If I'd had kids when I was first married, my oldest child would be in college right now. I know women programmers who have grandchildren. So maybe it's getting so that it's not so unusual for mom to know best.
"Son! Didn't I tell you to download the latest virus protection? Isn't that on your chore list? But you didn't, did you... Now your sister has to do it and furthermore, you're grounded!"
Dude, I simply don't know how to say it more clearly. You'll never convince him.
I don't care how much physics and biology you throw at some people, they're not going to see beyond their closed systems.
Betcha dollars to doughnuts this guy has spend a lot of time and money - well, they're the same thing, no? - developing his own "color manglement" system that works in his own shop. Every photograph he snaps off with his digital camera looks just *so* on his screen and prints just *so* on his inkjet. And it all looks pretty good because he re-adjusts when the monitor starts to go green or the cyan in the inkjet starts to to out or he changes light bulbs in the room once a month whether he needs to or not. He's got a system, y'know. He has experience.
More dollars to more doughnuts if he sends that nice digital pic off to his local lithographer, he doesn't get nearly what he wants. And he blames them. Bunch o'fuckups. I know, I am one.
OR...he's smart. He really does check all the CMYK values. He knows that when he sees that "certain shade of purple" that he's really going to get a "certain shade of blue" when he has posters or sales materials made at, again - his local lithographer. Folks like that *think* they're "going by the screen," but what they're really doing is making the adjustments in their heads.
Or he's holding up a matchprint to the screen and saying: "Yeah, that looks pretty good, doesn't it" and those of us who know the difference between additive and subtractive color but who are also his *supplier* are being polite and not laughing out loud so that he actually pays us later when he gets his bill. (Have I told the story of the patio pavers I had to hold up to my monitor while the customer stood over my shoulder? Ah...those were the days...)
Part of the job description we have for being a photo retoucher includes the ability to parrot this line: "Yes Mr. Customer. You're correct. Somehow your work defies the laws of physics and those two color spaces match exactly. We can do that."
"I can tag a PMS color off the top of my head, and can get within a few points of an accurate CMYK breakdown."
Yeah, of course. It's called "experience." I can also tell by looking what RGB color on my monitor won't render in CMYK. I can also tell a 5% to 95% halftone from a 0% to 100% on a properly calibrated monitor. I can see the difference between various UCR or GCR curves.
A decent monitor and decent calibration are vital. I don't believe foobar104 is saying that, though I don't presume to speak for another. But if either the designer or the prepress operator is making judgments on what will print CMYK based solely on what they see in RGB, they're in for a big ol' honkin' surprise, wouldn't you think?
(I've been in the position in which an experienced photographer was extraordinarily upset that their "bright blue" didn't print correctly on press. Reflex touch plates didn't even help. I think we went to flourescent touch plates in the end. That "bright blue" looked beautiful on the screen and the entire, very experienced prepress staff warned the customer and the sales rep about it. What did we know...)
There's no way in HELL I use *just* the monitor for precise color correction. If I take out 5% of the mag at a certain point on the curve, I don't do that "by feel." If I did, I'd be summarily dismissed. I bring up my favorite curve in Photoshop, do the adjustment, drop my cursor in to make sure the change has been made and run that sucker to......as you said:
"But I'll be damned if anything goes to press without a matchprint first."
Yeah...that's because, as you probably know, a contract proof is CMYK and your monitor is RGB and n'er the twain shall meet.
What separates the wanna-bes from the pros is knowledge and experience. Knowledge that there are many color spaces out there and that while they overlap, if you're working in RGB - which you are on any monitor - you cannot, even with all the calibration and adjustable ambient light in all the world - trust that monitor and that monitor only. You must run a CMYK proof.
I work for a $20 million a year commercial, sheet-fed printing company (read: high quality, annual report-type stuff) and while our guy who does color retouch and our scanner operator have quality monitors and while they are "calibrated," they go by the numbers, not feel.
I'll go even further in this way off-topic color discussion and tell you that we don't use any sort of "color management" either. And we are completely direct to plate - no film at all and what old film we have is copydotted.
Numbers. It's all about the numbers. No "feel." Numbers.
Teh *book* actually has two very different timelines in it. Frodo and Sam's story in The Two Towers takes longer than the story of Aragorn, Gandalf, and the rest of the gang. When you read the book, you don't really notice this because it has the distinct misfortune of being written in two separate tracks. (Personally, when I re-read TTT, I read a chapter or two of the first part, a chapter or two of the second part so that it's intercut.) I believe the Aragorn, et al story ends somewhere along the same time that Frodo and Sam are with Faramir, there are probably better fanatic...er scholars...than I who could correct me on that.
The movie will very likely be intercut as well. And since the two time lines don't match up, Shelob isn't going to be in this movie. At least that's what I've heard.
I can't imagine Jackson completely leaving her out of the entire story, though. So I imagine she'll be around in RoTK. I mean, who'd leave out a giant spider? That's just ripe for some truly awe-inspiring CGI.
Or maybe that's just me. Shelob is the all-time scariest creature in Middle Earth to me. I'm anxious to see her on screen as well.
Just say "I don't care!!" What, are you nuts? Just *say* what you *mean*? It'll never happen.
Reminds me of a college textbook in - of all things - media law that constantly and consistently used the phrase "not unlike." We used to make fun of it all the time - after all, we were supposed to be learning about "mass communications," "journalism," "how to speak newspeak." Er...
Anyway, "not unlike" means "like." You can say "That car is not unlike that other car." Or you can say "That car is like that other car." Both say the same thing, one just sounds more like it belongs in a textbook, I suppose.
So yeah, we could say "I *could* *not* care less." (The correct use of the phrase.) Or we could simply say: "I don't care." Me, I prefer simplicity, but I think folks like you and I are in the minority.
Dude...it was a joke...Didja catch the "suposably" part or do you think that's a word? Maybe you use it a lot. Maybe it does not mean what you think it means.
Ah, never mind. They're no good if ya gotta explain 'em.
Yeah, but this is a common mistake. So common that I think quite a few people don't realize that it's a mistake.
I post and read here, Usenet, special interest forums, and so on and the word "definitely" is quite consistently and frequently spelled "definately." It's not just in posts to Slashdot, for example, it's in articles...well, okay. Bad example.
"Definately" comes up so often that I'm past its being a pet peeve of mine. I'm almost past noticing, though I do notice. These days, I see the word and for an instant I'm not certain that it's incorrect. But it is. Like "seperate" or when some people consistently confuse "loose" and "lose."
Not that I'm perfect. But I know correct spelling from incorrect spelling and I truly think some of the users of "definately" don't realize that they're making a mistake. It's so widespread that I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a secondary spelling sometime.
For what it's worth, I'm trying the forest floor concept up close to my house under a HUGE cottonwood. Once I get through the first two seasons of weeds, I think I'll be okay.
I consider my house "new." I wanted to live in another neighborhood that was built in the 1880s. But I had to settle for this new, sparkly suburbia! Long story involving an urban-phobic spouse.
My house *is* going to be 100 years old in 15 years. Not bad. She's gettin' respectable, now.
And trees. After 80 or 90 years, the neighborhood actually has trees. Big ones. (And yuppies with leaf blowers, but that's another digression involving me, a rake, environmental concerns and building my upper body strength...)
Nice, grassless yard and yes, it probably takes waaaaaaay more maintenance than grass. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, I'm just saying folks should be aware of what it really takes to "get back to nature."
In my area, I can and do grow most of what I saw - astilbe, hosta, ferns. And they take one very important resource - water, water, water. And your time to pull the "weeds." That nice lawn ain't just native stuff that came up after they rototilled.;-)
It's well-manicured and well maintained. Someone - like my next door neighbor - spends a lot of time out there. Otherwise, you'd see nothing but bindweed and lawn ivy and that's not what's in those pics!
Good luck. I mean that. I'd like to have a lawn like that but I really only have time to mow!
"Built in the 20's and newly remodeled. No homeowners assoc."
Built in the '20s and no homeowner's association don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. While I'm enough of a New Urbanist to agree with you on the hot and treeless assessment of suburbia, the concept of a homeowner's association is not new.
My home - built in 1917 - is part of a homeowner's association that was founded in 1906.
Aside from making sure that we mow our tree-filled lawns, our homeowner's association protects the historical significance of our neighborhood.
I think your "forest floor" idea sounds good and who knows, it might work where you live. But my older neighborhood does have *a* *lot* of trees and only in the very densely treed portions of the neighborhood do you see the effect you might be going for (haven't checked your link...)
What we do have is a lot of non-grass groundcover like ivys. My neighbors have no grass in their back yard. Granted, most of the yard is taken up by pool, but the remainder is non-grass and wild *looking.* I emphasize that it only looks like "forest floor" because I know that the non-grass portion of their yard has to be cared for more intensely than the grass portion! And they have native plants back there. I think your forest floor might be higher maintenance than grass...
"A dated sales slip? Even after 3 years? Come on! Ok well fine I can dig out an invoice."
Dude. You need to keep better records. I know from whence I speak because I used to just throw shit away - packing slips, receipts. I thought "Hell, I got the serial number..." I've learned and now so have you. Grab some space in a file cabinet somewhere and keep everything.
"But they also want you to ship it back in the ORIGINAL box! Who has that after three years?"
And yup, I keep monitor boxes, too. I have an IT budget that's probably less than yours, but I have the benefit of working at a company that owns monstrous amounts of warehouse space and part of that space is simply taken up with empty boxes. Another lesson learned - that lesson was learned with a leasing company that wanted everything back in the original boxes. Ugh.
Call 'em back and bitch. See if you can get a swap - they send you a new monitor, you send them the broken one in the box within 30 days or something. They might want a credit card number in case they don't get an old one back, but that's what other manufacturers have done for me.
"After that I started buying HP monitors only....Class act right there."
While I agree that HP is a class act, I've had no problems with other monitor manufacturers or re-branders as the case may be. If you have any 15" HP Ergos on the floor, you'll realize exactly *why* HP is a class act. Those monitors go must be made with spit and toilet paper. I'm guessing they were low bid and HP probably decided "screw it, just keep replacing 'em - no questions asked."
You knew I'd be around for this one, didn't you? We all love a good game of semantics. By the way, yes you DO correct the newspapers in red ink and send them back, don't lie to the people.
"Of course, it's important to realize that the idea of lines-per-inch only applies to tints or continuous tone images."
The idea of LPI applies to halftoned images. The images you see on the printed page aren't themselves continuous tone. The originals - slides, prints, etc. - were, but by the time they hit the printed page they are single or multi (most times 4 color process) color halftones. You know that, but again...we're clarifying.
"you can only see them through a magnifying glass"
About 100x. Well okay, less if you know what you're looking at.
"And once ink hits paper, it bleeds just enough to smooth out all of those jaggies anyway"
Not "bleed," - "dot gain." "Bleed" is what one does outside of trim marks and if one doesn't know how to use a cork-backed ruler at the glass-topped light table. "Dot gain" is what happens when you print on paper stock that has the relative absorbency of a paper towel and the ink spreads out like a juice spill. But you knew that, we're clarifying.
Terminology, Foo...it's all about terminology.
And semantics.
And pedantic antics.
Gotta go. Gotta read the paper. Now where's my red ink pen?
The Win2K drivers for the HP 4000 series SUCK. I have problems out of Crystal Reports and *all* of the Microsoft Office products - both 98 and 2000. So I don't think your problems are limited to Excel97.
If your workstations are Win98 and your server is Win2K and you have the HP Win2K drivers on the server - that could be why you're having problems. My NT workstations bluescreened when printing if this was the case. It's the driver differences between older OSs (like in our case, NT) and Win2K that means I have both NT and Win2K print servers and users go through one or the other depending upon the client OS. WinNT and Win98 users use the NT print servers, Win2K users use the Win2K print server. It's a mess, but hey - it's my mess.
But other than that, the HP 4000s and 4050s we have are workhorses. Now the HP 8500 that I'd like to toss in the dumpster is another beast entirely...
"I dunno what would happen if you took a block of glass @ 1000 degrees and then hit it with a sledgehammer. I'll have to try it next time I'm in the studio; I suspect the hammer will just bounce off."
I love it! In what other "hobby" (and this ain't crafting duckies out of doilies, here) can you heat something up to 1000F and whack it with a sledgehammer just to see what happens!?
What if the sledge gets stuck in the glass? It might, I've had a small raking tool get pretty bogged down in >900F glass. Have a bucket of water handy.
I do wonder just how hot you'd have to get glass to have it flow in a more water-like manner.
"I've yet to find one of these windows thicker at the top. Does that mean that if they *were* thicker to begin with then the thick end was always installed at the bottom. Easier for me to believe in a slight flow."
So you do have hands-on experience with old window glass? I'm not being the usual Slashdot sarcastic or caustic. I really am asking your experience.
It really, really depends upon the age of the window in question. I responded to you earlier, let me give you a off the top of my head timeline for window glass manufacture. I get my info here and here. You'll notice that on the second page it says:
"By the 18th Century quality was often very good with an almost unmarked fire-finished surface. Crown was the preferred choice for window glass, together with some imported Cylinder glass until the mid 19th Century."
The crown method - gathering a glob of glass and spinning it into a sheet - was popluar up until the 1850s or so. While the crown method did produce good clear window glass, one portion of the glass pane would indeed be very much thicker than another. I've also read that it *is* entirely possible that the building methods at the time were to put that thicker portion of the sheet into the bottom of the pane. I'd rather believe that than "flow." There were a lot of "building standards" around at the time - some made sense, some didn't. And most were not documented. (For example, I have friends who live in a home built in 1890 - *without* any floor plans except what was in the master builder's head!)
Later, after the mid-1800s, the cut cylinder method of producing glass panes was used. This is still a process that produces thick portions in a sheet. Not as thick as the crown method, but still thick. As I've said, I've seen quite a bit of cylinder blown glass that has not "flowed" to the bottom of the pane. It's very popular in my area where the housing stock dates from mid-1800s (some earlier, but most from this era.)
Now window glass is produced using the float method. Molten glass is poured out onto molten tin. After that it's tempered or laminated or silvered or whatever else needs to be done to it, but still - even that laminated glass in your car started out as float glass at some stage. The method was invented in the 1950s and produces really smooth surfaces.
So. You can believe that someday all the blown cylinder and float glass that's out there will "flow" even though older blown cylinder sheets show no signs of it. Or you can believe that the crown glass manufacturing process - oh, and it's one that's still used today by "antique" glass manufacturers - produced thick sheets that were installed a certain way.
I know old buildings and old glass. I'm in the "no flow" camp.
"but the old glass panes are definately thicker on the bottom (and we not when installed)."
You know this? That the glass was NOT thicker at the bottom when it was installed? You were there those many years ago?
Two anecdotes. One - my own house. Built in 1917. The window glass is wavy - probably made from blown, cut cylinders of glass that were heated into sheets, a manufacturing process that was thick (heh) with inconsistencies. (Modern day glass is floated on molten tin - thus the name "float glass." Another, older process is to spin a glob of molten glass into a sheet, cool it and cut it down. The glass towards the center of the glob would have been much thicker and probably installed at the bottom of the pane.)
The glass in my house is not thicker at the bottom, necessarily. Some panes are, some are not. Some are thick right in the middle, some are wavy, some have bubbles. This is due to the manufacturing process at the time. Or maybe glass just doesn't start "flowing" until - ding! - exactly 100 years! I have to wait another 14 years then it'll suddenly appear.
Second - I "do" stained glass. Clear "antique" (wavy glass still manufactured using one of the above older methods) is still easy to buy, but why buy when you can get it free? I know someone in the home re-hab biz who gives me old window panes. Some are >100 years old.
I just cut out a half dozen of those >100 year old panes from their frames. I scored them, ran the score by tapping the glass with the brass end of my cutter, and "popped" out the pane. None of the glass was noticably thicker at one spot than at another - at least not thicker than what was produced by the manufacturing process of the day. And I'd have noticed. I was removing the glass without benefit of power tools...just the old fashioned score and run method.
Sorry, the glass flowing to the bottom of the pane business is just urban legend. There are people whose entire careers are built around antique stained glass restoration who've not seen anything more than manufacturing "defects" in glass.
And to paraphrase the Corning article mentioned upthread: If all these old window panes "flowed" so much, why aren't glass vessels from ancient Rome and Egypt just unrecognizable blobs by now? They're much older than some cathedral windows.
This needs some serious modding up. It's not like the scientists at Corning are playing around. Glass is their life.
At any rate, I just read this article yesterday, in fact. In my other life outside of real work, I'm a glass artist - I work mainly in stained glass ("cold" work, solid enough if you're trying to score and snap!) glass fusing ("warm" glass) and beadmaking or lampwork (at the very edge of "hot.") The properties of my meduim are fascinating to me.
One point that the above quoted article brings up is the "viscosity" or flow-ability (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the lead that is used in stained glass work. Buh-leeve me, the lead is far more pliable and - dare I say it? - "fluid" than the glass. So is the lead/tin solder used in another method of glass work, copper foil.
At any rate, the Corning Museum of Glass has a web site that's good for all sorts of glass surfing.
I cannot begin to describe how bullet-proof an AS/400 is. People simply don't believe me. One poster said that he knows people who IPL once a year. That's probably because it's *intended,* by the way - not because the machine hiccups. These suckers are the equivalent of cockroaches - they'll survive a nuclear blast.
But other than reliability, you're going to have to go after custom software markets. And not the glamorous stuff - the boring flat database stuff. I work for a good-sized printing company. We used an industry-specific ERP on an AS/400 for years and years. We still use that same app - only we now use the Windows version.
The AS/400 version was far less maintenance than the Windows version for various reasons - but the bottom line is the specialization. This isn't a couple of spreadsheets and a bar code wand out on the shop floor. This is much more involved than that and my industry type isn't the only place where this kind of software shows up. At the AS/400 mini-conferences I attended there were casino IT people, tool and die shops - even the car dealer I frequent has an AS/400 running industry-specific parts-tracking and job estimating software.
Plus these are not necessarily companies that have large R and D or programming departments. Nor *should* they. There are a lot of companies that are similar in size to ours that have IT people, a geek or two, but no one that really has the time, wherewithal or desire to replicate industry specfic software that can be easily purchased (for around $20,000 for all of the modules in our app) and supported (for about $2,000 a year.) Yeah, the hardware is expensive, but so is my time or the time of a programmer to create something that is customized for us. And oddly enough, I do have other things to do...
If you were selling Linux to me as a replacement for an AS/400, I'd first ask you what software is out there that will run my kind of manufacturing plant. I've already been down the "take some general software and customize it" road. It's a dead end.
If the answer is that I have to hire someone to write it or come up with something on my own or that you'll gladly look into consulting with my company on our specific needs, I'll hang on to my Black Beast, thankyouverymuch.
Good morning Mr. Bar! Just for grins, I went through my files.
Win2K Server was $743 per copy - not an upgrade - and that doesn't count the user licenses at $15 a holler. Yup, considerably more than 500 bucks and overkill for what you're up to.
And them's 2001 dollars.
And I might have gotten a discount because my vendor is way cool and likes me a lot. Or I might have gotten royally ripped because they secretly hate me. But those are the software costs from paid invoices.
Now the labor costs are another thing and I don't have those broken out for "installing and configuring this pile of pu-du on one of 7 new servers."
"Still, a good ui wouldn't bother the user with such trivial things as choosing where to save a file, other than "on my computer" or "on my website". It should look for a disk with available space, save the file there and remember what files are available where."
The "database" - which is what the users call it and the moment I heard this I knew I was doomed - is huge. It's also a vital part of our company's scheduling process. I actually inherited just the fact that I "had" to do it in Outlook, a boss told me to. I did create the whole shootin' match from the ground up.
(An aside, if Visual Basic is Budwieser, and Visual Basic for Applications is Bud Light, what is Visual Basic Scripting Edition? Water?)
I've already lost our entire Exchange database, so I'm kind of like a soldier who's seen the bleak underbelly of war. I've already fought with permissions on the folder that uses this form. They were changed by a visiting MCSE *on* *the* *virtual* *drive* - you Exchange 2000 admins know what I mean. Oh, don't do that by the way.
I have been many Exchange places and done many Exchange and custom form things. The end result is pretty cool - a nice sorted form that shows which jobs in a manufacturing plant are going to run on which date and on which machine.
Yeah, well...so we run the entire plant on it. I realize the weaknesses and so does the rest of the company...now...after the database went south.
And anyway, gives me something to do. Thus the sig:
Slashdot Mirror
You just weren't looking hard enough,
Maledictus - "Townie,"
Blonde, blue-eyed, no hick accent
Daughter of a retired UMR physics prof
Married to a BSEE, 1983
If I'd had kids when I was first married, my oldest child would be in college right now. I know women programmers who have grandchildren. So maybe it's getting so that it's not so unusual for mom to know best.
"Son! Didn't I tell you to download the latest virus protection? Isn't that on your chore list? But you didn't, did you... Now your sister has to do it and furthermore, you're grounded!"
Dude, I simply don't know how to say it more clearly. You'll never convince him.
I don't care how much physics and biology you throw at some people, they're not going to see beyond their closed systems.
Betcha dollars to doughnuts this guy has spend a lot of time and money - well, they're the same thing, no? - developing his own "color manglement" system that works in his own shop. Every photograph he snaps off with his digital camera looks just *so* on his screen and prints just *so* on his inkjet. And it all looks pretty good because he re-adjusts when the monitor starts to go green or the cyan in the inkjet starts to to out or he changes light bulbs in the room once a month whether he needs to or not. He's got a system, y'know. He has experience.
More dollars to more doughnuts if he sends that nice digital pic off to his local lithographer, he doesn't get nearly what he wants. And he blames them. Bunch o'fuckups. I know, I am one.
OR...he's smart. He really does check all the CMYK values. He knows that when he sees that "certain shade of purple" that he's really going to get a "certain shade of blue" when he has posters or sales materials made at, again - his local lithographer. Folks like that *think* they're "going by the screen," but what they're really doing is making the adjustments in their heads.
Or he's holding up a matchprint to the screen and saying: "Yeah, that looks pretty good, doesn't it" and those of us who know the difference between additive and subtractive color but who are also his *supplier* are being polite and not laughing out loud so that he actually pays us later when he gets his bill. (Have I told the story of the patio pavers I had to hold up to my monitor while the customer stood over my shoulder? Ah...those were the days...)
Part of the job description we have for being a photo retoucher includes the ability to parrot this line: "Yes Mr. Customer. You're correct. Somehow your work defies the laws of physics and those two color spaces match exactly. We can do that."
"I can tag a PMS color off the top of my head, and can get within a few points of an accurate CMYK breakdown."
...as you said:
Yeah, of course. It's called "experience." I can also tell by looking what RGB color on my monitor won't render in CMYK. I can also tell a 5% to 95% halftone from a 0% to 100% on a properly calibrated monitor. I can see the difference between various UCR or GCR curves.
A decent monitor and decent calibration are vital. I don't believe foobar104 is saying that, though I don't presume to speak for another. But if either the designer or the prepress operator is making judgments on what will print CMYK based solely on what they see in RGB, they're in for a big ol' honkin' surprise, wouldn't you think?
(I've been in the position in which an experienced photographer was extraordinarily upset that their "bright blue" didn't print correctly on press. Reflex touch plates didn't even help. I think we went to flourescent touch plates in the end. That "bright blue" looked beautiful on the screen and the entire, very experienced prepress staff warned the customer and the sales rep about it. What did we know...)
There's no way in HELL I use *just* the monitor for precise color correction. If I take out 5% of the mag at a certain point on the curve, I don't do that "by feel." If I did, I'd be summarily dismissed. I bring up my favorite curve in Photoshop, do the adjustment, drop my cursor in to make sure the change has been made and run that sucker to...
"But I'll be damned if anything goes to press without a matchprint first."
Yeah...that's because, as you probably know, a contract proof is CMYK and your monitor is RGB and n'er the twain shall meet.
What separates the wanna-bes from the pros is knowledge and experience. Knowledge that there are many color spaces out there and that while they overlap, if you're working in RGB - which you are on any monitor - you cannot, even with all the calibration and adjustable ambient light in all the world - trust that monitor and that monitor only. You must run a CMYK proof.
I work for a $20 million a year commercial, sheet-fed printing company (read: high quality, annual report-type stuff) and while our guy who does color retouch and our scanner operator have quality monitors and while they are "calibrated," they go by the numbers, not feel.
I'll go even further in this way off-topic color discussion and tell you that we don't use any sort of "color management" either. And we are completely direct to plate - no film at all and what old film we have is copydotted.
Numbers. It's all about the numbers. No "feel." Numbers.
Teh *book* actually has two very different timelines in it. Frodo and Sam's story in The Two Towers takes longer than the story of Aragorn, Gandalf, and the rest of the gang. When you read the book, you don't really notice this because it has the distinct misfortune of being written in two separate tracks. (Personally, when I re-read TTT, I read a chapter or two of the first part, a chapter or two of the second part so that it's intercut.) I believe the Aragorn, et al story ends somewhere along the same time that Frodo and Sam are with Faramir, there are probably better fanatic...er scholars...than I who could correct me on that.
The movie will very likely be intercut as well. And since the two time lines don't match up, Shelob isn't going to be in this movie. At least that's what I've heard.
I can't imagine Jackson completely leaving her out of the entire story, though. So I imagine she'll be around in RoTK. I mean, who'd leave out a giant spider? That's just ripe for some truly awe-inspiring CGI.
Or maybe that's just me. Shelob is the all-time scariest creature in Middle Earth to me. I'm anxious to see her on screen as well.
*shudder*
Just say "I don't care!!" What, are you nuts? Just *say* what you *mean*? It'll never happen.
Reminds me of a college textbook in - of all things - media law that constantly and consistently used the phrase "not unlike." We used to make fun of it all the time - after all, we were supposed to be learning about "mass communications," "journalism," "how to speak newspeak." Er...
Anyway, "not unlike" means "like." You can say "That car is not unlike that other car." Or you can say "That car is like that other car." Both say the same thing, one just sounds more like it belongs in a textbook, I suppose.
So yeah, we could say "I *could* *not* care less." (The correct use of the phrase.) Or we could simply say: "I don't care." Me, I prefer simplicity, but I think folks like you and I are in the minority.
Dude...it was a joke...Didja catch the "suposably" part or do you think that's a word? Maybe you use it a lot. Maybe it does not mean what you think it means.
Ah, never mind. They're no good if ya gotta explain 'em.
I really could care less. I just thought that supposably people were smart on this chat group.
Yeah, but this is a common mistake. So common that I think quite a few people don't realize that it's a mistake.
I post and read here, Usenet, special interest forums, and so on and the word "definitely" is quite consistently and frequently spelled "definately." It's not just in posts to Slashdot, for example, it's in articles...well, okay. Bad example.
"Definately" comes up so often that I'm past its being a pet peeve of mine. I'm almost past noticing, though I do notice. These days, I see the word and for an instant I'm not certain that it's incorrect. But it is. Like "seperate" or when some people consistently confuse "loose" and "lose."
Not that I'm perfect. But I know correct spelling from incorrect spelling and I truly think some of the users of "definately" don't realize that they're making a mistake. It's so widespread that I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a secondary spelling sometime.
For what it's worth, I'm trying the forest floor concept up close to my house under a HUGE cottonwood. Once I get through the first two seasons of weeds, I think I'll be okay.
I consider my house "new." I wanted to live in another neighborhood that was built in the 1880s. But I had to settle for this new, sparkly suburbia! Long story involving an urban-phobic spouse.
My house *is* going to be 100 years old in 15 years. Not bad. She's gettin' respectable, now.
And trees. After 80 or 90 years, the neighborhood actually has trees. Big ones. (And yuppies with leaf blowers, but that's another digression involving me, a rake, environmental concerns and building my upper body strength...)
Nice, grassless yard and yes, it probably takes waaaaaaay more maintenance than grass. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, I'm just saying folks should be aware of what it really takes to "get back to nature."
;-)
In my area, I can and do grow most of what I saw - astilbe, hosta, ferns. And they take one very important resource - water, water, water. And your time to pull the "weeds." That nice lawn ain't just native stuff that came up after they rototilled.
It's well-manicured and well maintained. Someone - like my next door neighbor - spends a lot of time out there. Otherwise, you'd see nothing but bindweed and lawn ivy and that's not what's in those pics!
Good luck. I mean that. I'd like to have a lawn like that but I really only have time to mow!
"Built in the 20's and newly remodeled. No homeowners assoc."
Built in the '20s and no homeowner's association don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. While I'm enough of a New Urbanist to agree with you on the hot and treeless assessment of suburbia, the concept of a homeowner's association is not new.
My home - built in 1917 - is part of a homeowner's association that was founded in 1906.
Aside from making sure that we mow our tree-filled lawns, our homeowner's association protects the historical significance of our neighborhood.
I think your "forest floor" idea sounds good and who knows, it might work where you live. But my older neighborhood does have *a* *lot* of trees and only in the very densely treed portions of the neighborhood do you see the effect you might be going for (haven't checked your link...)
What we do have is a lot of non-grass groundcover like ivys. My neighbors have no grass in their back yard. Granted, most of the yard is taken up by pool, but the remainder is non-grass and wild *looking.* I emphasize that it only looks like "forest floor" because I know that the non-grass portion of their yard has to be cared for more intensely than the grass portion! And they have native plants back there. I think your forest floor might be higher maintenance than grass...
"(That scene still hurts when I think about it!)"
Pah! That scene ain't nothin'. I believe someone once said that having a baby is like pulling a 10lb turkey out of your nose.
It isn't.
The turkey's easier.
"A dated sales slip? Even after 3 years? Come on! Ok well fine I can dig out an invoice."
...Class act right there."
Dude. You need to keep better records. I know from whence I speak because I used to just throw shit away - packing slips, receipts. I thought "Hell, I got the serial number..." I've learned and now so have you. Grab some space in a file cabinet somewhere and keep everything.
"But they also want you to ship it back in the ORIGINAL box! Who has that after three years?"
And yup, I keep monitor boxes, too. I have an IT budget that's probably less than yours, but I have the benefit of working at a company that owns monstrous amounts of warehouse space and part of that space is simply taken up with empty boxes. Another lesson learned - that lesson was learned with a leasing company that wanted everything back in the original boxes. Ugh.
Call 'em back and bitch. See if you can get a swap - they send you a new monitor, you send them the broken one in the box within 30 days or something. They might want a credit card number in case they don't get an old one back, but that's what other manufacturers have done for me.
"After that I started buying HP monitors only.
While I agree that HP is a class act, I've had no problems with other monitor manufacturers or re-branders as the case may be. If you have any 15" HP Ergos on the floor, you'll realize exactly *why* HP is a class act. Those monitors go must be made with spit and toilet paper. I'm guessing they were low bid and HP probably decided "screw it, just keep replacing 'em - no questions asked."
You knew I'd be around for this one, didn't you? We all love a good game of semantics. By the way, yes you DO correct the newspapers in red ink and send them back, don't lie to the people.
"Of course, it's important to realize that the idea of lines-per-inch only applies to tints or continuous tone images."
The idea of LPI applies to halftoned images. The images you see on the printed page aren't themselves continuous tone. The originals - slides, prints, etc. - were, but by the time they hit the printed page they are single or multi (most times 4 color process) color halftones. You know that, but again...we're clarifying.
"you can only see them through a magnifying glass"
About 100x. Well okay, less if you know what you're looking at.
"And once ink hits paper, it bleeds just enough to smooth out all of those jaggies anyway"
Not "bleed," - "dot gain." "Bleed" is what one does outside of trim marks and if one doesn't know how to use a cork-backed ruler at the glass-topped light table. "Dot gain" is what happens when you print on paper stock that has the relative absorbency of a paper towel and the ink spreads out like a juice spill. But you knew that, we're clarifying.
Terminology, Foo...it's all about terminology.
And semantics.
And pedantic antics.
Gotta go. Gotta read the paper. Now where's my red ink pen?
The Win2K drivers for the HP 4000 series SUCK. I have problems out of Crystal Reports and *all* of the Microsoft Office products - both 98 and 2000. So I don't think your problems are limited to Excel97.
If your workstations are Win98 and your server is Win2K and you have the HP Win2K drivers on the server - that could be why you're having problems. My NT workstations bluescreened when printing if this was the case. It's the driver differences between older OSs (like in our case, NT) and Win2K that means I have both NT and Win2K print servers and users go through one or the other depending upon the client OS. WinNT and Win98 users use the NT print servers, Win2K users use the Win2K print server. It's a mess, but hey - it's my mess.
But other than that, the HP 4000s and 4050s we have are workhorses. Now the HP 8500 that I'd like to toss in the dumpster is another beast entirely...
"I dunno what would happen if you took a block of glass @ 1000 degrees and then hit it with a sledgehammer. I'll have to try it next time I'm in the studio; I suspect the hammer will just bounce off."
I love it! In what other "hobby" (and this ain't crafting duckies out of doilies, here) can you heat something up to 1000F and whack it with a sledgehammer just to see what happens!?
What if the sledge gets stuck in the glass? It might, I've had a small raking tool get pretty bogged down in >900F glass. Have a bucket of water handy.
I do wonder just how hot you'd have to get glass to have it flow in a more water-like manner.
"To be well-beaten by a gentleman is much more pleasing than to be ill-cursed by a cur - phorm"
;-)
Thank you...for the "gentleman" part. But...and lets just keep this between you and me...I'm a girl!
Hey, maybe *that's* why I'm so dang nice...
"I've yet to find one of these windows thicker at the top. Does that mean that if they *were* thicker to begin with then the thick end was always installed at the bottom. Easier for me to believe in a slight flow."
So you do have hands-on experience with old window glass? I'm not being the usual Slashdot sarcastic or caustic. I really am asking your experience.
It really, really depends upon the age of the window in question. I responded to you earlier, let me give you a off the top of my head timeline for window glass manufacture. I get my info here and here. You'll notice that on the second page it says:
"By the 18th Century quality was often very good with an almost unmarked fire-finished surface. Crown was the preferred choice for window glass, together with some imported Cylinder glass until the mid 19th Century."
The crown method - gathering a glob of glass and spinning it into a sheet - was popluar up until the 1850s or so. While the crown method did produce good clear window glass, one portion of the glass pane would indeed be very much thicker than another. I've also read that it *is* entirely possible that the building methods at the time were to put that thicker portion of the sheet into the bottom of the pane. I'd rather believe that than "flow." There were a lot of "building standards" around at the time - some made sense, some didn't. And most were not documented. (For example, I have friends who live in a home built in 1890 - *without* any floor plans except what was in the master builder's head!)
Later, after the mid-1800s, the cut cylinder method of producing glass panes was used. This is still a process that produces thick portions in a sheet. Not as thick as the crown method, but still thick. As I've said, I've seen quite a bit of cylinder blown glass that has not "flowed" to the bottom of the pane. It's very popular in my area where the housing stock dates from mid-1800s (some earlier, but most from this era.)
Now window glass is produced using the float method. Molten glass is poured out onto molten tin. After that it's tempered or laminated or silvered or whatever else needs to be done to it, but still - even that laminated glass in your car started out as float glass at some stage. The method was invented in the 1950s and produces really smooth surfaces.
So. You can believe that someday all the blown cylinder and float glass that's out there will "flow" even though older blown cylinder sheets show no signs of it. Or you can believe that the crown glass manufacturing process - oh, and it's one that's still used today by "antique" glass manufacturers - produced thick sheets that were installed a certain way.
I know old buildings and old glass. I'm in the "no flow" camp.
"but the old glass panes are definately thicker on the bottom (and we not when installed)."
You know this? That the glass was NOT thicker at the bottom when it was installed? You were there those many years ago?
Two anecdotes. One - my own house. Built in 1917. The window glass is wavy - probably made from blown, cut cylinders of glass that were heated into sheets, a manufacturing process that was thick (heh) with inconsistencies. (Modern day glass is floated on molten tin - thus the name "float glass." Another, older process is to spin a glob of molten glass into a sheet, cool it and cut it down. The glass towards the center of the glob would have been much thicker and probably installed at the bottom of the pane.)
The glass in my house is not thicker at the bottom, necessarily. Some panes are, some are not. Some are thick right in the middle, some are wavy, some have bubbles. This is due to the manufacturing process at the time. Or maybe glass just doesn't start "flowing" until - ding! - exactly 100 years! I have to wait another 14 years then it'll suddenly appear.
Second - I "do" stained glass. Clear "antique" (wavy glass still manufactured using one of the above older methods) is still easy to buy, but why buy when you can get it free? I know someone in the home re-hab biz who gives me old window panes. Some are >100 years old.
I just cut out a half dozen of those >100 year old panes from their frames. I scored them, ran the score by tapping the glass with the brass end of my cutter, and "popped" out the pane. None of the glass was noticably thicker at one spot than at another - at least not thicker than what was produced by the manufacturing process of the day. And I'd have noticed. I was removing the glass without benefit of power tools...just the old fashioned score and run method.
Sorry, the glass flowing to the bottom of the pane business is just urban legend. There are people whose entire careers are built around antique stained glass restoration who've not seen anything more than manufacturing "defects" in glass.
And to paraphrase the Corning article mentioned upthread: If all these old window panes "flowed" so much, why aren't glass vessels from ancient Rome and Egypt just unrecognizable blobs by now? They're much older than some cathedral windows.
This needs some serious modding up. It's not like the scientists at Corning are playing around. Glass is their life.
At any rate, I just read this article yesterday, in fact. In my other life outside of real work, I'm a glass artist - I work mainly in stained glass ("cold" work, solid enough if you're trying to score and snap!) glass fusing ("warm" glass) and beadmaking or lampwork (at the very edge of "hot.") The properties of my meduim are fascinating to me.
One point that the above quoted article brings up is the "viscosity" or flow-ability (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the lead that is used in stained glass work. Buh-leeve me, the lead is far more pliable and - dare I say it? - "fluid" than the glass. So is the lead/tin solder used in another method of glass work, copper foil.
At any rate, the Corning Museum of Glass has a web site that's good for all sorts of glass surfing.
Specialization, specialization, specialization.
Oh. And reliability.
So four words.
I cannot begin to describe how bullet-proof an AS/400 is. People simply don't believe me. One poster said that he knows people who IPL once a year. That's probably because it's *intended,* by the way - not because the machine hiccups. These suckers are the equivalent of cockroaches - they'll survive a nuclear blast.
But other than reliability, you're going to have to go after custom software markets. And not the glamorous stuff - the boring flat database stuff. I work for a good-sized printing company. We used an industry-specific ERP on an AS/400 for years and years. We still use that same app - only we now use the Windows version.
The AS/400 version was far less maintenance than the Windows version for various reasons - but the bottom line is the specialization. This isn't a couple of spreadsheets and a bar code wand out on the shop floor. This is much more involved than that and my industry type isn't the only place where this kind of software shows up. At the AS/400 mini-conferences I attended there were casino IT people, tool and die shops - even the car dealer I frequent has an AS/400 running industry-specific parts-tracking and job estimating software.
Plus these are not necessarily companies that have large R and D or programming departments. Nor *should* they. There are a lot of companies that are similar in size to ours that have IT people, a geek or two, but no one that really has the time, wherewithal or desire to replicate industry specfic software that can be easily purchased (for around $20,000 for all of the modules in our app) and supported (for about $2,000 a year.) Yeah, the hardware is expensive, but so is my time or the time of a programmer to create something that is customized for us. And oddly enough, I do have other things to do...
If you were selling Linux to me as a replacement for an AS/400, I'd first ask you what software is out there that will run my kind of manufacturing plant. I've already been down the "take some general software and customize it" road. It's a dead end.
If the answer is that I have to hire someone to write it or come up with something on my own or that you'll gladly look into consulting with my company on our specific needs, I'll hang on to my Black Beast, thankyouverymuch.
Good morning Mr. Bar! Just for grins, I went through my files.
Win2K Server was $743 per copy - not an upgrade - and that doesn't count the user licenses at $15 a holler. Yup, considerably more than 500 bucks and overkill for what you're up to.
And them's 2001 dollars.
And I might have gotten a discount because my vendor is way cool and likes me a lot. Or I might have gotten royally ripped because they secretly hate me. But those are the software costs from paid invoices.
Now the labor costs are another thing and I don't have those broken out for "installing and configuring this pile of pu-du on one of 7 new servers."
I swear, that should be on the invoice.
As I say, thus the sig:
"Still, a good ui wouldn't bother the user with such trivial things as choosing where to save a file, other than "on my computer" or "on my website". It should look for a disk with available space, save the file there and remember what files are available where."
You mean like Windows?
This post not for the sarcasm impaired.
Yeah. They suck. Here's my story.
The "database" - which is what the users call it and the moment I heard this I knew I was doomed - is huge. It's also a vital part of our company's scheduling process. I actually inherited just the fact that I "had" to do it in Outlook, a boss told me to. I did create the whole shootin' match from the ground up.
(An aside, if Visual Basic is Budwieser, and Visual Basic for Applications is Bud Light, what is Visual Basic Scripting Edition? Water?)
I've already lost our entire Exchange database, so I'm kind of like a soldier who's seen the bleak underbelly of war. I've already fought with permissions on the folder that uses this form. They were changed by a visiting MCSE *on* *the* *virtual* *drive* - you Exchange 2000 admins know what I mean. Oh, don't do that by the way.
I have been many Exchange places and done many Exchange and custom form things. The end result is pretty cool - a nice sorted form that shows which jobs in a manufacturing plant are going to run on which date and on which machine.
Yeah, well...so we run the entire plant on it. I realize the weaknesses and so does the rest of the company...now...after the database went south.
And anyway, gives me something to do. Thus the sig: