I agree, an ADF scanner is definitely the way to go on your budget. However, I'd recommend purchasing a new one instead of buying used, especially since you'll be doing high-volume work. I'd also be wary of HP scanners, as I've had bad experiences with their PrecisionScan Pro software, and have been told that in general HP software is sub-par.
By the way, you shouldn't need to do any OCR with these files. I do use OCR (or what Acrobat 6.0 Standard calls "Paper Capture") for my scanning, but only because that allows the PDF to be read aloud, which gives greater accessibility to visually impaired students.
Besides, even the best OCR packages (we have ABBYY Fine Reader, supposedly very good) will do a poor job with handwritten text, and no OCR package that I know of will correctly do formulas.
I work at the Academic Support office at a university. Much of what I do is scanning textbooks for visually impaired students, and I've recently started using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard for some books. After a semi-scientific study, I found that scanning in black and white (that's 1-bit pure B&W, not 8-bit grayscale or whatever) and using Acrobat's adaptive compression gives good results with a small file size. Of course, this is usually with printed text, so YMMV.
The scanner I use is an HP ScanJet 7400C, and while the scanner is OK, the software has some major flaws that require workarounds. However, this is a fairly old scanner with old software (last updated in 2001, I think), so more recent versions may be improved.
Someone else suggested a high speed scanner from Fujitsu. I don't have any experience with these, but in addition to being very fast, they are very expensive and may require you to buy additional hardware (some of them use a SCSI interface instead of USB).
I'd suggest spending the money you have on a mid- or high-end consumer scanner with a good Automatic Document Feeder.
If you've got more questions, I'd be happy to answer them as best I can. Feel free to reply here or send me an email. If you do email, be sure to put "Slashdot" in the subject line.
The radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is not ultimately governed by the FCC. It is actually controlled by the United Nations through the International Telecommunications Union. The FCC must operate within the rules of the ITU.
So, while the FCC does have a good deal of control over broadcasting in the United States, there are certain things it cannot control and certain decisions it does not have the power to make.
Furthermore, the ITU is necessary to ensure the safe, reliable, and effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum. You wouldn't want some unlicensed broadcaster in Canada or Central/Southern America interfering with the radio services used by FEMA, would you?
At the University I attend there is a games lounge in the student center with 2 or 3 PS2 consoles and 2 or 3 X-Box consoles, along with a few pool and foosball tables. You show your student ID to check out a game and controllers. Nothing commercial, but the idea is the same.
Just thought I'd add that although we didn't make the Unwired list, GVSU is ranked 44th nationally in Yahoo's Wired Campus list. I don't think there's a classroom, office, or dorm/apartment room that doesn't have an ethernet jack. It's 10BaseT right now, but I've heard that it's being upgraded to 100BaseTX this summer.
I'm a little surprised that the university I attend, Grand Valley State University, didn't make the list. About 95% of our non-housing buildings have APs, along with several student housing centers. (Residents aren't allowed to set up their own APs, however, as this is a security risk.) Computer-to-student ratio is good, and we have about 16,000 undergraduates.
However, we have an 18-hole golf course and plenty of outdoor athletics facilities, so that's a lot of on-campus space that isn't covered. I imagine this may have bumped us out of the rankings, as percent of campus coverage was considered.
On the other hand, the Grand Rapids-Holland-Muskegon area (home of Grand Valley) is rated 74th in the Most Unwired Cities survey.:)
Okay, so you say you are valuable during emergency situations, but if the power was out, then there would be no interference with your signals. So you could still be used during emergencies.
Half of the reason we are useful in emergencies is that we practice and rehearse during non-emergency times. Without practice, our emergency operations would be disorganized and ineffective.
It's the same way with athletes. If a basketball player doesn't play basketball during the off-season, their performance will be seriously reduced when the season starts again.
Next is that we currently are implementing push-to-talk over GSM and CDMA that would easily remove the need for the emergency bands already used. Same applies as above, when the power it down, your radios will work again.
The problem with push-to-talk (and cell phones in general) is that it is centralized, just like the rest of the phone system. Under heavy load, it tends to fail.
The website gives the platform as Windows 9x. I know there's a compatibility wizard for running 9x programs on XP, but there's no guarantee that the wizard will be successful (that I'm aware of, anyway).
What are the chances of being unable to play Freespace 2 under XP, and is the price tag worth that risk?
Rats, I used up my last mod points just moments ago!
Silver is the best conductor, but it tarnishes pretty easily, killing it's conductivity. That's why you don't see silver-plated connectors on premium audio cables, etc. Gold is the next best conductor, AFAIK, and doesn't tarnish.
I suppose you can get away with using silver in thermal paste because it's isolated from the air.
Re:Old idea.
on
Your Own Mecha
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In the '60s, GE had a project called "Hardiman". It was scrapped when they couldn't get the limbs to coordinate properly. It was also impractically heavy, at 1,500 pounds.
Currently, DARPA has a $50 million project dedicated to developing exoskeletons for US soldiers.
How Stuff Works has an article detailing some of the problems with developing exoskeletons with a few interesting links.
Mandrake has offered XFS since at least 9.0, my first Linux distro. I've been using XFS (at the suggestion of my friend who helped with the install) for at least 6 months now, with only instance of a problem (not sure if it was a fault in the filesystem itself): lost or corrupted an inode or two, and fixed very easily once I knew what to do.
It works with both GRUB and LILO, is reasonably speedy, and has enormous partition and file size limits.
If memory (and legal knowledge) serves correctly, if I buy a piece of software (or, technically the disc and the right to use the software), I am legally entitled by US law to make a working backup of the software. It would seem that this anti-piracy technology interferes with this right.
Also, what happens if the original disc gets physically scratched so that the "fragments of 'subversive' code designed to seem like scratches" can't be read but the rest of the disc is fine?
As another poster stated, any company that uses Fade should offer free replacement discs to legitimate purchasers.
...of a passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the population of the universe.
The argument goes something like this: the number of individual beings in the universe is finite, and the size of the universe is more-or-less infinite. A finite number divided by infinity is approximately zero. Therefore, the population of the universe is zero.;)
All you/.ers in Michigan (that includes most of the editors, at least Taco and CowboyNeal), notify your local TV stations and newspapers about this and other effects of the Super DMCA. Write to your representatives and senators, too. Please, be respectful, but don't sugar-coat anything.
I don't know about you, but this law slipped in under my radar.
There is a place call Magnum Opus in eastern GR that sells anime, manga (some imports), merchandise, and lesser-known (independent?) comics. They also have an excellent selection of anime for rent.
The store is in the ground floor of an oldish, red house at 1422 Wealthy St SE.
Grand Valley State University (Allendale Campus, just 20-30 minutes from downtown GR) has an anime club that holds regular showings/meetings on Sundays througout the year. They also host a small convention, called JAFAX, every year.
Lastly, the UICA in GR has shown anime in the past (Metropolis). They don't currently have any more anime listed on their website, but you never know.
If we (as in the people of Earth, not just those from the United States) are going to explore, exploit, and colonize space effectively, we're probably going to have to do it cooperatively.
An international organization should be created now so that details and rules of exploration can be established. If we don't do this, we could end up with countries (or corporations) saying "I got here first, and I'll do what I want with it, and I don't have to share anything with you."
Space offers nearly limitless possibilities, many of which could be used to the benefit of everyone here on Earth. If we allow secrecy, greed, and selfishness to get in the way, not only will space exploration itself suffer, but the benefits available from space will be denied to many of us.
AFAIK, all "raw" Hubble images have that characteristic missing corner, such as this image of the Large Magellanic Cloud taken in November 1996.
I imagine that most of the Hubble images we've seen are composites of several individual pictures, compensating for the missing piece in each individual picture.
As for the cause of the missing corner, I imagine it could be due to the flaw in the telescope's optics and the subsequent fix. Alternately, it could simply be the way the telescope was designed.
Of course, your explanation is much more interesting.:)
I'm sure that Microsoft has poor tech support, but I'm also very sure that Microsoft is not the only company that does. There are probably dozens, hundreds maybe, of companies with even worse tech support.
To blame only Microsoft for industry-wide poor tech support is rather biased and narrowminded, IMHO.
Consumer Reports magazine has good, scientific, and fairly unbiased reviews of computer hardware every now and then. They usually have repair statistics as well, very useful if you're looking for stability and durability.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, an ADF scanner is definitely the way to go on your budget. However, I'd recommend purchasing a new one instead of buying used, especially since you'll be doing high-volume work. I'd also be wary of HP scanners, as I've had bad experiences with their PrecisionScan Pro software, and have been told that in general HP software is sub-par.
By the way, you shouldn't need to do any OCR with these files. I do use OCR (or what Acrobat 6.0 Standard calls "Paper Capture") for my scanning, but only because that allows the PDF to be read aloud, which gives greater accessibility to visually impaired students.
Besides, even the best OCR packages (we have ABBYY Fine Reader, supposedly very good) will do a poor job with handwritten text, and no OCR package that I know of will correctly do formulas.
~~LF
I work at the Academic Support office at a university. Much of what I do is scanning textbooks for visually impaired students, and I've recently started using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard for some books. After a semi-scientific study, I found that scanning in black and white (that's 1-bit pure B&W, not 8-bit grayscale or whatever) and using Acrobat's adaptive compression gives good results with a small file size. Of course, this is usually with printed text, so YMMV.
The scanner I use is an HP ScanJet 7400C, and while the scanner is OK, the software has some major flaws that require workarounds. However, this is a fairly old scanner with old software (last updated in 2001, I think), so more recent versions may be improved.
Someone else suggested a high speed scanner from Fujitsu. I don't have any experience with these, but in addition to being very fast, they are very expensive and may require you to buy additional hardware (some of them use a SCSI interface instead of USB).
I'd suggest spending the money you have on a mid- or high-end consumer scanner with a good Automatic Document Feeder.
If you've got more questions, I'd be happy to answer them as best I can. Feel free to reply here or send me an email. If you do email, be sure to put "Slashdot" in the subject line.
~~LF
There is no special tax for custom cabinets.
There is no special tax for custom photograph/art frames.
There is no special tax for a custom paint job for a car.
AFAIK, there are no special taxes for custom anything, whether it's a good, service, or form of information.
So what makes software so different?
The radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is not ultimately governed by the FCC. It is actually controlled by the United Nations through the International Telecommunications Union. The FCC must operate within the rules of the ITU.
So, while the FCC does have a good deal of control over broadcasting in the United States, there are certain things it cannot control and certain decisions it does not have the power to make.
Furthermore, the ITU is necessary to ensure the safe, reliable, and effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum. You wouldn't want some unlicensed broadcaster in Canada or Central/Southern America interfering with the radio services used by FEMA, would you?
At the University I attend there is a games lounge in the student center with 2 or 3 PS2 consoles and 2 or 3 X-Box consoles, along with a few pool and foosball tables. You show your student ID to check out a game and controllers. Nothing commercial, but the idea is the same.
Just thought I'd add that although we didn't make the Unwired list, GVSU is ranked 44th nationally in Yahoo's Wired Campus list. I don't think there's a classroom, office, or dorm/apartment room that doesn't have an ethernet jack. It's 10BaseT right now, but I've heard that it's being upgraded to 100BaseTX this summer.
I'm a little surprised that the university I attend, Grand Valley State University, didn't make the list. About 95% of our non-housing buildings have APs, along with several student housing centers. (Residents aren't allowed to set up their own APs, however, as this is a security risk.) Computer-to-student ratio is good, and we have about 16,000 undergraduates.
:)
However, we have an 18-hole golf course and plenty of outdoor athletics facilities, so that's a lot of on-campus space that isn't covered. I imagine this may have bumped us out of the rankings, as percent of campus coverage was considered.
On the other hand, the Grand Rapids-Holland-Muskegon area (home of Grand Valley) is rated 74th in the Most Unwired Cities survey.
I'm also a satisfied C3 user. Specifically, I own a 1GHz C3, with the newer Nehemiah core (the one with the full-speed FPU).
They're good for a low-heat, low-noise setup, and perform decently considering their intended use.
I've never seen them as part of a retail machine, though. Maybe as part of a barebones kit, but I'm not sure. How did you purchase yours?
In any case, I built my C3 system from scratch, and haven't had any hardware problems (except for a finicky optical drive).
~~LF
Okay, so you say you are valuable during emergency situations, but if the power was out, then there would be no interference with your signals. So you could still be used during emergencies.
Half of the reason we are useful in emergencies is that we practice and rehearse during non-emergency times. Without practice, our emergency operations would be disorganized and ineffective.
It's the same way with athletes. If a basketball player doesn't play basketball during the off-season, their performance will be seriously reduced when the season starts again.
Next is that we currently are implementing push-to-talk over GSM and CDMA that would easily remove the need for the emergency bands already used. Same applies as above, when the power it down, your radios will work again.
The problem with push-to-talk (and cell phones in general) is that it is centralized, just like the rest of the phone system. Under heavy load, it tends to fail.
You may also want to look at Edmund's general science offerings (which include microscopes and accessories) at their Scientifics Online website.
The website gives the platform as Windows 9x. I know there's a compatibility wizard for running 9x programs on XP, but there's no guarantee that the wizard will be successful (that I'm aware of, anyway).
What are the chances of being unable to play Freespace 2 under XP, and is the price tag worth that risk?
Rats, I used up my last mod points just moments ago!
Silver is the best conductor, but it tarnishes pretty easily, killing it's conductivity. That's why you don't see silver-plated connectors on premium audio cables, etc. Gold is the next best conductor, AFAIK, and doesn't tarnish.
I suppose you can get away with using silver in thermal paste because it's isolated from the air.
In the '60s, GE had a project called "Hardiman". It was scrapped when they couldn't get the limbs to coordinate properly. It was also impractically heavy, at 1,500 pounds.
Currently, DARPA has a $50 million project dedicated to developing exoskeletons for US soldiers.
How Stuff Works has an article detailing some of the problems with developing exoskeletons with a few interesting links.
~~LF
Mandrake has offered XFS since at least 9.0, my first Linux distro. I've been using XFS (at the suggestion of my friend who helped with the install) for at least 6 months now, with only instance of a problem (not sure if it was a fault in the filesystem itself): lost or corrupted an inode or two, and fixed very easily once I knew what to do.
It works with both GRUB and LILO, is reasonably speedy, and has enormous partition and file size limits.
Count me a happy customer.
~~LF
Pardon me if this sounds rude, but what's your source for that information?
If memory (and legal knowledge) serves correctly, if I buy a piece of software (or, technically the disc and the right to use the software), I am legally entitled by US law to make a working backup of the software. It would seem that this anti-piracy technology interferes with this right.
Also, what happens if the original disc gets physically scratched so that the "fragments of 'subversive' code designed to seem like scratches" can't be read but the rest of the disc is fine?
As another poster stated, any company that uses Fade should offer free replacement discs to legitimate purchasers.
...of a passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the population of the universe.
;)
The argument goes something like this: the number of individual beings in the universe is finite, and the size of the universe is more-or-less infinite. A finite number divided by infinity is approximately zero. Therefore, the population of the universe is zero.
All you /.ers in Michigan (that includes most of the editors, at least Taco and CowboyNeal), notify your local TV stations and newspapers about this and other effects of the Super DMCA. Write to your representatives and senators, too. Please, be respectful, but don't sugar-coat anything.
I don't know about you, but this law slipped in under my radar.
There is a place call Magnum Opus in eastern GR that sells anime, manga (some imports), merchandise, and lesser-known (independent?) comics. They also have an excellent selection of anime for rent.
The store is in the ground floor of an oldish, red house at 1422 Wealthy St SE.
Grand Valley State University (Allendale Campus, just 20-30 minutes from downtown GR) has an anime club that holds regular showings/meetings on Sundays througout the year. They also host a small convention, called JAFAX, every year.
Lastly, the UICA in GR has shown anime in the past (Metropolis). They don't currently have any more anime listed on their website, but you never know.
~~LF
If we (as in the people of Earth, not just those from the United States) are going to explore, exploit, and colonize space effectively, we're probably going to have to do it cooperatively.
An international organization should be created now so that details and rules of exploration can be established. If we don't do this, we could end up with countries (or corporations) saying "I got here first, and I'll do what I want with it, and I don't have to share anything with you."
Space offers nearly limitless possibilities, many of which could be used to the benefit of everyone here on Earth. If we allow secrecy, greed, and selfishness to get in the way, not only will space exploration itself suffer, but the benefits available from space will be denied to many of us.
AFAIK, all "raw" Hubble images have that characteristic missing corner, such as this image of the Large Magellanic Cloud taken in November 1996.
:)
I imagine that most of the Hubble images we've seen are composites of several individual pictures, compensating for the missing piece in each individual picture.
As for the cause of the missing corner, I imagine it could be due to the flaw in the telescope's optics and the subsequent fix. Alternately, it could simply be the way the telescope was designed.
Of course, your explanation is much more interesting.
--LF
As a firm believer in NASA and the space program, I ask you to back up your statements with some evidence that they are true.
Also, are you saying that NASA and the space program are useless?
Isn't that being a little, umm, narrowminded?
I'm sure that Microsoft has poor tech support, but I'm also very sure that Microsoft is not the only company that does. There are probably dozens, hundreds maybe, of companies with even worse tech support.
To blame only Microsoft for industry-wide poor tech support is rather biased and narrowminded, IMHO.
Just my 2.55861 JPY.
Consumer Reports magazine has good, scientific, and fairly unbiased reviews of computer hardware every now and then. They usually have repair statistics as well, very useful if you're looking for stability and durability.