Nicely written paper. Easy to read and not TOO technical. +Interesting, +Informative. Maybe a little Pro-Biased, but well done. (you need to not trust the spell check so much though.)
The Onkyo system is easy and basic, with excellent audio quality. The Yamaha adds more flexability and is a tad more stylish. Both systems are quite fault tolerent and well-thought-out from and end user stand point. Of course there are more geeky solutions if ultimate flexibility is what you are looking for.
Expensive colleges place too much emphasis on specialization, at least thats what I've seen. I went to a small state liberal arts college and got a BFA in photography and digital media. I feel that my education in art was lacking compared to folks who went to more expensive schools, however I feel I have a better grasp of the liberal arts in general than most of those I've me with expensive art degrees. Maybe it's just me, but I think the school makes a diference too.
Digital cameras are actualy conciderd "consumer devices" and as such are closed to optimize reliability, performance and cost (Much like the recently hotly argued Mac Mini, only more so).
Cell Phones didn't used to be open either, and it's only the cross-over into dual purpose PDA/Phone land that has opened them up. So the question is does your toaster make tell you what alloy it uses in the heating elements? No! Because you aren't supposed to care, and if you did there is probably little you could do to improve upon whay they already have.
Also remember that Digital cameras are rife with proprietary hardware, we're not just talking a hefty RISC CPU crunching numbers on raw data, we're talking about screens that use non-standard resolutions and refresh rates and have proprietary drivers, image optimization ICs that run in combined digital/analog mode to eek the most possible performance out of a given sensor device, etc etc. In most cameras the only things that are even remotely standards based are the flash-card controllers.
If someone were to build a standards-based digital camera that could contain user-upgrable parts/software it would end up either sacrificing a great deal of performance over a device thats not constrained by standards or cost twice as much as the competition.
I for one, as a photographer, appreciate that my digital camera never crashes, (almost) never needs a software update, and gets the most possible performance out of the hardware that they could cram into it.
yeah, I have an OLD system, and I run at 1280x1024 all effects/lighting/high quality textures, 2 frame antialiasing on. See this post. I Like my quake pretty rather than fast.
Sounds like PC card only smaller. Killer app aside, this could alow smaller laptops/palmtops to accept the kind of expansion devices we've come to expect from PC cards. I mean sure, many devices are comming through with built-in firewire/usb/networking, but this could reduce initial cost as well as size, or imagine a laptop with 4 expansion slots... It's all good. I'm excited to see what comes of it.
Now if only someone could build an AGP device thats PC card size or smaller... get me a radeon x800 for my (imaginary) Powerbook G5.
My main system will make many of you laugh, but here it is:
Beige Mac G3 tower, upgraded to 733MHz G3(ZIF), overclocked system bus to 100MHz, 768MB Ram (PC100), Original 24x Apple CD-Rom, HP 12x6x32 CD-RW Drive. WDC 20GB EIDE, Maxtor 10GB EIDE, Belkin 4 port PCI USB card, Adaptec PCI Ultra SCSI card, 6x IBM 10000rpm Ultra-2 Mil-Spec 1GB drives (RAID), 3DFX Voodooo 5/5500 PCI Graphics Card, various scanners, printers, monitors (2), Wacom Pads.
So there it is, the manufacture date on my CPU is 1997. So what do I do with this system? Graphic design, large format printing (Epson Stylus 10000), Digital art (Painter/Photoshop/Illustrator), Play the SIMS (all available expansion packs), Play Quake 3, etc etc... Probably most of what the average person does with a machine and more.
Sure my Quake framerates never break 60, and I have to actually WAIT for a gausian blur on a 200MB image, and most annoyingly there is no support for my VooDoo 5 under OS-X, so I still run 9.2.1 most of the time. But the point here is that with well written software there are VERY few people who would actualy bennefit from a 10GHz processor. My computer does all I need it to, and I demand a fair ammount from it. Right now my only real reason to upgrade is either for more HD space or to be able to run OS-X with full Quartz acceleration.
Please, I Laugh every time I hear some fellow MacHead whine about being stuck at 3.2GHz, I mean really, GET OVER IT!
P.S. My linux machine is a hacked EyeOpener running Debian/Knoppix. It sits on my end table to surf the web and check e-mail. It has 128MB ram, a 4GB HD, and does everything it needs to.
I agree. Blogs are sometimes interesting and somtimes informative, but I really don't see the point in reading what is esentialy someone else's diary. What ever happened to people WANTING privacy? And the point about homepages becoming blogs is well made.
corporate behemoth or no, IBM has consistently delivered intersting and highly inovative hardware... My theory is more along the lines of using Apple workstations clustered. User (secretary, call center slave etc...) sees nice pretty, friendly OS-X up front, meanwhile the cluster is crunching the corporate databases in the background under AIX/Linux. Reduce hardware outlay for companies by providing a single system solution for desktops and servers.
result: Corporate accounting's wet dream, reduce IT hardware budget by 50% (well ok, 30% since they'll have to shell out for Apple hardware, but still...): IT geek's wet dream, cool hardware that ALSO keeps the users happy.
It's a Wikipedia story about how the open-source user built encyclopedia is self-correcting and verifying and isn't that great, and isn't this SOLLOG guy an irritating nitwit, and oh yeah, isn't open-source great!...hey! atleast it's more interesting than reports of problems with what essentialy ammount to beta hardware on the PSP.
If the US government had invested the approximately three trillion dollars spent on war and "homeland security" since 9/11 maybe we would be closer to a viable Fusion power power solution. Virtualy zero radioactive waste, self-terminating reaction in the case of containment failure, compact plants, high output (possibly very expensive) but a very promising technology.
I still want to see the Roadster-Coupe come to the US, since ZAP is converting the CityCoupe, perhpas they'll see fit to convert a few Roadster-Coupes for the US market. Unfortunatley this probly means that the Roaster-Coupe will posses a premium price, instead of being cheaper competition for the Mazda Miata/MX5, like it is in Europe...
Oh well, I'll just keep looking for an Alfa Romeo 1300 Zagato Jr. 45 Mpg, 130 Mph =) Ofcouse it's about the size of an MG Midget and you have to open the sun-roof to let your head out the top of the car if you're over about 5'8"... And being collectable they sell for ridiculous ammounts.
Bah, I'd not worry about this is I lived in a part of the country where I could ride my motorcycle all year.
Don't know if I'm seeing things, but it looks to me that there was some spluttery output from one of the rocket nozzels right about the time it started rolling...could this be the cuase? Look between 00:54 and 01:05, watch the rocket flame and exhaust vs 00:30 to 00:40.
Well with Virgin Galactic aparently more than just vapor, maybe the days of comercial spaceflight really are just arround the corner...
Then the question: Will I be able to move to the Moon before I die of old age?
"So, will you be returning the U-Haul XR-2150 to Earth, or will it be a one-way move? Also, please remember to fill the LOX tanks before dropping it off at the agency or you WILL be chaged a flat rate of $500,000 wether they are empty or not."
Re: Rich Vs. Poor
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm No economist, and I don't pretend to know how to fix whats wrong (other than shooting the rich, then re-distributing thier estates evenly to the remaining population). But here's an example of the gap I see every day...
I work in Stowe, Vermont, which has one the highest concentrations of "truely rich" residents in the US, with perhaps the exception of Beverly Hills.
Stowe has about 5000 full-time residents, and housing that will support about 10,000. about 50% of the homes in Stowe are occupied by thier owners less than THREE WEEKS A YEAR (though they are often rented for a large portion of the year). The inflated property values caused by the vaction homes owned by the (super) rich make it not mearly difficult but IMPOSSIBLE for the service industry workers who keep Stowe alive to live IN the town.
Just for laughs, how about this number: the AVERAGE cost of a new construction home in Stowe (not including land value) is now in excess of $1.6 million. Thats the SIMPLE AVERAGE mind you, so we're looking at homes that cost more than I'll probably make in my entire working life. How many of these (new homes)are owned by full time residents, read: workers? Arround 2%.
I realize that being a "resort town" Stowe is an extreme example, but the gap isn't simply big, it's FRIGHTENINGLY HUGE. My boss is a reasonably succeful small business owner, does he live in Stowe? No, he can't afford to compete for realestate with the super-rich vaction home builders. We're talking somone who has been running a profitable business, employing 7-14 people for more than 20 years. My boss seems rich to me, but the people who are really rich are even richer than him in comparison to me. I live safely above the poverty line, but I'm definately not "upper middle class"...
The problem as I see it that "upper middle class", though it may be "comfortable" is no where NEAR the level of the rich.
The gap is growing, and It's not just a question of the rich paying more taxes than me, it's a question of the rich skewing property values and consumer goods prices to the point that somone who used to be "doing ok" can't afford to live or shop in the city in which he/she works.
In this part of my state theres a dagerous trend to slums surrounding the rich towns and we aren't talking inner city here, we're talking a rural state that rates smack in the middle of the US standard of living by state.
A Special "ULTRA-1337" award will go to the first person who ports CTSS to HP 48g graphing calculators and enables mutli-terminal support for 38g systems via IR.
Amen. For quite some time now I've thought of livingin a shack in the woods and "homesteading it" but with property taxes in my state what they are, I'm not sure I can afford it... I both dread and long for the "shake up".
If we applied that formula to my paycheck I should be making over $12 an hour washing dishes... Seems dish washers still make less than $7.50 an hour and although my current job pays more, I have significntly more responsibility and education than I did when I washed dishes after school.
As far as the "good quality 42" goes, have you seen the Panasonic 42" ED plasma? I know, I know, plasma has long-term issues, but the out of the box performance on the TH-42PD25 852x480 panel is impressive at it's current sub $3200 price-point.
ATSC tuner, HDMI, and plain AWSOME picture. Sure it's not REALLY HiDef, but damn it looks good!
Slashdot Mirror
Nicely written paper. Easy to read and not TOO technical. +Interesting, +Informative. Maybe a little Pro-Biased, but well done. (you need to not trust the spell check so much though.)
here are some:
Onkyo NetTune
Yamaha MusicCAST
The Onkyo system is easy and basic, with excellent audio quality. The Yamaha adds more flexability and is a tad more stylish. Both systems are quite fault tolerent and well-thought-out from and end user stand point. Of course there are more geeky solutions if ultimate flexibility is what you are looking for.
There's also Streamium from Philips.
Expensive colleges place too much emphasis on specialization, at least thats what I've seen. I went to a small state liberal arts college and got a BFA in photography and digital media. I feel that my education in art was lacking compared to folks who went to more expensive schools, however I feel I have a better grasp of the liberal arts in general than most of those I've me with expensive art degrees. Maybe it's just me, but I think the school makes a diference too.
Digital cameras are actualy conciderd "consumer devices" and as such are closed to optimize reliability, performance and cost (Much like the recently hotly argued Mac Mini, only more so).
Cell Phones didn't used to be open either, and it's only the cross-over into dual purpose PDA/Phone land that has opened them up. So the question is does your toaster make tell you what alloy it uses in the heating elements? No! Because you aren't supposed to care, and if you did there is probably little you could do to improve upon whay they already have.
Also remember that Digital cameras are rife with proprietary hardware, we're not just talking a hefty RISC CPU crunching numbers on raw data, we're talking about screens that use non-standard resolutions and refresh rates and have proprietary drivers, image optimization ICs that run in combined digital/analog mode to eek the most possible performance out of a given sensor device, etc etc. In most cameras the only things that are even remotely standards based are the flash-card controllers.
If someone were to build a standards-based digital camera that could contain user-upgrable parts/software it would end up either sacrificing a great deal of performance over a device thats not constrained by standards or cost twice as much as the competition.
I for one, as a photographer, appreciate that my digital camera never crashes, (almost) never needs a software update, and gets the most possible performance out of the hardware that they could cram into it.
Whats Wrong?
Have we always been at war with Eurasia?
Take two blue and then two more in one hour, You are a true believer, buy more. Buy more now.
(mixed movie miss-quotes based on statistical analysis of slashdot audience ability to recognize dystopian fantasy signature lines.)
yeah, I have an OLD system, and I run at 1280x1024 all effects/lighting/high quality textures, 2 frame antialiasing on. See this post. I Like my quake pretty rather than fast.
2.68 fewer microseconds?
.0000784 fewer frames of Quake 3 each day!
Hell! That means I'll be able to render
Sounds like PC card only smaller. Killer app aside, this could alow smaller laptops/palmtops to accept the kind of expansion devices we've come to expect from PC cards. I mean sure, many devices are comming through with built-in firewire/usb/networking, but this could reduce initial cost as well as size, or imagine a laptop with 4 expansion slots... It's all good. I'm excited to see what comes of it.
Now if only someone could build an AGP device thats PC card size or smaller... get me a radeon x800 for my (imaginary) Powerbook G5.
fisheye1969,
Are you giving your sexual partner what she wants?
*FREE* Internet Porn!
My main system will make many of you laugh, but here it is:
Beige Mac G3 tower, upgraded to 733MHz G3(ZIF), overclocked system bus to 100MHz, 768MB Ram (PC100), Original 24x Apple CD-Rom, HP 12x6x32 CD-RW Drive. WDC 20GB EIDE, Maxtor 10GB EIDE, Belkin 4 port PCI USB card, Adaptec PCI Ultra SCSI card, 6x IBM 10000rpm Ultra-2 Mil-Spec 1GB drives (RAID), 3DFX Voodooo 5/5500 PCI Graphics Card, various scanners, printers, monitors (2), Wacom Pads.
So there it is, the manufacture date on my CPU is 1997. So what do I do with this system? Graphic design, large format printing (Epson Stylus 10000), Digital art (Painter/Photoshop/Illustrator), Play the SIMS (all available expansion packs), Play Quake 3, etc etc... Probably most of what the average person does with a machine and more.
Sure my Quake framerates never break 60, and I have to actually WAIT for a gausian blur on a 200MB image, and most annoyingly there is no support for my VooDoo 5 under OS-X, so I still run 9.2.1 most of the time. But the point here is that with well written software there are VERY few people who would actualy bennefit from a 10GHz processor. My computer does all I need it to, and I demand a fair ammount from it. Right now my only real reason to upgrade is either for more HD space or to be able to run OS-X with full Quartz acceleration.
Please, I Laugh every time I hear some fellow MacHead whine about being stuck at 3.2GHz, I mean really, GET OVER IT!
P.S. My linux machine is a hacked EyeOpener running Debian/Knoppix. It sits on my end table to surf the web and check e-mail. It has 128MB ram, a 4GB HD, and does everything it needs to.
I agree. Blogs are sometimes interesting and somtimes informative, but I really don't see the point in reading what is esentialy someone else's diary. What ever happened to people WANTING privacy?
And the point about homepages becoming blogs is well made.
corporate behemoth or no, IBM has consistently delivered intersting and highly inovative hardware... My theory is more along the lines of using Apple workstations clustered. User (secretary, call center slave etc...) sees nice pretty, friendly OS-X up front, meanwhile the cluster is crunching the corporate databases in the background under AIX/Linux. Reduce hardware outlay for companies by providing a single system solution for desktops and servers.
result: Corporate accounting's wet dream, reduce IT hardware budget by 50% (well ok, 30% since they'll have to shell out for Apple hardware, but still...): IT geek's wet dream, cool hardware that ALSO keeps the users happy.
Thats my personal conspiracy theory.
It's a Wikipedia story about how the open-source user built encyclopedia is self-correcting and verifying and isn't that great, and isn't this SOLLOG guy an irritating nitwit, and oh yeah, isn't open-source great! ...hey! atleast it's more interesting than reports of problems with what essentialy ammount to beta hardware on the PSP.
If the US government had invested the approximately three trillion dollars spent on war and "homeland security" since 9/11 maybe we would be closer to a viable Fusion power power solution. Virtualy zero radioactive waste, self-terminating reaction in the case of containment failure, compact plants, high output (possibly very expensive) but a very promising technology.
I still want to see the Roadster-Coupe come to the US, since ZAP is converting the CityCoupe, perhpas they'll see fit to convert a few Roadster-Coupes for the US market. Unfortunatley this probly means that the Roaster-Coupe will posses a premium price, instead of being cheaper competition for the Mazda Miata/MX5, like it is in Europe...
Oh well, I'll just keep looking for an Alfa Romeo 1300 Zagato Jr. 45 Mpg, 130 Mph =) Ofcouse it's about the size of an MG Midget and you have to open the sun-roof to let your head out the top of the car if you're over about 5'8"... And being collectable they sell for ridiculous ammounts.
Bah, I'd not worry about this is I lived in a part of the country where I could ride my motorcycle all year.
Don't know if I'm seeing things, but it looks to me that there was some spluttery output from one of the rocket nozzels right about the time it started rolling...could this be the cuase? Look between 00:54 and 01:05, watch the rocket flame and exhaust vs 00:30 to 00:40.
Well with Virgin Galactic aparently more than just vapor, maybe the days of comercial spaceflight really are just arround the corner...
Then the question: Will I be able to move to the Moon before I die of old age?
"So, will you be returning the U-Haul XR-2150 to Earth, or will it be a one-way move? Also, please remember to fill the LOX tanks before dropping it off at the agency or you WILL be chaged a flat rate of $500,000 wether they are empty or not."
I'm No economist, and I don't pretend to know how to fix whats wrong (other than shooting the rich, then re-distributing thier estates evenly to the remaining population). But here's an example of the gap I see every day...
I work in Stowe, Vermont, which has one the highest concentrations of "truely rich" residents in the US, with perhaps the exception of Beverly Hills.
Stowe has about 5000 full-time residents, and housing that will support about 10,000. about 50% of the homes in Stowe are occupied by thier owners less than THREE WEEKS A YEAR (though they are often rented for a large portion of the year). The inflated property values caused by the vaction homes owned by the (super) rich make it not mearly difficult but IMPOSSIBLE for the service industry workers who keep Stowe alive to live IN the town.
Just for laughs, how about this number: the AVERAGE cost of a new construction home in Stowe (not including land value) is now in excess of $1.6 million. Thats the SIMPLE AVERAGE mind you, so we're looking at homes that cost more than I'll probably make in my entire working life. How many of these (new homes)are owned by full time residents, read: workers? Arround 2%.
I realize that being a "resort town" Stowe is an extreme example, but the gap isn't simply big, it's FRIGHTENINGLY HUGE. My boss is a reasonably succeful small business owner, does he live in Stowe? No, he can't afford to compete for realestate with the super-rich vaction home builders. We're talking somone who has been running a profitable business, employing 7-14 people for more than 20 years. My boss seems rich to me, but the people who are really rich are even richer than him in comparison to me. I live safely above the poverty line, but I'm definately not "upper middle class"...
The problem as I see it that "upper middle class", though it may be "comfortable" is no where NEAR the level of the rich.
The gap is growing, and It's not just a question of the rich paying more taxes than me, it's a question of the rich skewing property values and consumer goods prices to the point that somone who used to be "doing ok" can't afford to live or shop in the city in which he/she works.
In this part of my state theres a dagerous trend to slums surrounding the rich towns and we aren't talking inner city here, we're talking a rural state that rates smack in the middle of the US standard of living by state.
A Special "ULTRA-1337" award will go to the first person who ports CTSS to HP 48g graphing calculators and enables mutli-terminal support for 38g systems via IR.
Perhaps this is the real reason.
Amen. For quite some time now I've thought of livingin a shack in the woods and "homesteading it" but with property taxes in my state what they are, I'm not sure I can afford it... I both dread and long for the "shake up".
that 60" sony WEGA was rear projection LCD... they don't even MAKE a 60" LCD PANEL
If we applied that formula to my paycheck I should be making over $12 an hour washing dishes... Seems dish washers still make less than $7.50 an hour and although my current job pays more, I have significntly more responsibility and education than I did when I washed dishes after school.
As far as the "good quality 42" goes, have you seen the Panasonic 42" ED plasma? I know, I know, plasma has long-term issues, but the out of the box performance on the TH-42PD25 852x480 panel is impressive at it's current sub $3200 price-point.
ATSC tuner, HDMI, and plain AWSOME picture. Sure it's not REALLY HiDef, but damn it looks good!