Unlike Portland, OR, where the city tried to tell AT&T that, despite paying for all the hardware upgrades themselves, they had to open up their lines to other companies, Ashland, OR got it right. The laid down fiber in the whole city, sell access rights to a variety of ISP's, and they call compete for prices. @Home was a horrible option compared to the city's network, and the profits went back to local companies, so everyone won.
They also used the fiber to provide cheaper, better digital cable for everyone in the city as well. Future plans included adding 802.11b to the whole city so cable modem users could be online anywhere in the city for one low fee. For a town of 20,000 people in Southern Oregon that only has a Shakespeare Festival and a University, it's a pretty amazing network. The city also has their own power company, so you can get everything locally, it costs less (when their was a power shortage, the city was still fine), the city gets all the profits from it, parks and roads improve, and there is high bandwidth everywhere. Almost makes me wish I was still going to college there instead of living in Seattle where my DSL line the same speed costs almost $100 a month.
Lots of movies (Let's use Titanic as an example) are shot using Super35, where they acually capture more info above and below the 2.35:1 widescreen image used in theaters so they only have to crop off a small portion of the sides and add more material to the top and bottom so they aren't totally destroying the picture. This is as good a compromise as you can find for the people that refuse to watch the black bars, but it does have one problem.
When you get to the special effects shots, redoing all the effects for the P&S version would be absurdly expensive, so those are almost always just cropped versions of the widescreen image where you are losing almost half the image. I've never seen the end of Titanic in P&S and never want to, but I imagine all those effects scenes lose most of their impact.
I really wish people would try to educate consumers on the fact that 16:9 HDTV becomes the standard in 4 more years, you will likely own a widescreen set at that point, and so you will have to replace all your DVD's that you get cropped at this point with the widescreen versions in the future. Oh well, I'll take my 2.35:1 widescreen version on my 27" TV and be happy.
I don't know the last time I heard something with two outputs really being described as having lots of outputs. If it had Balanced XLR, Toslink, Coaxial, and at least two pairs of RCA outputs, that would be a lot. What are bare wire outputs for speakers as well? Are they spring clips, which are just horrible, or are they something like nice 5-way binding posts that accept bare wires, banana plugs, and spade lugs? Since you're writing this for a fairly technical audience, can't you look up the technical terms for the outputs on the device so we can know more about it? Oh, and is the headphone jack 1/4" or 1/8" in size?
Well, we all know the answer to that one now, don't we? It seems everyone seems to be forgetting that Slashdot has ads right now. They're just going to get a little bigger, but content and the free nature of Slashdot isn't changing. However, if you REALLY hate ads, you can pay $5 and get rid of 1,000 of them. Everyone that keeps suggesting $5 for a year seems to forget that they would probably be losing money on that (I'm guessing $5 is the going rate for 1,000 ads on Slashdot, so you guys break even on the deal), which doesn't help anyone out.
I'm not going to pay the money for removing the ads, since after growing up reading newspapers, magazines, watching TV, and seeing billboards everywhere, I'm used to them, and don't pay attention to them anymore. If they start to run popup or pop-under ads, however, then I stop visiting. Don't complain about them giving you the option (not forcing it like Salon) to pay to get rid of ads, though, it's a nice option to have.
Can someone answer me a simple question, though: If ads are blackholed thru my OpenBSD NAT, do those still count as hits for Slashdot? I'm pretty sure they do, but I've never gotten a real answer from someone.
If you read the article, you get to him asking if, by ignoring the CD Key, they violate the DMCA.
This is made clear by the definition of circumvention in 1201(a)(3)(B), which "means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." Bnetd does not descramble, decrypt, remove or deactivate anything. It does not avoid, bypass or impair, it ignores. Ignoring is not circumventing.
Now, tell me, how is ignoring the key not avoiding or bypassing it? He even mentions that they had to go and modify the DLL that comes with WC3 to enable it to skip the CD check. Isn't that deactivating it, or removing it? Most of the article seems solid, but when it comes down to compliance with the DMCA (I'm not saying the DMCA is good, I'm just going off what's law right now), it seems to fail, badly.
If you compare DLP (which they use for projection) to 35mm, the 35mm print will have greater fine detail, better shadow detail, and look far better overall. The only real advantage digital offers is that the print won't get worse over time, but how long are prints in the theater for now anyway? A month?
The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.
Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.
For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are. The DVD transfers should look totally incredible, though. However, does anyone care if the movie sucks as bad as Episode 1, and so far the trailers don't give me much hope.
Re:Yes, there ARE people who won't see it.
on
Review: Kung Pow
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· Score: 2
My point was that people that weren't going to see Lord of the Rings aren't going to want to see it because of a review on Slashdot. Some other movies that people haven't seen a million ads for or heard about as much, those are movies where reviews play more influence in the decision to see them. I'd rather see reviews of movies like that then the 400th review of Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars: Episode 2.
If he really wants to do reviews of films that people might acually use, why doesn't he go see some movies that aren't massive blockbusters? In the past two months, he could have gone to see In The Bedroom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Brotherhood of the Wolf (though I didn't like it), Amelie (best movie of last year, bar none), or Monsters Ball, which are smaller movies that people might acually go see if they read a good review of them. Kung Pow and Orange County have been showing me trailers for two months and they've looked stupid the whole time. Come on, do we really need Katz to do a review of Lord of the Rings? Was anyone NOT going to see it?
Newer Apple LCD's (the ones they could get review versions of in theory) now use a special Apple display connector so they won't work with any other computers besides Apple. I think I saw there might be a DVI converter that a 3rd party makes, but they basically made their 24" Cinema Display Mac only.
My senior project used PHP and MySQL on a Linux box, and when the time came for other students to review the projects of classmates, one student raised up her hand and asked "Can I not review or fail anything that uses Linux?". Seriously. I couldn't believe that a CS major would be that closed minded about an OS they probably should learn to get familiar with, but they were. Of course, the only other girl in the class had written a sound driver in Linux to get her senior project completed and was at the total other end of the spectrum.
We didn't have to deal with UNIX/Linux much outside of a couple classes, though, so it was really easy for students to hate it, and not know how to use it, which was really quite sad.
If we don't find a comment funny, then should we just assume that it's supposed to be funny and mod it as "funny"? OK: Chipmunks and butter. I find that funny, even if it's not in your taste in humor, mod it up! Yea!
I went and read their info about it after I hooked my laptop up to 802.11 in my apartment, but couldn't find a single reason to pay $30/month to get unlimited access there. Why does it cost so much to use their wireless access? If they got a cable modem (which are available in the area), or a DSL line, they could pay $30-50 a month to get fast enough access for everyone there to be happy with. Also, if I could have free access while I was there, I know I'd be far more likely to drop by Starbucks for coffee, or to get coffee there instead of going someplace else.
There are independant coffee houses in Seattle that offer free wireless access because they realize that customers might stop by and buy coffee and food whlie they use it, but they don't want to pay $30 a month for it, or a per-minute charge, since they are already spending money there. They go spend $50 a month on an ISP, $200 on their wireless router, and it's pretty much good.
I think where Starbucks failed was not adding wireless access, but thinking they would be able to charge a fortune for it instead of assuming they can make back the cost, and more, by the people that would stop by and have coffee while they use it that wouldn't stop by otherwise.
'N Sync already made their music sound bad enough without using copy protection to worsen sound quality.
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years
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Dorm Storm?
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Is this a big reunion of U of O Resnet Tech's here? The Black Box Compaq's were always the worst, was so glad I never got one of them.
Re:Believe it or not...
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Dorm Storm?
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First, the girls see you as "the guy that fixes the computer" and usually tries to talk to someone else or ignore you the whole time. Second, our boss was very clear on "no hitting on a customer" after issues the year before. Might want to make sure it's OK to do this. However, the people you work with are usually really cool, and nothing is great after 12 hours of installing network cards like a trip to the local bar (make sure to wear your University T-Shirts if you get them, they love that).
What I learned in my one experience
on
Dorm Storm?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
1. Make sure you have at least one expert for every 4-5 other tech people you have. If you are training people for 2-3 days before they work, they're going to screw up sometimes, and you're going to have to fix it. If you have 2 expert techs for 30 newbies, you're going to be swamped with problems continually.
2. Make sure people sign out when they are going to do an install so people know where they are. Walkie Talkies for the higher level techs can be a good idea, and if you have desks spread out to the different dorms, you're definately going to want a good way to communicate. When you can't track down the Level 2 tech because he didn't sign out for an install, it's going to be frustrating.
3. When people say "I'll try to do it myself", unless they have an iMac, tell them just to wait for a while and someone can do it for them. Once you've done 50 of these, you can do it in your sleep. However, if they've severely screwed up the machine before you get there, it makes your job a lot harder.
4. Make sure the computer runs before you get there. You're job is to fix the network, not to get their CD-R drive working, not to show them how to download pr0n, or how to install Quake 3. If you fix a printer or something else, they are going to tell their friends to call your office when their printer breaks, and your boss is going to hate you. If you are really nice and fix it, make sure they know never to call you guys about it again.
5. Send everyone out with certain things: Screwdriver (multiple bits, you can get them cheap), a 50' ethernet cable that you know works (can reach across the dorm room, can eliminate cable as an option), a PCI card, an ISA card, a CD with drivers for all the cards you support. You'll be amazed how many people try to use a phone cord instead of Cat5, so you'll want the cable for sure. Bring cards that you know work so you can eliminate the card being broken quickly.
6. Remember - Computers don't always work like you think they should. You'll find that a card will work in one PCI slot but not another. That if an ISA card is in one slot but not another, the PCI card will stop working. There are a million little things like this that cause problems because you think it should work, but it won't. Experiment with things like this. Make sure to check the BIOS and that it doesn't have some stupid issues. Don't be afraid to disable something in Windows Control Panel, but ASK FIRST.
7. Since you should keep computerized records of all these appointments, if there is anything strange about the install (had to use a certain PCI slot, had to disable something), make a note of it and keep that around. This will help immensely in the future. You might do a million installs the first few days, but if you keep track of them, when you have to fix them later you will be really happy you did.
8. Laptops suck. They love certain PCMCIA cards, they hate certain ones. We had a card that IBM's would never work with, but everyone else loved. I think IBM had a deal with 3Com so you couldn't use cheap cards in their laptops.
9. Remember, the low level techs that don't know as much and cause more problems than they fix? They're very good at going and getting you food and drinks. They're beeter at doing that then fixing a computer they don't understand.
10. Figure out who knows Macs, who knows NT/2000, who only knows 95/98, and if anyone knows Linux. Keep a list so people go to a computer they know. Have people write down what kind of computer and card they have when you go to do an install for them. It saves time and makes everyone happier.
If you like doing installs, this is a really fun week, and after a day or two it gets really, really easy to do. You also get good stories:
Compaq's had the expansion slot covers soldered at 10 points on certain models. They were not easy to get off. Nothing makes a parent feel confident like you ripping off their computer case and attacking the case with screwdriver with all your might to force it open. Sony VAIO desktops had this issue as well, but they were far less common. This week also teaches you what computer makers do a great job with their computers (Dell, Apple), and those that don't as much (almost everyone else).
Flim resolution is around 3500x2000 (I know the ratio isn't exactly right) from what I learned in imaging class a couple years ago. All films are shot on 35mm film typically, which has a 4x3 ratio. However, they capture it with an anamorphic lens which basically compresses a 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 ratio (films are NOT shot at 16x9) onto the 4:3 film. Then, in a theater, they project with the same lenses to unstretch it. Try watching a DVD on a 4:3 TV with the DVD player set to anamorphic mode (for 16:9 TV's) and you can see what I mean.
Anyway, people are keen on using digital film and digital projection because it saves cost in duplication, editing, equipment, etc... I have yet to find any serious film person that acually says that digital video has a technical advantage in resolution, detail, contrast ratio, or anything like that. Digital Video is great for many things, don't get me wrong, but unless there is an improvement, instead of just being close to as good, I'd like to stick with film for the moment.
No one since has made a butterfly keyboard I don't think. The reason is that the Thinkpad had a 10.4" screen I believe, which was big for that time. LCD's didn't get above 12" or so, where now we get 15.5" LCD's in our laptops. Since the screens are so huge, there is no reason to try to fit in a full size keyboard, since one will already fit. Maybe an ultra-portable could use it, but I can't think of one that does.
Re:Badass compression algorithm?
on
Share The Pi!
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Well, in theory, couldn't someone (with lots of money and the hardware and bandwidth that money can buy) set up a server with all of Pi on it, then you could send that server a request with the digit to start with, and the length, and have it send it back to you? Figuring out where the string exists in Pi is the hard part, but the advantage would be that you could just use the offset and length to retrieve your data from anywhere. Forget the compression idea, that won't work, at least I don't think, but imagine being able to instantly retrieve anything, from anywhere. Of course, once someone learned where a program like WindowsXP existed in the string, everyone could instantly retrieve it for free, so long as they also posted the location of the crack to remove the "Dial Home" protection.
Did you ever think that the rest of the world looks at Americans this same way?
Do I think people look at America's leaders the same way the look at someone like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Doubtful. Everyone that runs for office in the United State is power hungry, but our leaders aren't the only people we are allowed to vote for under fear of death (Iraq), a religious group that is the only people we can vote for while they go around taking away the rights of Women and everyone else (Afghanistan), or a communist dictatorship run by the not-so-stable son of the former leader of the country (North Korea).
Did I go and support beaking the ABM treaty? No, it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and had you acually read the whole post instead of going off and attacking statements as those of a "Rambo-style American Ego", maybe you would have caught onto that as well. I went through and stated why I don't think this will help and why we shouldn't build it and keep the ABM treaty in place. In no way to do think the US is honorable in all cases and always does the right things. We're about as hipocritical as a country can be, but that doesn't mean me aren't the most powerful country in the world and can use that power to apply force to different nations.
We all understand what Mutually Assured Destruction is, but is this going to stop that? If some rogue country fires a missile at us and we shoot it down, will we not retaliate? If we miss it, which I see happening, we're definately going to retaliate I imagine. However, how does to policy of MAD apply to terrorist groups, which I wrote were the main problem? Can we blow up their country in revenge? If they blow up a suitcase nuke or a biological/chemical weapon in NYC, how do we strike back at them? I don't know how we do it, or if we really can, but the missile shield doesn't help in this case, and this is the most likely case. If North Korea attacks, there is a good chance it's all over, missile shield or not, but if a terrorist does, the shield does nothing.
Our current leader is a power hungry, retarted drunk, and has been really good at showing that over time, but the people were still dumb enough to elect him for some reason. However, you better believe that he's in a little more check than Saddam Hussein, or the Taliban, or the other "nutjob" leaders of these rogue states. I'm not going out and attacking all communist nations in some version or McCarthyism like you suggest, since I don't think Cuba or China really have nutjobs running them, they just have communist governments. As much as our leader sucks, you'd be crazy to suggest he's the same thing as a dictator or a fundamantalist religious group running a country that has full power with no one below him.
Nutjob or no nutjob, people are in charge and running those countries because they love power. They like having control over everyone, and what they fear most is losing that power. When your country is below the US, it looks great to your people to attack them, hold them up to ridicule, and try to act like you don't fear anyone, but when push comes to shove, is anyone going to stand up?
If any of these rogue countries like Iraq or Afghanistan or North Korea ever did get the balls to launch a nuclear missile at us, they have to know that their life is over. Their power is gone. There is nothing they can do to save themselves at that point. For these leaders that thrive off power, do you really think they are going to throw it all away? What will this acomplish for them? Even if, somewhow, they destroyed the United States, don't you think that another country that is an ally (Great Brittian, France, Germany, etc...) would jump in and destroy them? Firing a nuclear missile at the United States has NO political gain for any other country.
However, a rogue terrorist group does have something to gain. They don't have a country you can nuke. They don't think as logically since, where Saddam Hussein might order his troops to death and he will never see a bullet, these terrorist leaders often get involved in the actions themselves. Far and away the most likely ways for them to attack us is to get a bomb into the US the same way people get drugs in, or to fire a missile from a boat off the coast and fly it in under radar. Can our missile defense shield protect against this? No way. Can it even defend against a large volley of nukes, like North Korea could possibly offer? With our current results, no way.
Lots and lots of people are making lots and lots of money off this plan. I'm sure lots of those people making money gave lots of money to the Bush/Cheney campaign last year, and now they are reaping the rewards. Of course, I'm sure they would have given the money to Gore/Lieberman as well, since they all sell out to the all mighty dollar here. If you really look at this plan, though, the countries that can send missles at us really have nothing to gain, where the wack jobs would never use a missile, they'd just get a suicide bomber to deliver it for them.
Re:Audiophiles are *worse* than drug addicts
on
Insanely Audiophile
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· Score: 1
I think the difference, though, is the Audiophile group doesn't lead you to believe you can rot in hell for eternity if you listen to your music on a walkman, they just think you don't get it. I also don't recall my high school having an audiophile group at it, or a religious group.
Of course, with digital signals you can get problems due to jitter (when the timing of the signal is off), but fixing those takes a spendy box, and I think you're really beyond the point of diminishing returns as well. Of course, no one would spend $8,000 on a CD player and use the digital output on it. I hear people talk about how a Coaxial Digital connection can, in theory, carry more data than a more common Toslink Optical connections, but nothing out there uses that bandwidth. It's like having a 6 lane highway between a couple small towns when 40 cars drive it a day.
They had to run new cables for some other project a couple years ago and decided to lay fiber down at the same time as well. This allows the company, Ashland Fiber Network, to give everyone in town amazing digital cable TV and cable internet access. Since they are just local and aren't as concerned with profit and taking over the world as someone like AT&T or Time-Warner is, you can pay around $30 a month for cable access, and the TV is cheaper as well. The network is also open for local ISP's who sell you service, not the town.
Ashland also provides their own power so they don't have to worry as much about blackouts this summer (we are 10 miles north of California), and everyone is wired. They are also working on a plan now to have wireless internet access through the whole city within a couple years so you can go downtown to the park with your laptop and still be working. The town is just under 20,000, and is home to a college (Southern Oregon University), but it has everything you could want in a town for internet access. It could use a decent computer store, though.
OK, I have no idea where in this country you live, but those people are making way above average. Back in 1990 or so, the average teacher in Beaverton, OR made something like $33,000 I believe, and then we slashed and burned the school budget thru tax cuts, so the pay has probably not gone up much, if at all, since then. That was probably the richest school district in the state and the pay was still that low. Cops don't make $100k in any area I've heard of, unless you are basing the "average" salary on what the chief of police makes and the superintendant of schools makes.
Yes, they have great benefits lots of the time, but they don't make much, have longer hours that require them to do more work in their free time than most people in IT, and earn that extra pension since they do jobs that people often choose not to do because they would risk death (cops) or being abused by students and parents if they try to stand up for themselves (teachers).
Our CS department is losing 3 teachers, including the head of the department, in the next 2 years, and we asked how they expected to replace them. They told us seniors that they really don't know since any CS professor that's qualified could easily make twice as much in the open market probably, doesn't have to stick around and hold office hours for students, and doesn't have to deal with the BS of being a teacher. If the head of a CS department at a college (which pays more than your average teacher) realizes they are screwed when compared to what other businesses can offer an IT person, then I think you should check your facts on what people really make again.
Slashdot Mirror
They also used the fiber to provide cheaper, better digital cable for everyone in the city as well. Future plans included adding 802.11b to the whole city so cable modem users could be online anywhere in the city for one low fee. For a town of 20,000 people in Southern Oregon that only has a Shakespeare Festival and a University, it's a pretty amazing network. The city also has their own power company, so you can get everything locally, it costs less (when their was a power shortage, the city was still fine), the city gets all the profits from it, parks and roads improve, and there is high bandwidth everywhere. Almost makes me wish I was still going to college there instead of living in Seattle where my DSL line the same speed costs almost $100 a month.
When you get to the special effects shots, redoing all the effects for the P&S version would be absurdly expensive, so those are almost always just cropped versions of the widescreen image where you are losing almost half the image. I've never seen the end of Titanic in P&S and never want to, but I imagine all those effects scenes lose most of their impact.
I really wish people would try to educate consumers on the fact that 16:9 HDTV becomes the standard in 4 more years, you will likely own a widescreen set at that point, and so you will have to replace all your DVD's that you get cropped at this point with the widescreen versions in the future. Oh well, I'll take my 2.35:1 widescreen version on my 27" TV and be happy.
I don't know the last time I heard something with two outputs really being described as having lots of outputs. If it had Balanced XLR, Toslink, Coaxial, and at least two pairs of RCA outputs, that would be a lot. What are bare wire outputs for speakers as well? Are they spring clips, which are just horrible, or are they something like nice 5-way binding posts that accept bare wires, banana plugs, and spade lugs? Since you're writing this for a fairly technical audience, can't you look up the technical terms for the outputs on the device so we can know more about it? Oh, and is the headphone jack 1/4" or 1/8" in size?
Well, we all know the answer to that one now, don't we? It seems everyone seems to be forgetting that Slashdot has ads right now. They're just going to get a little bigger, but content and the free nature of Slashdot isn't changing. However, if you REALLY hate ads, you can pay $5 and get rid of 1,000 of them. Everyone that keeps suggesting $5 for a year seems to forget that they would probably be losing money on that (I'm guessing $5 is the going rate for 1,000 ads on Slashdot, so you guys break even on the deal), which doesn't help anyone out.
I'm not going to pay the money for removing the ads, since after growing up reading newspapers, magazines, watching TV, and seeing billboards everywhere, I'm used to them, and don't pay attention to them anymore. If they start to run popup or pop-under ads, however, then I stop visiting. Don't complain about them giving you the option (not forcing it like Salon) to pay to get rid of ads, though, it's a nice option to have.
Can someone answer me a simple question, though: If ads are blackholed thru my OpenBSD NAT, do those still count as hits for Slashdot? I'm pretty sure they do, but I've never gotten a real answer from someone.
This is made clear by the definition of circumvention in 1201(a)(3)(B), which "means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." Bnetd does not descramble, decrypt, remove or deactivate anything. It does not avoid, bypass or impair, it ignores. Ignoring is not circumventing.
Now, tell me, how is ignoring the key not avoiding or bypassing it? He even mentions that they had to go and modify the DLL that comes with WC3 to enable it to skip the CD check. Isn't that deactivating it, or removing it? Most of the article seems solid, but when it comes down to compliance with the DMCA (I'm not saying the DMCA is good, I'm just going off what's law right now), it seems to fail, badly.
The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.
Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.
For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are. The DVD transfers should look totally incredible, though. However, does anyone care if the movie sucks as bad as Episode 1, and so far the trailers don't give me much hope.
My point was that people that weren't going to see Lord of the Rings aren't going to want to see it because of a review on Slashdot. Some other movies that people haven't seen a million ads for or heard about as much, those are movies where reviews play more influence in the decision to see them. I'd rather see reviews of movies like that then the 400th review of Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars: Episode 2.
If he really wants to do reviews of films that people might acually use, why doesn't he go see some movies that aren't massive blockbusters? In the past two months, he could have gone to see In The Bedroom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Brotherhood of the Wolf (though I didn't like it), Amelie (best movie of last year, bar none), or Monsters Ball, which are smaller movies that people might acually go see if they read a good review of them. Kung Pow and Orange County have been showing me trailers for two months and they've looked stupid the whole time. Come on, do we really need Katz to do a review of Lord of the Rings? Was anyone NOT going to see it?
Newer Apple LCD's (the ones they could get review versions of in theory) now use a special Apple display connector so they won't work with any other computers besides Apple. I think I saw there might be a DVI converter that a 3rd party makes, but they basically made their 24" Cinema Display Mac only.
We didn't have to deal with UNIX/Linux much outside of a couple classes, though, so it was really easy for students to hate it, and not know how to use it, which was really quite sad.
If we don't find a comment funny, then should we just assume that it's supposed to be funny and mod it as "funny"? OK: Chipmunks and butter. I find that funny, even if it's not in your taste in humor, mod it up! Yea!
There are independant coffee houses in Seattle that offer free wireless access because they realize that customers might stop by and buy coffee and food whlie they use it, but they don't want to pay $30 a month for it, or a per-minute charge, since they are already spending money there. They go spend $50 a month on an ISP, $200 on their wireless router, and it's pretty much good.
I think where Starbucks failed was not adding wireless access, but thinking they would be able to charge a fortune for it instead of assuming they can make back the cost, and more, by the people that would stop by and have coffee while they use it that wouldn't stop by otherwise.
'N Sync already made their music sound bad enough without using copy protection to worsen sound quality.
Is this a big reunion of U of O Resnet Tech's here? The Black Box Compaq's were always the worst, was so glad I never got one of them.
First, the girls see you as "the guy that fixes the computer" and usually tries to talk to someone else or ignore you the whole time. Second, our boss was very clear on "no hitting on a customer" after issues the year before. Might want to make sure it's OK to do this. However, the people you work with are usually really cool, and nothing is great after 12 hours of installing network cards like a trip to the local bar (make sure to wear your University T-Shirts if you get them, they love that).
2. Make sure people sign out when they are going to do an install so people know where they are. Walkie Talkies for the higher level techs can be a good idea, and if you have desks spread out to the different dorms, you're definately going to want a good way to communicate. When you can't track down the Level 2 tech because he didn't sign out for an install, it's going to be frustrating.
3. When people say "I'll try to do it myself", unless they have an iMac, tell them just to wait for a while and someone can do it for them. Once you've done 50 of these, you can do it in your sleep. However, if they've severely screwed up the machine before you get there, it makes your job a lot harder.
4. Make sure the computer runs before you get there. You're job is to fix the network, not to get their CD-R drive working, not to show them how to download pr0n, or how to install Quake 3. If you fix a printer or something else, they are going to tell their friends to call your office when their printer breaks, and your boss is going to hate you. If you are really nice and fix it, make sure they know never to call you guys about it again.
5. Send everyone out with certain things: Screwdriver (multiple bits, you can get them cheap), a 50' ethernet cable that you know works (can reach across the dorm room, can eliminate cable as an option), a PCI card, an ISA card, a CD with drivers for all the cards you support. You'll be amazed how many people try to use a phone cord instead of Cat5, so you'll want the cable for sure. Bring cards that you know work so you can eliminate the card being broken quickly.
6. Remember - Computers don't always work like you think they should. You'll find that a card will work in one PCI slot but not another. That if an ISA card is in one slot but not another, the PCI card will stop working. There are a million little things like this that cause problems because you think it should work, but it won't. Experiment with things like this. Make sure to check the BIOS and that it doesn't have some stupid issues. Don't be afraid to disable something in Windows Control Panel, but ASK FIRST.
7. Since you should keep computerized records of all these appointments, if there is anything strange about the install (had to use a certain PCI slot, had to disable something), make a note of it and keep that around. This will help immensely in the future. You might do a million installs the first few days, but if you keep track of them, when you have to fix them later you will be really happy you did.
8. Laptops suck. They love certain PCMCIA cards, they hate certain ones. We had a card that IBM's would never work with, but everyone else loved. I think IBM had a deal with 3Com so you couldn't use cheap cards in their laptops.
9. Remember, the low level techs that don't know as much and cause more problems than they fix? They're very good at going and getting you food and drinks. They're beeter at doing that then fixing a computer they don't understand.
10. Figure out who knows Macs, who knows NT/2000, who only knows 95/98, and if anyone knows Linux. Keep a list so people go to a computer they know. Have people write down what kind of computer and card they have when you go to do an install for them. It saves time and makes everyone happier.
If you like doing installs, this is a really fun week, and after a day or two it gets really, really easy to do. You also get good stories:
Compaq's had the expansion slot covers soldered at 10 points on certain models. They were not easy to get off. Nothing makes a parent feel confident like you ripping off their computer case and attacking the case with screwdriver with all your might to force it open. Sony VAIO desktops had this issue as well, but they were far less common. This week also teaches you what computer makers do a great job with their computers (Dell, Apple), and those that don't as much (almost everyone else).
Flim resolution is around 3500x2000 (I know the ratio isn't exactly right) from what I learned in imaging class a couple years ago. All films are shot on 35mm film typically, which has a 4x3 ratio. However, they capture it with an anamorphic lens which basically compresses a 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 ratio (films are NOT shot at 16x9) onto the 4:3 film. Then, in a theater, they project with the same lenses to unstretch it. Try watching a DVD on a 4:3 TV with the DVD player set to anamorphic mode (for 16:9 TV's) and you can see what I mean. Anyway, people are keen on using digital film and digital projection because it saves cost in duplication, editing, equipment, etc... I have yet to find any serious film person that acually says that digital video has a technical advantage in resolution, detail, contrast ratio, or anything like that. Digital Video is great for many things, don't get me wrong, but unless there is an improvement, instead of just being close to as good, I'd like to stick with film for the moment.
No one since has made a butterfly keyboard I don't think. The reason is that the Thinkpad had a 10.4" screen I believe, which was big for that time. LCD's didn't get above 12" or so, where now we get 15.5" LCD's in our laptops. Since the screens are so huge, there is no reason to try to fit in a full size keyboard, since one will already fit. Maybe an ultra-portable could use it, but I can't think of one that does.
Well, in theory, couldn't someone (with lots of money and the hardware and bandwidth that money can buy) set up a server with all of Pi on it, then you could send that server a request with the digit to start with, and the length, and have it send it back to you? Figuring out where the string exists in Pi is the hard part, but the advantage would be that you could just use the offset and length to retrieve your data from anywhere. Forget the compression idea, that won't work, at least I don't think, but imagine being able to instantly retrieve anything, from anywhere. Of course, once someone learned where a program like WindowsXP existed in the string, everyone could instantly retrieve it for free, so long as they also posted the location of the crack to remove the "Dial Home" protection.
Do I think people look at America's leaders the same way the look at someone like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Doubtful. Everyone that runs for office in the United State is power hungry, but our leaders aren't the only people we are allowed to vote for under fear of death (Iraq), a religious group that is the only people we can vote for while they go around taking away the rights of Women and everyone else (Afghanistan), or a communist dictatorship run by the not-so-stable son of the former leader of the country (North Korea).
Did I go and support beaking the ABM treaty? No, it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and had you acually read the whole post instead of going off and attacking statements as those of a "Rambo-style American Ego", maybe you would have caught onto that as well. I went through and stated why I don't think this will help and why we shouldn't build it and keep the ABM treaty in place. In no way to do think the US is honorable in all cases and always does the right things. We're about as hipocritical as a country can be, but that doesn't mean me aren't the most powerful country in the world and can use that power to apply force to different nations.
We all understand what Mutually Assured Destruction is, but is this going to stop that? If some rogue country fires a missile at us and we shoot it down, will we not retaliate? If we miss it, which I see happening, we're definately going to retaliate I imagine. However, how does to policy of MAD apply to terrorist groups, which I wrote were the main problem? Can we blow up their country in revenge? If they blow up a suitcase nuke or a biological/chemical weapon in NYC, how do we strike back at them? I don't know how we do it, or if we really can, but the missile shield doesn't help in this case, and this is the most likely case. If North Korea attacks, there is a good chance it's all over, missile shield or not, but if a terrorist does, the shield does nothing.
Our current leader is a power hungry, retarted drunk, and has been really good at showing that over time, but the people were still dumb enough to elect him for some reason. However, you better believe that he's in a little more check than Saddam Hussein, or the Taliban, or the other "nutjob" leaders of these rogue states. I'm not going out and attacking all communist nations in some version or McCarthyism like you suggest, since I don't think Cuba or China really have nutjobs running them, they just have communist governments. As much as our leader sucks, you'd be crazy to suggest he's the same thing as a dictator or a fundamantalist religious group running a country that has full power with no one below him.
If any of these rogue countries like Iraq or Afghanistan or North Korea ever did get the balls to launch a nuclear missile at us, they have to know that their life is over. Their power is gone. There is nothing they can do to save themselves at that point. For these leaders that thrive off power, do you really think they are going to throw it all away? What will this acomplish for them? Even if, somewhow, they destroyed the United States, don't you think that another country that is an ally (Great Brittian, France, Germany, etc...) would jump in and destroy them? Firing a nuclear missile at the United States has NO political gain for any other country.
However, a rogue terrorist group does have something to gain. They don't have a country you can nuke. They don't think as logically since, where Saddam Hussein might order his troops to death and he will never see a bullet, these terrorist leaders often get involved in the actions themselves. Far and away the most likely ways for them to attack us is to get a bomb into the US the same way people get drugs in, or to fire a missile from a boat off the coast and fly it in under radar. Can our missile defense shield protect against this? No way. Can it even defend against a large volley of nukes, like North Korea could possibly offer? With our current results, no way.
Lots and lots of people are making lots and lots of money off this plan. I'm sure lots of those people making money gave lots of money to the Bush/Cheney campaign last year, and now they are reaping the rewards. Of course, I'm sure they would have given the money to Gore/Lieberman as well, since they all sell out to the all mighty dollar here. If you really look at this plan, though, the countries that can send missles at us really have nothing to gain, where the wack jobs would never use a missile, they'd just get a suicide bomber to deliver it for them.
I think the difference, though, is the Audiophile group doesn't lead you to believe you can rot in hell for eternity if you listen to your music on a walkman, they just think you don't get it. I also don't recall my high school having an audiophile group at it, or a religious group.
Of course, with digital signals you can get problems due to jitter (when the timing of the signal is off), but fixing those takes a spendy box, and I think you're really beyond the point of diminishing returns as well. Of course, no one would spend $8,000 on a CD player and use the digital output on it. I hear people talk about how a Coaxial Digital connection can, in theory, carry more data than a more common Toslink Optical connections, but nothing out there uses that bandwidth. It's like having a 6 lane highway between a couple small towns when 40 cars drive it a day.
Ashland also provides their own power so they don't have to worry as much about blackouts this summer (we are 10 miles north of California), and everyone is wired. They are also working on a plan now to have wireless internet access through the whole city within a couple years so you can go downtown to the park with your laptop and still be working. The town is just under 20,000, and is home to a college (Southern Oregon University), but it has everything you could want in a town for internet access. It could use a decent computer store, though.
Yes, they have great benefits lots of the time, but they don't make much, have longer hours that require them to do more work in their free time than most people in IT, and earn that extra pension since they do jobs that people often choose not to do because they would risk death (cops) or being abused by students and parents if they try to stand up for themselves (teachers).
Our CS department is losing 3 teachers, including the head of the department, in the next 2 years, and we asked how they expected to replace them. They told us seniors that they really don't know since any CS professor that's qualified could easily make twice as much in the open market probably, doesn't have to stick around and hold office hours for students, and doesn't have to deal with the BS of being a teacher. If the head of a CS department at a college (which pays more than your average teacher) realizes they are screwed when compared to what other businesses can offer an IT person, then I think you should check your facts on what people really make again.