I started off my first post "Did you read the article?" I suppose I shall start off this post "Did you read my post?"
No where in my post do I attack giving away music. I say that the artist might not make money he/she might otherwise, but I never say that people should not do this, nor do I make any comment that could be taken this way.
I think you are too into the Slashdot mentality of defending music sharing (something I do not attack) and simply read my post as attacking that.
Did you read my post?
I say that what is not acceptable is MAKING MONEY off this.
When you share a mix tape, you are not making money off of the deal. Indeed, you are losing a (previously) blank tape.
Do you see the difference? You are attacking what you preceive as my attack on giving away music. In fact, I was attacking making money off of other people's music.
I liken this to someone with 16 CD-Rs burning copies of music and selling them for profit. This is not simply sharing the music, or increasing the awareness of the band. This is taking money that would otherwise go towards the original artists.
[Note that, like in my first post, I do not want to suggest that the artist mentioned in the article is not an artist. I see the difference between sampling music and wholesale CD-R burning. I simply believe that the people that made the music he sampled are entitled to their share, as well.]
Did you read the article? The artist in question was not trying to mock or satirize the music he sampled. Rather, he created a CD by mixing hundreds, and probably thousands of samples.
Like it or not, if someone takes something that an artist created (and copywrites) and turns around to use that to make money, I think there is a valid complaint to make.
This is entirely separate than the argument against music sharing. If I download a song by Pearl Jam, not only is it marked as being done by the original artist, but, more importantly, no one makes or loses money on the deal.
Suppose I take a bunch of downloaded music, burn it to disk, and give it to a friend. While the artist might lose money that he/she is otherwise entitled to, no one actively makes money on the deal.
On the other hand, if I take a bunch of downloaded music, burn it to disk, and then sell it, then the artist is missing out on his/her valid right to his or her share.
I am not saying that what the artist in the article did was not deserving of money, and definitely required artistic talent, but I do think that some of any money he makes off the music should go back to the original artists.
As far as the waveform library goes, I think it much more likely that someone at the pressing factory simply listed to the music and realized that the CD contains.
I am a big Mac fan, but have been in the market for an inexpensive PC to learn on. Since I will not be installing Windows, the best way to do this seems to be to build my own.
I have been looking for legacy-free motherboards, in part because the Mac fan in me scoffs when I see a 2GHz machine with PS/2 ports, but mostly because I will be using a USB KVM switch, and do not want to have to deal with any problems from having the silly ports.
About the only motherboard I have foudn that gets rid of some of the ports is the ABIT AT7 series motherboards. While a nice motherboard, I find it strange that there is only one.
(And, so you know, the AT7 line comes with Firewire, Audio, and Ethernet all on board. Everything else is USB, Firewire, and USB 2.0 externally, and S-ATA and ATA inside. Although it does still support a floppy drive... Ugh...)
I used to work at a small video rental chain (nine stores) in the corporate office/warehouse.
Each year, we would have a huge warehouse sale. We would gather about 10,000 previewed VHS tapes and sell them for anywhere from $1 up to $10. There were some really great deals.
Anyway, since the warehouse was actually behind and attached to one of the stores, we would just run one of the telephone lines and charge machines to the warehouse.
During that weekend, we would see tens of thousands of dollars in transactions, up from the normal activity on our account, usually measured in the hundreds of dollars a day in charges.
Each year we were called by the authorizing agent during the sale to make sure the sales were not fraudulent. In addition, one year we had to show a random sampling of the signed receipt copies from the sales.
I find it strange that the credit card company did not look into the matter any quicker than it did.
As a recently college graduate in mathematics, I have taken it upon myself to read a bunch of biographies of famous mathemeticians (almost an oxymoron outside of academia).
Has anyone else noticed that almost any famous mathematician (or one that is referred to as "great") was always more than a little strange and, oftentimes, a little crazy?
As someone who is always interested in seeing math and pure science appear as "cool", I am very glad to see movies like these being made.
"Good Will Hunting" and "Octobery Sky" are great examples of movies that show that scientists and mathematicians need not be regarded as "losers."
Taking the classes to get the degree in math will not cost you a whole lot, and will only work to your benifit. Even if your future employer has no need for a math degree, they should be impressed by the fact that you did extra work in college to get one.
Ideally the second major would be in a different field than the first to show your varied abilities, but any second major will show your added initiative.
Graduating from college I was one class away from a second degree. I was going to get a B.A. in Math, and only needed a seminar for a B.S. in Psychology. However, the seminar was only offerred in the fall, and I wanted to graduate that spring (I could not take the seminar the fall prior because or pre-reqs).
In the end, I am glad that I left early. The extra half a year of a salaried position more than made up for it.
Now that I am looking for a new job, however, I see the benifit that the second degree would have on my resume.
For you, since it will not require stayign around another semester, I would highly suggest getting the second major.
When users attack... Themselves
on
When Users Attack
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I was running some normal telephone cable for a friend of mine behind a desk. Modem, answering machine, and two telephones, all from one jack. I was running the cable and trying to get all of the power cords set up, as well. I was running out of hands, so I held one or two cables with my mouth. I was under the desk, so it was hard to work with.
I was getting things set-up when I plugged in one telephone cable to another piece of equipment. Sure enough, the telephone cable that was in my mouth just became live.
I cannot describe to people that have not felt their tongue being fried what it feels like. Not a good sensation at all.
It also caused me to hit my head on the bottom of the desk.
All in all, not a great install at all.
This may or may not be related to what the site says, but it is not responding (even at 1am EST), so I thought I would add my own little story.
While not the answer to the general question ("What do you do about avoiding signing up for Passport?"), but SprintPCS does offer similar services without the need for Passport (so far).
I just logged on and checked my mounthly usage and the settings for my phone.
I also have the wireless web for $5/month, allowing me to check my email by handpring Visor to my Samsung SCH-3500 with the use of a cable from Gomadic.
I get service in most metropolitan areas.
Perhaps this would be a good SlashPoll: What cell provider do you use? SprintPCS, Verizon, etc.
The problem is going to be the laptop used - the Duos never had an ADB port for easy connection of an external keyboard or mouse (or a SCSI port to run the computer in SCSI target mode).
In one of the pictures, he mentions leaving space in the frame to run a LocalTalk cable (the one port the Duos did have), so you could network the Duo to an older Mac.
The easiest thing to do is to set up the viewer program to run on start-up and automatically start a slide show using a pre-determined folder of pictures. Then when you networked over, all you would have to do is to add/remove pictures from that folder.
I imagine you might have to use a little AppleScripting to get the slide show set up to automatically run on start-up.
You admit that the confusion comes into play if you click on something "by accident." I do not believe I can expect an OS to know what I want if I click places by accident.
Either way, to get back to the application you want, whether the menu is at the top of the window or at the top of the screen, you have to either click on the window in question, or select the program from the dock.
I also believe that allowing users to choose between two such radically different interfaces will only lead to confusion. Yes, it might be strange at first for people switching from Windows, but Apple cannot simply design their interface based on making it easy for Windows switchers. To do so would simply mean mimicing XP's interface.
XP is easier for you just because you are used to it. The OS X environment is easier for me because that is what I am used to.
I believe that 10.0 was released right when it should have been. I am not one of the Mac fans that believe that Apple should have waited to release it until it was about 10.1 quality.
The point I was trying to make was in who should have adopted it at that time.
10.0 should have been released when it was, but it was still a little rough around the edges, and there were some problems with some programs running under Classic. Since there were not a lot of programs that were running natively under 10.0, I stand by my assertion that most people were better off waiting for 10.1
A fairly computer illerate mac user asked me about a week ago if they should get Jaguar (10.2). I replied "With 10.2, there is no reason anyone with a machine that Apple says can run OS X is not running it."
Unless you are running a specialized application that does not run under Classic, there is no reason not to be running OS X if your machine supports it.
The speed, support, and stability are all there to make this a great operating system.
The fact that I was able to throw in an old video card, a spare 100Base-T card and a USB card into my G4 at once and have them all immediately recognized and supported is simply amazing. Apple has done wonderful work with this transition.
And I have a two-button scroll optical mouse natively supported, for everyone who might chime in with that.
I actually had a Sony mini-system that was capable of this. Glancing through some reviews of current Sony mini-systems, they are mostly still capable of this. Look for "Record Timer" as a feature. A Google search for (sony mini system "record timer") brought several hits.
I was actually shopping for answering machines, speaking of KISS. I am techologically well aware, but when it comes to things like answering machines, I want as little as possible.
I see no need for answering machines to have ten buttons. My last one had three buttons (Play, Fast Forward/Memo, and Outgoing). Pressing Play played the messages. Pressing Outgoing played the outgoing message, and holding down the Outgoing button allowed you to record one.
What else do you need?
I go into the store, since my three button answering machine finally broke after six years of service, and I find machines with ten buttons. What added functionality do I want on an answering machine that requires that many buttons?
I finally ended up buying a combination cordless phone and answering machine despite my hesitations about ever buying combination machines (if one part breaks, you have lost basically the entire unit). TV/VCR combinations are a great example of this.
I have tried Chimera several times, and it is looking better with each release, but it is still farm from being a complete browser (such a subjective term when you are talking about Mozilla-based browsers minus the bloat).
It simply cannot do everything well just yet. Even K-Meleon, which seems to have stopped development a year ago is still slightly ahead of Chimera's development.
My eternal concern, though, with Chimera is the size. 0.4 currently takes up over 20 megs of space on my hard drive for the application package. What is that about? I am not worried about running out of hard drive space, but I am wondering what is in that 20 megs...
The Galeon developments are nice. As someone who is forced to use Windows at my work computer, I keep waiting for developments from K-Meleon, the windows equivilent.
K-Meleon 0.6 was released almost a year ago.
I would also like to see a Mac version, but I guess I cannot have everything. iCab is pretty good on that platform.
Re:Google Cookies
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Think about this situation, though: You are under investigation for something, so the Feds nab your computer with a search warrant. They grab the cookie from your computer, and then go to Google with a sepeana for that information.
I think that once you have a judge consent to a search, getting him/her to sign off on asking Google is a minor hassle.
One thing to do to speed up Compact Flash is to get a Firewire CF drive. It will not bring it up to Flash drive speed, but the limiting speed will be the card, and not the interface.
When I bought my PowerMac, Apple was having trouble keeping the Combo drive (CD-RW/DVD) in stock, and since both of those were requirements of mine, I ended up going with the Superdrive.
This summer, I was put into a position where I had to distribute about 3.2 gigs worth of material to numerous people by mail.
Borken up into somewhat logical chunks, the material took seven CD-Rs.
The solution, obviously, was to burn DVD-Rs. I was amazed at how easy it was and how effectively it worked. At 2x, I burned the material in a little over 20 minutes per disc.
In the end, I am glad I ended up paying the extra for the Superdrive. The ability to assure that most everyone would be able to read the discs in their DVD drive equipped PC was very nice.
My big comment: I see no reason for RW for most material. CD-Rs have gotten so cheap that I do not mind burning 30 megs worth of pictures to take to the local print shop for printing. I just throw the disc away after that.
I do not see a strong reason to deal with slower burn speeds and more expensive media just to be able to reuse what I now consider to be disposible media.
I was concerned about this very problem when I bought my Sony PEG-T665C. I already have a Canon S200 digital camera that uses Compact Flash. I also have a SanDisk CF reader (so getting pictures is easy).
I admit that it would be nice to be able to move the CF card from the camera to the Clie to view pictures on that screen. However, I have both a 128 meg Memory Stick and 128 meg CF card. One I use for pictures, and one I use for MP3s and backing up the Clie.
Very rarely would I want to move things between the two. I can view pictures on the Clie, but at 320x320 resolution, I am usually going to go through my computer first to reduce the resolution and size.
I would like to find a relatively inexpensive MS reader, though. Having to dock the Clie and go through it is a bit of a pain.
(I bought the Sony open-box from Best Buy to replace a Visor Platinum I had for over a year. I really never even looked at Palm as a possibility).
I also recommended to my mother, who was in the market for a low-end Palm, to go with the Sony S10 over the lowest Palm. The Palm had more memory, but the Sony had the 320x320 screen and the memory stick slot, meaning that expandability was only $20 (for a 16 meg stick) away.
So far both of us have been very happy with the Sony's.
I have a G4/933 with 768 megs and I was running iPhoto every day this summer. I was working with 4000+ pictures (3 gigs or so), and iPhoto was crawling a lot. Even now, with a little over 1,000 pictures (600+ megs), iPhoto is not as fast as I would want it. Start-up is about seven seconds, and quitting iPhoto takes about the same amount of time.
When I had the 4000+ pictures, switching between different albms was a several second affair. Selecting quantities of pictures tok too long, and scrolling in albums containing 1,000+ pictures was incredibly slow. At one time a file must have been corrupted (with about 2500 pictures, and recently imported pictures were not showing up). I ended up having to delete all of iPhoto's preferences files and libraries (and reimport all of the pictures) to get it working again.
Speaking of which, I would love to see a way to archive old photos from within iPhoto. I still have the 4000 pictures on my hard drive, moved from the iPhoto folder, with little way of getting the pictures back in except re-importing them.
Perhaps a "Browse Folder" function like what GraphicConverter offers would be nice.
Who would have thought that all the work done in prime numbers would pay off in a practical application?
True, a lot of the work done on prime numbers during World War II was directed at codes (both breaking them and coming up with new ones), but they were able to look back at a large library of previously researched work (with no application) and turn that into a concrete example of using previously inapplicable math.
Actually, I have been using Adium for Mac OS X and have to say that it is the best IM client out there. Clean OS X interface, and written entirely in Cocoa, which means you get the great features that come along with that.
For anyone running OS X, I would suggest giving it a try.
I went out and purchased a Radeon 7000 PCI card for my G4/933 so that I could run a second monitor.
One important thing to realize is that Quartz Extreme will probably work best with the entire VRAM for it, and not split up for two monitors (it requires 32megs VRAM). Running with a 64 or 128 meg card might allow you to run two monitors with QE, but you might want to check on that.
I picked up the Radeon for about $120.
Of course, if you need all of the PCI slots for something else, you will probably want to run the two monitors off of the original video card.
Just some things to think about.
(And now I have the great option of being able to run four monitors, and have TV-out off the 7000)
Slashdot Mirror
I started off my first post "Did you read the article?" I suppose I shall start off this post "Did you read my post?"
No where in my post do I attack giving away music. I say that the artist might not make money he/she might otherwise, but I never say that people should not do this, nor do I make any comment that could be taken this way.
I think you are too into the Slashdot mentality of defending music sharing (something I do not attack) and simply read my post as attacking that.
Did you read my post?
I say that what is not acceptable is MAKING MONEY off this.
When you share a mix tape, you are not making money off of the deal. Indeed, you are losing a (previously) blank tape.
Do you see the difference? You are attacking what you preceive as my attack on giving away music. In fact, I was attacking making money off of other people's music.
I liken this to someone with 16 CD-Rs burning copies of music and selling them for profit. This is not simply sharing the music, or increasing the awareness of the band. This is taking money that would otherwise go towards the original artists.
[Note that, like in my first post, I do not want to suggest that the artist mentioned in the article is not an artist. I see the difference between sampling music and wholesale CD-R burning. I simply believe that the people that made the music he sampled are entitled to their share, as well.]
Did you read the article? The artist in question was not trying to mock or satirize the music he sampled. Rather, he created a CD by mixing hundreds, and probably thousands of samples.
Like it or not, if someone takes something that an artist created (and copywrites) and turns around to use that to make money, I think there is a valid complaint to make.
This is entirely separate than the argument against music sharing. If I download a song by Pearl Jam, not only is it marked as being done by the original artist, but, more importantly, no one makes or loses money on the deal.
Suppose I take a bunch of downloaded music, burn it to disk, and give it to a friend. While the artist might lose money that he/she is otherwise entitled to, no one actively makes money on the deal.
On the other hand, if I take a bunch of downloaded music, burn it to disk, and then sell it, then the artist is missing out on his/her valid right to his or her share.
I am not saying that what the artist in the article did was not deserving of money, and definitely required artistic talent, but I do think that some of any money he makes off the music should go back to the original artists.
As far as the waveform library goes, I think it much more likely that someone at the pressing factory simply listed to the music and realized that the CD contains.
I am a big Mac fan, but have been in the market for an inexpensive PC to learn on. Since I will not be installing Windows, the best way to do this seems to be to build my own.
I have been looking for legacy-free motherboards, in part because the Mac fan in me scoffs when I see a 2GHz machine with PS/2 ports, but mostly because I will be using a USB KVM switch, and do not want to have to deal with any problems from having the silly ports.
About the only motherboard I have foudn that gets rid of some of the ports is the ABIT AT7 series motherboards. While a nice motherboard, I find it strange that there is only one.
(And, so you know, the AT7 line comes with Firewire, Audio, and Ethernet all on board. Everything else is USB, Firewire, and USB 2.0 externally, and S-ATA and ATA inside. Although it does still support a floppy drive... Ugh...)
I used to work at a small video rental chain (nine stores) in the corporate office/warehouse.
Each year, we would have a huge warehouse sale. We would gather about 10,000 previewed VHS tapes and sell them for anywhere from $1 up to $10. There were some really great deals.
Anyway, since the warehouse was actually behind and attached to one of the stores, we would just run one of the telephone lines and charge machines to the warehouse.
During that weekend, we would see tens of thousands of dollars in transactions, up from the normal activity on our account, usually measured in the hundreds of dollars a day in charges.
Each year we were called by the authorizing agent during the sale to make sure the sales were not fraudulent. In addition, one year we had to show a random sampling of the signed receipt copies from the sales.
I find it strange that the credit card company did not look into the matter any quicker than it did.
As a recently college graduate in mathematics, I have taken it upon myself to read a bunch of biographies of famous mathemeticians (almost an oxymoron outside of academia).
Has anyone else noticed that almost any famous mathematician (or one that is referred to as "great") was always more than a little strange and, oftentimes, a little crazy?
As someone who is always interested in seeing math and pure science appear as "cool", I am very glad to see movies like these being made.
"Good Will Hunting" and "Octobery Sky" are great examples of movies that show that scientists and mathematicians need not be regarded as "losers."
I very much agree. I still refuse to use "emoticon", instead relying on the types of things I first used on BBS's back in the very early 90's.
People I speak with on AIM still have to ask what <g> stands for.
I have added, over the years, some of my own, including <Laughter>, <Shudder>, and <Yawn>
Taking the classes to get the degree in math will not cost you a whole lot, and will only work to your benifit. Even if your future employer has no need for a math degree, they should be impressed by the fact that you did extra work in college to get one.
Ideally the second major would be in a different field than the first to show your varied abilities, but any second major will show your added initiative.
Graduating from college I was one class away from a second degree. I was going to get a B.A. in Math, and only needed a seminar for a B.S. in Psychology. However, the seminar was only offerred in the fall, and I wanted to graduate that spring (I could not take the seminar the fall prior because or pre-reqs).
In the end, I am glad that I left early. The extra half a year of a salaried position more than made up for it.
Now that I am looking for a new job, however, I see the benifit that the second degree would have on my resume.
For you, since it will not require stayign around another semester, I would highly suggest getting the second major.
I was running some normal telephone cable for a friend of mine behind a desk. Modem, answering machine, and two telephones, all from one jack. I was running the cable and trying to get all of the power cords set up, as well. I was running out of hands, so I held one or two cables with my mouth. I was under the desk, so it was hard to work with.
I was getting things set-up when I plugged in one telephone cable to another piece of equipment. Sure enough, the telephone cable that was in my mouth just became live.
I cannot describe to people that have not felt their tongue being fried what it feels like. Not a good sensation at all.
It also caused me to hit my head on the bottom of the desk.
All in all, not a great install at all.
This may or may not be related to what the site says, but it is not responding (even at 1am EST), so I thought I would add my own little story.
While not the answer to the general question ("What do you do about avoiding signing up for Passport?"), but SprintPCS does offer similar services without the need for Passport (so far).
I just logged on and checked my mounthly usage and the settings for my phone.
SprintPCS
I also have the wireless web for $5/month, allowing me to check my email by handpring Visor to my Samsung SCH-3500 with the use of a cable from Gomadic.
I get service in most metropolitan areas.
Perhaps this would be a good SlashPoll:
What cell provider do you use?
SprintPCS, Verizon, etc.
The problem is going to be the laptop used - the Duos never had an ADB port for easy connection of an external keyboard or mouse (or a SCSI port to run the computer in SCSI target mode).
In one of the pictures, he mentions leaving space in the frame to run a LocalTalk cable (the one port the Duos did have), so you could network the Duo to an older Mac.
The easiest thing to do is to set up the viewer program to run on start-up and automatically start a slide show using a pre-determined folder of pictures. Then when you networked over, all you would have to do is to add/remove pictures from that folder.
I imagine you might have to use a little AppleScripting to get the slide show set up to automatically run on start-up.
You admit that the confusion comes into play if you click on something "by accident." I do not believe I can expect an OS to know what I want if I click places by accident.
Either way, to get back to the application you want, whether the menu is at the top of the window or at the top of the screen, you have to either click on the window in question, or select the program from the dock.
I also believe that allowing users to choose between two such radically different interfaces will only lead to confusion. Yes, it might be strange at first for people switching from Windows, but Apple cannot simply design their interface based on making it easy for Windows switchers. To do so would simply mean mimicing XP's interface.
XP is easier for you just because you are used to it. The OS X environment is easier for me because that is what I am used to.
I believe that 10.0 was released right when it should have been. I am not one of the Mac fans that believe that Apple should have waited to release it until it was about 10.1 quality.
The point I was trying to make was in who should have adopted it at that time.
10.0 should have been released when it was, but it was still a little rough around the edges, and there were some problems with some programs running under Classic. Since there were not a lot of programs that were running natively under 10.0, I stand by my assertion that most people were better off waiting for 10.1
10.0.x were for the true bleeding edge.
10.1.x were for most Mac users.
10.2 is for every Mac user.
A fairly computer illerate mac user asked me about a week ago if they should get Jaguar (10.2). I replied "With 10.2, there is no reason anyone with a machine that Apple says can run OS X is not running it."
Unless you are running a specialized application that does not run under Classic, there is no reason not to be running OS X if your machine supports it.
The speed, support, and stability are all there to make this a great operating system.
The fact that I was able to throw in an old video card, a spare 100Base-T card and a USB card into my G4 at once and have them all immediately recognized and supported is simply amazing. Apple has done wonderful work with this transition.
And I have a two-button scroll optical mouse natively supported, for everyone who might chime in with that.
I actually had a Sony mini-system that was capable of this. Glancing through some reviews of current Sony mini-systems, they are mostly still capable of this. Look for "Record Timer" as a feature. A Google search for (sony mini system "record timer") brought several hits.
I was actually shopping for answering machines, speaking of KISS. I am techologically well aware, but when it comes to things like answering machines, I want as little as possible.
I see no need for answering machines to have ten buttons. My last one had three buttons (Play, Fast Forward/Memo, and Outgoing). Pressing Play played the messages. Pressing Outgoing played the outgoing message, and holding down the Outgoing button allowed you to record one.
What else do you need?
I go into the store, since my three button answering machine finally broke after six years of service, and I find machines with ten buttons. What added functionality do I want on an answering machine that requires that many buttons?
I finally ended up buying a combination cordless phone and answering machine despite my hesitations about ever buying combination machines (if one part breaks, you have lost basically the entire unit). TV/VCR combinations are a great example of this.
I have tried Chimera several times, and it is looking better with each release, but it is still farm from being a complete browser (such a subjective term when you are talking about Mozilla-based browsers minus the bloat).
It simply cannot do everything well just yet. Even K-Meleon, which seems to have stopped development a year ago is still slightly ahead of Chimera's development.
My eternal concern, though, with Chimera is the size. 0.4 currently takes up over 20 megs of space on my hard drive for the application package. What is that about? I am not worried about running out of hard drive space, but I am wondering what is in that 20 megs...
The Galeon developments are nice. As someone who is forced to use Windows at my work computer, I keep waiting for developments from K-Meleon, the windows equivilent.
K-Meleon 0.6 was released almost a year ago.
I would also like to see a Mac version, but I guess I cannot have everything. iCab is pretty good on that platform.
Think about this situation, though: You are under investigation for something, so the Feds nab your computer with a search warrant. They grab the cookie from your computer, and then go to Google with a sepeana for that information.
I think that once you have a judge consent to a search, getting him/her to sign off on asking Google is a minor hassle.
i am running dual LCDs right now, a 17" Apple Studio Display and a 15" NEC 1550V.
While it is not the dual set-up diaplayed on that page, it definitely is much more productive than any one screen.
Obligatory picture actually showing three monitors off one computer.
I was in an Apple store last week, and was able to play with one of the 23" Cinema Displays. Those are extremely nice...
One thing to do to speed up Compact Flash is to get a Firewire CF drive. It will not bring it up to Flash drive speed, but the limiting speed will be the card, and not the interface.
When I bought my PowerMac, Apple was having trouble keeping the Combo drive (CD-RW/DVD) in stock, and since both of those were requirements of mine, I ended up going with the Superdrive.
This summer, I was put into a position where I had to distribute about 3.2 gigs worth of material to numerous people by mail.
Borken up into somewhat logical chunks, the material took seven CD-Rs.
The solution, obviously, was to burn DVD-Rs. I was amazed at how easy it was and how effectively it worked. At 2x, I burned the material in a little over 20 minutes per disc.
In the end, I am glad I ended up paying the extra for the Superdrive. The ability to assure that most everyone would be able to read the discs in their DVD drive equipped PC was very nice.
My big comment: I see no reason for RW for most material. CD-Rs have gotten so cheap that I do not mind burning 30 megs worth of pictures to take to the local print shop for printing. I just throw the disc away after that.
I do not see a strong reason to deal with slower burn speeds and more expensive media just to be able to reuse what I now consider to be disposible media.
That might just be me.
I was concerned about this very problem when I bought my Sony PEG-T665C. I already have a Canon S200 digital camera that uses Compact Flash. I also have a SanDisk CF reader (so getting pictures is easy).
I admit that it would be nice to be able to move the CF card from the camera to the Clie to view pictures on that screen. However, I have both a 128 meg Memory Stick and 128 meg CF card. One I use for pictures, and one I use for MP3s and backing up the Clie.
Very rarely would I want to move things between the two. I can view pictures on the Clie, but at 320x320 resolution, I am usually going to go through my computer first to reduce the resolution and size.
I would like to find a relatively inexpensive MS reader, though. Having to dock the Clie and go through it is a bit of a pain.
(I bought the Sony open-box from Best Buy to replace a Visor Platinum I had for over a year. I really never even looked at Palm as a possibility).
I also recommended to my mother, who was in the market for a low-end Palm, to go with the Sony S10 over the lowest Palm. The Palm had more memory, but the Sony had the 320x320 screen and the memory stick slot, meaning that expandability was only $20 (for a 16 meg stick) away.
So far both of us have been very happy with the Sony's.
I have a G4/933 with 768 megs and I was running iPhoto every day this summer. I was working with 4000+ pictures (3 gigs or so), and iPhoto was crawling a lot. Even now, with a little over 1,000 pictures (600+ megs), iPhoto is not as fast as I would want it. Start-up is about seven seconds, and quitting iPhoto takes about the same amount of time.
When I had the 4000+ pictures, switching between different albms was a several second affair. Selecting quantities of pictures tok too long, and scrolling in albums containing 1,000+ pictures was incredibly slow. At one time a file must have been corrupted (with about 2500 pictures, and recently imported pictures were not showing up). I ended up having to delete all of iPhoto's preferences files and libraries (and reimport all of the pictures) to get it working again.
Speaking of which, I would love to see a way to archive old photos from within iPhoto. I still have the 4000 pictures on my hard drive, moved from the iPhoto folder, with little way of getting the pictures back in except re-importing them.
Perhaps a "Browse Folder" function like what GraphicConverter offers would be nice.
One word: Cryptology.
Who would have thought that all the work done in prime numbers would pay off in a practical application?
True, a lot of the work done on prime numbers during World War II was directed at codes (both breaking them and coming up with new ones), but they were able to look back at a large library of previously researched work (with no application) and turn that into a concrete example of using previously inapplicable math.
Actually, I have been using Adium for Mac OS X and have to say that it is the best IM client out there. Clean OS X interface, and written entirely in Cocoa, which means you get the great features that come along with that.
For anyone running OS X, I would suggest giving it a try.
I went out and purchased a Radeon 7000 PCI card for my G4/933 so that I could run a second monitor.
One important thing to realize is that Quartz Extreme will probably work best with the entire VRAM for it, and not split up for two monitors (it requires 32megs VRAM). Running with a 64 or 128 meg card might allow you to run two monitors with QE, but you might want to check on that.
I picked up the Radeon for about $120.
Of course, if you need all of the PCI slots for something else, you will probably want to run the two monitors off of the original video card.
Just some things to think about.
(And now I have the great option of being able to run four monitors, and have TV-out off the 7000)