Trader Joe's happens to be in the same parking lot as (ahem) a Microcenter computer store (gee, wonder where everything was bought..)
Actually, I think the only thing I got at Microcenter was the PQI drive (because I couldn't get in touch with anyone at PQI to save my life). Everything else was shipped to me from the manufacturer. But yes, you guys guessed right: Ars Technica was founded by a bunch of Harvard guys, thus the photos of the area.
Seeing as I was the one who wrote the review, I seriously considered including the Shuffle, but then I realized that if I included it, I would have gotten a ton of people accusing me of playing favorites to Apple and asking where all the other Flash-based MP3 players were at the same time. Including all the flash-based players along with the Shuffle would have made this article obscenely long and unmanageable.
Needless to say, I have an iPod shuffle in hand along with a bunch of other flash-based digital audio players. I should have a review coming soon featuring as many of these flash-based players as I can get my hands on (some of which can act as a flash drive, too.)
Unfortunately, it's still far too shaky to consider it useful for any indie film that doesn't want to be branded with the Blair Witch style. So why would you go to the trouble?
I'll offer up an answer, since I wrote the review.
I realized today that there was a small problem with our video test: we weren't following any subject. Most steadicam shots are either following a subject or moving around a subject within a few feet of the camera. As you saw in the test, there was no subject. Consequently, even the tiniest movements seemed to make the whole world shake.
The other half (as I mentioned in the review) was that we didn't practice much with the steadicam. I imagine with a little work, we could have gotten a really nice shot. One of the areas that could have used some practice was paying attention to how the side bar is held (since it controls the side-to-side motion). You'll see in the last shot that overall it is very smooth, except that there is a little side to side movement.
All in all, the $14 steadicam was a fun build and worthwhile if you don't have a few thousands dollars for a real steadicam.
Re:A Games CD for Linux on BitTorrent ... mmm..
on
Games Knoppix
·
· Score: 1
We didn't review it for a few reasons. 1) We wanted to focus on USB 2.0 Hi-speed devices (the link you have is for the slower "full speed" - a.k.a USB 1.1) 2) We wanted embedded memory drives only. Upgradable models would have made the article more confusing.
But don't worry, we have a follow-up article in the works that will feature more exotic devices.
Actually, we didn't ignore it. The article was focused strictly on Hi-speed USB 2.0 Flash drives. I don't know if you're aware of how many USB devices there are on the market, but there are a ton. If we had included the Muvo TX, then we would have had to include like a hundred other devices.
Anyway, we are planning a follow-up article which will feature more exotic USB devices such as the one you mentioned.
A bit of a plug here, but still a good resource nonetheless...
Ars Bachelor Chow!: It's a 50+ page book chock full of great (and a few not-so-great) recipes for geek bachelors. Hey, it's probably better than the bachelor chow advertised on Futurama... ^_^
Actually, Ben Browder (and I think even David Kemper) said himself that the sets were falling apart after 4 seasons and that re-building them from scratch would have been cheaper and faster than trying to salvage them.
Though I agree that they are going to have to pull consistent 2s or higher in the Nielsen ratings to get this series saved. Anyway, I'll be watching. Too bad I don't have a Nielsen box.:(
You don't have to join an expensive gym like Bally's, Gold's, etc. Many YMCA's (come on, sing it with me) have great gyms and their prices are usually well under those of the big gyms. Most of the YMCAs that I've always gone to have pools and basketball courts, too!
If you are looking to build muscle, I would suggest a personal trainer for like 4 sessions. They'll really help you learn good form and technique, as well as exercises you hadn't considered. (The only drawback is that personal trainers can be kind of expensive.)
Actually, I managed to pick up the whole first season of SG1 for $50. Also, I know Season 2 has been released in Region 2. Supposedly MGM plans to release Season 2 in North America this fall. I'm not sure why they waited so long.
I know the first season of Farscape is out, but apparently the going rate is $15 - $20 per disc (with each disc holding only 2 episodes.) Considering that the first season was 22 episodes, I'm not particularly inclined to pay $165 - $220. Such a shame.:(
Fluorescents certainly do not top out at 12 - 15%. Most flourescents exceed 75% efficiency! Sometimes they even hit close to 80%.
The new models use electronic balasts, so they don't flicker at the frequency of the powersupply. And they start instantly, too. (altho for some reason a bunch of them require a 1 to 2-minute warmup period to reach full strength.)
And you can buy fluorescent bulbs that emit soft, warm light (instead of the traditional harsh, cold light of long tube fluorescents.)
Now if this new technology that's being pimped in the article in this thread ultimately exceeds 80% efficiency, then I'm switching to this new technology (assuming it is cost effective). Until then, fluorescents all the way baby!!
Interestingly enough. Compact Fluorescent bulbs have changed radically in the past few years. These light bulb makers have listened to the complaints of people and have taken steps to correct the problems with the bulbs.
- The phosphors on the bulbs have been changed so as to put out a soft "warm" white light just like a regular incandescent bulb. (rather than the traditional "cold" bluish light from the long tube fluorescents.)
- The bulbs been shrunk even futher to fit nearly every type of lamp fixture.
- The bulbs are started with electronic balasts (instead of the old magnetic kinds). This eliminates "flicker" and allows the bulbs to start instantly rather than taking a few seconds to start.
- The life of these bulbs is usually around 10,000 hours (exceedingly longer than the measly 750 to 1,500 hours of most incandescents.)
- Energy Efficiency of most of these bulbs exceeds 75%! (still much better than this "improved" incandescent that this thread is about.)
A small handful of states subsidize purchase of these bulbs. Check out The Energy Guide for great deals on Fluorescent bulbs.
I've changed all the incandescents in my house to compact fluorescents, and I've knocked at least $10 / month off my electricity bill!
The biggest problem that I have with Aerons is that they have no sound dampening and odor absorbing properties. "Why is this important", you ask?
Imagine going out for a nice beef and bean burrito for lunch. Ya come back to work and you gotta fart like it's nobody's business. (In fact it is nobody's business except yours.) But those Aerons are no help. Ya try and let them sneak out silently, but inevidably a loud one gets out and all your co-workers are pointing their fingers at you. Not to mention their other hand holding their noses.:-)
-----
As funny as this sounds, I'm actually quite serious.
Yep, it's disgusting. Americans are pretty stupid for the most part. And no, most haven't really "seen the light". They're so used to buying standard incandescent bulbs they never stop to think about why (they shouldn't.)
And to the poster who said that the light hurts his/her eyes, well I can say that R&D has fixed that problem as well. Most of the new screw type flourescent bulbs produce a "warm incandescent-like" light, rather than the old "cool white" (harsh) light.
While this may sound crazy, flourescent lights have come a long way and the technology is fairly common and is becoming cheaper everyday.
The cool thing about flourescent bulbs is that they now come in standard "edison" screw type sizes so you don't need to buy those long tubes. On top of this, they are over 80% efficient (only 20% of energy is turned to heat) and last 10,000 hours! [5 - 7 years under average use] Good old incandescent bulbs only last 1,000 hours at most and are only 15% efficient. (85% of the energy goes up as heat.)
Not only is this a boon for 3rd world countries, but it is helpful for 1st world ones with states that have rolling black-outs.:^)
So if you're a Californian trying to get in on the 20/20 deal, you might want to look into getting flourescent lights for your house. Not only do they produce less heat, they consume only 1/5th the electricity.
The best place that I've found to buy flourescent bulbs online is some company called http://www.energyguide.com
and New Englanders get a $5 discount per bulb making them practically free. So what are you waiting for? Save yourself some money by lowering your electricity bill! (and perhaps avoid rolling blackouts!)
Yeah, I was gonna mention that. I was thinking that some of the SCSI standards allow up to 9 meters! You could put the player in your car and run an ultralong cable to your trunk where your computer (with MP3 software) would reside. Though I imagine you still have to deal with vibration and shock problems.
There is another potential problem to this if you were thinking of hooking it to a remote computer unit.
Most older CD-ROM drives (not the really old ones w/ the proprietary interfaces), but the ones that use EIDE as an interface are restricted in bus length. I think the longest an EIDE cable is spec'd for is 18". You might be able to push it to 1 or 2 feet, but beyond that you'd get consistent errors.
Now if someone was familiar with the EIDE bus, you might be able to hack an ad-hoc controller and make a crude interface for the player (w/ a cable no more than a foot or so), to tell the player to play, stop, pause and skip tracks, but outside of that, it wouldn't be very useful.
And as others pointed out, vibration dampening might be a problem. Neat idea though.
As a technical consultant for SAP America, I can say with certainty that SAP DB (previously known as Adabas), is far better than mySQL and Postgres SQL. It has had full transaction processing for many years and is quite comparable in performance to the other big ones like MS-SQL Server and Oracle 8. Although I don't think it is quite as good as them, it's definitely in the same league. (I'll see if I can dig up some benchmarks...)
Nevertheless, SAP DB is a full-blown Relational DB. Many European companies are "live" with their production systems using SAP DB as the backend.
I'm surprised more people haven't started using SAP DB now that it's fully GPL'd. If you need a real DB that can really scale and can't afford to buy Oracle or MS-SQL server, this is the one to get!
Btw, Open Source is not something that's new to SAP. When you buy SAP R/3, you get all the source code to all of the programs that execute on the R/3 system. Many customers heavily modify the code to adapt it to their own business processes. (The core "kernel" code is not open source and probably never will be.)
I think SAP is on the right track. Open Source is really starting to make sense to some companies. Hopefully the rest will realize this, too.
This is a very do-able thing, but only if you have experience with repairing cars.
I was all excited to try this myself since I understand all the basic principles and the plans seemed relatively simple. The only problem that I ran into was when I got to this paragraph:
If the timing is the same as in a normal gasoline engine, the new fuel's explosive forces will fire before TDC and will not be properly harnessed. This will not aid mileage, but actually could retard it as well as cause possible engine damage.
Yikes!! I don't want to damage my car!! Of course there is a fix:
The damage might be caused because the explosive force is pushing down when the piston cannot really move much (when at the TDC point). By retarding the timing, the forces can fire when the piston is ready to go down. You can set the timing for 3-5 degrees later. A tip for setting your timing: I have found (if you have no timing light) you can use a vacuum gauge. Just set the engine to the highest vacuum at idle.
This stopped me. How do I do this? Who do I talk to? I'm not about to go to my mechanic and say "Hey man, can you help me with this totally experimental hack?"
Otherwise, this setup seems like a pretty cool way to increase your mileage at least 25%!! (possibly more as the article mentioned)
Hrm. I hadn't considered the limited weight issue with the Saturn5 rocket. I imagine there is more room for redundancy these days, but your explanation does sound pretty sound and rational.
Slashdot Mirror
Trader Joe's happens to be in the same parking lot as (ahem) a Microcenter computer store (gee, wonder where everything was bought..)
Actually, I think the only thing I got at Microcenter was the PQI drive (because I couldn't get in touch with anyone at PQI to save my life). Everything else was shipped to me from the manufacturer. But yes, you guys guessed right: Ars Technica was founded by a bunch of Harvard guys, thus the photos of the area.
Seeing as I was the one who wrote the review, I seriously considered including the Shuffle, but then I realized that if I included it, I would have gotten a ton of people accusing me of playing favorites to Apple and asking where all the other Flash-based MP3 players were at the same time. Including all the flash-based players along with the Shuffle would have made this article obscenely long and unmanageable.
Needless to say, I have an iPod shuffle in hand along with a bunch of other flash-based digital audio players. I should have a review coming soon featuring as many of these flash-based players as I can get my hands on (some of which can act as a flash drive, too.)
Hope this makes sense.
Unfortunately, it's still far too shaky to consider it useful for any indie film that doesn't want to be branded with the Blair Witch style. So why would you go to the trouble?
I'll offer up an answer, since I wrote the review.
I realized today that there was a small problem with our video test: we weren't following any subject. Most steadicam shots are either following a subject or moving around a subject within a few feet of the camera. As you saw in the test, there was no subject. Consequently, even the tiniest movements seemed to make the whole world shake.
The other half (as I mentioned in the review) was that we didn't practice much with the steadicam. I imagine with a little work, we could have gotten a really nice shot. One of the areas that could have used some practice was paying attention to how the side bar is held (since it controls the side-to-side motion). You'll see in the last shot that overall it is very smooth, except that there is a little side to side movement.
All in all, the $14 steadicam was a fun build and worthwhile if you don't have a few thousands dollars for a real steadicam.
And here's the BitTorrent Link:
BitTorrent for Games Knoppix 3.7
(Mods: Sorry if this is redundant. I didn't see one immediately available...)
We didn't review it for a few reasons.
1) We wanted to focus on USB 2.0 Hi-speed devices (the link you have is for the slower "full speed" - a.k.a USB 1.1)
2) We wanted embedded memory drives only. Upgradable models would have made the article more confusing.
But don't worry, we have a follow-up article in the works that will feature more exotic devices.
Actually, we didn't ignore it. The article was focused strictly on Hi-speed USB 2.0 Flash drives. I don't know if you're aware of how many USB devices there are on the market, but there are a ton. If we had included the Muvo TX, then we would have had to include like a hundred other devices.
Anyway, we are planning a follow-up article which will feature more exotic USB devices such as the one you mentioned.
Cheers!
Don't forget Ars Technica's finding that if you turn off SSID, Windows Wireless Zero Configuration may connect your to other networks that you don't want to connect to.
A bit of a plug here, but still a good resource nonetheless...
Ars Bachelor Chow!: It's a 50+ page book chock full of great (and a few not-so-great) recipes for geek bachelors. Hey, it's probably better than the bachelor chow advertised on Futurama... ^_^
Hey. Let's not forget close-call that was "3 Mile Island" and another snafu here in the US: The SL-1 Accident in Idaho.
Freevo can be found here: Freevo
;)
(for those of you who don't know how to use Google yet...
Actually, Ben Browder (and I think even David Kemper) said himself that the sets were falling apart after 4 seasons and that re-building them from scratch would have been cheaper and faster than trying to salvage them.
:(
Though I agree that they are going to have to pull consistent 2s or higher in the Nielsen ratings to get this series saved. Anyway, I'll be watching. Too bad I don't have a Nielsen box.
You don't have to join an expensive gym like Bally's, Gold's, etc. Many YMCA's (come on, sing it with me) have great gyms and their prices are usually well under those of the big gyms. Most of the YMCAs that I've always gone to have pools and basketball courts, too!
If you are looking to build muscle, I would suggest a personal trainer for like 4 sessions. They'll really help you learn good form and technique, as well as exercises you hadn't considered. (The only drawback is that personal trainers can be kind of expensive.)
Actually, I managed to pick up the whole first season of SG1 for $50. Also, I know Season 2 has been released in Region 2. Supposedly MGM plans to release Season 2 in North America this fall. I'm not sure why they waited so long.
:(
I know the first season of Farscape is out, but apparently the going rate is $15 - $20 per disc (with each disc holding only 2 episodes.) Considering that the first season was 22 episodes, I'm not particularly inclined to pay $165 - $220. Such a shame.
Bzzzzz. Wrong. Sorry. Thanks for playing. :-)
Fluorescents certainly do not top out at 12 - 15%. Most flourescents exceed 75% efficiency! Sometimes they even hit close to 80%.
The new models use electronic balasts, so they don't flicker at the frequency of the powersupply. And they start instantly, too. (altho for some reason a bunch of them require a 1 to 2-minute warmup period to reach full strength.)
And you can buy fluorescent bulbs that emit soft, warm light (instead of the traditional harsh, cold light of long tube fluorescents.)
Now if this new technology that's being pimped in the article in this thread ultimately exceeds 80% efficiency, then I'm switching to this new technology (assuming it is cost effective). Until then, fluorescents all the way baby!!
- The phosphors on the bulbs have been changed so as to put out a soft "warm" white light just like a regular incandescent bulb. (rather than the traditional "cold" bluish light from the long tube fluorescents.)
- The bulbs been shrunk even futher to fit nearly every type of lamp fixture.
- The bulbs are started with electronic balasts (instead of the old magnetic kinds). This eliminates "flicker" and allows the bulbs to start instantly rather than taking a few seconds to start.
- The life of these bulbs is usually around 10,000 hours (exceedingly longer than the measly 750 to 1,500 hours of most incandescents.)
- Energy Efficiency of most of these bulbs exceeds 75%! (still much better than this "improved" incandescent that this thread is about.)
A small handful of states subsidize purchase of these bulbs. Check out The Energy Guide for great deals on Fluorescent bulbs. I've changed all the incandescents in my house to compact fluorescents, and I've knocked at least $10 / month off my electricity bill!
Then again, I could be totally wrong:
Domain Name: COM.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS.CNET.COM
Name Server: NS2.CNET.COM
Updated Date: 04-dec-2001
/me runs away and hides...
Did someone actually follow the link? Even though it appears to be coming from News.com, it is actually coming from News.com.com
Some owns the domain name: com.com - but it probably isn't C|Net.
I say April Fools! =P
Imagine going out for a nice beef and bean burrito for lunch. Ya come back to work and you gotta fart like it's nobody's business. (In fact it is nobody's business except yours.) But those Aerons are no help. Ya try and let them sneak out silently, but inevidably a loud one gets out and all your co-workers are pointing their fingers at you. Not to mention their other hand holding their noses. :-)
-----
As funny as this sounds, I'm actually quite serious.
Yep, it's disgusting. Americans are pretty stupid for the most part. And no, most haven't really "seen the light". They're so used to buying standard incandescent bulbs they never stop to think about why (they shouldn't.) And to the poster who said that the light hurts his/her eyes, well I can say that R&D has fixed that problem as well. Most of the new screw type flourescent bulbs produce a "warm incandescent-like" light, rather than the old "cool white" (harsh) light.
While this may sound crazy, flourescent lights have come a long way and the technology is fairly common and is becoming cheaper everyday.
The cool thing about flourescent bulbs is that they now come in standard "edison" screw type sizes so you don't need to buy those long tubes. On top of this, they are over 80% efficient (only 20% of energy is turned to heat) and last 10,000 hours! [5 - 7 years under average use] Good old incandescent bulbs only last 1,000 hours at most and are only 15% efficient. (85% of the energy goes up as heat.)
Not only is this a boon for 3rd world countries, but it is helpful for 1st world ones with states that have rolling black-outs. :^)
So if you're a Californian trying to get in on the 20/20 deal, you might want to look into getting flourescent lights for your house. Not only do they produce less heat, they consume only 1/5th the electricity.
The best place that I've found to buy flourescent bulbs online is some company called http://www.energyguide.com and New Englanders get a $5 discount per bulb making them practically free. So what are you waiting for? Save yourself some money by lowering your electricity bill! (and perhaps avoid rolling blackouts!)
Yeah, I was gonna mention that. I was thinking that some of the SCSI standards allow up to 9 meters! You could put the player in your car and run an ultralong cable to your trunk where your computer (with MP3 software) would reside. Though I imagine you still have to deal with vibration and shock problems.
There is another potential problem to this if you were thinking of hooking it to a remote computer unit.
Most older CD-ROM drives (not the really old ones w/ the proprietary interfaces), but the ones that use EIDE as an interface are restricted in bus length. I think the longest an EIDE cable is spec'd for is 18". You might be able to push it to 1 or 2 feet, but beyond that you'd get consistent errors.
Now if someone was familiar with the EIDE bus, you might be able to hack an ad-hoc controller and make a crude interface for the player (w/ a cable no more than a foot or so), to tell the player to play, stop, pause and skip tracks, but outside of that, it wouldn't be very useful.
And as others pointed out, vibration dampening might be a problem. Neat idea though.
As a technical consultant for SAP America, I can say with certainty that SAP DB (previously known as Adabas), is far better than mySQL and Postgres SQL. It has had full transaction processing for many years and is quite comparable in performance to the other big ones like MS-SQL Server and Oracle 8. Although I don't think it is quite as good as them, it's definitely in the same league. (I'll see if I can dig up some benchmarks...)
Nevertheless, SAP DB is a full-blown Relational DB. Many European companies are "live" with their production systems using SAP DB as the backend.
I'm surprised more people haven't started using SAP DB now that it's fully GPL'd. If you need a real DB that can really scale and can't afford to buy Oracle or MS-SQL server, this is the one to get!
Btw, Open Source is not something that's new to SAP. When you buy SAP R/3, you get all the source code to all of the programs that execute on the R/3 system. Many customers heavily modify the code to adapt it to their own business processes. (The core "kernel" code is not open source and probably never will be.)
I think SAP is on the right track. Open Source is really starting to make sense to some companies. Hopefully the rest will realize this, too.
This is a very do-able thing, but only if you have experience with repairing cars. I was all excited to try this myself since I understand all the basic principles and the plans seemed relatively simple. The only problem that I ran into was when I got to this paragraph: If the timing is the same as in a normal gasoline engine, the new fuel's explosive forces will fire before TDC and will not be properly harnessed. This will not aid mileage, but actually could retard it as well as cause possible engine damage. Yikes!! I don't want to damage my car!! Of course there is a fix: The damage might be caused because the explosive force is pushing down when the piston cannot really move much (when at the TDC point). By retarding the timing, the forces can fire when the piston is ready to go down. You can set the timing for 3-5 degrees later. A tip for setting your timing: I have found (if you have no timing light) you can use a vacuum gauge. Just set the engine to the highest vacuum at idle. This stopped me. How do I do this? Who do I talk to? I'm not about to go to my mechanic and say "Hey man, can you help me with this totally experimental hack?" Otherwise, this setup seems like a pretty cool way to increase your mileage at least 25%!! (possibly more as the article mentioned)
Thanks!