Luckily for me, I have this extra space in my office...it's called "under the desk" and its where I have two beige (Actually, dark grey) boxes with a total of 5 hard drives and about 1TB of storage. There's a clock in the next room which ticks louder than both boxes combined (it's far more annoying from my chair than the fans on the systems).
The only things computer-related on my desk are two monitors (with two cables each running behind the desk to their respective ports) a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. (oops...got a PDA cradle, too).
One computer has a free slot for a removable hard drive (no, it's not hot pluggable). The other one is just about full, but I think I can sneak in another SATA drive or two in a pinch.
Oh, I forgot to mention...both machines are less than a year old and - combined - cost me less than $1000. (That doesn't count the two 21" Hitachi monitors, which weigh in at $200 combined and about 250lbs, but I bought those used from my former employer so I thought that they shouldn't count). I could buy back most of my "wasted" desk space by dropping $1600 on a pair of LCDs, but it doesn't seem worth it, yet.
Apple makes sexy machines, but I wouldn't want to justify them on a price basis (or performance for that matter, as my primary application is not distributed on any apple OS).
That's 111 trips for a couple, and closer to 75 if you get popcorn and a drink. Have 2 kids? You're down to about 40 trips (kids cost less, but they each have to have thir own drink). What, you leave the kids at home? Pony up $30 for the sitter then (you can't win, I tell you).
Even with that, it's not about the absolute cost. If you've got a comfortable place to watch and a decent stereo (would a 5.1 be a quinto?), you can get most of the advantages (immersive experience) without the distracting disadvantages (cell phones, people talking, popcorn scalpers, no bathroom breaks).
Your point is well taken. It does take a real stretch to drop $4k-5k on an LCD wall mount when a 720p front projector set-up with a 10' (yes, 10 foot) screen can be had for under 3k and a day of tinkering (you're going to spend a couple hours with your new LCD flat panel as well).
Now, throw the matrix up on a 119" screen and you'll be blown away. Of course, now you can use the $1500 you saved to upgrade your audio system.;-)
Light control? Get some blinds. Don't like that sdea? sit on your hands 'til next summer and spring for a Sony black screen. Oh, but get in line...it's already on my summer wish list.
I will testify that the Apple IIe never existed. My best frined in HS didn't have one, and I didn't have the Ace1000 which was its clone.;-) And you can bet I never found Werdna on the 10th level on that IIe that never existed!
Actually, a static RFID location would be a snap to find, and if there's no child there, you can start yelling and screaming.
It is a bit freaky, but you can bet your life that if I were offered the option of putting an RFID wristband on my daughter (who is only two right now) in a themepark with big crowds and any possiblity of getting lost I'd sign us up.
Think of it this way - would you make your young child wear a life preserver all the time? Would you make your young child wear a life preserver in a small boat? Easy choice. My daughter doesn't go outside the fenced yard without a life preserver when we're at the lake. I may watch her closely, but kids will get into trouble faster than you can imagine.
Don't worry, I'd have been on the side of the paranoid libertarians if I didn't have a child.
Hmmm...I usually only have to reboot when an application heaves its lunch - usually autocad. There are cetain things it will screw up, and only a reboot will fix it. I'd say I run into that once every couple of months. I've never had XP bluescreen on me on three machines running 24/7 for a year and a half (2 XP-H, 1 XP-P, all SP1).
Blu-ray is HD. HD-DVD is HD. Blu-ray holds more data, which translates into lower compression rates, assuming the same extras on the disc.
IF Sony can get blu-ray out the door in a cost-competitive way, there will be no real fight like there was with Betamax/VHS. Sony just needs to get over themselves, and with so many parteners, they pretty much have to. There will be a marginal ($1) difference in production price at production volumes for the new laser wavelength. They're the same size disc, use the same codecs, will likely end up with the same DRM.
You're confusing technological failure with product failure. Sony squeezed their golden goose 'til it died. I'd say, in order, the most important parts of a format success are:
1) Content 2) Price 3) Quality
You've got to be superior beyond belief for (3) to trump (2) or (1). Say, black and white analog vs Hi Def for a 20% premium. HDTV has (3) in spades, but is missing (1) and (2). The adoption is just barely getting off the ground now, as (2) and (1) begin to come into line with NTSC. I believe that, if the government wasn't mandating it, HD would fail. Miserably.
They COULD put them on, but then it would be harder to justify them charging you $300 for all six seasons. A single disc is only worth $20 retail. Two discs are worth $40. Three are $60, and you can get a discount for a 5-box set at $80.
Thanks, I was too lazy to actually look it up. I just figured I'd save most of slashdot the time reading the whole interveiw.
Of course, it takes a good set of 'nads to stand up in front of/. and tell them that your product, which they already hate, is really part of a good business model, and isn't about sucking the living soul from them. Props for actually answering (most) of the questions, even if we don't like the answers any better than the product they're about.
1 Apple and Linux don't have the user base to make them worth our while.
2 Online music won't drop below $.79/song until we can beat the RIAA into lower fees.
3 We use a proprietary format because if we didn't, we'd get crushed by MS and Apple. If Apple, however, figured out how to play.rm, we'd sue their asses off. They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
4 We write annoying and intrusive software because Microsoft does it too (and our annoyances aren't as bad as their's are).
6 Helix gives us street cred in the OS community, that's why we do it.
7 We had our lawyers look very closely to make sure Apple couldn't sue us over the iPod. We don't expect any trouble. And don't worry, you'll always be able to play Harmony on your iPod, as long as you never use iTunes again.
8 See the first summary item for Linux support.
9. Based on "independent" consultants on our payroll, people want alternatives to iTunes. That must mean they want us. We lost a million dollars in 3 weeks selling music at below-cost, so it must be true.
10. I have not stopped beating my wife, but more to the popint, our company is raking in lots of dough. We're not making any profit, or I would have given you profit numbers instead of revenue numbers.
MP3pro sucks ass. Plain and simple. How do I know? I tried it. Here's the issue: I can hear MP3 compression artificats clearly to 192kb on most sources, and to 224kb on some of my "favorite" music. Certain Boston sequences are particulary difficult to encode well even at 256kb when played over decent headphones*.
The problem is that even the registered version of an MP3pro converter would max out at 128kB, with 192kB "quality". Nice, but not really "enough". Everyone seems to be racing to the 96-128kb SIZE point, without realizing that it's not really all the great to listen to unless there's a lot of background noise, or the equipment you're playing it on comes in a heat-sealed clamshell. And 64kn in every format I've listened to sounds somewhere between AM and FM radio, with digital artifacting added as a bonus. I'll take 48 or 64 for spoken spoken word, but please don't say you use it for audio unless you are listening to it while mowing the lawn.
I finally gave up on lossy formats and started re-ripping everything in FLAC. Now I can transcode through foobar2000 to whatever the format dujour is, or to a format which will fit in the space I have on my portable player.
It's because all of the right leaning media don't want it to get out. It would hurt Bush immesely to show that his PRK policy has not worked, and those frakin' right-wing fundamentalists running the media services want to do all they can to keep him in power. How else can you explain it?
(I'm jokin, of course, but this IS the response we get from every middle-far right wonk when an anti-Kerry story doesn't get picked up immediately)
Yeah, stop killing pigs! Chicken is far cleaner to raise and render (not).
Actually, if you get the chance and are in an area with 4H or FFA shows like county or state fairs, there's usually an auction where you can buy you animals on the hoof. There are usually local slaughterhouses where you can have the animals automatically shipped and processed. The money goes to the kids who raise them - usually on small family farms - and you get a well fed, well treated animal for your freezer. Well treated until they shipped him off to get the axe, that is.
You'll probably want to buy a bigger freezer or go in with a friend to split an animal. Maybe 2 or three if you're inclined to buy a steer.
(Yes, I raised animals in 4H and sold them. We always kept one hog and usually got a side of beef from another local. Now that's good eats. Did chickens too, and turkeys. Nasty, filthy creatures but, once again, good eats!)
Are they P4s? Just spray on some Pam and turn 'em on! For those outside the US, Pam is a spray can of oil - probably canola. Though, now that I think about it, for P4 temps you should really consider peanut oil...it's got a higher smoke point. (I knew those Alton Brown episodes would come in handy some day)
Get the isopropyl Drygas (make sure there's no special "engine cleaner" additives). It's about as close to 100% isopropanol as you can get, and I usually keep a case around for cleaning and such.
Note: regular Drygas is methynol, iirc, but they make a "special" version (isopropanol, more expensive - maybe $1/bottle) for fuel injected autos.
...and the other half are claiming that we're being hypocritical.
Actually, there is always humor in a (hated) champion outfoxed with his own techniques, but that's beside the point.
Patents have been used by the software industry to muscle out competition or to try and inflate profits by hobbling competition. The only way things are going to change is if the "big boys" are slapped hard by the rules they've created. Though the chance is slim, industry-led changes to laws (patent and DMCA-style) may open the door to real investigation into the impact of these laws. I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying that the only way it will happen is if the first move is made by those with money & power.
Oh, and if you haven't sent a five-spot to Congressman Rick Boucher http://http//www.house.gov/boucher/welcome.htm/, you might want to consider it. He's one of the few outspoken opponents of the DMCA (and PATRIOT, too, for you libertarians) and is doing something about it. HOWEVER, he's being challenged by a Republican carpetbagger with lots of GOP cash backing this fall.
I think his core values are solid, though his reversals on particular ways to meet his ends result in apparent flip-flops. I just happen to think his values are, well, not mine (I'm sure he feels they're progressive, I think they're neanderthal and dogmatic).
Anyway, I wholehartedly agree with your 2 year old analogy, and think it fits reasonably well. And I happen to have a 2 year old. At times I know that I'd make more headway by talking to her stuffed animals. I'm sure Colin Powell feels the same way most days, even if he doesn't admit it publicly.
If you're not going to hold them accountable for mission failure (if I engineer a building and it falls down, I'm liable for the whole thing) then why not just elimiate all the expensive contract administration and corporate profit and hire the engineers and machinists directly?
As it is, there is simply no accountability anywhere in the system.
So, let me get this straight: Terrorists might be able to use satellite imagery to plan an armed assault on some target in the US. The response is to limit 1st amendment rights, but to leave 2nd amendment rights unchanged.
I guess it just depends on who's slippin' you the bills.
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily for me, I have this extra space in my office...it's called "under the desk" and its where I have two beige (Actually, dark grey) boxes with a total of 5 hard drives and about 1TB of storage. There's a clock in the next room which ticks louder than both boxes combined (it's far more annoying from my chair than the fans on the systems).
The only things computer-related on my desk are two monitors (with two cables each running behind the desk to their respective ports) a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. (oops...got a PDA cradle, too).
One computer has a free slot for a removable hard drive (no, it's not hot pluggable). The other one is just about full, but I think I can sneak in another SATA drive or two in a pinch.
Oh, I forgot to mention...both machines are less than a year old and - combined - cost me less than $1000. (That doesn't count the two 21" Hitachi monitors, which weigh in at $200 combined and about 250lbs, but I bought those used from my former employer so I thought that they shouldn't count). I could buy back most of my "wasted" desk space by dropping $1600 on a pair of LCDs, but it doesn't seem worth it, yet.
Apple makes sexy machines, but I wouldn't want to justify them on a price basis (or performance for that matter, as my primary application is not distributed on any apple OS).
That's 111 trips for a couple, and closer to 75 if you get popcorn and a drink. Have 2 kids? You're down to about 40 trips (kids cost less, but they each have to have thir own drink). What, you leave the kids at home? Pony up $30 for the sitter then (you can't win, I tell you).
Even with that, it's not about the absolute cost. If you've got a comfortable place to watch and a decent stereo (would a 5.1 be a quinto?), you can get most of the advantages (immersive experience) without the distracting disadvantages (cell phones, people talking, popcorn scalpers, no bathroom breaks).
Your point is well taken. It does take a real stretch to drop $4k-5k on an LCD wall mount when a 720p front projector set-up with a 10' (yes, 10 foot) screen can be had for under 3k and a day of tinkering (you're going to spend a couple hours with your new LCD flat panel as well).
;-)
Now, throw the matrix up on a 119" screen and you'll be blown away. Of course, now you can use the $1500 you saved to upgrade your audio system.
Light control? Get some blinds. Don't like that sdea? sit on your hands 'til next summer and spring for a Sony black screen. Oh, but get in line...it's already on my summer wish list.
You don't hang around with many marketing folks, do you? ;-)
I will testify that the Apple IIe never existed. My best frined in HS didn't have one, and I didn't have the Ace1000 which was its clone. ;-) And you can bet I never found Werdna on the 10th level on that IIe that never existed!
Ahhh, FORTRAN (77 in my case). Easy to get the job done, impossible to make the output look nice. Oh, well, you can't have everything.
*hand goes up*
Actually, a static RFID location would be a snap to find, and if there's no child there, you can start yelling and screaming.
It is a bit freaky, but you can bet your life that if I were offered the option of putting an RFID wristband on my daughter (who is only two right now) in a themepark with big crowds and any possiblity of getting lost I'd sign us up.
Think of it this way - would you make your young child wear a life preserver all the time? Would you make your young child wear a life preserver in a small boat? Easy choice. My daughter doesn't go outside the fenced yard without a life preserver when we're at the lake. I may watch her closely, but kids will get into trouble faster than you can imagine.
Don't worry, I'd have been on the side of the paranoid libertarians if I didn't have a child.
Even better, get yourself a faraday cage to put it in, that way you'll have it if you need it.
Hmmm...I usually only have to reboot when an application heaves its lunch - usually autocad. There are cetain things it will screw up, and only a reboot will fix it. I'd say I run into that once every couple of months. I've never had XP bluescreen on me on three machines running 24/7 for a year and a half (2 XP-H, 1 XP-P, all SP1).
Blu-ray is HD. HD-DVD is HD. Blu-ray holds more data, which translates into lower compression rates, assuming the same extras on the disc.
IF Sony can get blu-ray out the door in a cost-competitive way, there will be no real fight like there was with Betamax/VHS. Sony just needs to get over themselves, and with so many parteners, they pretty much have to. There will be a marginal ($1) difference in production price at production volumes for the new laser wavelength. They're the same size disc, use the same codecs, will likely end up with the same DRM.
You're confusing technological failure with product failure. Sony squeezed their golden goose 'til it died. I'd say, in order, the most important parts of a format success are:
1) Content
2) Price
3) Quality
You've got to be superior beyond belief for (3) to trump (2) or (1). Say, black and white analog vs Hi Def for a 20% premium. HDTV has (3) in spades, but is missing (1) and (2). The adoption is just barely getting off the ground now, as (2) and (1) begin to come into line with NTSC. I believe that, if the government wasn't mandating it, HD would fail. Miserably.
They COULD put them on, but then it would be harder to justify them charging you $300 for all six seasons. A single disc is only worth $20 retail. Two discs are worth $40. Three are $60, and you can get a discount for a 5-box set at $80.
No, they'll just use less of the disc.
Thanks, I was too lazy to actually look it up. I just figured I'd save most of slashdot the time reading the whole interveiw.
/. and tell them that your product, which they already hate, is really part of a good business model, and isn't about sucking the living soul from them. Props for actually answering (most) of the questions, even if we don't like the answers any better than the product they're about.
Of course, it takes a good set of 'nads to stand up in front of
1 Apple and Linux don't have the user base to make them worth our while.
.rm, we'd sue their asses off. They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
2 Online music won't drop below $.79/song until we can beat the RIAA into lower fees.
3 We use a proprietary format because if we didn't, we'd get crushed by MS and Apple. If Apple, however, figured out how to play
4 We write annoying and intrusive software because Microsoft does it too (and our annoyances aren't as bad as their's are).
6 Helix gives us street cred in the OS community, that's why we do it.
7 We had our lawyers look very closely to make sure Apple couldn't sue us over the iPod. We don't expect any trouble. And don't worry, you'll always be able to play Harmony on your iPod, as long as you never use iTunes again.
8 See the first summary item for Linux support.
9. Based on "independent" consultants on our payroll, people want alternatives to iTunes. That must mean they want us. We lost a million dollars in 3 weeks selling music at below-cost, so it must be true.
10. I have not stopped beating my wife, but more to the popint, our company is raking in lots of dough. We're not making any profit, or I would have given you profit numbers instead of revenue numbers.
MP3pro sucks ass. Plain and simple. How do I know? I tried it. Here's the issue: I can hear MP3 compression artificats clearly to 192kb on most sources, and to 224kb on some of my "favorite" music. Certain Boston sequences are particulary difficult to encode well even at 256kb when played over decent headphones*.
x
The problem is that even the registered version of an MP3pro converter would max out at 128kB, with 192kB "quality". Nice, but not really "enough". Everyone seems to be racing to the 96-128kb SIZE point, without realizing that it's not really all the great to listen to unless there's a lot of background noise, or the equipment you're playing it on comes in a heat-sealed clamshell. And 64kn in every format I've listened to sounds somewhere between AM and FM radio, with digital artifacting added as a bonus. I'll take 48 or 64 for spoken spoken word, but please don't say you use it for audio unless you are listening to it while mowing the lawn.
I finally gave up on lossy formats and started re-ripping everything in FLAC. Now I can transcode through foobar2000 to whatever the format dujour is, or to a format which will fit in the space I have on my portable player.
* Sony MDR-V6 in my case...quite the bargain IMHO, but get the Beyerdynamic 250/290 replacement pads - they're much more comfortable. See http://www.audioreview.com/PRD_118127_2750crx.asp
It's because all of the right leaning media don't want it to get out. It would hurt Bush immesely to show that his PRK policy has not worked, and those frakin' right-wing fundamentalists running the media services want to do all they can to keep him in power. How else can you explain it?
(I'm jokin, of course, but this IS the response we get from every middle-far right wonk when an anti-Kerry story doesn't get picked up immediately)
Yeah, stop killing pigs! Chicken is far cleaner to raise and render (not).
Actually, if you get the chance and are in an area with 4H or FFA shows like county or state fairs, there's usually an auction where you can buy you animals on the hoof. There are usually local slaughterhouses where you can have the animals automatically shipped and processed. The money goes to the kids who raise them - usually on small family farms - and you get a well fed, well treated animal for your freezer. Well treated until they shipped him off to get the axe, that is.
You'll probably want to buy a bigger freezer or go in with a friend to split an animal. Maybe 2 or three if you're inclined to buy a steer.
(Yes, I raised animals in 4H and sold them. We always kept one hog and usually got a side of beef from another local. Now that's good eats. Did chickens too, and turkeys. Nasty, filthy creatures but, once again, good eats!)
Are they P4s? Just spray on some Pam and turn 'em on! For those outside the US, Pam is a spray can of oil - probably canola. Though, now that I think about it, for P4 temps you should really consider peanut oil...it's got a higher smoke point. (I knew those Alton Brown episodes would come in handy some day)
Get the isopropyl Drygas (make sure there's no special "engine cleaner" additives). It's about as close to 100% isopropanol as you can get, and I usually keep a case around for cleaning and such.
Note: regular Drygas is methynol, iirc, but they make a "special" version (isopropanol, more expensive - maybe $1/bottle) for fuel injected autos.
I'm suprised there isn't a slashdot referral link in the front page blurb, or would that be too obvious?
/. these days?)
(Is anything to obvious for
...and the other half are claiming that we're being hypocritical.
Actually, there is always humor in a (hated) champion outfoxed with his own techniques, but that's beside the point.
Patents have been used by the software industry to muscle out competition or to try and inflate profits by hobbling competition. The only way things are going to change is if the "big boys" are slapped hard by the rules they've created. Though the chance is slim, industry-led changes to laws (patent and DMCA-style) may open the door to real investigation into the impact of these laws. I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying that the only way it will happen is if the first move is made by those with money & power.
Oh, and if you haven't sent a five-spot to Congressman Rick Boucher http://http//www.house.gov/boucher/welcome.htm/, you might want to consider it. He's one of the few outspoken opponents of the DMCA (and PATRIOT, too, for you libertarians) and is doing something about it. HOWEVER, he's being challenged by a Republican carpetbagger with lots of GOP cash backing this fall.
If it's NOT up for a "best picture" Academy Award:
;-)
The guy gets the girl, the aliens are defeated, and world is saved.
If it IS up for a "best picture" Academy Award:
The guy gets the girl, and one or both of them die. The safety of the world isn't even part of the story.
You can mail me 1/2 your movie money, or I can take paypal
I think his core values are solid, though his reversals on particular ways to meet his ends result in apparent flip-flops. I just happen to think his values are, well, not mine (I'm sure he feels they're progressive, I think they're neanderthal and dogmatic).
Anyway, I wholehartedly agree with your 2 year old analogy, and think it fits reasonably well. And I happen to have a 2 year old. At times I know that I'd make more headway by talking to her stuffed animals. I'm sure Colin Powell feels the same way most days, even if he doesn't admit it publicly.
If you're not going to hold them accountable for mission failure (if I engineer a building and it falls down, I'm liable for the whole thing) then why not just elimiate all the expensive contract administration and corporate profit and hire the engineers and machinists directly?
As it is, there is simply no accountability anywhere in the system.
Time to burn some Karma...
So, let me get this straight: Terrorists might be able to use satellite imagery to plan an armed assault on some target in the US. The response is to limit 1st amendment rights, but to leave 2nd amendment rights unchanged.
I guess it just depends on who's slippin' you the bills.