I've never seen the zire, but I wouldn't worry too much about upgradeability. Consider that electronics are always getting cheaper, by the time you outgrow the zire, you could probably buy a new machine cheaper than upgrading. And if you get to advanced levels, you will probably own at least one advanced paper dictionary like the massive Kenkyusha New JE. No portable electronic dict can come close to a comprehensive paper dict. Many of the electronic devices use the same dictionary database (usually the Gakken dict), they're targeted at looking up the most common words you encounter. That's the bulk of your lookup tasks. But then, YMMV, I went through a particularly tough program, and by the time I got to 4th year, I think I owned 9 or 10 different paper dicts and two electronic ones. Kanji dicts, EJ dicts, JE dicts, dicts of idioms, of verbs, etc etc. It gets to be expensive. I remember taking a 4th year class with a particularly torturous set of texts. I used to show them to native speakers and even they couldn't read some of the words. I found one complex word that even our teacher couldn't decipher, we showed it to every teacher in the department and they were all stumped. They ditched that textbook halfway through the semester. Ha!
oops, correction: I meant to say I mostly use my *Wordtank* when writing to check kanji, and the Zaurus when reading. What I wrote made no sense. Sorry. But it should point out that even a WT, the "beginner's dict" will have good long-term value. At least it did for me.
Unfortunately the Wordtank is going to be a big pain in the butt for kanji lookups, it's barely better than a paper dictionary, since you need to use the same index system as a paper dict. That is, you need to know the stroke count and the radical, or the reading, just to locate the kanji. Once you're there, you can then use "jumping search" to find jukugo using that kanji. A Wordtank is barely faster than a paper dict when looking up kanji. But it does the job, and it's lighter than most paper dicts. The WT's best feature is kana J-E lookups, they're very fast, and you'd use that a lot. The WT also has an English menu mode and also has a flashcard function, so you can mark words as you do lookups and drill them later. The WT also has furigana above kanji, which aren't available on many devices targeted at native Japanese users (i.e. the Seiko units). I still think beginners (especially absolute newbie beginners) start with a cheap "learner's dictionary." They're cheap, which is good because you'll toss it out later when you get better. Definitions and examples are usually expanded and more appropriate for learners. There are kanji learner's dictionaries too. These wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for advanced students, but they're great for beginners. People have spent hundreds of years figuring out the best ways to study Japanese and the best methods are still often the traditional ones. Just as an example, I have never seen any beginning Japanese computer instruction programs that weren't anything but pure crap. One more cautionary tale about dictionaries. I once wrote an essay for my J class about the working hours of Japanese vs. American workers. After the class, the teacher came up to me with the essay, pointed to a word I'd picked from a dictionary that translated as "worker," and asked, "WHERE did you get THAT word?? I want you to completely forget that word exists, and use the regular conventional word. You chose a word with a very derogatory connotation." I admitted I just picked it out of a dictionary, I assumed it was a perfectly good synonym and used it because I was bored writing the same word for "worker" over and over. So a dictionary won't teach you everything about a word.
can be obtained here. They have multiple advantages, they're more pleasurable to hold in your hands than electronic devices, they know ALL the words, and the batteries never run out. On the down side, the batteries never run out, even when you wish they WOULD, maintenance costs are extremely high, and after a few years of use, you'll lose interest in speaking Japanese ever again.
Ahem.. these devices are called "denshi jiten" and not "denki jisho." Denki means electricity, not electronic, and jisho is archaic usage, so you've described an electric dictionarium, not an electronic dictionary. But quibbling aside, your description of the Zaurus handwriting input is innacurate. You can make SOME errors in input, but you must be able to draw the kanji in correct stroke order, and the strokes must cross each other in the correct pattern. This makes them suitable only for advanced students that can accurately copy any kanji in the correct stroke order. This is usually a skill that only develops somewhere around the 4th year of university level courses. That's when I bought a Zaurus. And the first thing the Zaurus taught me was that I'd been writing hiragana "na" incorrectly for years, it couldn't recognize my handwriting. I was, however, rather astonished to see the Zaurus could accurately read some cursive kanji. These devices are really designed for native Japanese users, so they are designed to accomodate errors or cursive simplifications typical to native Japanese users.
Either you haven't given sufficient information on your needs here, or you haven't given sufficient THOUGHT to your needs here. You give vague guidelines for what you're seeking, like for example, you want to input kana and have it output kanji. You must be a beginner, because you don't seem to realize there is no one-to-one correspondence between words written in kana and kanji. For example, when I write the kana "seikou," do I want the kanji meaning sex, a political platform, success, or any of a dozen other homonyms? A dictionary is not a mindreader, it doesn't know what you want, you can only get out of it what you know how to get out of it. So what I'm getting at is, dictionary needs are different for beginners than for advanced students. A beginner who isn't skilled at writing kanji will not get along with a Zaurus, an advanced student will be frustrated with a WordTank model that would satisfy a beginner. I usually tell beginners to buy a Wordtank, and advanced students to get a Zaurus. But no electronic dictionary is a substitute for a paper dictionary. I use my Zaurus mostly when writing, to doublecheck the kanji when I know the reading. I use my Zaurus mostly when reading, to quickly look up an unknown kanji for the reading & definition. But I usually end up using the electronic lookup as the entry point for the huge 2100 page Kenkyusha New JE Dictionary, on paper. If I want more specialized data like etymology, I pop in my Kojien CD. If I want classical Japanese lookups, I use a paper kogojiten (haven't found a good electronic kogojiten yet). But I have found that I use my portable dictionaries less and less. Free online dicts like WWWJDIC and the goo.ne.jp dictionary have made portable devices less useful to me. Ultimately, portable dictionaries are a crutch. I often think of a news story I saw with someone demonstrating an electronic "speaking translator" in Spanish. It could say basic phrases like "Can you direct me to a nearby taxi stand?" They used this device, and that exact phrase, on a Spanish-speaker, who immediately understood the tinny little voice, and shot back a rapid fire answer, in Spanish of course. Which was completely incomprehensible to the person with the device. The answer would have to be given back through the device, the person giving the answer would have needed to learn how to input his answer and spit it back out through the device. So what I'm basically trying to tell you is that electronic dictionaries are not going to do much good for beginners, they're more useful for advanced students who really don't have that much need for dictionaries generally. Even some of the basic skills needed to effectively search for words are beyond most beginners, I know I wasn't taught how to use a paper dictionary until I was in 2nd year classes. So save your money for good TEXTBOOKS, you'll learn to speak Japanese without having to consult a dictionary every two words.
It is equally unfair to compare MacOS X to OS 9, they are different OSes. OS 9 is officially dead, just like Win95. I won't count Win95-specific viruses (if there is such a thing) against WinXP, so don't count OS9 viruses against OS X.
Unix worms have never hit MacOS X. Macro viruses don't count, they can't affect anything beyond the document. Most OS X users don't even have MSOffice or MSWord. And even if they did, the OS X version of Office is AFAIK the first version to have macro virus protection and have it turned on by default. It's a dead issue.
And while I'm being nitpicky here, FYI the plural of virus is viruses, not virii.
Don't spread more FUD. You claim there are 60 to 100 "mac virii." What you really meant is that there were viruses for MacOS 9. There are NO known MacOS X viruses.
You are right, BSD developers deserve credit. But you missed one extremely obvious point: that includes Apple. Apple's programmers contributing BSD code back to the source tree. Apple's efforts have brought more users and more programmers to BSD than ever before. Apple is the largest Unix vendor in the world.
Watching this film will cure cancer. It will cause your zits to fade away, leaving a smooth, youthful complexion. If you have seen this film, naked women will throw themselves at your feet. If you buy a ticket to this film, you will Make Money Fast. Buying this film on DVD will extend your lifespan by 10 years, and your IQ will go up 10 points. Telling people the ending of this film (even if they've already read the book) will cause you to develop toe fungus, arterial blockages, and brain tumors. If you do leave the theater before the credits are completed, you will go blind. God lives in New Zealand.
I don't know a single person or company that owns any fax machine other than ancient thermal printer units they bought when fax was considered hi tech. Fax is for Luddites that don't use computers.
Darth Vader is Luke's father. Apollo 13 makes it home safely. Hal9000 kills the crew. Sarah Connor crushes the Terminator in a metal press. Khan is killed in the Genesis explosion while Kirk escapes. Spiderman kills the Green Goblin. ET phones home and a spaceship comes to rescue him. Ripley blows the Alien out an airlock. Major Kong rides an H-Bomb to the target and the Doomsday Weapon is detonated. The Planet of the Apes is really Earth. Butch and Sundance get killed by the Peruvian Army. Spartacus gets crucified. Frodo throws Gollum and the Ring into the pit, defeating Evil.
Oh come on, you can be more creative than that with a FAX machine. Some friends and I tried a revenge-fax method we heard about, we used to wait until late night (when presumably nobody was around to watch the fax machine), get an 8.5x24inch piece of black paper, start faxing it to the target, and then once the lead end of the black page came out of the machine, we'd tape it to the trailing end. You create a continuous loop of black paper, so you are faxing an endless black fax (make sure everything is aligned perfectly or the loop will walk sideways over time). At worst, you'll waste their fax paper, at best, you'll burn out the thermal printheads on their fax machine. Optional: tape a small piece of white paper with a short message to the loop (keep it small, you don't want to let those thermal printheads cool off by transmitting too much white). I'd recommend removing the sender's phone number from your fax machine before sending this (which, BTW, is illegal now).
I can say that because you obviously know nothing about art.
A photograph is a recording of light reflecting off objects. An artwork is the expression of an idea. There are many fine photographers who are not artists. Some of them eventually get it, most don't. You don't get it.
I had an old Logitech 3 button ADB mouse, it was the default mouse for MkLinux way back in the dark ages. It was the most unergonomic mouse I ever used, it gave me finger cramps after using it for an hour or so. Definitely the worst designed product I've ever seen. The Logitech Wingman and other mice I saw in this thread are quite similar in design, I wouldn't touch em with a ten foot pole. Maybe the mouse was just too small for my hand, but this was a pretty darn big mouse. So just consider yourself warned, be sure to test the ergonomics before buying.
Yes, you've confirmed you've missed the point. The books are not about process, they are about abstraction. The books are not designed to teach you technology to MAKE photographs, it is intended to teach you how to SEE photographs. But I suppose it is impossible to explain this to nonartists.
well, you're quibbling to say that DV is not only for amateur work. Sure, I see plenty of broadcasters using compressed DV, and their productions look like crap. But then, it is not widely known that until recently, the 3 major networks used VHS tapes as a backup source in case their broadcast feed died and they had to switch to a secondary source. So oftentimes, it's more a matter of expediency than quality. And it's up to you if you want your work to look like crap. I actually set up a shootout, we did the same short job on DV and SD (using high quality studio cameras as a source) and every single video pro thought the DV looked worse. About 3/4 of the non-video people could tell the difference and thought DV looked worse too.
And BTW, people DO use Combustion for editing. I know it's not what it's intended for, but it can be done, and it IS being done. They're stupid to do it that way, but hell, it's their time and money.
Since I have a BFA in Photography, I'm probably the only person on Slashdot to have actually DONE *all* the exercises in the Adams books, and I assure you, you have completely missed the point. Adams' books were NOT about the technology of the process. Technology was completely secondary to the issue. Adams was primarily interested in "previsualization." You see a scene you'd like to photograph, you previsiualize how you want the picture to turn out, and only THEN do you consider what technology (i.e. what lens & settings, what film speed, what developing) is necessary to produce the image you've previsualized.
Evoting was mandated under the "Help America Vote Act" in the wake of the Florida coup. Consequently, the new Evoting systems are designed SOLELY to address the problem of undervoting and overvoting. Unfortunately, that is relatively minor problem compared to the security and integrity of the overall voting process. Nothing in these Evoting systems is designed to improve security or the integrity of voting compared to paper ballots.
What do you mean by "professional grade editing suite?" My local CBS station uses DV for editing local commercials and news, you can see the difference in quality between their DV productions and work done on full uncompressed SD edit suites. They say they're saving up their money for HD equipment, but it's obvious they're just using it because they're the most amateurish of all the local network stations and they can't afford anything better.
There are no professional-quality open source editing systems. Period. All my video editor buddies (and I) are using Macs with Final Cut Pro, Boris Red, Shake, Peak or Logic, etc. I know one big shop that used Combustion on an SGI Onyx/IRIX box but they switched to Macs when the G5 came out.
Hardware is another issue. If you're just doing amateur work, DV will be fine, you just need a cheapo DV converter like the Canopus ADVC-1000. If you're a pro, you'll need an SD card like a Kona-SD, a realtime effects card like the Matrox RTMac series, and a hardware RAID to deal with high-bandwidth data streams with reasonable speed. One vendor I know claims that 4 IDE drives in a RAID will be sufficient for SD, but I'm more inclined to go with an 8 drive IDE RAID, a 4-drive SCSI RAID with 15kRPM drives, or a SATA RAID, all of which would beat the pants off any IDE RAID, and even do a decent job with HD.
Face it, Apple owns the pro editing market. There are some competitors like Avid and Combustion, those packages even run on PeeCees, sometimes even on IRIX. But those packages are in serious decline. Apple is rumored to be buying out the Autodesk video line (including Combustion, Cleaner, etc.) Why would you want to waste time cobbling together open source junk? Is your time worth nothing? The additional cost of professional hardware and software will pale in significance next to your tape decks and other non-computer equipment, you are trying to save money where that will do the most harm to the project.
Haven't gotten around to installing it yet, my DSL provider went bankrupt and I just spent 2 days getting back online. You know you have to have your SCSI scanner turned on at boot time, or the system doesn't know it exists, right?
Now I can use my ancient Epson 636 SCSI scanner with TWAIN, so I can scan directly into programs like Acrobat or Omnipage. I don't know any TWAIN-like drivers that can compete with pro graphics scanning applications like SilverFast, but this SANE-TWAIN driver will be awesome for the low end jobs or bulk scanning of B&W documents.
Now if only I could find a cheap used document feeder for the E636. Epson still sells them new, for $495. Hell, I could buy TWO new scanners with sheet feeders for that price.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never seen the zire, but I wouldn't worry too much about upgradeability. Consider that electronics are always getting cheaper, by the time you outgrow the zire, you could probably buy a new machine cheaper than upgrading. And if you get to advanced levels, you will probably own at least one advanced paper dictionary like the massive Kenkyusha New JE. No portable electronic dict can come close to a comprehensive paper dict. Many of the electronic devices use the same dictionary database (usually the Gakken dict), they're targeted at looking up the most common words you encounter. That's the bulk of your lookup tasks.
But then, YMMV, I went through a particularly tough program, and by the time I got to 4th year, I think I owned 9 or 10 different paper dicts and two electronic ones. Kanji dicts, EJ dicts, JE dicts, dicts of idioms, of verbs, etc etc. It gets to be expensive. I remember taking a 4th year class with a particularly torturous set of texts. I used to show them to native speakers and even they couldn't read some of the words. I found one complex word that even our teacher couldn't decipher, we showed it to every teacher in the department and they were all stumped. They ditched that textbook halfway through the semester. Ha!
oops, correction: I meant to say I mostly use my *Wordtank* when writing to check kanji, and the Zaurus when reading. What I wrote made no sense. Sorry. But it should point out that even a WT, the "beginner's dict" will have good long-term value. At least it did for me.
Unfortunately the Wordtank is going to be a big pain in the butt for kanji lookups, it's barely better than a paper dictionary, since you need to use the same index system as a paper dict. That is, you need to know the stroke count and the radical, or the reading, just to locate the kanji. Once you're there, you can then use "jumping search" to find jukugo using that kanji. A Wordtank is barely faster than a paper dict when looking up kanji. But it does the job, and it's lighter than most paper dicts. The WT's best feature is kana J-E lookups, they're very fast, and you'd use that a lot. The WT also has an English menu mode and also has a flashcard function, so you can mark words as you do lookups and drill them later. The WT also has furigana above kanji, which aren't available on many devices targeted at native Japanese users (i.e. the Seiko units).
I still think beginners (especially absolute newbie beginners) start with a cheap "learner's dictionary." They're cheap, which is good because you'll toss it out later when you get better. Definitions and examples are usually expanded and more appropriate for learners. There are kanji learner's dictionaries too. These wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for advanced students, but they're great for beginners. People have spent hundreds of years figuring out the best ways to study Japanese and the best methods are still often the traditional ones. Just as an example, I have never seen any beginning Japanese computer instruction programs that weren't anything but pure crap.
One more cautionary tale about dictionaries. I once wrote an essay for my J class about the working hours of Japanese vs. American workers. After the class, the teacher came up to me with the essay, pointed to a word I'd picked from a dictionary that translated as "worker," and asked, "WHERE did you get THAT word?? I want you to completely forget that word exists, and use the regular conventional word. You chose a word with a very derogatory connotation." I admitted I just picked it out of a dictionary, I assumed it was a perfectly good synonym and used it because I was bored writing the same word for "worker" over and over. So a dictionary won't teach you everything about a word.
can be obtained here. They have multiple advantages, they're more pleasurable to hold in your hands than electronic devices, they know ALL the words, and the batteries never run out. On the down side, the batteries never run out, even when you wish they WOULD, maintenance costs are extremely high, and after a few years of use, you'll lose interest in speaking Japanese ever again.
Ahem.. these devices are called "denshi jiten" and not "denki jisho." Denki means electricity, not electronic, and jisho is archaic usage, so you've described an electric dictionarium, not an electronic dictionary.
But quibbling aside, your description of the Zaurus handwriting input is innacurate. You can make SOME errors in input, but you must be able to draw the kanji in correct stroke order, and the strokes must cross each other in the correct pattern. This makes them suitable only for advanced students that can accurately copy any kanji in the correct stroke order. This is usually a skill that only develops somewhere around the 4th year of university level courses. That's when I bought a Zaurus. And the first thing the Zaurus taught me was that I'd been writing hiragana "na" incorrectly for years, it couldn't recognize my handwriting. I was, however, rather astonished to see the Zaurus could accurately read some cursive kanji. These devices are really designed for native Japanese users, so they are designed to accomodate errors or cursive simplifications typical to native Japanese users.
Either you haven't given sufficient information on your needs here, or you haven't given sufficient THOUGHT to your needs here. You give vague guidelines for what you're seeking, like for example, you want to input kana and have it output kanji. You must be a beginner, because you don't seem to realize there is no one-to-one correspondence between words written in kana and kanji. For example, when I write the kana "seikou," do I want the kanji meaning sex, a political platform, success, or any of a dozen other homonyms? A dictionary is not a mindreader, it doesn't know what you want, you can only get out of it what you know how to get out of it.
So what I'm getting at is, dictionary needs are different for beginners than for advanced students. A beginner who isn't skilled at writing kanji will not get along with a Zaurus, an advanced student will be frustrated with a WordTank model that would satisfy a beginner.
I usually tell beginners to buy a Wordtank, and advanced students to get a Zaurus. But no electronic dictionary is a substitute for a paper dictionary. I use my Zaurus mostly when writing, to doublecheck the kanji when I know the reading. I use my Zaurus mostly when reading, to quickly look up an unknown kanji for the reading & definition. But I usually end up using the electronic lookup as the entry point for the huge 2100 page Kenkyusha New JE Dictionary, on paper. If I want more specialized data like etymology, I pop in my Kojien CD. If I want classical Japanese lookups, I use a paper kogojiten (haven't found a good electronic kogojiten yet).
But I have found that I use my portable dictionaries less and less. Free online dicts like WWWJDIC and the goo.ne.jp dictionary have made portable devices less useful to me.
Ultimately, portable dictionaries are a crutch. I often think of a news story I saw with someone demonstrating an electronic "speaking translator" in Spanish. It could say basic phrases like "Can you direct me to a nearby taxi stand?" They used this device, and that exact phrase, on a Spanish-speaker, who immediately understood the tinny little voice, and shot back a rapid fire answer, in Spanish of course. Which was completely incomprehensible to the person with the device. The answer would have to be given back through the device, the person giving the answer would have needed to learn how to input his answer and spit it back out through the device.
So what I'm basically trying to tell you is that electronic dictionaries are not going to do much good for beginners, they're more useful for advanced students who really don't have that much need for dictionaries generally. Even some of the basic skills needed to effectively search for words are beyond most beginners, I know I wasn't taught how to use a paper dictionary until I was in 2nd year classes. So save your money for good TEXTBOOKS, you'll learn to speak Japanese without having to consult a dictionary every two words.
It is equally unfair to compare MacOS X to OS 9, they are different OSes. OS 9 is officially dead, just like Win95. I won't count Win95-specific viruses (if there is such a thing) against WinXP, so don't count OS9 viruses against OS X.
Unix worms have never hit MacOS X. Macro viruses don't count, they can't affect anything beyond the document. Most OS X users don't even have MSOffice or MSWord. And even if they did, the OS X version of Office is AFAIK the first version to have macro virus protection and have it turned on by default. It's a dead issue.
And while I'm being nitpicky here, FYI the plural of virus is viruses, not virii.
Don't spread more FUD. You claim there are 60 to 100 "mac virii." What you really meant is that there were viruses for MacOS 9. There are NO known MacOS X viruses.
You are right, BSD developers deserve credit. But you missed one extremely obvious point: that includes Apple. Apple's programmers contributing BSD code back to the source tree. Apple's efforts have brought more users and more programmers to BSD than ever before. Apple is the largest Unix vendor in the world.
Watching this film will cure cancer. It will cause your zits to fade away, leaving a smooth, youthful complexion. If you have seen this film, naked women will throw themselves at your feet. If you buy a ticket to this film, you will Make Money Fast. Buying this film on DVD will extend your lifespan by 10 years, and your IQ will go up 10 points. Telling people the ending of this film (even if they've already read the book) will cause you to develop toe fungus, arterial blockages, and brain tumors. If you do leave the theater before the credits are completed, you will go blind. God lives in New Zealand.
Yeah, like I give a fuck what you and your wannabee-hobbit friends think.
Yeah, like I give a fuck about whether he was pushed or he slipped.
I don't know a single person or company that owns any fax machine other than ancient thermal printer units they bought when fax was considered hi tech. Fax is for Luddites that don't use computers.
Darth Vader is Luke's father. Apollo 13 makes it home safely. Hal9000 kills the crew. Sarah Connor crushes the Terminator in a metal press. Khan is killed in the Genesis explosion while Kirk escapes. Spiderman kills the Green Goblin. ET phones home and a spaceship comes to rescue him. Ripley blows the Alien out an airlock. Major Kong rides an H-Bomb to the target and the Doomsday Weapon is detonated. The Planet of the Apes is really Earth. Butch and Sundance get killed by the Peruvian Army. Spartacus gets crucified. Frodo throws Gollum and the Ring into the pit, defeating Evil.
Oh come on, you can be more creative than that with a FAX machine. Some friends and I tried a revenge-fax method we heard about, we used to wait until late night (when presumably nobody was around to watch the fax machine), get an 8.5x24inch piece of black paper, start faxing it to the target, and then once the lead end of the black page came out of the machine, we'd tape it to the trailing end. You create a continuous loop of black paper, so you are faxing an endless black fax (make sure everything is aligned perfectly or the loop will walk sideways over time).
At worst, you'll waste their fax paper, at best, you'll burn out the thermal printheads on their fax machine.
Optional: tape a small piece of white paper with a short message to the loop (keep it small, you don't want to let those thermal printheads cool off by transmitting too much white). I'd recommend removing the sender's phone number from your fax machine before sending this (which, BTW, is illegal now).
I can say that because you obviously know nothing about art.
A photograph is a recording of light reflecting off objects. An artwork is the expression of an idea. There are many fine photographers who are not artists. Some of them eventually get it, most don't. You don't get it.
I had an old Logitech 3 button ADB mouse, it was the default mouse for MkLinux way back in the dark ages. It was the most unergonomic mouse I ever used, it gave me finger cramps after using it for an hour or so. Definitely the worst designed product I've ever seen. The Logitech Wingman and other mice I saw in this thread are quite similar in design, I wouldn't touch em with a ten foot pole. Maybe the mouse was just too small for my hand, but this was a pretty darn big mouse. So just consider yourself warned, be sure to test the ergonomics before buying.
You presuppose incorrectly.
This is why your photographs are mere snapshots, while Ansel Adams' are art.
Yes, you've confirmed you've missed the point. The books are not about process, they are about abstraction. The books are not designed to teach you technology to MAKE photographs, it is intended to teach you how to SEE photographs. But I suppose it is impossible to explain this to nonartists.
well, you're quibbling to say that DV is not only for amateur work. Sure, I see plenty of broadcasters using compressed DV, and their productions look like crap. But then, it is not widely known that until recently, the 3 major networks used VHS tapes as a backup source in case their broadcast feed died and they had to switch to a secondary source. So oftentimes, it's more a matter of expediency than quality. And it's up to you if you want your work to look like crap.
I actually set up a shootout, we did the same short job on DV and SD (using high quality studio cameras as a source) and every single video pro thought the DV looked worse. About 3/4 of the non-video people could tell the difference and thought DV looked worse too.
And BTW, people DO use Combustion for editing. I know it's not what it's intended for, but it can be done, and it IS being done. They're stupid to do it that way, but hell, it's their time and money.
Since I have a BFA in Photography, I'm probably the only person on Slashdot to have actually DONE *all* the exercises in the Adams books, and I assure you, you have completely missed the point.
Adams' books were NOT about the technology of the process. Technology was completely secondary to the issue. Adams was primarily interested in "previsualization." You see a scene you'd like to photograph, you previsiualize how you want the picture to turn out, and only THEN do you consider what technology (i.e. what lens & settings, what film speed, what developing) is necessary to produce the image you've previsualized.
Evoting was mandated under the "Help America Vote Act" in the wake of the Florida coup. Consequently, the new Evoting systems are designed SOLELY to address the problem of undervoting and overvoting. Unfortunately, that is relatively minor problem compared to the security and integrity of the overall voting process. Nothing in these Evoting systems is designed to improve security or the integrity of voting compared to paper ballots.
What do you mean by "professional grade editing suite?" My local CBS station uses DV for editing local commercials and news, you can see the difference in quality between their DV productions and work done on full uncompressed SD edit suites. They say they're saving up their money for HD equipment, but it's obvious they're just using it because they're the most amateurish of all the local network stations and they can't afford anything better.
There are no professional-quality open source editing systems. Period. All my video editor buddies (and I) are using Macs with Final Cut Pro, Boris Red, Shake, Peak or Logic, etc. I know one big shop that used Combustion on an SGI Onyx/IRIX box but they switched to Macs when the G5 came out.
Hardware is another issue. If you're just doing amateur work, DV will be fine, you just need a cheapo DV converter like the Canopus ADVC-1000. If you're a pro, you'll need an SD card like a Kona-SD, a realtime effects card like the Matrox RTMac series, and a hardware RAID to deal with high-bandwidth data streams with reasonable speed. One vendor I know claims that 4 IDE drives in a RAID will be sufficient for SD, but I'm more inclined to go with an 8 drive IDE RAID, a 4-drive SCSI RAID with 15kRPM drives, or a SATA RAID, all of which would beat the pants off any IDE RAID, and even do a decent job with HD.
Face it, Apple owns the pro editing market. There are some competitors like Avid and Combustion, those packages even run on PeeCees, sometimes even on IRIX. But those packages are in serious decline. Apple is rumored to be buying out the Autodesk video line (including Combustion, Cleaner, etc.) Why would you want to waste time cobbling together open source junk? Is your time worth nothing? The additional cost of professional hardware and software will pale in significance next to your tape decks and other non-computer equipment, you are trying to save money where that will do the most harm to the project.
Haven't gotten around to installing it yet, my DSL provider went bankrupt and I just spent 2 days getting back online. You know you have to have your SCSI scanner turned on at boot time, or the system doesn't know it exists, right?
Now I can use my ancient Epson 636 SCSI scanner with TWAIN, so I can scan directly into programs like Acrobat or Omnipage. I don't know any TWAIN-like drivers that can compete with pro graphics scanning applications like SilverFast, but this SANE-TWAIN driver will be awesome for the low end jobs or bulk scanning of B&W documents.
Now if only I could find a cheap used document feeder for the E636. Epson still sells them new, for $495. Hell, I could buy TWO new scanners with sheet feeders for that price.