If you want multiple monitors, Matrox seems to be the way to go. Sure, their cards aren't as well-equipped to give you every single last piece of 3D eye candy, but they are great with two or three display setups.
I'm currently working on a 21 in. Trinitron screen (and I've got other CRTs lying around that I've tried the Matrox TripleHead Desktop on), but my next display jump will be to get a pair of 17 in. or 19 in. TFT panels to put either side of my main display.
With that kind of setup I get the best of both worlds - accurate colours for graphics work, a single main display for games that aren't multi-monitor-compliant, and dialogue boxes that pop up in the middle of a screen, not in between two displays, as well as all the benefits of multiple displays.
Do I really, really need it? No. Will I love it? Yes.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just send a new $20 bill to every person in the US?
How stupid are you? The current US population is roughly 280 million. So, off the top of my head, they're spending a little more than 20 cents, not $20, per capita to get their message out to the public.
If you think that ~20 cents = $20, then you shouldn't be let lose with money. Heck, you should give every penny you have and earn to me right now.
The first three are pretty effective, but as to how effective a national email preference service can be combatting an international problem... Well we all know the answer to that one.
See, that's another one. The correct tense (I forget which past tense it is) of the verb "to spell" in this context is indeed "spelt". But, because US English is so watered down/bastardised/simplified, Americans invariably use "spelled" rather than "spelt".
If you don't believe me that "spelt" is correct then I suggest you look it up in a dictionary or ask an English teacher/professor.
Actually, either is now acceptable. However, this is only becuase the word "orientate" has become abbreviated through common usage to "oriented".
In the UK, and most of the English-speaking world, we tend to write "orientated", but pronounce the word as "oriented". Our American cousins (of which I assume you are one) spell some things differently from us, and this is one such example. Common English words such as "colour", "vigour", etc have letters dropped from them in their US spellings and some such as "centre", "theatre", etc have letters transposed. Others such as "cheque", "defence", etc are just spelt differently.
Another common difference is "-ise" becoming "ize". In the UK "modernise", "personalise", etc are correct but, in the US, the final "s" is replaced with a "z".
Sorry, but your link, which points to an American university, fails to take into account the majority of the English-speaking world.
It's a sad, sad day when the stories contain two levels of redundancy. Would you say a 2-wheeled, bike-type mountain bike? A four-wheeled, 4x4-like Land Rover? Sheesh.
If it's for the challenge, then go right ahead and ignore what's below. But if it's because you want to get something specific done in as short a time frame as possible then carry on reading.
It's highly unlikely that you're the first person to attempt such a project. In all likelyhood, there's something out there that either does what you want it to do or can be easily modified to do the job with a lot less effort that starting from scratch. But where are you going to find it?
Well, if I were you, I'd fire off some emails and letters to some academics - there's a very high probability that a chemical process simulator has been developed by some postgrad out there, perhaps even been released under the GPL or similar license. Try the more science-orientated universities first and work your way down the list, and try to correspond with people in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, etc departments.
I know someone out there is going to reply with a "Duh!", (or is at least tempted to do so) but it doesn't hurt to give it a go. Write a form email/letter, make sure it gets to the right people and give it a go. It might turn out to be a fruitless search but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
You are kidding, right? There's a reason that Google is by far the most popular search engine on the web, and it's got a lot to do with the "cockamamy" way it's run.
Perhaps you prefer the good old days when you'd have to check half a dozen search engines and trawl through countless useless links until you found something that was useful.
There are a handful of websites that should be in everyone's bookmarks. Top of the list is Google. Nuff said.
Oh, and as several people will have mentioned by now, and as Google's FAQ surely does, putting your search parameter in quotes will give you exact phrase results. This is pretty standard amongst all search engines, so it's amazing that you don't know this already.
Either you're new to the web and search engines in general or you haven't got a clue how to use one. Regardless, if you're going to comment on how "cockamamy" Google is, you should at least have an idea of how to use it first.
So, let me get this straight, you say that the shuttle is the one thing that has kept us from going to Mars, the logical next "giant leap for mankind", and you're glad about it?
Sorry, when something as old and dangerous as the space shuttle stands in the way of change, and change for the better, then there's something seriously wrong. Especially so when you're cheering such a luddite view.
Do we need to be making real strides into space? Yes. Is the best way of doing that by clinging onto old technology that the best scientific minds (Feynman, etc) reckon has a 1 in 50 failure rate? No.
Wow. You really are as innocent as a lamb aren't you?
Look all around you. Take a very good look. Have a look at that McDonalds' "100% beef" burger that tastes like no other beef on Earth. Watch that WWE wrestling match that's about as honest as a $7 note. Watch that TV expose that shows the truth behind the "honest" business practices of Gap, Nike, etc. Read RIAA's latest claims about P2P costing its members half their sales revenues, and of a 40-speed CD burner equating to 40 actual burners. Pick up a paper and marvel at how many of your fellow citizens still think the attacks on Septemer 11th were carried out by Iraqis, or that WMDs will be found in Iraq any minute now.
The world is full of lies and deception. That isn't about to change. If you're going to stand up and complain about it, you could find a lot of better things to complain about than the possible mis-labelling (deliberate or otherwise) of a USB2 device.
I'm not trying to put you down or anything. I'm just trying to show you that this is a drop in the ocean. And complaining about drops when there are some big, kick-ass tsunamis out there is kind of ridiculous.
Someone needs to point out to the judiciary, if not the USPTO itself, that this is getting beyond a joke.
Take the car as an example. If Mercedes (or whoever it was who made the first car) had tried to patent the idea of putting four wheels together and putting a box on them to carry passengers, etc on a horseless carriage then, by USPTO standards, a patent would have been granted even though the arrangement was already commonplace - it's just a reworking of a horse-drawn carriage.
But, because this was a "new application" (or whatever they call this crap), it would have been patentable. And so would the steering wheel. And horns. And indicators. And headlights. And god knows how many engine-related things.
Software patents are the worst of the lot - how can patent law that's meant to give a generation's worth of protection (30 years) apply to an industry where 5 years may see two generations' worth of progress?
I got told that my services were no longer required when I was recovering from life-saving surgery. The cold-hearted bastards even sent me a letter asking me to come into the office to discuss my position whilst I was still in hospital recovering from my operation.
The cowards didn't even have the guts to tell my co-workers that they were letting me go. They announced that they were going to reshuffle someone else into my position at a meeting and, when someone asked what my new role was going to be, weasled out a few lines along the lines of "he's decided to focus on other priorities".
All this despite knowing that I would be able to return to work within four weeks - one of which was the Christmas/New Year holiday period when the office was virtually dead. Not only did they have that in writing from me, they had it from my surgeon, who was a world-reknowned expert in his field.
Basically, what it boiled down to was my boss (not my line manager, but her boss) didn't want me around. He couldn't fault my performance so he dressed up my ill-health for his own advantage. My line manager even suggested that I apply for the vacancy created by the co-worker who moved into my job. I told her that I was never going to allow the bastard who sacked me the opportunity to do it twice.
I swear, at that moment in time, I felt I was as low as it gets. I had someone who loved me and she gave me a reason to live, but I had just gone from being in the prime of my manhood to death's door and back, only to find that the one thing I was most looking forward to - the one job that I truly loved - had been callously taken from me. It was like being kicked to the ground and then, at the first sign of life, kicked to unconciousness.
It's a good thing that I'm not an American living in America. If there was ever a time in my life that I would have picked up a gun, walked up to someone, and calmly shot them through the head that was it. Some people are just scum. This guy was the king of them.
I think you're missing something here. To a lot of physicists and other scientists, CERN is probably known as "the guys who know more than anyone about particle physics". But, to the average guy, CERN is probably a totally unknown quantity.*
If you were to mention particle physics then Mr. Average would probably still be none the wiser - to him it would still be "men in white coats with massive dome-shaped heads" stuff. However, if you mention the world wide web, the chances are that he'll know what you're talking about.
People relate to things by association, especially by association with their own lives and experiences. Most people have no clue what a quark is, let alone know what flavours mean in this context, but they do know what a web page looks like.
(*That's not to say that only scientists know about CERN, only that relatively few non-scientists know about it. I'm sure there are some non-scientists that know CERN backwards, but they're in a very small minority.)
After September 11th, Dubya had the political good will of virtually every country in the world. Somehow, in less than two years, he managed to piss it all away. That's some acheivement.
That Matrix-inspired case isn't that hot but the Millennium Falcon mod looks great. Imagine turning up to a LAN party with that baby - you'd be the envy of every geek with a pulse.
I wonder what kind of sound scheme he's running? A bunch of well-placed MF-related quotes and sounds for system startup and shutdown, critical alerts, etc would just be the icing on the cake.
Perhaps your definition of "well off" and that of the Indian developers that you dealt with were (are) very different.
To most Americans, "well off" probably means not having to worry about mortgage repayments, a nice car or two, two or three luxurious holidays a year, being able to pay for your kids' college educations without counting the pennies, etc.
To most Indians, "well off" probably means having a good job and career in a white collar industry. Yes, some things are obviously cheaper in India than they are in the US but that's not true to the extent that you suggest across the board, and it's especially not true for manufactured goods, such as cars and PCs.
Yes, $50,000 will go further in India than in the US but it'll also go further in Green Bay than it will in New York city. Rent/mortgage repayments alone account for a huge chunk of that difference, and your monthly bills make another great dent too. Etc, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want multiple monitors, Matrox seems to be the way to go. Sure, their cards aren't as well-equipped to give you every single last piece of 3D eye candy, but they are great with two or three display setups.
I'm currently working on a 21 in. Trinitron screen (and I've got other CRTs lying around that I've tried the Matrox TripleHead Desktop on), but my next display jump will be to get a pair of 17 in. or 19 in. TFT panels to put either side of my main display.
With that kind of setup I get the best of both worlds - accurate colours for graphics work, a single main display for games that aren't multi-monitor-compliant, and dialogue boxes that pop up in the middle of a screen, not in between two displays, as well as all the benefits of multiple displays.
Do I really, really need it? No. Will I love it? Yes.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just send a new $20 bill to every person in the US?
How stupid are you? The current US population is roughly 280 million. So, off the top of my head, they're spending a little more than 20 cents, not $20, per capita to get their message out to the public.
If you think that ~20 cents = $20, then you shouldn't be let lose with money. Heck, you should give every penny you have and earn to me right now.
Belarc Advisor. Get it from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html.
It tells you everything you need to know on your Windows systems, hardware and software, even including registration numbers.
Here are the links that you want:
Telephone - http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/
Fax - http://www.fpsonline.org.uk/
Post - http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/
Email - http://www.dmaconsumers.org/emps.html
The first three are pretty effective, but as to how effective a national email preference service can be combatting an international problem... Well we all know the answer to that one.
See, that's another one. The correct tense (I forget which past tense it is) of the verb "to spell" in this context is indeed "spelt". But, because US English is so watered down/bastardised/simplified, Americans invariably use "spelled" rather than "spelt".
If you don't believe me that "spelt" is correct then I suggest you look it up in a dictionary or ask an English teacher/professor.
Actually, either is now acceptable. However, this is only becuase the word "orientate" has become abbreviated through common usage to "oriented".
In the UK, and most of the English-speaking world, we tend to write "orientated", but pronounce the word as "oriented". Our American cousins (of which I assume you are one) spell some things differently from us, and this is one such example. Common English words such as "colour", "vigour", etc have letters dropped from them in their US spellings and some such as "centre", "theatre", etc have letters transposed. Others such as "cheque", "defence", etc are just spelt differently.
Another common difference is "-ise" becoming "ize". In the UK "modernise", "personalise", etc are correct but, in the US, the final "s" is replaced with a "z".
Sorry, but your link, which points to an American university, fails to take into account the majority of the English-speaking world.
...a 3 wheeled trike-type rickshaw...
It's a sad, sad day when the stories contain two levels of redundancy. Would you say a 2-wheeled, bike-type mountain bike? A four-wheeled, 4x4-like Land Rover? Sheesh.
...then why don't you simply just change the tickets for cash at a change booth and then gamble with that cash?
Hey, it's hardly rocket science, is it?
If it's for the challenge, then go right ahead and ignore what's below. But if it's because you want to get something specific done in as short a time frame as possible then carry on reading.
It's highly unlikely that you're the first person to attempt such a project. In all likelyhood, there's something out there that either does what you want it to do or can be easily modified to do the job with a lot less effort that starting from scratch. But where are you going to find it?
Well, if I were you, I'd fire off some emails and letters to some academics - there's a very high probability that a chemical process simulator has been developed by some postgrad out there, perhaps even been released under the GPL or similar license. Try the more science-orientated universities first and work your way down the list, and try to correspond with people in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, etc departments.
I know someone out there is going to reply with a "Duh!", (or is at least tempted to do so) but it doesn't hurt to give it a go. Write a form email/letter, make sure it gets to the right people and give it a go. It might turn out to be a fruitless search but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Oh, and good luck.
Somewhere just beyond the asteroid belt, Jupiter is on the phone to its lawyer...
What a cockamamy way to run a search engine.
You are kidding, right? There's a reason that Google is by far the most popular search engine on the web, and it's got a lot to do with the "cockamamy" way it's run.
Perhaps you prefer the good old days when you'd have to check half a dozen search engines and trawl through countless useless links until you found something that was useful.
There are a handful of websites that should be in everyone's bookmarks. Top of the list is Google. Nuff said.
Oh, and as several people will have mentioned by now, and as Google's FAQ surely does, putting your search parameter in quotes will give you exact phrase results. This is pretty standard amongst all search engines, so it's amazing that you don't know this already.
Either you're new to the web and search engines in general or you haven't got a clue how to use one. Regardless, if you're going to comment on how "cockamamy" Google is, you should at least have an idea of how to use it first.
So, let me get this straight, you say that the shuttle is the one thing that has kept us from going to Mars, the logical next "giant leap for mankind", and you're glad about it?
Sorry, when something as old and dangerous as the space shuttle stands in the way of change, and change for the better, then there's something seriously wrong. Especially so when you're cheering such a luddite view.
Do we need to be making real strides into space? Yes. Is the best way of doing that by clinging onto old technology that the best scientific minds (Feynman, etc) reckon has a 1 in 50 failure rate? No.
Wow. You really are as innocent as a lamb aren't you?
Look all around you. Take a very good look. Have a look at that McDonalds' "100% beef" burger that tastes like no other beef on Earth. Watch that WWE wrestling match that's about as honest as a $7 note. Watch that TV expose that shows the truth behind the "honest" business practices of Gap, Nike, etc. Read RIAA's latest claims about P2P costing its members half their sales revenues, and of a 40-speed CD burner equating to 40 actual burners. Pick up a paper and marvel at how many of your fellow citizens still think the attacks on Septemer 11th were carried out by Iraqis, or that WMDs will be found in Iraq any minute now.
The world is full of lies and deception. That isn't about to change. If you're going to stand up and complain about it, you could find a lot of better things to complain about than the possible mis-labelling (deliberate or otherwise) of a USB2 device.
I'm not trying to put you down or anything. I'm just trying to show you that this is a drop in the ocean. And complaining about drops when there are some big, kick-ass tsunamis out there is kind of ridiculous.
If it does that bad, I'll buy you a bottle of ketchup. And some "previously enjoyed" underwear for desert.
Someone needs to point out to the judiciary, if not the USPTO itself, that this is getting beyond a joke.
Take the car as an example. If Mercedes (or whoever it was who made the first car) had tried to patent the idea of putting four wheels together and putting a box on them to carry passengers, etc on a horseless carriage then, by USPTO standards, a patent would have been granted even though the arrangement was already commonplace - it's just a reworking of a horse-drawn carriage.
But, because this was a "new application" (or whatever they call this crap), it would have been patentable. And so would the steering wheel. And horns. And indicators. And headlights. And god knows how many engine-related things.
Software patents are the worst of the lot - how can patent law that's meant to give a generation's worth of protection (30 years) apply to an industry where 5 years may see two generations' worth of progress?
I got told that my services were no longer required when I was recovering from life-saving surgery. The cold-hearted bastards even sent me a letter asking me to come into the office to discuss my position whilst I was still in hospital recovering from my operation.
The cowards didn't even have the guts to tell my co-workers that they were letting me go. They announced that they were going to reshuffle someone else into my position at a meeting and, when someone asked what my new role was going to be, weasled out a few lines along the lines of "he's decided to focus on other priorities".
All this despite knowing that I would be able to return to work within four weeks - one of which was the Christmas/New Year holiday period when the office was virtually dead. Not only did they have that in writing from me, they had it from my surgeon, who was a world-reknowned expert in his field.
Basically, what it boiled down to was my boss (not my line manager, but her boss) didn't want me around. He couldn't fault my performance so he dressed up my ill-health for his own advantage. My line manager even suggested that I apply for the vacancy created by the co-worker who moved into my job. I told her that I was never going to allow the bastard who sacked me the opportunity to do it twice.
I swear, at that moment in time, I felt I was as low as it gets. I had someone who loved me and she gave me a reason to live, but I had just gone from being in the prime of my manhood to death's door and back, only to find that the one thing I was most looking forward to - the one job that I truly loved - had been callously taken from me. It was like being kicked to the ground and then, at the first sign of life, kicked to unconciousness.
It's a good thing that I'm not an American living in America. If there was ever a time in my life that I would have picked up a gun, walked up to someone, and calmly shot them through the head that was it. Some people are just scum. This guy was the king of them.
I think you're missing something here. To a lot of physicists and other scientists, CERN is probably known as "the guys who know more than anyone about particle physics". But, to the average guy, CERN is probably a totally unknown quantity.*
If you were to mention particle physics then Mr. Average would probably still be none the wiser - to him it would still be "men in white coats with massive dome-shaped heads" stuff. However, if you mention the world wide web, the chances are that he'll know what you're talking about.
People relate to things by association, especially by association with their own lives and experiences. Most people have no clue what a quark is, let alone know what flavours mean in this context, but they do know what a web page looks like.
(*That's not to say that only scientists know about CERN, only that relatively few non-scientists know about it. I'm sure there are some non-scientists that know CERN backwards, but they're in a very small minority.)
After September 11th, Dubya had the political good will of virtually every country in the world. Somehow, in less than two years, he managed to piss it all away. That's some acheivement.
Yeah, and Dubya's bringing peace to the world.
And they say you can tell when a politician's lying because his lips are moving...
...you have to see it for yourself.
From Reference.com:
Entry: matrix
Function: noun
Definition: origin
Synonyms: cast, forge, form, grid, model, mold, origin, pattern, source, womb
Concept: origin/source
Source: Roget's Interactive Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.0.0).
Hey, if the editors can recycle old stories, why can't I recycle old jokes?
That Matrix-inspired case isn't that hot but the Millennium Falcon mod looks great. Imagine turning up to a LAN party with that baby - you'd be the envy of every geek with a pulse.
I wonder what kind of sound scheme he's running? A bunch of well-placed MF-related quotes and sounds for system startup and shutdown, critical alerts, etc would just be the icing on the cake.
...for browsing the web!
First one to register eChad.com is the winner.
Perhaps your definition of "well off" and that of the Indian developers that you dealt with were (are) very different.
To most Americans, "well off" probably means not having to worry about mortgage repayments, a nice car or two, two or three luxurious holidays a year, being able to pay for your kids' college educations without counting the pennies, etc.
To most Indians, "well off" probably means having a good job and career in a white collar industry. Yes, some things are obviously cheaper in India than they are in the US but that's not true to the extent that you suggest across the board, and it's especially not true for manufactured goods, such as cars and PCs.
Yes, $50,000 will go further in India than in the US but it'll also go further in Green Bay than it will in New York city. Rent/mortgage repayments alone account for a huge chunk of that difference, and your monthly bills make another great dent too. Etc, etc.