up my SL9000 that it controls TV/CABLE/VCR without mode switching and the button layout is the one *I* think is right, not the menufacturer.:-)
All in all, Once I've set everything up, I've never used other remotes ever since.
Did I mention it's damn powerful? I can point it in any direction in a room and it works perfectly.
For $100 it's hard to beat if you have more than 1 device to control, and it's simply essential if some of your devices have weird features other "universal" RC manufacturers didn't think about. Before RC-9000 I tried several such RCs and neither was able to control my digital cable box.
I've been thinking about this a bit. My younger brother dropped out of college arguing that they (college) are hopelessly out of date in CS and that real work experience is more important. Below are some points that came out during our arguments.
What matters -- education or experience?
These days employer pays more attention to what you can do prectically, not theoretically. Therefore work experience gives you more points. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who's looking for the job and potential employer quite often gets alot of resumes. It's pretty hard to figure out who's worth what, therefore there must be some formal creteria to filter out resumes of "unfit" candidates. In my experience almost every employer I've seen would not pay attention to a resume without words "B.S" or "M.S" or something like that. If you happen to live abroad and want to find a job in US, you'd better get at least B.S. Otherwise it will be quite hard to get in.
If you've got an interview with potential employer, then experience plays most important role. To get an interview, your resume should pass through some kind of filter and that's where you'd better have a degree.
Education per se
That is true that educational institutions quite often lag behind current technologies. On the other hand, there is not that much conceptually new stuff invented lately. Technology does change pretty fast, but science behind it evolves significantly slower. Therefore, in my opinion, it pays to spend some years in college studying basics. It's sometimes surprising to see someone who claims to be a software developer and who never ever read "The Art of Programming".
I've spent 6 years getting my degree, and I really think thet it was well worth it. It's not that they've made me learn a lot of stuff I will probably never use in my life (Physics of high energy particle detectors anyone?), the point is that they've taught us HOW to learn, how to get through tons of information and gather all those important bits. Consider college years as an experience in information processing and practical application of cognitive sciences (besides beer drinking and all other fun stuff).:-)
Another point that was not obvious at all to me when I was a teenager is that I really didn't know what is it I want to do. I just didn't have enough information about world around me. It's a catch-22 situation - you do not know what to learn because you know too little, and you know too little because you do not know what do you want to learn. The funny thing it that I was pretty sure that I know everything (well, almost. I didn't know how does that feel to spend 25hrs a day at work..:)
All in all, education is the basis for your future development. Don't neglect it just because you think you already know everything and you don't need the rest. Try it, you might like it after all. Let's not forget that there is a lot of interesting things besides computer in this world.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind, though, that quite a few ATX power supplies will not work properly unless they are loaded. Usually they require that you draw few Amps on +5 or +3.3V lines. Without sufficient load output voltage may be not what you'd expect to see.
I found that DjVu format produces substantially smaller file than PDF for the same scanned image.
There is an open-source project http://djvu.sourceforge.net/ that provides code for reading DjVu docs, but I have no idea where to get DjVu encoder.
Bummer! IndexComputer has apparently figured out that it can charge way more than $20.
It's $60 now on their site.
Sure, Quattro4 beats old good matrox in performance and would probably beat it in the quality department on the *second* display.
But! The problem with Nvidia cards (as well as with Radeons) is that right between high-speed RAMDAC and your trusty high-end monitor thay put a low-pass filter that smoothes the high-quality signal (i.e. with sharp edges, hence with a lot of high-frequency harmonics) that RAMDAC generates. What you see on the screen is *slightly* fuzzy image. The problem is that it has to be sharp. In my experience matrox G400MAX gives the best picture quality. G450 is similar, but it's a bit slower. G550 is a bit faster but it's RAMDAC is on an add-on board and that slightly degrades signal quality.
I tried Radeon with it's 350MHz ramdac which, according to some reviews supposed to beat nvidia in image quality. Yuck! I've plugged my g400max back 20 minutes later because I couldn't stand that annoyingly fuzzy (compared to matrox) picture radeon produced.
Once in a while I give new cards a chance to replace my old matrox, but so far g400 bets everyone in quality department on primary monitor. Maybe I shall try 200nvs.
I've been using SL-9000 and I'm pretty happy about it. It's programmable - if SL-9000 does not have built-in codes for your device, it can always learn the trick from original remote.
It can assign a sequence of commands to some of the buttons. It comes pretty handy when you want to turn on/off cable box/TV/ VCR all at once.
The most useful feature is that you can assign any function to any button if you have original remotes. I've set up my SL9000 that it controls TV/CABLE/VCR without mode switching and the button layout is the one *I* think is right, not the menufacturer. :-)
All in all, Once I've set everything up, I've never used other remotes ever since.
Did I mention it's damn powerful? I can point it in any direction in a room and it works perfectly.
For $100 it's hard to beat if you have more than 1 device to control, and it's simply essential if some of your devices have weird features other "universal" RC manufacturers didn't think about. Before RC-9000 I tried several such RCs and neither was able to control my digital cable box.
I've been thinking about this a bit. My younger brother dropped out of college arguing that they (college) are hopelessly out of date in CS and that real work experience is more important. Below are some points that came out during our arguments.
What matters -- education or experience?
Education per se
--Artem