They already do...
Go and have a look at the offerings from companies like Quato.
They have monitors with inbuilt hardware calibration - this means that the monitor itself linearises itself, rather than changing the gamma curves in the video card. This means that you get the full gamut that the video card is capable of producing - whenever you modify the LUT in a video card, you're reducing it's gamut. If the calibration is performed by the monitor, then the video card is running with it's maximum gamut, to a monitor that can display all the colours, and display them accurately.
If iPhoto or Picasa don't float your boat, then try something a bit more suited to the task, like Aperture.
It brings major ease of use to simple photo management with incredibly powerful tools, like the ability to work with RAW images, and automatic versioning so you never stuff up your original "digital negatives"
Good idea. Someone's already beaten you to it, however =) Wacom (among others) use this technology for their sketch styluses (stylii?) and wireless mouses that only work when in close proximity to the surface of the graphics tablet...
Article test: Korea's top antitrust regulator reportedly said on a local radio show that authorities there may look into whether Apple's purchase of flash memory from Samsung Electronics may have violated any of that country's competition laws.
According to a report by Yonhap News, Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Kang Chul-kyu said that his agency could look into allegations that Samsung sold the memory chips to Apple at below-market rates.
Apple reportedly grabbed a significant share of Samsung's flash capacity in order to introduce its new iPod Nano. Analysts also speculate the computer maker got a significant discount from Samsung in order to hit the Nano's $199 and $249 prices.
An Apple representative did not immediately have a comment on the report.
Now, forgive me, but what is newsworthy about this? Not only is it heresy published on a blog, but it's not even saying anything definite.
I (and I'm not alone here) would hope that Apple got a damn good break on the price for buying the flash in the kinds of quantities that they will need to satisfy demand for the Nano.
I would look into a digital asset management solution designed for this task.
Oloto or Cumulus will do exactly what you want - plus offer you plenty of room for growth.
When you look at the time and effort involved in rolling something like this yourself, you can save a lot of money by purchasing a pre-rolled solution, plus you then don't need to maintain (or hire people to maintain) it all yourself.
Re:Security for Apple Heads
on
Too Many Passwords
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Us Apple Heads, as you put it, don't need Password Safe (as good a product as it is) as we have, built right into the OS, the Keychain - an AES128 encrypted file containing
Web Passwords
Application Passwords
Security Certificates
Public/Private keypairs
Secure Notes
It integrates with most apps on the system so, for instance, if I go to a passworded site in Safari (the Web browser) and Safari can get the username and password from the keychain (by asking me for my keychain password) and then I can optionally allow Safari to always access this item without asking me first.
You can have multiple keychains, have some unlocked automatically and have more secure ones that you have to unlock each time, or even go into the Keychain Access application and manually unlock...
Interesting that Apple are firmly in one camp whereas Intel are quite solidly in the other...
Neither of these companies are the primary force behind either of the respective products, but with them recently jumping into bed together, I wonder if one of them will "Switch" =)
CD is as good as a universal format at the moment
on
The Digital Dark Age
·
· Score: 1
CDs have been around for some 20 years now. The basic CD is still not obsolete - half a gig of information is still a useful amount. With all the higher capacity optical disc formats being proposed and/or introduced - none of them break backwards compatibility. You can still buy music on LP and Compact Cassette today - I'm willing to put money on you being able to purchase at least music on CD in 20 + years time - failing that, it is such a ubiquitous storage medium today that there should be backwards compatible drives to read it for the foreseeable future.
You're 100% correct - these Copy Control Discs (or whatever flavour of DRM they're using at the moment) are _NOT_ CDs - and you will not find the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo anywhere on the disc or the packaging. Frequently (at least here in Australia) the discs are quite clearly labelled as being protected, and listing system specs of compatible systems, but the discs are not labelled as CDs because they are not Red Book CD-DA. They happen to follow enough of the specification that the majority of devices will play them - "dumb" devices such as your CD player _should_ only see the CD-DA parts and "smart" devices, that know about things like multiple sessions and the like will see the data portion of the disc. FWIW, I've never had a problem with any of these discs in my Mac - insert the disc and OS X shows not one, but two, partitions. One partition (session, slice, whatever) contains the CD-DA stuff (which iTunes promptly imports as MP3 or AAC, whatever I've told it to use) and the other session contains the lower quality DRM audio.
This dude is a professor at the New South Wales University - in Sydney, Australia. South Wales is somewhere in the UK, and I don't know if they even have a university there. It's only one word missing but it makes half a world of difference =)
Look for any scanner that comes bundled with SilverFast - Lots of manufacturers bundle their own software with scanners, however it's been my experience that any scanner that _also_ comes with a copy of SilverFast is generally pretty decent, and SilverFast is great scanning software (standalone scanning or Photoshop plugin) that can deliver powerful results, and is easy to use.
Both RSS and Atom suffer from the fact that they are a solution looking for a problem. The problem that they both intend to solve (allowing easy and standardised updates to content to be published to subscribers) is such that this is one area where "push" technologies would be ideal. No having to configure your newsreader to poll a number of sites every half hour - the remote sites push content out to you if and when they post it.
You've never tried kicking an Apple G5 have you?
Their aluminium cases are made from 3-4mm thick plate Aluminium - a coworker dropped one from waist height and it fell and hit the feet of an office chair - the chair was damaged but there was not a dent on the case
(OK, so both the CPUs and their massive watercooling system were wrentched from the logic board, but the case was OK =)
Sony have XDCAM that records onto 23GB Optical media, Professional Disc for Data.
The discs are about $30 a pop, you can get a PDD drive for your computer, or use the camera via FireWire either as a VTR style device, or in file access mode, where you see the files on the disc. It's non-linear and very rugged. You can pause for as long as you like with no wear and tear. There's no need to then capture the footage to your computer, as it's already there, on the disc, ready to use in your editing software. Discs are cheap, when you have those 15 minute pauses, switch discs, even if it's not full, that way you'll never run out of space - no-one will be talking for over an hour and a half, continuously.
The upper part of the L you say - great, now I know *exactly* where you live!
Re:Still a single point of failure
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes and No. For a basic RAID, ie a host card in a computer attached to a bunch of disks, then yes, the card is the single point of failure. This is less of a problem than losing a disk because: the card is less likely to fail (as you guessed, no moving parts) and failure of the card doesn't necessarily mean loss of any data. Failure of the RAID card will mean access to the attached RAID array becomes difficult =) however some machines even have hot-swap adapter cards, in which case you swap out the card for a new one and you're back up and running. No downtime, no loss of data.
For the usual kinds of RAID units used in enterprise, they're a hardware RAID enclosure with it's own RAID controller, attached via SCSI or FibreChannel to a host. Some of these units actually have two (or more) RAID controllers in them, each with their own FibreChannel connections (two or more, per controller) and if one controller dies, the other one takes up the slack (with a loss of performance, but not data). Going even further, you can have separate FiberChannel connections from each controller going through separate FC Switches, so even if a FC Switch dies, the SAN doesn't go down...
Well, yes, you have to send your calculator back. Only certain models are on the approved list, and using a calculator that's not on this list is the same as cheating.
If you want to pass, you can't do it using a non-approved calculator
The main problem with emulation of a PowerPC on an x86 (or any other modern CPU on x86 for that matter) is the sheer lack of registers. Registers in a CPU are used for (among other things) very fast places to store variables and as a scratchpad area for calculations and having to offload the contents of registers into main RAM or even on-chip cache, would slow things down quite considerably. Going the other way around, doing an x86 on PPC is easier, as the host CPU has many more registers than the emulated CPU meaning that there's no virtualisation of registers.
Seriously, if you are going to cut and paste the first paragraph of the target story as your submission, at least get it right and don't have the first sentence pasted in twice.
SunFire v20z or v40z Servers. http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v40z/index.jsp They're the entry-level servers from Sun, so they have great support. They're on the WHQL List, so Windows XP, 2003 Server and the forthcoming 64-bit versions all run fine. They also run Linux quite well, and as if that wasn't enough, they all scream along with Solaris installed. The v20z is a 1 or 2 way Opteron box, in a 1RU case. the v40z is a two or for CPU box that is available with single or dual core Opterons. Plus, they're one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, Tier 1 Opteron servers on the market.
Sure, you may be camping in Eastern-Washington or back-country skiing in Whistler and a satellite pager can tell you that everything's gone pear-shaped back in the server room, but then how do you plan to act on that notice in a timely fashion?
It's no good being three hours from civilisation only to find that your servers are down and you can't do anything about it =)
Anything, such as this, that is nothing more than a free (?) advertisement posted to the front page of/. should be marked as such, and then subscribers (of which I am not, for this reason among others) would have the option of easily skipping it.
I'm writing this, after browsing slashdot through loband.
It's a nice, clean look actually - nowhere near as much clutter as the standard slashdot.
It's a nice, sans-serif font (in black) on a white background and all links are in blue with an underline. There are no ads or other images, yet it keeps the layout pretty true to the original. Form submissions are a bit hit and miss - I could change, for instance, the threshold for viewing comments OK, however I had to return to regular slashdot to actually post this.
Plus, even though I'm on a 10 meg connection, this loband page loaded noticably faster than the regular page - less cruft to download, less HTTP connections to be made and broken, and a cleaner layout that's easier for my broswer to rend.
Slashdot Mirror
They already do...
Go and have a look at the offerings from companies like Quato.
They have monitors with inbuilt hardware calibration - this means that the monitor itself linearises itself, rather than changing the gamma curves in the video card. This means that you get the full gamut that the video card is capable of producing - whenever you modify the LUT in a video card, you're reducing it's gamut. If the calibration is performed by the monitor, then the video card is running with it's maximum gamut, to a monitor that can display all the colours, and display them accurately.
If iPhoto or Picasa don't float your boat, then try something a bit more suited to the task, like Aperture.
It brings major ease of use to simple photo management with incredibly powerful tools, like the ability to work with RAW images, and automatic versioning so you never stuff up your original "digital negatives"
Good idea. Someone's already beaten you to it, however =)
Wacom (among others) use this technology for their sketch styluses (stylii?) and wireless mouses that only work when in close proximity to the surface of the graphics tablet...
Article test:
Korea's top antitrust regulator reportedly said on a local radio show that authorities there may look into whether Apple's purchase of flash memory from Samsung Electronics may have violated any of that country's competition laws.
According to a report by Yonhap News, Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Kang Chul-kyu said that his agency could look into allegations that Samsung sold the memory chips to Apple at below-market rates.
Apple reportedly grabbed a significant share of Samsung's flash capacity in order to introduce its new iPod Nano. Analysts also speculate the computer maker got a significant discount from Samsung in order to hit the Nano's $199 and $249 prices.
An Apple representative did not immediately have a comment on the report.
Now, forgive me, but what is newsworthy about this? Not only is it heresy published on a blog, but it's not even saying anything definite.
I (and I'm not alone here) would hope that Apple got a damn good break on the price for buying the flash in the kinds of quantities that they will need to satisfy demand for the Nano.
Common, Off The Shelf Solution...
I would look into a digital asset management solution designed for this task.
Oloto or Cumulus will do exactly what you want - plus offer you plenty of room for growth.
When you look at the time and effort involved in rolling something like this yourself, you can save a lot of money by purchasing a pre-rolled solution, plus you then don't need to maintain (or hire people to maintain) it all yourself.
- Web Passwords
- Application Passwords
- Security Certificates
- Public/Private keypairs
- Secure Notes
It integrates with most apps on the system so, for instance, if I go to a passworded site in Safari (the Web browser) and Safari can get the username and password from the keychain (by asking me for my keychain password) and then I can optionally allow Safari to always access this item without asking me first. You can have multiple keychains, have some unlocked automatically and have more secure ones that you have to unlock each time, or even go into the Keychain Access application and manually unlock...Interesting that Apple are firmly in one camp whereas Intel are quite solidly in the other...
Neither of these companies are the primary force behind either of the respective products, but with them recently jumping into bed together, I wonder if one of them will "Switch" =)
CDs have been around for some 20 years now. The basic CD is still not obsolete - half a gig of information is still a useful amount. With all the higher capacity optical disc formats being proposed and/or introduced - none of them break backwards compatibility. You can still buy music on LP and Compact Cassette today - I'm willing to put money on you being able to purchase at least music on CD in 20 + years time - failing that, it is such a ubiquitous storage medium today that there should be backwards compatible drives to read it for the foreseeable future.
You're 100% correct - these Copy Control Discs (or whatever flavour of DRM they're using at the moment) are _NOT_ CDs - and you will not find the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo anywhere on the disc or the packaging. Frequently (at least here in Australia) the discs are quite clearly labelled as being protected, and listing system specs of compatible systems, but the discs are not labelled as CDs because they are not Red Book CD-DA.
They happen to follow enough of the specification that the majority of devices will play them - "dumb" devices such as your CD player _should_ only see the CD-DA parts and "smart" devices, that know about things like multiple sessions and the like will see the data portion of the disc.
FWIW, I've never had a problem with any of these discs in my Mac - insert the disc and OS X shows not one, but two, partitions. One partition (session, slice, whatever) contains the CD-DA stuff (which iTunes promptly imports as MP3 or AAC, whatever I've told it to use) and the other session contains the lower quality DRM audio.
This dude is a professor at the New South Wales University - in Sydney, Australia.
South Wales is somewhere in the UK, and I don't know if they even have a university there.
It's only one word missing but it makes half a world of difference =)
Look for any scanner that comes bundled with SilverFast - Lots of manufacturers bundle their own software with scanners, however it's been my experience that any scanner that _also_ comes with a copy of SilverFast is generally pretty decent, and SilverFast is great scanning software (standalone scanning or Photoshop plugin) that can deliver powerful results, and is easy to use.
Cheers,
Kai
Both RSS and Atom suffer from the fact that they are a solution looking for a problem. The problem that they both intend to solve (allowing easy and standardised updates to content to be published to subscribers) is such that this is one area where "push" technologies would be ideal. No having to configure your newsreader to poll a number of sites every half hour - the remote sites push content out to you if and when they post it.
You've never tried kicking an Apple G5 have you?
Their aluminium cases are made from 3-4mm thick plate Aluminium - a coworker dropped one from waist height and it fell and hit the feet of an office chair - the chair was damaged but there was not a dent on the case
(OK, so both the CPUs and their massive watercooling system were wrentched from the logic board, but the case was OK =)
Sony have XDCAM that records onto 23GB Optical media, Professional Disc for Data.
The discs are about $30 a pop, you can get a PDD drive for your computer, or use the camera via FireWire either as a VTR style device, or in file access mode, where you see the files on the disc. It's non-linear and very rugged. You can pause for as long as you like with no wear and tear. There's no need to then capture the footage to your computer, as it's already there, on the disc, ready to use in your editing software. Discs are cheap, when you have those 15 minute pauses, switch discs, even if it's not full, that way you'll never run out of space - no-one will be talking for over an hour and a half, continuously.
The upper part of the L you say - great, now I know *exactly* where you live!
Yes and No.
For a basic RAID, ie a host card in a computer attached to a bunch of disks, then yes, the card is the single point of failure. This is less of a problem than losing a disk because: the card is less likely to fail (as you guessed, no moving parts) and failure of the card doesn't necessarily mean loss of any data. Failure of the RAID card will mean access to the attached RAID array becomes difficult =) however some machines even have hot-swap adapter cards, in which case you swap out the card for a new one and you're back up and running. No downtime, no loss of data.
For the usual kinds of RAID units used in enterprise, they're a hardware RAID enclosure with it's own RAID controller, attached via SCSI or FibreChannel to a host. Some of these units actually have two (or more) RAID controllers in them, each with their own FibreChannel connections (two or more, per controller) and if one controller dies, the other one takes up the slack (with a loss of performance, but not data). Going even further, you can have separate FiberChannel connections from each controller going through separate FC Switches, so even if a FC Switch dies, the SAN doesn't go down...
What's the downside to all this? Big $$$.
Cheers,
Kai
Well, yes, you have to send your calculator back. Only certain models are on the approved list, and using a calculator that's not on this list is the same as cheating. If you want to pass, you can't do it using a non-approved calculator
The main problem with emulation of a PowerPC on an x86 (or any other modern CPU on x86 for that matter) is the sheer lack of registers. Registers in a CPU are used for (among other things) very fast places to store variables and as a scratchpad area for calculations and having to offload the contents of registers into main RAM or even on-chip cache, would slow things down quite considerably. Going the other way around, doing an x86 on PPC is easier, as the host CPU has many more registers than the emulated CPU meaning that there's no virtualisation of registers.
Seriously, if you are going to cut and paste the first paragraph of the target story as your submission, at least get it right and don't have the first sentence pasted in twice.
Thankyou for that slashvertisement, we now return you to your regularly scheduled program...
SunFire v20z or v40z Servers.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v40z/index.jsp
They're the entry-level servers from Sun, so they have great support. They're on the WHQL List, so Windows XP, 2003 Server and the forthcoming 64-bit versions all run fine.
They also run Linux quite well, and as if that wasn't enough, they all scream along with Solaris installed.
The v20z is a 1 or 2 way Opteron box, in a 1RU case. the v40z is a two or for CPU box that is available with single or dual core Opterons.
Plus, they're one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, Tier 1 Opteron servers on the market.
Sure, you may be camping in Eastern-Washington or back-country skiing in Whistler and a satellite pager can tell you that everything's gone pear-shaped back in the server room, but then how do you plan to act on that notice in a timely fashion?
It's no good being three hours from civilisation only to find that your servers are down and you can't do anything about it =)
I Propose a new categoryu for Slashdot stories:
/. should be marked as such, and then subscribers (of which I am not, for this reason among others) would have the option of easily skipping it.
Advertorial
Anything, such as this, that is nothing more than a free (?) advertisement posted to the front page of
I'm writing this, after browsing slashdot through loband.
It's a nice, clean look actually - nowhere near as much clutter as the standard slashdot.
It's a nice, sans-serif font (in black) on a white background and all links are in blue with an underline. There are no ads or other images, yet it keeps the layout pretty true to the original. Form submissions are a bit hit and miss - I could change, for instance, the threshold for viewing comments OK, however I had to return to regular slashdot to actually post this.
Plus, even though I'm on a 10 meg connection, this loband page loaded noticably faster than the regular page - less cruft to download, less HTTP connections to be made and broken, and a cleaner layout that's easier for my broswer to rend.
Sacrifice a virgin, there should be no shortage of them in these parts :-P