There are a lot of people who have dialup. The FTP install isn't so fun for us. Faster CD delivery would be nice. Not trying to demand too much, but perhaps having the CDs ship within a week of ordering them would be reasonable?
I would imagine that the files from the iTunes video store will blow up on the TV just as well if not better than VHS would. H.264 (assuming that is the core format inside the DRM of the files from the iTunes store) is an amazing codec and a 40-45 minute show in better than VHS resolution can fit in 400megs, and that is in progressive scan 24fps mode, which will look nice on TVs that support it. Of course, it is speculation until we start seeing reports of the file sizes and quality of the iTunes videos. I don't know about iMac users, but hopefully Powermac users with good enough TV sets will be allowed to send the video to TV instead of watching only on the screen. But, then, a 30" LCD isn't anything to laugh at either.
And that works out so lovely when a truck behind you pushes you further than any reasonable following distance into the car in front of you, or the driver in front of you decides to put the car in reverse and floor it.
I looked into ISDN. ISP service was afforadble ($40/mo unmetered), but the line itself was amazingly expensive (almost $300 for unmetered).
I'm aware that there are tricks that can be done to help reduce the cost, but I believe those tricks require that your ISP be in the same telco switch as you are.
In the end I'm making due with the 26.4k connections I get when lucky and am saving my pennies to buy a house in a better location.
A proper S/PDIF over coax implementation should use isolation transformers to electrically isolate the signal, preventing groundloops. RF is still a posibility, but using proper coax cable instead of any old RCA cable will help greatly prevent problems there as well.
A card like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 would be a respectable choice for under $100. I don't have my card handy to look at, but I think it uses a proper transformer for isolation. I don't think the creative labs cards do though. There may be some adequate USB interfaces, but I have no hands on experience with them.
There is also the option of shipping small PCs loaded with large IDE disks and a GigE card. Should be faster than many tape drives, albeit not quite as reliable. I seem to recall someone reporting that as what they did in some issue of the ACM Queue.
Just to be clear that a device called a DV bridge should be just DV, there are companies that make uncompressed firewire capture boxes. For instance see the AJA IO line. Alas, I believe most of these speak a proprietary protocol. However, at least one company makes an uncompressed firewire capture box that speaks IIDC (commonly used for web cams).
Also, while a DV bridge could be nice for a lot of things, it's probably best just to use DV directly with cameras/vcrs that support it.
NVRAM is often just SRAM with a battery. Thus, it has a finite lifespan. People who use computers that store vital information in NVRAM (say users of older Suns) will often run into problems with this.
Several versions of the PowerMac G4 can be bought for under $500 used. Each of these will take normal USB keyboards and mice, and thus should work with your USB KVM. You will most likely need a ADC to DVI or HD15 adapter though for the monitor, depending on what video card it comes with, or that you upgrade to.
Now what I'm trying to figure is how to make this work with my PS2 KVM. I'm seeing conflicting reports about how well PS2->KVM adapters work.
Cinepaint fixes one and two. Plus, I like the UI better. However, there are certainly ways that it is further behind the GIMP. Still, I prefer to use cinepaint when I need a paint program. And if I would ever learn to script it and/or write programs, I could hopefully fix a lot of my complaints.
I don't know what RAW to TIFF converter you used, or how it worked, however, there is not reason for the converter to have an exposure control. It would be better for the converter to spit out a 32bit single precision TIFF file, or better still an OpenEXR file.
Then instead of using The Gimp, use Cinepaint (a gimp fork). Cinepaint is used by numerous professionals with demanding color acuracy needs. Cinepaint has ICC profile support. Any exposure control you need can now be handled in the paint program.
I'm not clear what the best way to calibrate a monitor is though. I know there are people with properly calibrated monitors on linux, but I don't know how they do it. I suspect that there are proprietary solutions involved, but I could be wrong. A colorimeter that doesn't require OS support might also be one way to do it, although that would be more labor intensive I would expect.
Overall though, I expect a Mac is probably a better way to go for a single user.
On linux,.so's common have version numbers in the file name. So for instance, I have libgmp.so.3.3.2, and libgmp.so.4.1.3. libgmp.so is a symbolic link to libgmp.so.4.1.3, but applications that need 3.3.2 can still use 3.3.2.
I've never had trouble keeping multiple versions of.so files around.
Now, for the applications themselves (which often rely directly on other applications, rather than just.so files), things are a bit trickier. I currently have about 10 versions of gcc installed on my work machine, and it is a bit of a pain in the butt.
The versions I built myself go into their own directory tree with version name (so rather than just sticking it in/usr/local, I would set it in/opt/gcc-3.4.2). For the different versions from the distro (I have redhat's bastard 2.96, redhat's compile or 3.2.1, and redhats compile of one of the 3.5 betas), they stick the files in the same places, but have different names (so, gcc296 for 2.96, gcc for 3.2.1, and gcc-ssa for the 3.5 beta). A different vendor supplied set of GCCs go into/opt/vendorname/gnutools.
I've always thought linux (and other unixs in general) were pretty good about letting me keep different versions around.
Now, if you want a real.so pain in the butt, look at irix. Not only do you need 2-3 different builds for ever library (old style 32bit, new style 32bit, and 64bit), but you will have some programs that require an SGI build, other programs that require a build from SGI freeware, and other programs that require entirely different builds. Argh. I think I have 9 or 10 copies of the exact same version of libjpeg installed. I know I have many more copies of libtiff installed because on top of that, I have applications that require specific versions. Sheesh.
They forked the Gimp because the Gimp developers weren't interested in merging the changes back in, wanting to wait several years until GEGL was ready.
Frankly, I generally prefer to use Cinepaint instead of the Gimp, especially the Gimp 2.0.
* Who has write access? Obviously, the car's sensors and nobody else. But are there safeguards (digital signature?) to ensure against tampering? And what if a hacker replaces the car's CPU?
Why should boxes designed for scientific data collection require digital signatures? If people would just use them as intended, there would be no problems. At least one car manufactor in the past has fought having their black boxes used for court, since they only put them there to collect data to help them build safer cars.
> If you're on a CRT, raise the refresh rate to at > least 85Hz. If on an LCD, make sure you're running > at the native resolution. If your CRT monitor > doesn't support at least 85Hz, get a new one or > switch to an LCD.
Alas, this doesn't help those of us who don't work from home, and whose jobs won't pay for the new monitor. Until I can either move my work home or get a job, it looks like I'm stuck with a 60hz display in a room with flourescent lighting.
Most of the women I know care. As I think about the women in my family and extended family, as well as the ones where I work, and the ones I know from other social circles, I can only think of maybe 1 or 2 who wouldn't mind the hood being unopenable by anyone other than the dealership.
For the ones who don't do car repairs or maintainence themselves (which is most of them off the top of my head), they still care. Some of them want to be able to have their husbands/brothers/fathers work on the car. Others want small time mechanics who work out of the shed behind the house and are in no way factory trained or authorized to work on their cars. Such men may be incompetent. But others are reasonably competent at any work that doesn't require any special computer equipment fancier than a basic ODB-II machine.
I looked into ISDN just a few months ago. Around here, you have to arrange the ISDN line and the ISP seperately. A local ISP was willing to provide 128k service with a fixed IP address for $40 a month.
The phone company was much harder to deal with. They wanted $120 or so for install (which wasn't too bad). The basic line cost was under $30 a month. However, the cost per minute of use was really awefull. I figured that you use their basic plan, and stay connected all the time would cost over $600 a month. The phone company also offers a flat rate deal of $240 a month.
So, for a flat rate, always on internet connection via ISDN, it would set me back $280 a month. Somedays I'm tempted to go for it, but if I add $240 (the difference between ISDN and Cable or DSL) to what I'm paying for rent now, the new figure should be enough to rent a nice apartment in an area with cable or DSL service. My current apartment is nice, but it isn't quite that nice.
However, I have to at least stay until my lease is up. After that, I have to decide if I want to move to a new apartment, or if I just should stick with this one until I can buy a house. But, that would mean a second year with crappy internet service.
The worst part is that cable internet is affordable per month at my current apartment. However, the apartment building hasn't already been wired for cable, and the cable company wants $5000 to run a wire from the road to the apartment building. The owner of the property, understandably, refuses to pay it, and I'm not willing to do it either for a place I'm renting.
I think every house should have a phone that will operate without local electrical power, just in case. I know that my fancy digital answering machine in a phone unit requires power for the ringer or answering machine to work, but I can place calls just fine without power.
I still haven't dealt with my inadequate UPS coverage though. Must get more UPSs.
When I start to think about getting my own house, I intend to factor the price of a whole house generator into figuring what I can afford.
A pair of headphones would be something I could afford to loose, but I would still make a darn big stink over not getting them if a company fired me that way.
Oh, and how do I print my vi output in the right format (paginated with the right margins, headers and footers, any necessary sections underlined, double spaced)? I'm sure there's a nice little Unix utility to do it, but it'd probably take me about 10 minutes with man to find it and work out how to use it.
I'll stick with OpenOffice for my novel writing requirements, thanks.
I just use a LaTeX template file and a short script something like:
cat ~/head.tex $1 >/tmp/$$.tex
echo \\end{document} >>/tmp/$$.tex
latex/tmp/$$.tex
dvips/tmp/$$.dvi
rm/tmp/$$.tex/tmp/$$.dvi/tmp/$$.aux/tmp/$$.log
Of course, the script should possibly consider doing something more sophisticated to make sure that the text file passed in as $1 doesn't contain codes that will confuse latex, but since this is just for myself I don't have to worry about that. Using troff or groff would probably be easier, but I don't know how to use them, and I'd already had to learn latex for a math class. I have one script for letters, two for simple papers (one is for single space, one for double spaced), and if my requirements are harder for some reason, I just make the latex file directly.
I use OpenOffice for a spread sheet. I appreciate that it is free, and it is certainly a good enough spreadsheet for my personal needs (although in past jobs I would have found it inadequate), but in general OpenOffice feels sluggish on my aging machines, and I like being able to do my wordprocessing easily from any machine via ssh. I obviously am not a novelist though.
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It might have allowed for 12cm fans, but it you had looked, you would see that they are using 10 much smaller fans. Ick.
Meanwhile, the x4600 (8 dual core Opteron system) does apparently use 2 12cm fans.
With all those disks, I suppose it might not make much difference, but I would have rather seen them using 12cm fans on the x4500 as well.
There are a lot of people who have dialup. The FTP install isn't so fun for us. Faster CD delivery would be nice. Not trying to demand too much, but perhaps having the CDs ship within a week of ordering them would be reasonable?
I would imagine that the files from the iTunes video store will blow up on the TV just as well if not better than VHS would. H.264 (assuming that is the core format inside the DRM of the files from the iTunes store) is an amazing codec and a 40-45 minute show in better than VHS resolution can fit in 400megs, and that is in progressive scan 24fps mode, which will look nice on TVs that support it. Of course, it is speculation until we start seeing reports of the file sizes and quality of the iTunes videos. I don't know about iMac users, but hopefully Powermac users with good enough TV sets will be allowed to send the video to TV instead of watching only on the screen. But, then, a 30" LCD isn't anything to laugh at either.
And that works out so lovely when a truck behind you pushes you further than any reasonable following distance into the car in front of you, or the driver in front of you decides to put the car in reverse and floor it.
There are really only two choices. Erlang or lisp. For smaller projects, Smalltalk in the Seaside environment may be acceptable.
All three support the best time proven techniques, and have withstood the test of time.
Some people seem to like Ruby on Rails. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks acceptable.
I looked into ISDN. ISP service was afforadble ($40/mo unmetered), but the line itself was amazingly expensive (almost $300 for unmetered).
I'm aware that there are tricks that can be done to help reduce the cost, but I believe those tricks require that your ISP be in the same telco switch as you are.
In the end I'm making due with the 26.4k connections I get when lucky and am saving my pennies to buy a house in a better location.
A proper S/PDIF over coax implementation should use isolation transformers to electrically isolate the signal, preventing groundloops. RF is still a posibility, but using proper coax cable instead of any old RCA cable will help greatly prevent problems there as well.
A card like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 would be a respectable choice for under $100. I don't have my card handy to look at, but I think it uses a proper transformer for isolation. I don't think the creative labs cards do though. There may be some adequate USB interfaces, but I have no hands on experience with them.
There is also the option of shipping small PCs loaded with large IDE disks and a GigE card. Should be faster than many tape drives, albeit not quite as reliable. I seem to recall someone reporting that as what they did in some issue of the ACM Queue.
To drive the car silly.
Just to be clear that a device called a DV bridge should be just DV, there are companies that make uncompressed firewire capture boxes. For instance see the AJA IO line. Alas, I believe most of these speak a proprietary protocol. However, at least one company makes an uncompressed firewire capture box that speaks IIDC (commonly used for web cams).
Also, while a DV bridge could be nice for a lot of things, it's probably best just to use DV directly with cameras/vcrs that support it.
NVRAM is often just SRAM with a battery. Thus, it has a finite lifespan. People who use computers that store vital information in NVRAM (say users of older Suns) will often run into problems with this.
Several versions of the PowerMac G4 can be bought for under $500 used. Each of these will take normal USB keyboards and mice, and thus should work with your USB KVM. You will most likely need a ADC to DVI or HD15 adapter though for the monitor, depending on what video card it comes with, or that you upgrade to.
Now what I'm trying to figure is how to make this work with my PS2 KVM. I'm seeing conflicting reports about how well PS2->KVM adapters work.
Cinepaint fixes one and two. Plus, I like the UI better. However, there are certainly ways that it is further behind the GIMP. Still, I prefer to use cinepaint when I need a paint program. And if I would ever learn to script it and/or write programs, I could hopefully fix a lot of my complaints.
So, what's wrong with Cinepaint?
I don't know what RAW to TIFF converter you used, or how it worked, however, there is not reason for the converter to have an exposure control. It would be better for the converter to spit out a 32bit single precision TIFF file, or better still an OpenEXR file.
Then instead of using The Gimp, use Cinepaint (a gimp fork). Cinepaint is used by numerous professionals with demanding color acuracy needs. Cinepaint has ICC profile support. Any exposure control you need can now be handled in the paint program.
I'm not clear what the best way to calibrate a monitor is though. I know there are people with properly calibrated monitors on linux, but I don't know how they do it. I suspect that there are proprietary solutions involved, but I could be wrong. A colorimeter that doesn't require OS support might also be one way to do it, although that would be more labor intensive I would expect.
Overall though, I expect a Mac is probably a better way to go for a single user.
I don't know about that. My $50 computer speakers (some sort of altec lancing 3 piece set) sound a lot nicer than my $50 walmart stereo.
Maybe around $100 things change.
On linux, .so's common have version numbers in the file name. So for instance, I have libgmp.so.3.3.2, and libgmp.so.4.1.3. libgmp.so is a symbolic link to libgmp.so.4.1.3, but applications that need 3.3.2 can still use 3.3.2.
.so files around.
.so files), things are a bit trickier. I currently have about 10 versions of gcc installed on my work machine, and it is a bit of a pain in the butt.
/usr/local, I would set it in /opt/gcc-3.4.2). For the different versions from the distro (I have redhat's bastard 2.96, redhat's compile or 3.2.1, and redhats compile of one of the 3.5 betas), they stick the files in the same places, but have different names (so, gcc296 for 2.96, gcc for 3.2.1, and gcc-ssa for the 3.5 beta). A different vendor supplied set of GCCs go into /opt/vendorname/gnutools.
.so pain in the butt, look at irix. Not only do you need 2-3 different builds for ever library (old style 32bit, new style 32bit, and 64bit), but you will have some programs that require an SGI build, other programs that require a build from SGI freeware, and other programs that require entirely different builds. Argh. I think I have 9 or 10 copies of the exact same version of libjpeg installed. I know I have many more copies of libtiff installed because on top of that, I have applications that require specific versions. Sheesh.
I've never had trouble keeping multiple versions of
Now, for the applications themselves (which often rely directly on other applications, rather than just
The versions I built myself go into their own directory tree with version name (so rather than just sticking it in
I've always thought linux (and other unixs in general) were pretty good about letting me keep different versions around.
Now, if you want a real
They forked the Gimp because the Gimp developers weren't interested in merging the changes back in, wanting to wait several years until GEGL was ready.
Frankly, I generally prefer to use Cinepaint instead of the Gimp, especially the Gimp 2.0.
* Who has write access? Obviously, the car's sensors and nobody else. But are there safeguards (digital signature?) to ensure against tampering? And what if a hacker replaces the car's CPU?
Why should boxes designed for scientific data collection require digital signatures? If people would just use them as intended, there would be no problems. At least one car manufactor in the past has fought having their black boxes used for court, since they only put them there to collect data to help them build safer cars.
> If you're on a CRT, raise the refresh rate to at
> least 85Hz. If on an LCD, make sure you're running
> at the native resolution. If your CRT monitor
> doesn't support at least 85Hz, get a new one or
> switch to an LCD.
Alas, this doesn't help those of us who don't work from home, and whose jobs won't pay for the new monitor. Until I can either move my work home or get a job, it looks like I'm stuck with a 60hz display in a room with flourescent lighting.
Most of the women I know care. As I think about the women in my family and extended family, as well as the ones where I work, and the ones I know from other social circles, I can only think of maybe 1 or 2 who wouldn't mind the hood being unopenable by anyone other than the dealership.
For the ones who don't do car repairs or maintainence themselves (which is most of them off the top of my head), they still care. Some of them want to be able to have their husbands/brothers/fathers work on the car. Others want small time mechanics who work out of the shed behind the house and are in no way factory trained or authorized to work on their cars. Such men may be incompetent. But others are reasonably competent at any work that doesn't require any special computer equipment fancier than a basic ODB-II machine.
I looked into ISDN just a few months ago. Around here, you have to arrange the ISDN line and the ISP seperately. A local ISP was willing to provide 128k service with a fixed IP address for $40 a month.
The phone company was much harder to deal with. They wanted $120 or so for install (which wasn't too bad). The basic line cost was under $30 a month. However, the cost per minute of use was really awefull. I figured that you use their basic plan, and stay connected all the time would cost over $600 a month. The phone company also offers a flat rate deal of $240 a month.
So, for a flat rate, always on internet connection via ISDN, it would set me back $280 a month. Somedays I'm tempted to go for it, but if I add $240 (the difference between ISDN and Cable or DSL) to what I'm paying for rent now, the new figure should be enough to rent a nice apartment in an area with cable or DSL service. My current apartment is nice, but it isn't quite that nice.
However, I have to at least stay until my lease is up. After that, I have to decide if I want to move to a new apartment, or if I just should stick with this one until I can buy a house. But, that would mean a second year with crappy internet service.
The worst part is that cable internet is affordable per month at my current apartment. However, the apartment building hasn't already been wired for cable, and the cable company wants $5000 to run a wire from the road to the apartment building. The owner of the property, understandably, refuses to pay it, and I'm not willing to do it either for a place I'm renting.
I think every house should have a phone that will operate without local electrical power, just in case. I know that my fancy digital answering machine in a phone unit requires power for the ringer or answering machine to work, but I can place calls just fine without power.
I still haven't dealt with my inadequate UPS coverage though. Must get more UPSs.
When I start to think about getting my own house, I intend to factor the price of a whole house generator into figuring what I can afford.
A pair of headphones would be something I could afford to loose, but I would still make a darn big stink over not getting them if a company fired me that way.
cat ~/head.tex $1 >
echo \\end{document} >>
latex
dvips
rm
Of course, the script should possibly consider doing something more sophisticated to make sure that the text file passed in as $1 doesn't contain codes that will confuse latex, but since this is just for myself I don't have to worry about that. Using troff or groff would probably be easier, but I don't know how to use them, and I'd already had to learn latex for a math class. I have one script for letters, two for simple papers (one is for single space, one for double spaced), and if my requirements are harder for some reason, I just make the latex file directly.
I use OpenOffice for a spread sheet. I appreciate that it is free, and it is certainly a good enough spreadsheet for my personal needs (although in past jobs I would have found it inadequate), but in general OpenOffice feels sluggish on my aging machines, and I like being able to do my wordprocessing easily from any machine via ssh. I obviously am not a novelist though.