"People (amatuers) ask me all the time about what printer to buy because they want to print their digital photos.
They always give me a dumbfounded look when I tell them not to print any photos on any of the entry level photo printers, instead have them printed at a reputable photo lab. "Isn't that expensive?" they ask. Nope, not when compared to the total cost of the paper, the ink cartridges you used and the quality of the prints."
I do believe that this is the best option for high volume printing of digital photos. Still, I find having that photo printer on my desk is useful for the occasional print. For example we recently finished decorating the Christmas tree. When it got dark, I took my ultracompact and photgraphed the lit-up tree with a long-exposure flashless setup. The result was a beautiful 4 MP rendition of a glowing red tree. And minutes later I had a pretty good quality physical print. On a Sunday night at 9:30 PM.
It would not have been worth it to drive all the way to the closest place that accepts digital photos and pay for ONE photo to be developed, wasting gas, time, etc. Not that any would have been open at that time anyway.
That's why it's still good to have a photo printer. Small volume nearly-instantaneous good quality prints are still something that the photo lab can't match. Of course I would not do this for printing a vacation's worth of photos or something. My printer (Epson R200) is mainly used for inkjet printable CDs and DVDs.
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"Passwords are always going to be flawed. Biometrics are the wave of the near future/present."
There should be some feature in slashcode to remind people who inevitably try to post this that as soon as someone can fake your fingerprint or retinal scan, you are forked for life because you can never change those things.
"I'm pretty sure, we've had this in Ontario since 1995. The image is digitally printed and stored in a central DB. The birthday and name info is encoded into a magnetic stripe, and we have a hologram of a trillium when the card is tilted."
Actually the birthday is 'encoded' into the license number itself. Look at your driver's license number. The last six digits are actually the YYMMDD of your birthdate.
And your signature is also digitized. When you sign for your first driver's license, they scan it into the computer. When I got my second one, I didn't have to sign. They just used the scan from the original one and printed it again. They are pixel-identical.
"I carry a USB stick with my financial balances on it, as well as some other stuff. Good stuff I browse at work gets saved there. Every so often, I need to dump the accumulated debris off of it. It goes right on the fileserver without even being sorted."
I hope you're encrypting it in case you get mugged.
"I personally use alternate email aliases on my mail server that forward to my real account. then, once every couple of months, I delete those aliases and create new ones to post to websites, or use when I sign up for something. Only close personal friends get my real address, and if spam ever does show up directly at that address, I attack the spammer in every way possible."
I love this method, but the main problem with it is that you can't use it with GMail. You are *forced* to use your real @Gmail.com address as your 'from' addresss. You can only change the reply-to. I believe that this is why I now get spam at my gmail account.
" I have a real problem with the industry releasing everything on IDE. Is it me or is SCSI DVD drives obsolete. I have to go get a IDE-to-SCSI converter or something, and they are a rip off. There is not enough IDE channels to spare on any one motherboard."
IDE is obsolete. That's why we have SATA.
Most HD manufacturers offer the SATA version of their drives. My Segate 200GB SATA is lovely.:-) Also Plextor is offering SATA versions of all its latest DVDRW drives. It will be a while but we will see them from other optical drive manufacturers too.
And I must say, hooking up SATA devices is pure joy. The connectors snap in so very easily on both ends. The cables are so small and easily routed that the cabling job is much easier. And you're not sitting there 'see-sawing' the connector into the drive. Everything has its own private 150 MBps channel so there's no master/slave business anymore and you don't have to worry about PIO and DMA devices trying to talk on the same channel.
And FWIW I have two DVD burners, a DVD-ROM, a CD-Rw and three hard drives in my main box right now so I do have an extra dual channel ATA133 card in there to support them. (And yes, I do have a legit reason for having four optical drives.;-)
"My spoken English, and especially my understanding of it, has improved by leaps and bounds since I started living in an English speaking country (Canada). I wish I could say the same about my writing: due to being constantly exposed to your/you're and similar constructs, I feel its quality has definitely decreased."
Regardless, you are still part of a select group of English speakers who know the correct spelling of 'definitely' .;-)
"But on the bright side, at least all this means the current DVD standard will last slightly longer while the new formats battle for supremacy.
It'll give me an extra year or two of service out of my current systems before I have to start thinking about splashing out *again* on a new player. The manufacturers may want us to spend, spend, spend, but there's plenty of people who don't want (or can't afford) to buy a whole new entertainment system every three years just because they keep inventing new formats."
Considering that BluDisc and HDDVD have the same form factor as current DVD discs, I would be extremely surprised if BD/HD players did not play standard DVD discs by the second generation.
Also, since DVDs are digital and the CSS system has been completely cracked, there should relatively painless rip/convert/burn process for converting current DVDs to BluDisc-R or HDDVD-R whenver that format should become available. I see forsee some DVDShrink-esque utility (obviously without the 'shrink' part) that would automate this.
Unfortunaetly if BD/HD actually have 'unbreakable' protection schemes, there will be an artificial barrier protecting us from upgrading to whatever is invented after BD/HD due to the inability to decrpyt it and convert it for compatibility with the next systems.
"Could it be that I prefer to not be monitored by my toilet?"
The US has a lot more social stigmas regarding toilets and bathrooms than Japan. (In fact, the 'toilet' is generally separated from the rest of the bathroom appliances in Japan. Toilet and bathroom are different concepts over there.)
"Perhaps, but how about the differences between audio CD and DVD. I beleive the solution there was simply to put 2 readers in the DVD drive. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will have many of the same components. The motor and tracking will probably work the same way, and once the data is actually read, the electronics will be more or less identical."
Fair enough. But remember that CD and DVD are not competing formats. They have different purposes. On the other hand, HD-DVD and BlueDisc are each trying to kill the other, so I don't expect to see devices supporting both formats appearing right away.
"As before, there will be a short 'format war', maybe even shorter this time, say 6 months - and low and behold every product will sudenly start supporting every format - just like they did when DVD burners became popular."
Except that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are a lot more dissimilar than DVD+R and DVD-R. (Note: Some people think that + and - are identical after being recorded, but this is false. There are differences in the optics and signal processing techniques.)
My understanding is that the HD and Blu-Ray formats have notably different data storage sizes and manufacturing processes. The discs are tangibly and physically different in design.
Compare that to DVD+R and DVD-R. Their designs are almost identical. Even the ancient Panasonic DVD player from four years ago we have in the living room plays both formats even though it was invented before recordable DVD. That's how similar they are.
Will a first gen HD player read Blu Ray discs? Probably not. I'm not saying that dual format HD/Blu-Ray devices won't come out. I am saying that it will be a longer wait than with +R/-R readers.
"Both of these options focus on YOU rather than the person who is reading the email. That is missing the issue. When YOU writez0r teh bad grammer, OTHER PEOPLE think YOU are a moron. But when those OTHER PEOPLE judge you based on your grammar, they are doing so primarily based on how much your grammar differed from social norms rather than how difficult it was for them to understand what you were saying.
My point is that the judgement passed by the OTHER PEOPLE on YOU is unreasonable."
And when YOU talk like CAPTAIN KIRK then YOU sound like an IDIOT.;-)
"why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar?"
"2) So people don't think you're a moron."
Exactly! In 2002, I wrote this one short e-mail to the IT security people correcting them on some small thing they put on the company intranet regarding the dangers of e-mail attachments. There was a small but obvious typo in the message that made it look like I had made a grammar error.
To my surprise, three weeks later my e-mail was printed in the company newsletter being distributed to 10,000 people, with a note congratulating me on helping to increase the computer networks' security. My typo was there for all to conclude that I was a grammar-ignorant idiot.
Moral of the story: You never know who will read what you write, even if it is an internal company e-mail. Spending that 20 seconds to check your grammar/spelling/etc is worthwhile. You never know what small thing might come back and bite you in the butt later on.
"Balderdash. Balderdash is perhaps the greatest board game ever created. It's provided more hilarity and riot to my friends and I than anything else I've ever encountered."
I've gotta agree with this one. I've found that it needs at least 6 people to be fun, but some of my happiest family moments have been around the balderdash board. (We usually play it with extended family visiting, thus giving us a goodly number of players.)
Erm, I was thinking that that Bart Simpson comment deserved an 'Insightful' as opposed to 'Funny.'
Seriously, comment was designed to show how deeply the stupid == cool equation is embedded into American culture. IMO it's a real problem and I don't see how it will be solved anytime soon.
"How many careers actually use higher-end math at work? Even in programming for biz apps, one does not use much algebra, and zero Calculus. I agree that it is a nice skill to have, but it may be costing tens of thousands of dollars per student to force them into something not used that often.
It may make sense for other countries because they are getting all our offshored brain-work, while we do only the marketing and shmoozing and all the other fluff stuff that our unemployed geeks are not good at.
Face it, math is old-school."
While you may not actually be solving systems of differential equations in most jobs, studying advanced mathematics is important because it trains you in systematic thinking. It teaches you how to derive information from facts and how to avoid circular reasoning. It teaches you how to base decisions on logical reasoning and facts instead of some tenuous illogical, emotionally-motivated, sheepish or just plain poorly reasoned thinking. (I'll leave the linking of the last sentence to the recent US elections to the reader.) It teaches you to be skeptical of mathematics seen in the media, because it's almost always true that when the media does math, the media gets it wrong. Learning math helps people exercise common sense and apply a degree of critical thinking to information they receive.
Thus, even if your career does not involve high end math, studying it is still very relevant and beneficial.
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." --Albert Einstein
"In this country, there's a huge stigma attached to being good at math. If you are good at math, you're a nerd, where as all the cool kids suck at math, and are proud of that fact. Change the perceptions, and you'll go a long way toward improving the scores."
"These people just got the president re-elected. They have more power today then they have ever had. Not only does the president agree with them pretty much 100% he is indebted to them for his election."
It's interesting that Libermann (who ran for US Vice President as a Democrat in 2000) is on their board of advisors.
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I do believe that this is the best option for high volume printing of digital photos. Still, I find having that photo printer on my desk is useful for the occasional print. For example we recently finished decorating the Christmas tree. When it got dark, I took my ultracompact and photgraphed the lit-up tree with a long-exposure flashless setup. The result was a beautiful 4 MP rendition of a glowing red tree. And minutes later I had a pretty good quality physical print. On a Sunday night at 9:30 PM.
It would not have been worth it to drive all the way to the closest place that accepts digital photos and pay for ONE photo to be developed, wasting gas, time, etc. Not that any would have been open at that time anyway.
That's why it's still good to have a photo printer. Small volume nearly-instantaneous good quality prints are still something that the photo lab can't match. Of course I would not do this for printing a vacation's worth of photos or something. My printer (Epson R200) is mainly used for inkjet printable CDs and DVDs.
Funny, I thought almost all spam originated in the US (even though it is sent via Chinese webservers.) This is confirmed in the article, btw.
http://www.steves-digicams.com
http://www.dpreview.com
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I was born before October and mine doesn't look strange.
There should be some feature in slashcode to remind people who inevitably try to post this that as soon as someone can fake your fingerprint or retinal scan, you are forked for life because you can never change those things.
Actually the birthday is 'encoded' into the license number itself. Look at your driver's license number. The last six digits are actually the YYMMDD of your birthdate.
And your signature is also digitized. When you sign for your first driver's license, they scan it into the computer. When I got my second one, I didn't have to sign. They just used the scan from the original one and printed it again. They are pixel-identical.
I hope you're encrypting it in case you get mugged.
I love this method, but the main problem with it is that you can't use it with GMail. You are *forced* to use your real @Gmail.com address as your 'from' addresss. You can only change the reply-to. I believe that this is why I now get spam at my gmail account.
IDE is obsolete. That's why we have SATA.
Most HD manufacturers offer the SATA version of their drives. My Segate 200GB SATA is lovely. :-) Also Plextor is offering SATA versions of all its latest DVDRW drives. It will be a while but we will see them from other optical drive manufacturers too.
And I must say, hooking up SATA devices is pure joy. The connectors snap in so very easily on both ends. The cables are so small and easily routed that the cabling job is much easier. And you're not sitting there 'see-sawing' the connector into the drive. Everything has its own private 150 MBps channel so there's no master/slave business anymore and you don't have to worry about PIO and DMA devices trying to talk on the same channel.
And FWIW I have two DVD burners, a DVD-ROM, a CD-Rw and three hard drives in my main box right now so I do have an extra dual channel ATA133 card in there to support them. (And yes, I do have a legit reason for having four optical drives. ;-)
Regardless, you are still part of a select group of English speakers who know the correct spelling of 'definitely' . ;-)
Considering that BluDisc and HDDVD have the same form factor as current DVD discs, I would be extremely surprised if BD/HD players did not play standard DVD discs by the second generation.
Also, since DVDs are digital and the CSS system has been completely cracked, there should relatively painless rip/convert/burn process for converting current DVDs to BluDisc-R or HDDVD-R whenver that format should become available. I see forsee some DVDShrink-esque utility (obviously without the 'shrink' part) that would automate this.
Unfortunaetly if BD/HD actually have 'unbreakable' protection schemes, there will be an artificial barrier protecting us from upgrading to whatever is invented after BD/HD due to the inability to decrpyt it and convert it for compatibility with the next systems.
And you're saying that US men don't pee to the side of the toilet bowl so that the urine-splashing-water sound doesn't resonate?
The US has a lot more social stigmas regarding toilets and bathrooms than Japan. (In fact, the 'toilet' is generally separated from the rest of the bathroom appliances in Japan. Toilet and bathroom are different concepts over there.)
Fair enough. But remember that CD and DVD are not competing formats. They have different purposes. On the other hand, HD-DVD and BlueDisc are each trying to kill the other, so I don't expect to see devices supporting both formats appearing right away.
Except that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are a lot more dissimilar than DVD+R and DVD-R. (Note: Some people think that + and - are identical after being recorded, but this is false. There are differences in the optics and signal processing techniques.)
My understanding is that the HD and Blu-Ray formats have notably different data storage sizes and manufacturing processes. The discs are tangibly and physically different in design.
Compare that to DVD+R and DVD-R. Their designs are almost identical. Even the ancient Panasonic DVD player from four years ago we have in the living room plays both formats even though it was invented before recordable DVD. That's how similar they are.
Will a first gen HD player read Blu Ray discs? Probably not. I'm not saying that dual format HD/Blu-Ray devices won't come out. I am saying that it will be a longer wait than with +R/-R readers.
And when YOU talk like CAPTAIN KIRK then YOU sound like an IDIOT. ;-)
"I helped my uncle Jack off a horse."
"I helped my uncle jack off a horse."
"2) So people don't think you're a moron."
Exactly! In 2002, I wrote this one short e-mail to the IT security people correcting them on some small thing they put on the company intranet regarding the dangers of e-mail attachments. There was a small but obvious typo in the message that made it look like I had made a grammar error.
To my surprise, three weeks later my e-mail was printed in the company newsletter being distributed to 10,000 people, with a note congratulating me on helping to increase the computer networks' security. My typo was there for all to conclude that I was a grammar-ignorant idiot.
Moral of the story: You never know who will read what you write, even if it is an internal company e-mail. Spending that 20 seconds to check your grammar/spelling/etc is worthwhile. You never know what small thing might come back and bite you in the butt later on.
I've gotta agree with this one. I've found that it needs at least 6 people to be fun, but some of my happiest family moments have been around the balderdash board. (We usually play it with extended family visiting, thus giving us a goodly number of players.)
Seriously, comment was designed to show how deeply the stupid == cool equation is embedded into American culture. IMO it's a real problem and I don't see how it will be solved anytime soon.
While you may not actually be solving systems of differential equations in most jobs, studying advanced mathematics is important because it trains you in systematic thinking. It teaches you how to derive information from facts and how to avoid circular reasoning. It teaches you how to base decisions on logical reasoning and facts instead of some tenuous illogical, emotionally-motivated, sheepish or just plain poorly reasoned thinking. (I'll leave the linking of the last sentence to the recent US elections to the reader.) It teaches you to be skeptical of mathematics seen in the media, because it's almost always true that when the media does math, the media gets it wrong. Learning math helps people exercise common sense and apply a degree of critical thinking to information they receive.
Thus, even if your career does not involve high end math, studying it is still very relevant and beneficial.
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." --Albert Einstein
Next up: America fails spelling! :P
Bart Simpson is clearly to blame for this.
It's interesting that Libermann (who ran for US Vice President as a Democrat in 2000) is on their board of advisors.