I am laughing my ass off that you cite Userland's piece o'crap software as your example. It is hardly possible to UNDERestimate the difficulties involved, when Dave Winer is in the picture. You KNOW it's primarily because of Dave's sheer assholery that a replacement for RSS is in development. I'd personally wait until they get the new standard out the door before converting listserv-style products to syndicated feeds. But anyway, you know damn well that RSS discover is poorly implemented, your average user isn't going to figure out that he's pointed at an auth feed, he's just going to figure his discovery didn't work (again). Just wait til people start hiding their feed in auth-only subdirectories, oh boy we just need 80 zillion obscure places instead of putting them at server root per current methods. Then it will be just like listservs, where you must know the address in advance.
That's a good idea, now go write an RSS aggregator that supports HTTP auth, and then go convince everyone to support it in their servers. But first, you might want to think about how auth will interfere with RSS discovery (which is already screwed up enough).
There's only one problem with RSS compared to email, you have no way to control distribution, anyone can read the RSS. But with a listserv, you can control your distribution list easily. RSS is not a substitute for listservs. Everyone can get email, it's simple, but not everyone can grok an RSS aggregator.
I bet Neil Gaiman felt really great when he won the award that Harry Potter won last year. I looked through the past Hugo lists, it's all the same people giving themselves the same awards. Are these awards really important to anyone outside the authors' circles?
That script, it is almost like you were there. We argued this idea was stupid and the boss just said he was going to persist so it would be quicker to just say "no no no" than to argue with him about it. His rationale was that if you can become more comfortable saying no to the #1 Boss, you'd be better at saying it to the lowly employees and customers. Fortunately the boss mostly gave up on this stuff after a few months, but he still singled out people for persistent "no" treatment. He was a nutcase, for sure.
I had an insane boss once, each day as business started he'd roam around the office for his morning ritual, he made each employee look him straight in the eyes and say "No" three times in a firm but neutral voice. If he didn't like how you did it, he'd make you do it again. Yep, he was totally nuts.
This is like asking for the all-time demo reel, it's pretty subjective. But I'm surprised people aren't going back even farther, to the really groundbreaking works, like Robert Abel's Sexy Robot (early mocap), James Blinn's Voyager simulations, Nam June Paik's analog video synthesizers.. I could probably think of a few more. Everyone cites The Last Starfighter, I got a chance to look through their shop, they had a Cray and a CM-2, running Symbolics software, it was awesome. But that wasn't what made TLS a breakthrough. The movie went millions over budget due to the effects. It never made back production costs, not by a large margin. Studios put a curse on CG movies, it was now considered the kiss of death to spend millions on CG, you couldn't make your money back. But the studio was surprised when it learned that it was a huge hit on VHS tape. This was the first time Hollywood realized you could salvage a financial flop with the tape sales and rental revenues, it turned the business upside down.
Well, I should note that the QMaster render clients run on Linux and Irix (windoze client is discontinued) but those are paid licensed versions and Apple's giving away the QMaster Mac version free. They're giving an incentive to run Apple hardware across the board, obviously. It's easier to create a cluster computing gadget like QMaster if you've got a few apps that operate around a common task like FCP/Shake rendering, and Apple has barely begun to develop this so it's still a little rough around the edges and geeky. But I don't see any reason why this clustering couldn't be applied to general apps. I figure eventually you'll have a dual proc system handling local OS tasks and I/O, plus any number of extra "virtual processors" available through a cluster.
I have to agree, the multiple processor systems rock. I have a dual 1Ghz MDD machine, near the end of the line for the old G4 architecture (it's the last gen that can boot OS 9 natively, supposedly) and it is quite zippy. Don't underestimate the usefulness of dual processors. I use the old dead freeware gadget "Cycles" to watch both G4s in separate graphs, it's interesting seeing each processor's load. Apps like VPC monopolize one CPU for emulation, and offload OS and screen drawing tasks on the other processor. Some apps really max out everything, like Cleaner 6 or DVD Studio Pro, you can be up to about 98% CPU utilization on both processors, but the system is still responsive enough to toss it in the background and run other hefty apps, the main app will behave nicely and give up CPU cycles. My G4 CPU has improved memory bus bandwidth which made a really obvious improvement in performance doing tasks like encoding that are both I/O intensive and CPU-intensive. But the G5's memory bandwidth looks like it is at least 10x what my G4 can do. And there's one thing I think people haven't noticed. I looked at Shake 3 and Final Cut Pro, they use a new networked clustering controller called QMaster. It is a new background system service for rendering video out of Shake or FCP Compressor. You can control a whole render farm of Macs from your workstation with QMaster. This doesn't have to be a rack of XServes, it could just be the regular macs around the office. I think Apple's moving to a more networked, distributed processing model, this could be an incredible increase in computing power.
There's only one problem, the archives are really incomplete. The BBC bulk-erased much of old archive back in the 1970s. Here's just one example of the carnage:
Dr. Who FAQ Section 2 - About The "Missing Episodes"
I'm fairly skeptical about fair trade coffee and these charity deals. TMy local hippie coop sells only fair trade coffee, a long time ago I saw a brand advertised as "antiapartheid coffee" with a percentage of the profits to go to fighting apartheid. Of course this was 6 months after South Africa abolished apartheid. BTW, I've visited a coffee plantation in Columbia. The conditions for workers were appalling. Drying the beans involves spreading them out on large concrete pads that look like parking lots, the beans are spread by barefoot workers with pushbrooms. I do not want to consume a product that's been lodged between the sweaty toes of a Columbian laborer.
Remember "linux/unix" also includes MacOS X, and there were quite a few comments about Macs on that page. They might have gotten even higher percentages, maybe even beyond 50%, if they'd put MacOS X in the survey. Ya know, not everyone runs Intel/AMD.
The true application is obvious. They're tracking alt.binaries and other warez newsgroups, tracking users and what they post, with an eye towards eventual law enforcement (remember the Business Software Alliance, owned by MS?).
The NYTimes has a nice "comparator" gadget up on their front page right now. I had that idea last night, I cut up the before/after images in photoshop, put them on different layers, then blinked from Before to After. Unfortunately, the sat images have the overlay map placed inaccurately, so if you line up the two maps, the cities' positions jiggle. I lined them up so the map jiggled and the cities were in the correct positions. But it appears that the After shot has a slightly lower exposure, there is some noise and insensitivity near the edge of the data frame that seems to mask some of the light intensity in the recording.
This is an old idea. I've seen outdoor "Laserium" style shows, projected onto huge fog-fountains on barges on a lake. The barges were lined up in a row, each one sprayed out a flat semicircle of fine water particles, when lined up together they made a strip of solid "screen" about 50 feet high. They laser-projected animations on the wide strip across the lake. Then they ran fireworks from barges even farther out on the lake. It was way cool.
RC Copters are popular with Japanese farmers, they use them to spray pesticides on a small scale. Aum Shinrikyo used this idea, they bought 3 mini copters with the intention of spraying botulism toxin over Tokyo. But they crashed all 3 copters while learning how to fly them. End of plan. On a related note, here's a story from yesterday's Mainichi Daily News, "Farmer's radio-controlled chopper cuts off his leg"
I'm working on a similar project (well, if you consider trying to raise the money to be "working"). Being a professional photographer, I want professional results, and that means remote preview through the camera via USB (why oh why don't prosumer cameras come with FireWire?) and of course USB craps out after about 5 meters. But I just found out that someone finally did the impossible, a 1000ft USB extension device. It's an active microprocessor controlled relay device, you need one at both ends, runs off 12v so I could use a 12v battery to power it. But now I can't find the damn vendor. Anyone know who makes this device?
I've seen a small increase in total goddam idiots on usenet who were former p2p lusers, you know, the kind of kiddee who thinks he can post 5Gb of mp3s to usenet like he used to share a 5Gb drive on gnutella.
Olmos said that FANBOYS of the old series should not watch the new series because they backstory was thrown out and a new one created. He never said people in GENERAL should not watch it.
Oops, I think I multi posted this by accident. Sorry.
but nobody does anything about it. Press releases about the latest "Chandler" vaporware fell like snow, but it's no closer to the desktop than a scribble on a napkin.
Meanwhile, I'll keep using my Unix desktop.. MacOS X.
Slashdot Mirror
I am laughing my ass off that you cite Userland's piece o'crap software as your example. It is hardly possible to UNDERestimate the difficulties involved, when Dave Winer is in the picture. You KNOW it's primarily because of Dave's sheer assholery that a replacement for RSS is in development. I'd personally wait until they get the new standard out the door before converting listserv-style products to syndicated feeds.
But anyway, you know damn well that RSS discover is poorly implemented, your average user isn't going to figure out that he's pointed at an auth feed, he's just going to figure his discovery didn't work (again). Just wait til people start hiding their feed in auth-only subdirectories, oh boy we just need 80 zillion obscure places instead of putting them at server root per current methods. Then it will be just like listservs, where you must know the address in advance.
That's a good idea, now go write an RSS aggregator that supports HTTP auth, and then go convince everyone to support it in their servers. But first, you might want to think about how auth will interfere with RSS discovery (which is already screwed up enough).
There's only one problem with RSS compared to email, you have no way to control distribution, anyone can read the RSS. But with a listserv, you can control your distribution list easily. RSS is not a substitute for listservs. Everyone can get email, it's simple, but not everyone can grok an RSS aggregator.
I bet Neil Gaiman felt really great when he won the award that Harry Potter won last year.
I looked through the past Hugo lists, it's all the same people giving themselves the same awards. Are these awards really important to anyone outside the authors' circles?
That script, it is almost like you were there. We argued this idea was stupid and the boss just said he was going to persist so it would be quicker to just say "no no no" than to argue with him about it. His rationale was that if you can become more comfortable saying no to the #1 Boss, you'd be better at saying it to the lowly employees and customers. Fortunately the boss mostly gave up on this stuff after a few months, but he still singled out people for persistent "no" treatment. He was a nutcase, for sure.
I had an insane boss once, each day as business started he'd roam around the office for his morning ritual, he made each employee look him straight in the eyes and say "No" three times in a firm but neutral voice. If he didn't like how you did it, he'd make you do it again. Yep, he was totally nuts.
This is like asking for the all-time demo reel, it's pretty subjective. But I'm surprised people aren't going back even farther, to the really groundbreaking works, like
Robert Abel's Sexy Robot (early mocap), James Blinn's Voyager simulations, Nam June Paik's analog video synthesizers.. I could probably think of a few more.
Everyone cites The Last Starfighter, I got a chance to look through their shop, they had a Cray and a CM-2, running Symbolics software, it was awesome. But that wasn't what made TLS a breakthrough. The movie went millions over budget due to the effects. It never made back production costs, not by a large margin. Studios put a curse on CG movies, it was now considered the kiss of death to spend millions on CG, you couldn't make your money back. But the studio was surprised when it learned that it was a huge hit on VHS tape. This was the first time Hollywood realized you could salvage a financial flop with the tape sales and rental revenues, it turned the business upside down.
Well, I should note that the QMaster render clients run on Linux and Irix (windoze client is discontinued) but those are paid licensed versions and Apple's giving away the QMaster Mac version free. They're giving an incentive to run Apple hardware across the board, obviously.
It's easier to create a cluster computing gadget like QMaster if you've got a few apps that operate around a common task like FCP/Shake rendering, and Apple has barely begun to develop this so it's still a little rough around the edges and geeky. But I don't see any reason why this clustering couldn't be applied to general apps. I figure eventually you'll have a dual proc system handling local OS tasks and I/O, plus any number of extra "virtual processors" available through a cluster.
I use Cycles because I think it's aesthetics are better than the Apple CPU Monitor. Just a personal thing.
I have to agree, the multiple processor systems rock. I have a dual 1Ghz MDD machine, near the end of the line for the old G4 architecture (it's the last gen that can boot OS 9 natively, supposedly) and it is quite zippy. Don't underestimate the usefulness of dual processors. I use the old dead freeware gadget "Cycles" to watch both G4s in separate graphs, it's interesting seeing each processor's load. Apps like VPC monopolize one CPU for emulation, and offload OS and screen drawing tasks on the other processor. Some apps really max out everything, like Cleaner 6 or DVD Studio Pro, you can be up to about 98% CPU utilization on both processors, but the system is still responsive enough to toss it in the background and run other hefty apps, the main app will behave nicely and give up CPU cycles. My G4 CPU has improved memory bus bandwidth which made a really obvious improvement in performance doing tasks like encoding that are both I/O intensive and CPU-intensive. But the G5's memory bandwidth looks like it is at least 10x what my G4 can do.
And there's one thing I think people haven't noticed. I looked at Shake 3 and Final Cut Pro, they use a new networked clustering controller called QMaster. It is a new background system service for rendering video out of Shake or FCP Compressor. You can control a whole render farm of Macs from your workstation with QMaster. This doesn't have to be a rack of XServes, it could just be the regular macs around the office. I think Apple's moving to a more networked, distributed processing model, this could be an incredible increase in computing power.
I don't drink wine, not machine made nor the kind with toejam additives.
There's only one problem, the archives are really incomplete. The BBC bulk-erased much of old archive back in the 1970s. Here's just one example of the carnage:
2 /f aq2.html
Dr. Who FAQ Section 2 - About The "Missing Episodes"
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~hili/DrWho/FAQ/faq
The worst part of this is, I actually had some of the missing episodes on VHS tape, but my psychoexgirlfriend stole them and destroyed them.
Anyway, I like this idea. I've been watching other projects, like for example, the Yomiuri Shinbun is putting their post-WWII newsreels online.
I'm fairly skeptical about fair trade coffee and these charity deals. TMy local hippie coop sells only fair trade coffee, a long time ago I saw a brand advertised as "antiapartheid coffee" with a percentage of the profits to go to fighting apartheid. Of course this was 6 months after South Africa abolished apartheid.
BTW, I've visited a coffee plantation in Columbia. The conditions for workers were appalling. Drying the beans involves spreading them out on large concrete pads that look like parking lots, the beans are spread by barefoot workers with pushbrooms. I do not want to consume a product that's been lodged between the sweaty toes of a Columbian laborer.
Remember "linux/unix" also includes MacOS X, and there were quite a few comments about Macs on that page. They might have gotten even higher percentages, maybe even beyond 50%, if they'd put MacOS X in the survey. Ya know, not everyone runs Intel/AMD.
The true application is obvious. They're tracking alt.binaries and other warez newsgroups, tracking users and what they post, with an eye towards eventual law enforcement (remember the Business Software Alliance, owned by MS?).
yabut, you can't reposition the images around in one pixel increments in a browser.
The NYTimes has a nice "comparator" gadget up on their front page right now. I had that idea last night, I cut up the before/after images in photoshop, put them on different layers, then blinked from Before to After. Unfortunately, the sat images have the overlay map placed inaccurately, so if you line up the two maps, the cities' positions jiggle. I lined them up so the map jiggled and the cities were in the correct positions. But it appears that the After shot has a slightly lower exposure, there is some noise and insensitivity near the edge of the data frame that seems to mask some of the light intensity in the recording.
This is an old idea. I've seen outdoor "Laserium" style shows, projected onto huge fog-fountains on barges on a lake. The barges were lined up in a row, each one sprayed out a flat semicircle of fine water particles, when lined up together they made a strip of solid "screen" about 50 feet high. They laser-projected animations on the wide strip across the lake. Then they ran fireworks from barges even farther out on the lake. It was way cool.
RC Copters are popular with Japanese farmers, they use them to spray pesticides on a small scale. Aum Shinrikyo used this idea, they bought 3 mini copters with the intention of spraying botulism toxin over Tokyo. But they crashed all 3 copters while learning how to fly them. End of plan.
0 /2 0030730p2a00m0dm024000c.html
On a related note, here's a story from yesterday's Mainichi Daily News, "Farmer's radio-controlled chopper cuts off his leg"
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/archive/200307/3
That was awesome. Unfortunately, it was completely incomprehensible.
Hey thanks, that page helped me find the item I was looking for:
0 6
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=13
1650ft range over Cat5 cable. I wonder how much helium it takes to lift 1650 ft of cable, the USB extender & battery, plus my camera?
I'm working on a similar project (well, if you consider trying to raise the money to be "working"). Being a professional photographer, I want professional results, and that means remote preview through the camera via USB (why oh why don't prosumer cameras come with FireWire?) and of course USB craps out after about 5 meters. But I just found out that someone finally did the impossible, a 1000ft USB extension device. It's an active microprocessor controlled relay device, you need one at both ends, runs off 12v so I could use a 12v battery to power it. But now I can't find the damn vendor. Anyone know who makes this device?
I've seen a small increase in total goddam idiots on usenet who were former p2p lusers, you know, the kind of kiddee who thinks he can post 5Gb of mp3s to usenet like he used to share a 5Gb drive on gnutella.
Olmos said that FANBOYS of the old series should not watch the new series because they backstory was thrown out and a new one created. He never said people in GENERAL should not watch it.
Oops, I think I multi posted this by accident. Sorry.
but nobody does anything about it. Press releases about the latest "Chandler" vaporware fell like snow, but it's no closer to the desktop than a scribble on a napkin.
Meanwhile, I'll keep using my Unix desktop.. MacOS X.