Wow, 3TB for 18 minutes? Impressive, but nothing I'd want to have to record in its native format. And here I though the TB array I just put in my Digital Video box would last me a while.::mumble mubmle:: back to Fry's::mumble mumble::
Animation master is also available for $199 at trade shows and conventions. I don't have their current schedule, but I do know they'll be presenting at Sakura Con and selling the software at the discount rate.
As another note on Hash, the guys who work on Animation Master are about the coolest I've ever met (it's not many offices you see where employees have parots on thier shoulders), and they're great people. Hash Inc owns the Columbia Arts Center and has done some amazing things to support art and culture in the Vancouver (Wa not BC) area.
I don't see why we couldn't speed it up... and do it fairly cleanly as well. You could for example...
Deploy a massive solar powered heating elements which raised the ambient temperature near the CO^2 glaciers. This might have the effect of accelerating the rate of melt, or sustaining a rate of melt if the change is seasonal.
I don't know what kind of heating system you'd want... the idea of monsterous hair dryers with heating elements blowing "hot air" over the martian glaciers is an amagingly funny image to conjure, but you could also bore pipes through the glacier and run hot liquid through the pipes... and I'm sure someone with a better science background than mine could come up with more.
Honestly though, this is something that's been talked about for years. Sci-fi authors have speculated about any number of ways in which we could terra-form mars. And many of them are scientifically sound. The problem is this:
Going to mars costs money. Terra-forming mars will cost alot of money. No individual, no matter how long lived, will ever see a teraforming project through from beginning to end... and few people are willing to start such a massively expensive endeavor when there is no payoff in thier own lifetime (nor the lifetimes of the next three or four generations).
Without doubt, this announcement is good news. It gives more for Sci-fi authors (self included) to work with to write plausable fiction. Remember, the best of sci-fi authors have a good grasp of physics / biology / astronomy when writing. That's why Aasimov and Sagan and the other Grand Masters have been able to write their imortal works... because they understand science well enough, that years later we aren't laughing and saying "wow, shows how little they knew!"
Okay, if you want an idea why you could possibly want vide on your cell phone, drop the idea of watching movies/TV Shows/other entertainment.
Now, think about a small video camera in your phone. 3G is the bandwidth to speak to eachother Face to Face (well sort of) over a cell phone. Add a little cradle for the thing (so you can sit and look at it) and you can put a face on the other end of the line. IMHO, that would be a worth while use of video on a phone.
But if that wasn't good enough, imagine calling 911, getting patched to an Paramedic with a video phone, and being able to pass video data to mdical techs on their way to the scene (they may even be able to help provide instructions for emergency care). Useful stuff if you ask me.
You know, an improved wireless back bone is in all our interests... Think about the speed offered by 3G with a link for your PDA (drool). Lately I've been seeing cell phone game competitions (best Snake score anyone?), but wouldn't it be interesting to see a shooter on your cell phone? (Odd twist to lan gaming eh?)
OTOH, this could suffer a catastorphic death to high cost and a perception that it's a fad. Witness the trouble going on with @Home. If high speed internet for a traditional internet market is floundering... who's going to jump on the band wagon for high speed Cell Phones?
I always thought the name of the MP3 I found had some funky Japanese to English translation errors
Given the Japanese tendancy to change thier names whenever it suits them, (Hayashibara, Megumi-san, bless her heart, assumed that name near the start of her career), a real person named Kyoko Date wouldn't be that surprising. Especially in the J-pop / Seiyu arena.
The odd part to get used to is that we're talking about legal name changes here. We may be used to people working under pen names or other odd titles in american music, but would any one take "Snoop Dog" seriously of that was his actual name? Yet this tactic is common in the Japanese music inudstry (and japanese society in general) where names change frequently. After all, the name you got when your born is just a convienient lable for your parents until you figure out who you are, ne?
You know, this might work if Google implemented it the right way. I'm just thinking there are a few simple things they could do right off...
Don't put "rate this sight" next to every hit. Instead, use a system of random assignment. Every x(where x is a random number) hits, give the user a "rate this site" dialogue. This cuts down on the potential for direct abuse.
Add an option to sort by user rating, or sort by the current standard. This way, if people don't want to see user rated results, they don't have to.
I love google and all, but some of the things that make it to the top of the list from time to time are as useful to me as a 16 bit dos driver (for my RS/6000). It'd be good to see something resembling peer review on the web after all. Who knows, even if it fails, it might spark something that works!
Best of luck google!
Step one: M$ is the only company with the ability to buy they shuttle... and does it to prove it
Step two: US Gov. Takes M$ to court because they have a manopoly on shuttle flights.
Step three: Shuttle crashes frequently while M$ and US Gov go back and forth in courts.
This has been a shameless joke at M$s expense... those who laugh will be assimilated at next reboot.
I can understand the hell of the final year of a CS degree. I can't stand the programming classes that teach you to say "Hello World" in yet another language, or worse yet "Reinvent the wheel of the week!" So, I understand needing to do something else.
Let me first say, stick it out if you want to work in computers. The bachelors degree does mean something. Recently I starting working in an AIX unix devision. I'm a Systems Programmer 1 instead of a Senior System's Programmer because of my lack o' sheepskin. I don't mind... the sheep skin is not far off now. But in the first weeks of my job I found a love of coding that I didn't have in the class room. I was solving problems, writing custom solutions, and doing good work. It felt good to do something real. So, stick it out... you're more than half way there.
They say that you need a dedicated connection, and bandwidth is a biggie... but how much bandwidth? Is this a "Cable Modem's a bad idea" limiter? Will consumer DSL provide sufficient bandwidth? Or is it really going to need T1 speed?
Sounds odd, but every now and then you get this with lazy web developers. One of the individuals I work with develops using ASP and other M$ technologies (I've always been a Perl/PHP guy so I'm not entirely sure what he's doing). The upshot of it is, when our club's website went live, it locked netscape something fierce. It took months of nagging for him to add a browser check and "netscape safe" version of the page. Could M$N have made the decision that they didn't want to allow browsers they know couldn't handle their proprietary tags?
I did some volunteer work during my junior year (working on a BS Computer Science) teaching web design at a high school. The school had me in once a week, and I worked with the kids in the "Tech Ed" program. (Translate, the ones deemed "less than college bound" by school councilors).
So, one day a week for the better part of a semester, I came in and walked these students through HTML basics. They never touched front page, but by the end of the quarter, I would consider them competent to render any written document into cleanly coded HTML.
The sad part was the places I couldn't go. The administration opposed installing any new software to support this once a week project, and so, in absence of Photoshop (no I couldn't even have gimp) we didn't cover graphics design. I spent a lot of time on my home box putting together packets of buttons and backgrounds. It allowed students to mix and match a bit, and gave me the ability to discuss some design issues, but I never really had a chance to let them start the ball on the graphics end.
At the end of it, I had a pile of student Counter Strike tips pages with staggering good information, but the majority couldn't distinguish between "Cool" and "Professional". But, I chalk that up to it being high school.
Knowing a bit of HTML may never get these kids a real job, but, they have learned a bit more about how the web really works. And who knows, it may have inspired them to go further into computing. (Or they may have decided geeks are wierd, and they should just stay away.)
The article says " plans to sell a preview edition of the software for $99 "
Any word on what they're actually planning on selling it for? At least once purchased you can put it on multiple computers, but still... $99 is steep for a Linux. I'm also wondering if the $99 preview release is some sort of gimick to gain development funding (a Send Resume button at the top of Lindows.com is not confidence inspiring.
Microsoft won't support OEM licenses, and the manufacturers are getting inundated with problems Microsoft won't touch
I had a problem with a few years ago. The vendor I purchased from refused to support me because I re-installed windows, and M$ refused to support the issue because it was OEM. What was even more infuriating was that I had taken the suspect box into the manufacturer who correctly identified the problem and said "no biggie, it'll just take five minutes". 5 Minutes later the tech walked back out and said "did you re-install windows?" when I said yes he said "Well, for a $50 servicing fee + $25/hour we'll reinstall windows and then you can have tech support back".
The funny part is that when I told M$ about this they sent me to pay per incedent support and solved the problem over the phone in 10 min for $35... M$ was CHEAPER!
It's interesting to listen to administration explain why we purchase Dell and Gateway equipment in bulk. The answers run to something like this:
We get a bulk rate
We get an educational discount
We get a support contract
The intersting bit is the support contract. We seldom use it. Typically, our own Computing Services techs are modifying units when they come in the door (some of our labs need zip drives, but the administration doesn't purchace them... so we add them on site. As an example). But the other factor has been response time. Even though we have a support contract, it's simply easier to say "We can fix this. Fix it now and send the broken part back to Gateway."
So how good is the support when we really need it? I have no idea... Computing Services answer to my problems with the Dell on my desk has largely been "You shouldn't be trying to do that anyway so it's not really a problem..." Ah well... that's another can of worms...
:q!
Re:A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else
on
Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 1
(which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners),
You can get fire wire controllers for PCs... I think it's beginning to crop up on mother boards as well. These Guys have fire wire goodies and they're just in the first 10 sites you get when you Google for "FireWire".
I've seen some truly interesting cases in my time... (The most interesting being a computer named "Bagle Dogs" that ran out of a Bagle Dogs box), but this is pretty cool.
Wood makes a lot of sense for the Napalese. Think about it. It's abundant, it's cheap, and if they really got into the student educating bit, they could have students build their cases (anyone ever take wood shop?).
As far as heat goes, it's actually an easy problem to aleviate... open the case. If it ran semi-exposed they could dump a lot of heat. Also remember that the 486 was still able to run without a fan (fans and passive heat sinks were optional) so they won't be suffering quite as badly as, say, an athlon would.
I'm just thinking... does it seem like a lot of the prodocts that have flared up here were good ideas for the geek market... but that the consumer market isn't ready for?
Example: How many consumers really want an MP3 player in thier home entertainment system? We love it (and spend lots of time talking about the best way to do it), but does the average consumer?
I think this may be a trend. Geeks think of cool things, and start doing them. Someone in marketing says "Hey, look what the engeneers are putting together for themselves... if they want it and can do it... maybe we can market it!" A few months later geeks are interested... but marketing is looking at consumers not geeks... and projects get abandoned.
I mean, think about it, when's the last time you saw an add for a portable mp3 player on TV. I've just recently heard a few radio adds for car stereo with mp3 support... but nothing like the Rout 66 project.
Looking around my current environment I find several things:
The SD (software development) guys make thier own hours. I've never seen an engeneer face to face and never reached one before 9 am or after 3 pm.
The Unix group makes thier own hours, supplied by a wink and nod from management as long as the windows group doesn't find out.
The Unix guys stash ties in thier desks in case really senior management ever drops by, but by and large, they push the envelope of the dress code.
The windows group is so clean cut, crisp, and polished I could slice vegetables on their creases and use their shirts as drafting boards.
Windows guys, hardware techs, network techs, and most any position that can be filled with a few hundred hours of training or an associates degree is becomming very clean cut and corperate. There is an abundance of these guys and management can hire people who fit the corperate image rather than more "quirky" candidates.
In other areas, the supply is still scarce, and you take what you can get. (As the article says, they were having a hard time finding someone qualified).
The place I see the most freedom these days though, is with Web Developers and Graphic Artists. They're supposed to be creative, expressive, and different. I think they have to be a little quirky to get past the interview.
i am getting sick of this geeks are not social garbage. i am definately a geek, but i am also quite social
I don't mean to imply that all geeks are non social. Far from it. I think a large number of geeks are very social. However, I've lost track of the number of my fellow students (CS Majors)who want nothing to do with people. They like thier computer and like the fact that they don't have to deal with people to do something they love.
The question is, when NAN's become common (if they do) and neighbors begin turning to the neighborhood geek for support, how will those geeks who are uncomfortable in social situations react to their new found status as a valued member of the community? Or will they just stay in their comfortable little hole asking not to be bothered?
Could this actually get neighbors talking to eachother? And might the neighbors start to value geeks in the sense that the neightborhood plumber has always been valued? I mean, think about it. If you had NANs poping up, how long would it be before the geek (previously confined to his cable connection in the basement hapilly perusing slashdot) becomes a common invitee to neighborhood social events.
"He was so nice when I couldn't get xyz on the NAN all I had to do was message him and he solved my problem..." : Common comment by Annyonomous Grandma in the NAN era?
Or will this just pull the geeks out of their comfortable corners into social realms they don't want to be in? Will it force the geeks of the world to be more social?
What I'd love to see though... is Annyonomous Grandma taking a hand to the backside of the neightbor hood Script Kiddies... or better yet, DoSing them of the NAN herself!
I have to say this is a feature I can actually dig. With the S-Video out I might actually be able to take my computer with me on the road. Yeah laptops are available, but when going to Anime Cons... nothing beats being able to snag Bandai's latest release on DVD and throw it up at your room party that night. "Cowboy Bebop: Knockin on Heaven's Door anyone? Come to my room party!".
Honestly I think this is a good middle ground for portability. When you want a computer you can haul about anywhere but don't require the ability to actually use it when you're in transit it beats the heck out of a laptop.
It might also be a good platform for some presentations. I know when I'm doing premier demos, I'm working with a computer + projector on either RGB or S-Video... this would be an easy box to throw on a desktop at home and bring to any site for a demo. (At least for the Poor College Student doing demos to college clubs and user groups!)
As a current CS major this sounds all to familiar. I feel like many Universities are beginning to train computer science students instead of educating them.
Many of my classmates are coming into the industry looking for a job. They jabber about "certification this" and "Test prep for X". The school itself is bending which ever way business seems to dictate this year leaving students gasping as courses are added, dropped, or radically altered.
Few of my fellows do anything for the love of it. Computers are thier job. They don't live it, they don't breathe it, and they don't want to. It's disturbing to me that the computing industry is truly becoming an industry, filling in with widgets who have no more interest than punching a clock and taking thier check.
In other news Geek has been added to the Endangered Species List...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, 3TB for 18 minutes? Impressive, but nothing I'd want to have to record in its native format. And here I though the TB array I just put in my Digital Video box would last me a while. ::mumble mubmle:: back to Fry's ::mumble mumble::
As another note on Hash, the guys who work on Animation Master are about the coolest I've ever met (it's not many offices you see where employees have parots on thier shoulders), and they're great people. Hash Inc owns the Columbia Arts Center and has done some amazing things to support art and culture in the Vancouver (Wa not BC) area.
Deploy a massive solar powered heating elements which raised the ambient temperature near the CO^2 glaciers. This might have the effect of accelerating the rate of melt, or sustaining a rate of melt if the change is seasonal.
I don't know what kind of heating system you'd want... the idea of monsterous hair dryers with heating elements blowing "hot air" over the martian glaciers is an amagingly funny image to conjure, but you could also bore pipes through the glacier and run hot liquid through the pipes... and I'm sure someone with a better science background than mine could come up with more.
Honestly though, this is something that's been talked about for years. Sci-fi authors have speculated about any number of ways in which we could terra-form mars. And many of them are scientifically sound. The problem is this:
Going to mars costs money. Terra-forming mars will cost alot of money. No individual, no matter how long lived, will ever see a teraforming project through from beginning to end... and few people are willing to start such a massively expensive endeavor when there is no payoff in thier own lifetime (nor the lifetimes of the next three or four generations).
Without doubt, this announcement is good news. It gives more for Sci-fi authors (self included) to work with to write plausable fiction. Remember, the best of sci-fi authors have a good grasp of physics / biology / astronomy when writing. That's why Aasimov and Sagan and the other Grand Masters have been able to write their imortal works... because they understand science well enough, that years later we aren't laughing and saying "wow, shows how little they knew!"
Okay, I'm done with my mini rant... back to work.
Now, think about a small video camera in your phone. 3G is the bandwidth to speak to eachother Face to Face (well sort of) over a cell phone. Add a little cradle for the thing (so you can sit and look at it) and you can put a face on the other end of the line. IMHO, that would be a worth while use of video on a phone.
But if that wasn't good enough, imagine calling 911, getting patched to an Paramedic with a video phone, and being able to pass video data to mdical techs on their way to the scene (they may even be able to help provide instructions for emergency care). Useful stuff if you ask me.
OTOH, this could suffer a catastorphic death to high cost and a perception that it's a fad. Witness the trouble going on with @Home. If high speed internet for a traditional internet market is floundering... who's going to jump on the band wagon for high speed Cell Phones?
Given the Japanese tendancy to change thier names whenever it suits them, (Hayashibara, Megumi-san, bless her heart, assumed that name near the start of her career), a real person named Kyoko Date wouldn't be that surprising. Especially in the J-pop / Seiyu arena.
The odd part to get used to is that we're talking about legal name changes here. We may be used to people working under pen names or other odd titles in american music, but would any one take "Snoop Dog" seriously of that was his actual name? Yet this tactic is common in the Japanese music inudstry (and japanese society in general) where names change frequently. After all, the name you got when your born is just a convienient lable for your parents until you figure out who you are, ne?
- Don't put "rate this sight" next to every hit. Instead, use a system of random assignment. Every x(where x is a random number) hits, give the user a "rate this site" dialogue. This cuts down on the potential for direct abuse.
- Add an option to sort by user rating, or sort by the current standard. This way, if people don't want to see user rated results, they don't have to.
I love google and all, but some of the things that make it to the top of the list from time to time are as useful to me as a 16 bit dos driver (for my RS/6000). It'd be good to see something resembling peer review on the web after all. Who knows, even if it fails, it might spark something that works! Best of luck google!Now that would be an ugly sight.
Step two: US Gov. Takes M$ to court because they have a manopoly on shuttle flights.
Step three: Shuttle crashes frequently while M$ and US Gov go back and forth in courts.
This has been a shameless joke at M$s expense... those who laugh will be assimilated at next reboot.
Let me first say, stick it out if you want to work in computers. The bachelors degree does mean something. Recently I starting working in an AIX unix devision. I'm a Systems Programmer 1 instead of a Senior System's Programmer because of my lack o' sheepskin. I don't mind... the sheep skin is not far off now. But in the first weeks of my job I found a love of coding that I didn't have in the class room. I was solving problems, writing custom solutions, and doing good work. It felt good to do something real. So, stick it out... you're more than half way there.
As to what to do to keep your self sane through the next few years, look at Student Government and Clubs. Most universities support rich environments for co-cirricular and extra-cirricualr activities. My college is sporting a robust Linux User Group and an Anime club I've been proud to help found and lead. The experience of being a student leader (while scoffed by many) is invaluable, and challanging. It's also rewarding to look at your institution, see problems, and be in a position to fix them!
Good luck, and may the Source be with you!
So, one day a week for the better part of a semester, I came in and walked these students through HTML basics. They never touched front page, but by the end of the quarter, I would consider them competent to render any written document into cleanly coded HTML.
The sad part was the places I couldn't go. The administration opposed installing any new software to support this once a week project, and so, in absence of Photoshop (no I couldn't even have gimp) we didn't cover graphics design. I spent a lot of time on my home box putting together packets of buttons and backgrounds. It allowed students to mix and match a bit, and gave me the ability to discuss some design issues, but I never really had a chance to let them start the ball on the graphics end.
At the end of it, I had a pile of student Counter Strike tips pages with staggering good information, but the majority couldn't distinguish between "Cool" and "Professional". But, I chalk that up to it being high school.
Knowing a bit of HTML may never get these kids a real job, but, they have learned a bit more about how the web really works. And who knows, it may have inspired them to go further into computing. (Or they may have decided geeks are wierd, and they should just stay away.)
Any word on what they're actually planning on selling it for? At least once purchased you can put it on multiple computers, but still... $99 is steep for a Linux. I'm also wondering if the $99 preview release is some sort of gimick to gain development funding (a Send Resume button at the top of Lindows.com is not confidence inspiring.
I had a problem with a few years ago. The vendor I purchased from refused to support me because I re-installed windows, and M$ refused to support the issue because it was OEM. What was even more infuriating was that I had taken the suspect box into the manufacturer who correctly identified the problem and said "no biggie, it'll just take five minutes". 5 Minutes later the tech walked back out and said "did you re-install windows?" when I said yes he said "Well, for a $50 servicing fee + $25/hour we'll reinstall windows and then you can have tech support back".
The funny part is that when I told M$ about this they sent me to pay per incedent support and solved the problem over the phone in 10 min for $35... M$ was CHEAPER!
The intersting bit is the support contract. We seldom use it. Typically, our own Computing Services techs are modifying units when they come in the door (some of our labs need zip drives, but the administration doesn't purchace them... so we add them on site. As an example). But the other factor has been response time. Even though we have a support contract, it's simply easier to say "We can fix this. Fix it now and send the broken part back to Gateway."
So how good is the support when we really need it? I have no idea... Computing Services answer to my problems with the Dell on my desk has largely been "You shouldn't be trying to do that anyway so it's not really a problem..." Ah well... that's another can of worms...
You can get fire wire controllers for PCs... I think it's beginning to crop up on mother boards as well. These Guys have fire wire goodies and they're just in the first 10 sites you get when you Google for "FireWire".
Wood makes a lot of sense for the Napalese. Think about it. It's abundant, it's cheap, and if they really got into the student educating bit, they could have students build their cases (anyone ever take wood shop?).
As far as heat goes, it's actually an easy problem to aleviate... open the case. If it ran semi-exposed they could dump a lot of heat. Also remember that the 486 was still able to run without a fan (fans and passive heat sinks were optional) so they won't be suffering quite as badly as, say, an athlon would.
Example: How many consumers really want an MP3 player in thier home entertainment system? We love it (and spend lots of time talking about the best way to do it), but does the average consumer?
I think this may be a trend. Geeks think of cool things, and start doing them. Someone in marketing says "Hey, look what the engeneers are putting together for themselves... if they want it and can do it... maybe we can market it!" A few months later geeks are interested... but marketing is looking at consumers not geeks... and projects get abandoned.
I mean, think about it, when's the last time you saw an add for a portable mp3 player on TV. I've just recently heard a few radio adds for car stereo with mp3 support... but nothing like the Rout 66 project.
be useful in determining exactly when "Quirky Engeneers" went the way of the dinasour? ;)
Windows guys, hardware techs, network techs, and most any position that can be filled with a few hundred hours of training or an associates degree is becomming very clean cut and corperate. There is an abundance of these guys and management can hire people who fit the corperate image rather than more "quirky" candidates.
In other areas, the supply is still scarce, and you take what you can get. (As the article says, they were having a hard time finding someone qualified).
The place I see the most freedom these days though, is with Web Developers and Graphic Artists. They're supposed to be creative, expressive, and different. I think they have to be a little quirky to get past the interview.
I don't mean to imply that all geeks are non social. Far from it. I think a large number of geeks are very social. However, I've lost track of the number of my fellow students (CS Majors)who want nothing to do with people. They like thier computer and like the fact that they don't have to deal with people to do something they love.
The question is, when NAN's become common (if they do) and neighbors begin turning to the neighborhood geek for support, how will those geeks who are uncomfortable in social situations react to their new found status as a valued member of the community? Or will they just stay in their comfortable little hole asking not to be bothered?
"He was so nice when I couldn't get xyz on the NAN all I had to do was message him and he solved my problem..." : Common comment by Annyonomous Grandma in the NAN era?
Or will this just pull the geeks out of their comfortable corners into social realms they don't want to be in? Will it force the geeks of the world to be more social?
What I'd love to see though... is Annyonomous Grandma taking a hand to the backside of the neightbor hood Script Kiddies... or better yet, DoSing them of the NAN herself!
Honestly I think this is a good middle ground for portability. When you want a computer you can haul about anywhere but don't require the ability to actually use it when you're in transit it beats the heck out of a laptop.
It might also be a good platform for some presentations. I know when I'm doing premier demos, I'm working with a computer + projector on either RGB or S-Video... this would be an easy box to throw on a desktop at home and bring to any site for a demo. (At least for the Poor College Student doing demos to college clubs and user groups!)
Many of my classmates are coming into the industry looking for a job. They jabber about "certification this" and "Test prep for X". The school itself is bending which ever way business seems to dictate this year leaving students gasping as courses are added, dropped, or radically altered.
Few of my fellows do anything for the love of it. Computers are thier job. They don't live it, they don't breathe it, and they don't want to. It's disturbing to me that the computing industry is truly becoming an industry, filling in with widgets who have no more interest than punching a clock and taking thier check.
In other news Geek has been added to the Endangered Species List...