i didn't even think about embroidery repro of the logo, but your points are well taken. especially... - the new logo lacks immediate recognition(confusion with bumble ball, pokemon, or game daemons) -too easily converted into genitalia thru vandalism it's not bad, it's just a little bland.
yeah, that's what i'm talking about!
elsewhere in this thread, orrin bloquy mentions some of the downsides of logo design, and i totally agree. a lot of what logo design requires is thought on how it will be reproduced in different media(print/web/silkscreen/embroidery/etc), and while i originally stated that the winning logo was appropriate(with various iterations for multi-purposes), after seeing references to game daemons. i think i'm gonna retract my original comment and make a general request that the other submissions be show, and that some community input be considered in a re-vote on the logo design!
i seem to recall that there was a butt load of submissions. i think from a branding point of view, the winning submission is appropriate: it allows for various merchandise items to be branded consistently, including logotype and color variations. all in all i think freebsd will get alot of mileage out of the winning submission. that being said, it would be cool to see the other submissions, even if for nothing else for curiosity's sake. come on, let's see the losers!
bbedit has a neat feature which allows for batch editing of files, and if you wish, allows you to verify the change before committing... many programming tag libraries are available (html,perl,java,php), it really helps process large number of files. plus, if you use it with tiger, i bet you could do some funky automator scripts to really custom fit your needs.
i think the real question being posed to our friend is: for our small architectural firm, how many copies of autocad photoshop illustrator are we buying this year? what is the minimum software and hardware we need to purchase to keep our employees productive whitout breaking the bank? i was speaking with a guy from a small architectural firm last year during a focus group, and what i gleened from that conversation is how much architecture relies on presentation. marker renderings and topographical models have been replaced by 3d renderings and photoshop compositions from existing elevation photos...
at the end of the day it's a head/seat count for hardware and software. i usually count on at least 1 major upgrade a year which i'll be asked to purchase at a cost of 30-70% of original cost, plus 1-2 major bug fixes, and 1-6 minor fixes at little to no charge, regardless of software. i also expect production hardware to be replaced(desktop computers, large format plotters, centralized workgroup laser printers, color copiers) every 3 years, and system hardware(servers, raid storage, network equipment, tape jukeboxes, server archive software, other server software) to be replaced every 5 years.
of course YMMV in your particular scene, so don't ask your boss to replace a bunch of gear if he's a cheapskate. pose every need as exactly that, a need. we can't do our presentations WITHOUT photoshop CS2, we NEED to upgrade 10 copies of autocad to version 2006 our senior architect is complaining that his BOOTLEG copy of version 14 is taking a long time to launch, our HP5000 is breaking down and the cost or repair is MORE that a years worth of lease payments, if we don't buy X copies of Y software, one of our disgruntal former employees will drop a dime on us and call the SPA or BSA, so here's a schedule for how to get legit in the next 3 years... you get the picture... if you can't buy it this year, schedule it for next year, unless it's a break fix.
i helped a friend set up wireless in her coffee shop. we discussed the pros/cons of free vs charged wifi, and after some discussion, her decision was to charge a low monthly fee, equal to a couple of hours at starbucks(which incidentally just opened down the street from her). the whole point of providing bandwidth is to give an additional service to your patrons. free bandwidth will attract new and repeat business, but it doesn't always turn into an increase cash register activity. the whole point is to get folks to eat and drink at your establishment. free wifi might end up in a loss of sales, and a bunch of users who'll milk a latte for a couple of hours while surfing at your establishment, taking up chair and table real estate that a paying customer could have used.
if it were a SEAGATE. i don't care for WD, maxtor/quantum, who've been screwing the consumer public with anemic 1 yr warranties(i see WD just upped their warranty on enterprise class products to five years). seagate on the other hand has a 5 year warranty on all their drives(previously only 3 years for pata/sata). after seagate, hitachi/ibm, and samsung, with a 3 year warranty...
the price for shushant's solution doesn't have to be free, and when building a dedicated firewall based on monowall, it might make sense to use a a few new and inexpensive parts.
my first monowall used the rhine and intel chipset with less than stellar performance, but when i changed the ethernet cards to identical asante etherfast with the tulip chipset, my performance increased dramatically(sorry for the lack of any tech details, but the difference was "subjectively" noticable).
if you go the route of using a CF card, do yourself a favor and load monowall on a couple of cards, 16-32 mb cards are dirt cheap. this way you can always experiment with later versions of the firmware, just by swapping cards out. on the otherhand, if you go the CD route, you can run without a harddrive(use floppy for xml configs).
lastly, use a PII or PIII. prolly overkill for your scene, but the last thing you want is a firewall struggling with an anemic cpu.
m0n0wall is definitely the *nix based firewall for the NT admin;-)
first off regarding some comments about cracking os x on intel, even if you could do it, why? would you feel comfortable operating a business on white boxen running a cracked version of os x? would your company feel confident that their core business apps are running on a pirated/hackz/warez version of os x in which only you, the company geek, can fix it? i think not. in the end, companies have to be responsible to themselves and the clients that they serve by running legit software. doesn't mean you can't try to do it at home for personal reasons, but for the most part this isn't going to fly in the corporate world... and before any linux-zealots flame about what business would need os x for their core business, think printing, audio, video, and other media venues.
proprietary os's are the rule, not the exception, especially in businesses, government, and other major infrastructure environments... military, banking, energy companies, research facilities, and schools are all running windows, solaris, aix, irix, as400,[fill in the blank for you favorite proprietary *nix-like os] along side linux and *bsd. os x is no different, and being proprietary doesn't weaken an os, it actually helps shorten it's dev cycle and patch cycles, such that os x has been able to release a major version almost every 12-18 months. sun is also able to make that claim from 2.4-10 for the last 7 years. windows on the other hand has a much longer cycle for dev and patches because of all the 3rd party hardware it tries to support.
TCO is also important, and apple, sun, sgi, ibm equipment in general(as well as other "proprietary" hardware) have better total cost of ownership than commodity hardware. plenty of graphic shops have ancient beige macs still running old software simply because it still works and does it's job well. conversely, there still alot of win95/98 boxes still running cause it still does it's job well... i've been thinking about whipping together some lite98 boxen running off a flash disk to run some utilites just cause it's cheaper and just as efficient(if not more so) than a newer machine running xp...
according to 3d world silo scores a little higher than modo. i've tried both silo and modo (briefly) and both feel pretty smooth. i can't really asy if i agree with the review scores as i haven't had enough time under my belt with either of these apps. one thing that i did like about silo(although i can see where one might get enamored and caught up in the customization) is the ability to build button interfaces for commonly used functions. doesn't matter what tool you use (photoshop, maya, gimp, etc) once you build your skills in an app, you end up using a core group of tools, and i think it's nice to have the ability to custom fit tool palattes to your work habits...
yeah, that's my fear with maya PLE is that files once created in PLE are not accessible in the full version. considering that modelling is often a multi-session process, going back and refining previously created files, the version locking didn't seem very cool to me.
i concur with you middle mouse(especially wheel mice) allow for rotation/drag/scaling/zooming that i've not experienced to the same degree. it's feels more natural than having to use a keyboard modifier to do the same. wings is the closest in feel to blender, although i find myself using blender key commands in wings and vs.
i'm not doing any pro work, but i hope to take a crack at it. before i plunk the serious cash for maya(and possibly training), i was hoping there might be another package that could help me build the skills so i could make the transition and lessen the steep learning curve. i've considered maya PLE, but i'm unsure how much i'll be hindered by the crippled features.
BrynM, i agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the crack and torrent post... i'm not interested in warez or crackz. thanks for validating your thought regarding blender, i think it's quite a powerful app, and it seems that besides the syntax peculiarities and tool description, it has many of the tools the powerful commercial apps(maya,lightwave) have. incidentally i was initially motivated to make a blender to maya transition based on the experience that landis fields had. he started with blender and transitioned to maya after what seems to be quite the journey in teaching himself 3d in blender before transitioning to maya thru structured training.
according to www.palm.com. this was their original (public) explaination for the split between palm source and palm one. what a joke. now their going back to their old name, but in the meantime the focus on thier product line is fuzzy at best. i.e. the treo 650 is canibalizing sales from the 600(yet both are sold at the same time) and although the lifedrive seems like a cool idea, it just doesn't to have the sex appeal of an ipod, and will probably have a rocky product life before being shelved. palm needs to refocus on what made their product popular in the first place(speed, compact size, efficient) and eliminate the product line bloat.
I totally lack any scientific degrees, but this technique looks an awful lot like raytracing in reverse(or even real world application of algebra)... the projector is necessary to help map the way certain areas of the subject react to light based on the surface quality, and using pixel level illumination from the projector recreates the camera... FUCKING BRILLIANT.
this technique works because of the lcd/dlp array in a projector, but i wonder if it can be reproduced if the light source is already a pinpoint(chrismas light, or very small bulb). what happens when the light source is very broad, like that of a computer monitor/ TV? i wonder if this technique could also be used to extrapolate what someone is watching/reading/viewing on screen? taking another stab from a raytracing perspective, i wonder if an environment could be revealed thru image analysis, aka reverse-HDRI?
hats off to the dually photo boys of stanford and cornell... keep up the cool work.
that there has been alot of good innovation in the gaming industry. he's not the best at predicting trends or playing the part of a doomsayer, but some of what he says does have a grain of truth. many of the games introduced are riding the coattails of their progenitors, sequels based on sequels and mods.
if you were going to take a very socratic view on the gaming industry, then you might say there hasn't been real innovation since chess and the playing cards. socrates might consider the FPS as nothing more than a derivation-of-a-derivation of chess.
i think a category dvorak missed is the resource management games. and pray tell what exactly is wrong with rehashing an old idea? gaming industry doomed? no, but it prolly will have a slight slump, smaller shops will get gobbled by the bigger ones, repeating the same cycle of growth and reduction that we seen in the last 25+ years...
look at the ingredients they intend to illuminate... i hope it's not all together...
6. A method of claim 5(container contains a fluid), wherein the fluid is selected from the group consisting of water, ammonia, bleach, window cleaner, insect repellant, insect killer, lotion, soap, liquid soap, kitchen cleaner, bathroom cleaner, shaving gel, cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, furniture polish, wood treatment, paint, primer, drain cleaner, disinfectant, room deodorizer, carpet deodorizer, room scent, perfume, cologne, shaving foam, toilet cleaner, aerosol, skin care fluid, suntan lotion, shampoo, surface cleaner, and liquid wax.
12. A method of claim 1(lighting a product), wherein the household product is selected from the group consisting of a pencil, a pen, a fork, a knife, a spoon, a kitchen utensil, a whisk, a broom, a bottle, a glass, a mug, a coffee maker, a toothpaste tube, a dispenser, a shampoo bottle, a soap holder, a razor, an electric razor, a hair dryer, a picture frame, a marker, a jar, a makeup facility, a perfume dispenser, a brush, a lipstick, and a candle.
IMHO the USPTO is giving out too many highly specific applications patents. maybe if i specify that my lighting system only illuminates the "toiletbowl-bound stream of urine just before surface impact, thereby creating a firework like display" i'll get a patent for lighting a toiletbowl too! then i can sue anyone who turns the light on to pee!
you've gotta know that from the service side of the industry(prepress, advertising, service bureau, kinko's, etc) blending these two companies will relieve a LOT of headaches.
remember back when there were three heavies competeing iin the graphic art market:adobe, aldus, and quark. aldus and quark were neck and neck with pagemaker and xpress, while adobe languished behind with framemaker(which it acquired thru acquisition)... adobe literally save pagemaker, and was able it itegrate many of it's best features into the "quark killer" indesign. granted, it's been a long time since seeing the first previews of indesign until its recent adoption by the creative market to replace quark. it'll still be a few years before Id offsets quark as the defacto pagelayout software, but the tides are definitely turning. you'll also remember at the time of the merger, adobe was not allowed to incorporate freehand into illustrator because of a potential monopoly on bezier drawing applications, hence macromedia acquiring freehand at that time...
since the adobe/aldus merger, there have been mini-holy wars between illustrator and freehand for features and capabilities, many which were just silly oneupsmanship features, and not real upgrades and enhancements to improve the products at all. in fact, it's my opinion that during these feature wars between illustrator and freehand that features were included that have caused really weird problems which required postscript to be adjusted itself to handle new issues, for example transparency problems within blended items/vignettes. this has caused a bloat in both postscript and pdf standards which are still being fixed in the seperation area.
eliminating freehand will allow illustrator to concentrate on being refined as the premier vector art tool, without the silly catch up games the two were playing. it'll also force many graphic artists/designers to standardize on illustrator, making the seperators job alot easier(opening competing files within competing apps was never really compatible).
as far as golive, there's no doubt in my mind that it'll be better off going away in favor of dreamweaver with stronger ties into illustrator, photoshop/imageready, and indesign. director and it's subvarient products will probably end up blending well with the premiere applications... code bases maybe different, but general algorithms for transformations are the same, just look at transformations between PS and the gimp... what makes a function standout is the UI, and it's those pieces which will be chosen as best of breed, lifted and placed into the best application.
weasel, i don't agree with you regarding the impracticality of the wheel. the wheel belongs to the rare class of being a true invention, or what i would refer to as a socratic invention, brought about by necessity. moving heavy objects by the use of a lever or sled or liftiing were no longer pratical, as they moved the object to little, too much friction existed, or the object was too heavy to lift. the car is a refinement of the original wheel, many generations removed, and doesn't even belong in the same class.
practicality is important in order for something to catch on and persist. impractical innovations tend to fade fast because they tend to be faddish. red-green/polarized 3d movies, analog/digital holography, polaroid movies, stereo glasses, VRML, all these 3d technologies lacked real practicality... cool, but not really practical. and guess what? they're not in use by the general population, only the diehards who won't give up on them...
a 3d desktop is cool, but if it doesn't solve any of the problems that a 2d desktop has, it won't succeed: clutter, navigation, etc. CDE actually comes the closer, IMHO, to having expanded the desktop metaphor the best by adding drawers to the dashboard(even though it's 2d).
in order for a 3d desktop to be REALLY useful, here are a few things i believe need to be accomplished: 1) objects which are not in the forground/active should be out of focus/blurry. mouse or sloppy focus can activae an object to come into focus. objects that need attention(bounding dock icons) can force the focus of an object based on it's urgency/priority. 2) there needs to be a way to file folders away in virual file cabinets. i really like crichton's description of a virtual library in disclosure. 3) gestural navigation needs to be standardized. not just up-down-left-right, or gestural navigation for web pages, such as is available for mozilla, but 6 axis navigation i.e x, y, z, theta x, theta y, theta z. the movie johnny menomic had an interesting interpertation on the idea, pushing, pulling, flipping and rotation of objects. 4) a navigation device that works in 3d. mouse is still a 2d pointing device, we need something that will read real 3d input. take a look at the early display research done by evans&sutherland. once again, the gloves from johnny menomic might be appropriate here.
but what REAL practicality does this have? what's gonna happen to your window management when you have 50+ windows open in you sphere and one of your windows/apps starts misbehaving?
osx could have something like this if aqua were to use/borrow the QTVR technology. spherical distortion of windows is easy when your view point is always from the center(?)... the genie effect and exposé already work quite well for staking and layering of windows.
this alos looks like it has similarities to sun's looking glass, 2d window is active, 3d window that is "pushed away" is in active, or behind the active window... time will tell if this is a new metaphor, or just a graphic extention of the desktop metaphor.
would probably be redhat, followed very closely by suse. since redhat has become "the man" in the last few years(especially if you're a big debian or slackware fan), there will be a lot of you who will tout the virtues of your distro, and bash RH for problems with ___(fill in the blank, rpm, large base install, blah blah blah).
why is redhat a better choice of distro for the enterprise? prior to (and shortly after their IPO), redhat was actually getting the big players(IBM and oracle, just to name a couple) to standardize on RH as the distro of choice for the enterprise. it's also one of the very few distro's that offers an education track, and also other professional services, from support and installation, to business customization.
RH isn't the best distro for super customized installs, mainly because it has a lot of dependancies, but it is the best for commercial/enterprise use, because a lot of software has been ported specifically to RH. if you want to go in and twiddle with kernel tuning ad nauseum, custom build apps from source, or install alpha-through-early-beta software, redhat isn't the distro for you. if you want to run ibm websphere, oracle, helios, xinet, cumulus, and a host of other commercial applications, redhat might end up being your only choice.
just to be clear, i'm not a redhat fanatic: at home i'm running openbsd as a netatalk server, with mac osx/9 clients. at work, i'm running solaris, w2k, aix, irix, nt4, osx on a variety of machines, each as a server functioning with specific software. as far as my favorite distro, i'd probably pick a distro with either apt or yum as an install/update mechanism, or a port system like bsd or gentoo. i've been digging knoppix for it's live cd qualities too...
frankly i think you're question is a little odd: if your a sysadmin with the ability/responsibility to recommend, specify and implement an alternate operating system (and i'm guessing moving away from a commercial OS, windows, solaris, irix, etc) you probably already have your choices picked out(or at least narrowed), based on you application(?) requirements. the requirements that you list "best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration" really seem like it came from any operating system's marketing material, possibly even microsoft's own claims regarding windows as a server platform. your question actually sounds more like some kind of challenge put to you/your company/your companies management by a commercial OS vendor. also your question is a little too simplistic tossing out vague requirements, and your expectation's might be a little unrealistic. frankly there isn't "one Linux distribution..." that has "...the best of all worlds on everything", let alone a commercial OS that has that kind of selling point. you're really looking for the one solution with the most lowest common denominators(or phrased differently, the fewest lowset common denominator issues). it sounds like your headed towards a homogeneous environment. it's an ideal you can try to strive for, but you'll always have a little hetrogeneous-ness in a homo environment;-)
if you can't make everyone happy, make everyone equally unhappy. the distro your looking sounds like it's gonna have to be a swiss army knife, and while it's versatile, it's not really the best knife, nail file, scissors, or toothpick. ask yourself(and your enterprise) if a commercial OS solution is really out of the question? what about BSD? MacOSX? Windows? what is the final goal and benefit for finding this holy grail of distros? what if you can't find a distro to fit your needs, will windows/solaris win?
and you don't need to get another plant;-) (sorry, i couldn't resist) actually, you might consider any plant that's hydro/aeroponic friendly. take a look at the hyodponic gel, that supplies water and nutrients to your plants root system. spider plants are nice because of their broad light/heat/moisture requirements. so are the lucky bamboo plants, which are actually related to the corn plant and have no relation to bamboo at all. i actually have a spider plant in our kitchen(not too bright, 'cause it's next to a gangway), but i tossed a betta in the bowl, and he loves squirming between the roots! i also saw a suggestion for a dwarf orange tree... perhaps some of the other dwarf fruit plants(citrus, banana) might work well. good luck
it's my opinion that while western countries are good at cuturally breeding innovators, the eastern countries (while they also breed innovators) are better at breeding refinment. breeding sounds very commoditized, but it is meant in its broadest sense of cutural/societal influence... yes, the chinese contribution to global innovation include paper, printing press, gun powder, military strategy, martial arts, holistic medicine, feng shui and pasta, to name a few. what other innovations have asia brought us in the 19th or 20th century? the western world, on the other hand, are responsible for a fucking butt load of innovation for quite a few centuries (3?): internal combustion, pnumatice tires, radio/tv/sattelite communications, electronic computing, internet, medical and pharmacueticals... the list could keep going. this whole innovations/refinement discussion could be it's own topic of discussion... the asian countries, on the oher hand, have been really good at taking western innovations(cars, electronics, entertainment), digesting it, and regurgitating well thought out refinements. honda element, sony ps2, ringu, these are things that are now feed back to the innovators, but in the end they are really only refinements to the original.
the chinese will be the country to watch in the next few decades. they are still one of the few communist countries in existance, they have the biggest population on the globe, and they are entering the growth and refinement stage that japan, korea, and other southeastern dragons went thru in the 19th and 20th century. they also have some of the biggest problems in the world; they have the biggest population on the globe(organization will be difficult), they are still communist(not good for innovation), and they are entering a stage i their cutural development which might require more capitalistic injection from the west.
the fact that the chinese will fly more taikonauts this year has IMHO a few big implications: 1) we have the economy to support a state run space program 2) we have the cultural drive and support of the people 3) we have the resouces to make this happen 4) the biggest one is this-we're flexing our muscles-don't fuck with us!
it's also interesting that according to the article, they are extending a welcome hand in talking about working together with nasa. this is a simple publicity move to bolster their rising technical position within the world and it basically says, "we're growing up as a country and we're not to far behind you. team up with us now, and you won't be eating our dust. don't and you might get fucked". afterall the united states government has really taken a beating in the last few years regarding space, space travel safety, and global joint projects(ISS). right now the chinese are on the upswing, they are just entering the golden area of space travel that the uinited states and ussr were going thru in the 1950-1990's(golden area in terms of economic and workforce resources as well as national support). there's really a lot of multi-facet/multi-layered pros and cons teaming up with the chinese... some are good, others could be not so good. hope this venture doesn't turn america into an obedient dog on a chinese leash...
i have to agree with many of the other posts regarding using a serial console. use ssh for primary maintenance(all your systems should have a common admin account, probably tied together for common login with NIS/YP/LDAP), and use the serial console for access when ssh craps up...
you make a persuasive case for going the cheaper x86 route, but i don't want to eat up that kind of room:space is a premium in my home office these days. the xpc was attractive, size-wise(and a reasonable performer), and i'd probably end up running open/freebsd on it. i'm not a big gamer, so the gaming argument falls on deaf ears. you also mentioned XP, but i don't see that on your shopping list;-), that plus all the FOSS goodies that run on X aren't gonna run under XP.
you did mention the XP UI, and that is a big negative... if you've ever experienced X for day to day work(i'm in the graphic arts industry) mac wins hands down. i'm hard pressed to move away from the aqua experience...
the rendering time does have me concerned, though... i know pov has the povbench database, know of any blender benchmark tests for different platforms/os?
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i didn't even think about embroidery repro of the logo, but your points are well taken.
especially...
- the new logo lacks immediate recognition(confusion with bumble ball, pokemon, or game daemons)
-too easily converted into genitalia thru vandalism
it's not bad, it's just a little bland.
let's call for a re-vote, with community input!
yeah, that's what i'm talking about! elsewhere in this thread, orrin bloquy mentions some of the downsides of logo design, and i totally agree. a lot of what logo design requires is thought on how it will be reproduced in different media(print/web/silkscreen/embroidery/etc), and while i originally stated that the winning logo was appropriate(with various iterations for multi-purposes), after seeing references to game daemons. i think i'm gonna retract my original comment and make a general request that the other submissions be show, and that some community input be considered in a re-vote on the logo design!
i seem to recall that there was a butt load of submissions. i think from a branding point of view, the winning submission is appropriate: it allows for various merchandise items to be branded consistently, including logotype and color variations. all in all i think freebsd will get alot of mileage out of the winning submission. that being said, it would be cool to see the other submissions, even if for nothing else for curiosity's sake. come on, let's see the losers!
bbedit has a neat feature which allows for batch editing of files, and if you wish, allows you to verify the change before committing... many programming tag libraries are available (html,perl,java,php), it really helps process large number of files. plus, if you use it with tiger, i bet you could do some funky automator scripts to really custom fit your needs.
i think the real question being posed to our friend is: for our small architectural firm, how many copies of autocad photoshop illustrator are we buying this year? what is the minimum software and hardware we need to purchase to keep our employees productive whitout breaking the bank? i was speaking with a guy from a small architectural firm last year during a focus group, and what i gleened from that conversation is how much architecture relies on presentation. marker renderings and topographical models have been replaced by 3d renderings and photoshop compositions from existing elevation photos...
at the end of the day it's a head/seat count for hardware and software. i usually count on at least 1 major upgrade a year which i'll be asked to purchase at a cost of 30-70% of original cost, plus 1-2 major bug fixes, and 1-6 minor fixes at little to no charge, regardless of software. i also expect production hardware to be replaced(desktop computers, large format plotters, centralized workgroup laser printers, color copiers) every 3 years, and system hardware(servers, raid storage, network equipment, tape jukeboxes, server archive software, other server software) to be replaced every 5 years.
of course YMMV in your particular scene, so don't ask your boss to replace a bunch of gear if he's a cheapskate. pose every need as exactly that, a need. we can't do our presentations WITHOUT photoshop CS2, we NEED to upgrade 10 copies of autocad to version 2006 our senior architect is complaining that his BOOTLEG copy of version 14 is taking a long time to launch, our HP5000 is breaking down and the cost or repair is MORE that a years worth of lease payments, if we don't buy X copies of Y software, one of our disgruntal former employees will drop a dime on us and call the SPA or BSA, so here's a schedule for how to get legit in the next 3 years... you get the picture... if you can't buy it this year, schedule it for next year, unless it's a break fix.
i helped a friend set up wireless in her coffee shop. we discussed the pros/cons of free vs charged wifi, and after some discussion, her decision was to charge a low monthly fee, equal to a couple of hours at starbucks(which incidentally just opened down the street from her).
the whole point of providing bandwidth is to give an additional service to your patrons. free bandwidth will attract new and repeat business, but it doesn't always turn into an increase cash register activity. the whole point is to get folks to eat and drink at your establishment. free wifi might end up in a loss of sales, and a bunch of users who'll milk a latte for a couple of hours while surfing at your establishment, taking up chair and table real estate that a paying customer could have used.
if it were a SEAGATE. i don't care for WD, maxtor/quantum, who've been screwing the consumer public with anemic 1 yr warranties(i see WD just upped their warranty on enterprise class products to five years). seagate on the other hand has a 5 year warranty on all their drives(previously only 3 years for pata/sata). after seagate, hitachi/ibm, and samsung, with a 3 year warranty...
the price for shushant's solution doesn't have to be free, and when building a dedicated firewall based on monowall, it might make sense to use a a few new and inexpensive parts.
;-)
my first monowall used the rhine and intel chipset with less than stellar performance, but when i changed the ethernet cards to identical asante etherfast with the tulip chipset, my performance increased dramatically(sorry for the lack of any tech details, but the difference was "subjectively" noticable).
if you go the route of using a CF card, do yourself a favor and load monowall on a couple of cards, 16-32 mb cards are dirt cheap. this way you can always experiment with later versions of the firmware, just by swapping cards out. on the otherhand, if you go the CD route, you can run without a harddrive(use floppy for xml configs).
lastly, use a PII or PIII. prolly overkill for your scene, but the last thing you want is a firewall struggling with an anemic cpu.
m0n0wall is definitely the *nix based firewall for the NT admin
first off regarding some comments about cracking os x on intel, even if you could do it, why? would you feel comfortable operating a business on white boxen running a cracked version of os x? would your company feel confident that their core business apps are running on a pirated/hackz/warez version of os x in which only you, the company geek, can fix it? i think not. in the end, companies have to be responsible to themselves and the clients that they serve by running legit software. doesn't mean you can't try to do it at home for personal reasons, but for the most part this isn't going to fly in the corporate world... and before any linux-zealots flame about what business would need os x for their core business, think printing, audio, video, and other media venues.
proprietary os's are the rule, not the exception, especially in businesses, government, and other major infrastructure environments... military, banking, energy companies, research facilities, and schools are all running windows, solaris, aix, irix, as400,[fill in the blank for you favorite proprietary *nix-like os] along side linux and *bsd. os x is no different, and being proprietary doesn't weaken an os, it actually helps shorten it's dev cycle and patch cycles, such that os x has been able to release a major version almost every 12-18 months. sun is also able to make that claim from 2.4-10 for the last 7 years. windows on the other hand has a much longer cycle for dev and patches because of all the 3rd party hardware it tries to support.
TCO is also important, and apple, sun, sgi, ibm equipment in general(as well as other "proprietary" hardware) have better total cost of ownership than commodity hardware. plenty of graphic shops have ancient beige macs still running old software simply because it still works and does it's job well. conversely, there still alot of win95/98 boxes still running cause it still does it's job well... i've been thinking about whipping together some lite98 boxen running off a flash disk to run some utilites just cause it's cheaper and just as efficient(if not more so) than a newer machine running xp...
according to 3d world silo scores a little higher than modo. i've tried both silo and modo (briefly) and both feel pretty smooth. i can't really asy if i agree with the review scores as i haven't had enough time under my belt with either of these apps. one thing that i did like about silo(although i can see where one might get enamored and caught up in the customization) is the ability to build button interfaces for commonly used functions. doesn't matter what tool you use (photoshop, maya, gimp, etc) once you build your skills in an app, you end up using a core group of tools, and i think it's nice to have the ability to custom fit tool palattes to your work habits...
yeah, that's my fear with maya PLE is that files once created in PLE are not accessible in the full version. considering that modelling is often a multi-session process, going back and refining previously created files, the version locking didn't seem very cool to me.
i concur with you middle mouse(especially wheel mice) allow for rotation/drag/scaling/zooming that i've not experienced to the same degree. it's feels more natural than having to use a keyboard modifier to do the same. wings is the closest in feel to blender, although i find myself using blender key commands in wings and vs.
i'm not doing any pro work, but i hope to take a crack at it. before i plunk the serious cash for maya(and possibly training), i was hoping there might be another package that could help me build the skills so i could make the transition and lessen the steep learning curve. i've considered maya PLE, but i'm unsure how much i'll be hindered by the crippled features.
BrynM, i agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the crack and torrent post... i'm not interested in warez or crackz.
thanks for validating your thought regarding blender, i think it's quite a powerful app, and it seems that besides the syntax peculiarities and tool description, it has many of the tools the powerful commercial apps(maya,lightwave) have.
incidentally i was initially motivated to make a blender to maya transition based on the experience that landis fields had. he started with blender and transitioned to maya after what seems to be quite the journey in teaching himself 3d in blender before transitioning to maya thru structured training.
according to www.palm.com.
this was their original (public) explaination for the split between palm source and palm one.
what a joke. now their going back to their old name, but in the meantime the focus on thier product line is fuzzy at best. i.e. the treo 650 is canibalizing sales from the 600(yet both are sold at the same time) and although the lifedrive seems like a cool idea, it just doesn't to have the sex appeal of an ipod, and will probably have a rocky product life before being shelved.
palm needs to refocus on what made their product popular in the first place(speed, compact size, efficient) and eliminate the product line bloat.
I totally lack any scientific degrees, but this technique looks an awful lot like raytracing in reverse(or even real world application of algebra)... the projector is necessary to help map the way certain areas of the subject react to light based on the surface quality, and using pixel level illumination from the projector recreates the camera... FUCKING BRILLIANT.
this technique works because of the lcd/dlp array in a projector, but i wonder if it can be reproduced if the light source is already a pinpoint(chrismas light, or very small bulb). what happens when the light source is very broad, like that of a computer monitor/ TV? i wonder if this technique could also be used to extrapolate what someone is watching/reading/viewing on screen? taking another stab from a raytracing perspective, i wonder if an environment could be revealed thru image analysis, aka reverse-HDRI?
hats off to the dually photo boys of stanford and cornell... keep up the cool work.
that there has been alot of good innovation in the gaming industry. he's not the best at predicting trends or playing the part of a doomsayer, but some of what he says does have a grain of truth. many of the games introduced are riding the coattails of their progenitors, sequels based on sequels and mods.
if you were going to take a very socratic view on the gaming industry, then you might say there hasn't been real innovation since chess and the playing cards. socrates might consider the FPS as nothing more than a derivation-of-a-derivation of chess.
i think a category dvorak missed is the resource management games. and pray tell what exactly is wrong with rehashing an old idea? gaming industry doomed? no, but it prolly will have a slight slump, smaller shops will get gobbled by the bigger ones, repeating the same cycle of growth and reduction that we seen in the last 25+ years...
look at the ingredients they intend to illuminate... i hope it's not all together...
6. A method of claim 5(container contains a fluid), wherein the fluid is selected from the group consisting of water, ammonia, bleach, window cleaner, insect repellant, insect killer, lotion, soap, liquid soap, kitchen cleaner, bathroom cleaner, shaving gel, cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, furniture polish, wood treatment, paint, primer, drain cleaner, disinfectant, room deodorizer, carpet deodorizer, room scent, perfume, cologne, shaving foam, toilet cleaner, aerosol, skin care fluid, suntan lotion, shampoo, surface cleaner, and liquid wax.
12. A method of claim 1(lighting a product), wherein the household product is selected from the group consisting of a pencil, a pen, a fork, a knife, a spoon, a kitchen utensil, a whisk, a broom, a bottle, a glass, a mug, a coffee maker, a toothpaste tube, a dispenser, a shampoo bottle, a soap holder, a razor, an electric razor, a hair dryer, a picture frame, a marker, a jar, a makeup facility, a perfume dispenser, a brush, a lipstick, and a candle.
IMHO the USPTO is giving out too many highly specific applications patents. maybe if i specify that my lighting system only illuminates the "toiletbowl-bound stream of urine just before surface impact, thereby creating a firework like display" i'll get a patent for lighting a toiletbowl too! then i can sue anyone who turns the light on to pee!
you've gotta know that from the service side of the industry(prepress, advertising, service bureau, kinko's, etc) blending these two companies will relieve a LOT of headaches.
remember back when there were three heavies competeing iin the graphic art market:adobe, aldus, and quark. aldus and quark were neck and neck with pagemaker and xpress, while adobe languished behind with framemaker(which it acquired thru acquisition)... adobe literally save pagemaker, and was able it itegrate many of it's best features into the "quark killer" indesign. granted, it's been a long time since seeing the first previews of indesign until its recent adoption by the creative market to replace quark. it'll still be a few years before Id offsets quark as the defacto pagelayout software, but the tides are definitely turning. you'll also remember at the time of the merger, adobe was not allowed to incorporate freehand into illustrator because of a potential monopoly on bezier drawing applications, hence macromedia acquiring freehand at that time...
since the adobe/aldus merger, there have been mini-holy wars between illustrator and freehand for features and capabilities, many which were just silly oneupsmanship features, and not real upgrades and enhancements to improve the products at all. in fact, it's my opinion that during these feature wars between illustrator and freehand that features were included that have caused really weird problems which required postscript to be adjusted itself to handle new issues, for example transparency problems within blended items/vignettes. this has caused a bloat in both postscript and pdf standards which are still being fixed in the seperation area.
eliminating freehand will allow illustrator to concentrate on being refined as the premier vector art tool, without the silly catch up games the two were playing. it'll also force many graphic artists/designers to standardize on illustrator, making the seperators job alot easier(opening competing files within competing apps was never really compatible).
as far as golive, there's no doubt in my mind that it'll be better off going away in favor of dreamweaver with stronger ties into illustrator, photoshop/imageready, and indesign. director and it's subvarient products will probably end up blending well with the premiere applications... code bases maybe different, but general algorithms for transformations are the same, just look at transformations between PS and the gimp... what makes a function standout is the UI, and it's those pieces which will be chosen as best of breed, lifted and placed into the best application.
weasel, i don't agree with you regarding the impracticality of the wheel. the wheel belongs to the rare class of being a true invention, or what i would refer to as a socratic invention, brought about by necessity. moving heavy objects by the use of a lever or sled or liftiing were no longer pratical, as they moved the object to little, too much friction existed, or the object was too heavy to lift. the car is a refinement of the original wheel, many generations removed, and doesn't even belong in the same class.
practicality is important in order for something to catch on and persist. impractical innovations tend to fade fast because they tend to be faddish. red-green/polarized 3d movies, analog/digital holography, polaroid movies, stereo glasses, VRML, all these 3d technologies lacked real practicality... cool, but not really practical. and guess what? they're not in use by the general population, only the diehards who won't give up on them...
a 3d desktop is cool, but if it doesn't solve any of the problems that a 2d desktop has, it won't succeed: clutter, navigation, etc. CDE actually comes the closer, IMHO, to having expanded the desktop metaphor the best by adding drawers to the dashboard(even though it's 2d).
in order for a 3d desktop to be REALLY useful, here are a few things i believe need to be accomplished:
1) objects which are not in the forground/active should be out of focus/blurry. mouse or sloppy focus can activae an object to come into focus. objects that need attention(bounding dock icons) can force the focus of an object based on it's urgency/priority.
2) there needs to be a way to file folders away in virual file cabinets. i really like crichton's description of a virtual library in disclosure.
3) gestural navigation needs to be standardized. not just up-down-left-right, or gestural navigation for web pages, such as is available for mozilla, but 6 axis navigation i.e x, y, z, theta x, theta y, theta z. the movie johnny menomic had an interesting interpertation on the idea, pushing, pulling, flipping and rotation of objects.
4) a navigation device that works in 3d. mouse is still a 2d pointing device, we need something that will read real 3d input. take a look at the early display research done by evans&sutherland. once again, the gloves from johnny menomic might be appropriate here.
but what REAL practicality does this have? what's gonna happen to your window management when you have 50+ windows open in you sphere and one of your windows/apps starts misbehaving?
osx could have something like this if aqua were to use/borrow the QTVR technology. spherical distortion of windows is easy when your view point is always from the center(?)... the genie effect and exposé already work quite well for staking and layering of windows.
this alos looks like it has similarities to sun's looking glass, 2d window is active, 3d window that is "pushed away" is in active, or behind the active window... time will tell if this is a new metaphor, or just a graphic extention of the desktop metaphor.
would probably be redhat, followed very closely by suse. since redhat has become "the man" in the last few years(especially if you're a big debian or slackware fan), there will be a lot of you who will tout the virtues of your distro, and bash RH for problems with ___(fill in the blank, rpm, large base install, blah blah blah).
;-)
why is redhat a better choice of distro for the enterprise? prior to (and shortly after their IPO), redhat was actually getting the big players(IBM and oracle, just to name a couple) to standardize on RH as the distro of choice for the enterprise. it's also one of the very few distro's that offers an education track, and also other professional services, from support and installation, to business customization.
RH isn't the best distro for super customized installs, mainly because it has a lot of dependancies, but it is the best for commercial/enterprise use, because a lot of software has been ported specifically to RH. if you want to go in and twiddle with kernel tuning ad nauseum, custom build apps from source, or install alpha-through-early-beta software, redhat isn't the distro for you. if you want to run ibm websphere, oracle, helios, xinet, cumulus, and a host of other commercial applications, redhat might end up being your only choice.
just to be clear, i'm not a redhat fanatic: at home i'm running openbsd as a netatalk server, with mac osx/9 clients. at work, i'm running solaris, w2k, aix, irix, nt4, osx on a variety of machines, each as a server functioning with specific software. as far as my favorite distro, i'd probably pick a distro with either apt or yum as an install/update mechanism, or a port system like bsd or gentoo. i've been digging knoppix for it's live cd qualities too...
frankly i think you're question is a little odd: if your a sysadmin with the ability/responsibility to recommend, specify and implement an alternate operating system (and i'm guessing moving away from a commercial OS, windows, solaris, irix, etc) you probably already have your choices picked out(or at least narrowed), based on you application(?) requirements. the requirements that you list "best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration" really seem like it came from any operating system's marketing material, possibly even microsoft's own claims regarding windows as a server platform. your question actually sounds more like some kind of challenge put to you/your company/your companies management by a commercial OS vendor. also your question is a little too simplistic tossing out vague requirements, and your expectation's might be a little unrealistic. frankly there isn't "one Linux distribution..." that has "...the best of all worlds on everything", let alone a commercial OS that has that kind of selling point. you're really looking for the one solution with the most lowest common denominators(or phrased differently, the fewest lowset common denominator issues). it sounds like your headed towards a homogeneous environment. it's an ideal you can try to strive for, but you'll always have a little hetrogeneous-ness in a homo environment
if you can't make everyone happy, make everyone equally unhappy. the distro your looking sounds like it's gonna have to be a swiss army knife, and while it's versatile, it's not really the best knife, nail file, scissors, or toothpick. ask yourself(and your enterprise) if a commercial OS solution is really out of the question? what about BSD? MacOSX? Windows? what is the final goal and benefit for finding this holy grail of distros? what if you can't find a distro to fit your needs, will windows/solaris win?
and you don't need to get another plant ;-) (sorry, i couldn't resist)
actually, you might consider any plant that's hydro/aeroponic friendly. take a look at the hyodponic gel, that supplies water and nutrients to your plants root system. spider plants are nice because of their broad light/heat/moisture requirements. so are the lucky bamboo plants, which are actually related to the corn plant and have no relation to bamboo at all. i actually have a spider plant in our kitchen(not too bright, 'cause it's next to a gangway), but i tossed a betta in the bowl, and he loves squirming between the roots!
i also saw a suggestion for a dwarf orange tree... perhaps some of the other dwarf fruit plants(citrus, banana) might work well.
good luck
it's my opinion that while western countries are good at cuturally breeding innovators, the eastern countries (while they also breed innovators) are better at breeding refinment. breeding sounds very commoditized, but it is meant in its broadest sense of cutural/societal influence... yes, the chinese contribution to global innovation include paper, printing press, gun powder, military strategy, martial arts, holistic medicine, feng shui and pasta, to name a few. what other innovations have asia brought us in the 19th or 20th century? the western world, on the other hand, are responsible for a fucking butt load of innovation for quite a few centuries (3?): internal combustion, pnumatice tires, radio/tv/sattelite communications, electronic computing, internet, medical and pharmacueticals... the list could keep going. this whole innovations/refinement discussion could be it's own topic of discussion... the asian countries, on the oher hand, have been really good at taking western innovations(cars, electronics, entertainment), digesting it, and regurgitating well thought out refinements. honda element, sony ps2, ringu, these are things that are now feed back to the innovators, but in the end they are really only refinements to the original.
the chinese will be the country to watch in the next few decades. they are still one of the few communist countries in existance, they have the biggest population on the globe, and they are entering the growth and refinement stage that japan, korea, and other southeastern dragons went thru in the 19th and 20th century. they also have some of the biggest problems in the world; they have the biggest population on the globe(organization will be difficult), they are still communist(not good for innovation), and they are entering a stage i their cutural development which might require more capitalistic injection from the west.
the fact that the chinese will fly more taikonauts this year has IMHO a few big implications:
1) we have the economy to support a state run space program
2) we have the cultural drive and support of the people
3) we have the resouces to make this happen
4) the biggest one is this-we're flexing our muscles-don't fuck with us!
it's also interesting that according to the article, they are extending a welcome hand in talking about working together with nasa. this is a simple publicity move to bolster their rising technical position within the world and it basically says, "we're growing up as a country and we're not to far behind you. team up with us now, and you won't be eating our dust. don't and you might get fucked". afterall the united states government has really taken a beating in the last few years regarding space, space travel safety, and global joint projects(ISS). right now the chinese are on the upswing, they are just entering the golden area of space travel that the uinited states and ussr were going thru in the 1950-1990's(golden area in terms of economic and workforce resources as well as national support). there's really a lot of multi-facet/multi-layered pros and cons teaming up with the chinese... some are good, others could be not so good. hope this venture doesn't turn america into an obedient dog on a chinese leash...
i have to agree with many of the other posts regarding using a serial console. use ssh for primary maintenance(all your systems should have a common admin account, probably tied together for common login with NIS/YP/LDAP), and use the serial console for access when ssh craps up...
you make a persuasive case for going the cheaper x86 route, but i don't want to eat up that kind of room:space is a premium in my home office these days. the xpc was attractive, size-wise(and a reasonable performer), and i'd probably end up running open/freebsd on it. i'm not a big gamer, so the gaming argument falls on deaf ears. you also mentioned XP, but i don't see that on your shopping list ;-), that plus all the FOSS goodies that run on X aren't gonna run under XP.
you did mention the XP UI, and that is a big negative... if you've ever experienced X for day to day work(i'm in the graphic arts industry) mac wins hands down. i'm hard pressed to move away from the aqua experience...
the rendering time does have me concerned, though... i know pov has the povbench database, know of any blender benchmark tests for different platforms/os?