Don't blame the chipmakers. Place the blame squarely in Sprint's lap. The engineeering types there have been pleading with marketeers to put Blutetooth support in their phones, explicitly to support things like web browsing over PDA's and laptops. Unfortunately, the marketeers haven't been able to figure out how to profitably sell (and even more important, to control) such services to the 'great unwashed masses' and in particular, us geeky types, that would just 'take advantage' of Sprint's good graces, and set up Kazaa and Napster nodes on every cell connection in site, thus jamming and congesting their poor lil' ol' network.
At the moment, things are in a kind of Mexican standoff with Sprint. Hooking a PDA or laptop to one of their cell phones is against their Terms of Service (no kidding, in spite of the fact that they *sell* PDAphones like the Samsung i330, and connectable ones like the Samsung A500, but then try to bury all the cables so no one can connect to them), but it doesn't stop a small, determined group of users from being able to get reasonable connectivity at will, to check on email, or to get their Slash fix. 8-)
Sprint sells a PCMCIA card for $300, along with a so-called 'data account' for $120 a month for 80 Mbytes max. This is laughable, considering that any of their Vision-enabled phones that support a pass-through connection will do just fine, and all Vision phones have an unlimited data allowance. Why would anyone in their right mind buy the data card and account?
Sprint is mortally afraid that if they start shipping Bluetooth-enabled phones that will become so easy for folks to hook up, they will lose what little control they think they have over the situation now (mainly making it hard to find the cables for some of the phones, but for ones like the Samsung i330, which is a Palm, it comes with a syncing cradle that doubles very nicely as a passthrough modem connection, thank you very much 8-).
If the companies weren't so busy worrying about how they can ultimately control everyone's online experience, we would all be a lot farther along, and there would be an even bigger market for everyone to share.
Thanks for that pointer (although we could do without the pop-up junk).
The Bill Knapp's restaurant chain (now defunt) had a button in the wall, that when depressed, would play a rendition of Happy Birthday over the music system, while the waitpern brought out one of those little free chocolate cakes for the birthday person.
One of the manager's monthly report items to Bill Knapp's corporate was an accounting of the number of times the Happy Birthday song button had been pushed, presumably so that Bill Knapp's corporate offices could settle with the copyright holders.
OK, let's try this again. I know the RIAA says that they are concerned about music sharing in general, but so far, their techniques involve scanning MP3 files looking for violations.
So far, I've not heard of *anyone* being accidentally accused of illegal song swapping when the RIAA stumbled over their collection of.ogg files, mainly becuase I believe that the RIAA is so clueless it will take them another few years to even realize that folks can harbor music collections in some other format than all the proprietary commercial ones out there (MP3, WMP, WAV, etc, etc)
I mainly brought up the Ogg issue, because a number of folks have complained about the possibility (quite real, from recent accounts) of being hassled by the RIAA for legal music collections that were somehow 'discovered' to be on their personal or work computers. Not that using Ogg is a total solution, but a combination of common sense and staying under the radar, by using something besides what all the illegal song swappers seem to be currently using, should help to keep your life a little more hassle-free.
You can use MP3 if you want, but I'll be smug and say that I stand less of a chance of getting a knock on the door from the RIAA and/or their minions someday than you. And no, I don't post my.oggs publicly, but I do carry them around with me from place to place on various media (CD-R/RW, CF, USB HD), including work, and just want to enjoy my music, not spend a lot of time explaining where I got all those MP3s (not!) from.
If that doesn't make any sense to you, then just write me off as a kook, if that makes you feel any better. I like ogg, not only because of freedom from MP3s patent issues, but I've found it produces smaller, better sounding files (to my ears) than MP3 does.
Check out tckOggRipper, at TheKompany.com. It's a free download, and you can get ones for both Linux and Windows (maybe Mac, too, I don't recall).
To be more clear, if you eschew MP3 format entirely, and use Ogg instead, then you won't get hassled by the RIAA, even accidentally. Further, you will be helping to move away from the patent issues surrounding MP3 format.
The more folks that find (and support) companies that support Ogg, the better off everyone will be.
What better excuse than to keep the RIAA away from your door?
I rip my own CD collection with Ogg Vorbis..ogg format is unemcumbered by patents (unlike MP3 -- is *your* ripper legal?).
Except for some genre music (Celtic, Jazz, etc) from unsigned artists I've obtained (legally) from the old MP3.COM site (before it was vilified), I have *no* MP3's for the RIAA to find, even if they manage to bust in through my firewall (or my front door, with or without a search warrant).
All of my ripping is for migrating from one media to another, and is protected by fair use.
A recent TV news report in the metro Detroit area featured a used-car dealership that used exactly such tactics, only even worse than you imagine.
Their customers are considered 'high-risk' borrowers, so they must make payments once a week, in person, at the dealership. In addition, if they miss a payment, their car dies in the middle of the street somewhere, courtesy of an intelligent kill switch that must be reset at the dealership. If the customer abandons the car, it is a simply matter for the dealership to locate it and pick it up.
The TV station interviewed some customers to get their feedback on the system, and they all said something to the effect that "they were glad to be able to get wheels at all, and they were grateful that this dealership had found a way to help them out".
I'd say it takes someone in a pretty desparate situation to knowingly get into a deal like that. It makes me shudder. Reminds me of a recent EPIC article about 'Poverty and Privacy' (or how those in poverty don't get any privacy).
This kind of thing is pervasive in the 'real' world. I really don't want to welcome that kind of 'feature creep' into geekdom.
Ah, this brings back memories, all right. I had a KSR 28 (no paper tape reader/punch) hooked to a Digital Group Z-80 based CP/M system (wrote the CP/M Bios myself, to use the NEC floppy controller that was in the system).
An interesting feature of the Digital Group system was 'minimal hardware', in that there was no serial chip at all in the I/O. Rather, you used a 'bit-banger' parallel to serial software timing loop, to send bits serially out on of the parallel I/O lines.
So the challenge was modifying the supplied 8-bit ASCII serial driver to send at a different baud rate and number of data bits (not too difficult) and 1 and 1/2 stop bits (that turned out to be tricky, IIRC, for some reason). On yeah, you also had to implement a lookup table scheme for transliterating ASCII to/from Baudot, and don't forget that Baudot has a 'letters' and 'figures' state that must be kept track of. Also, no lower-case alphas.
Anyway, loads of fun, and you certainly learn a lot of low-level kinds of stuff when hacking on systems like that. Very useful for working on embedded systems as a profession later in life.
Now, how about showing some civility and by not implying that I might have lied about reading the FCC regs?
I agree with everything in your above post. And I'll grant you the civility if you will grant us the courtesy of labeling 'your belief' as such, instead of presenting as fact, as you appear to have done previously.
As a matter of fact, I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt, and apologize. It's just that I'm tired myself of the poor state of consumer electronics brought about precisely becuase of the above Part 15 lip-service situation.
If a piece of consumer electronics is FCC approved, then it should not be the responsibility of the consumer to have anything "fixed."
That's a fallacy, and you know it, if you've read the FCC regs as you've claimed.
I'd say you were lucky in at least one respect. A stereo that shows interference in the speakers when turned off, is glaringly at fault. If means that the speaker wires are acting as antennas, and feeding RF back into the speaker terminals on the receiver. Back feeding current like this into speaker terminals is usually met with a non-linear load, which will then rectify the RF and produce the interference you were hearing.
This is never the fault of the transmitting station, and cannot be cured by reducing power or installing filters on the transmitter. It is quite possible, of course, to reduce it below a certain threshold, past which you cannot hear the interference any more, by taking some of the measures you indicated that the ham operator took, particularly reducing power, and getting a more efficient power transfer match to his antenna. Reducing power is an obvious one, but fixing a poor antenna match may not seem so. It would likely have to do with how much loose RF was running around on other conductors (including house wiring, gutters, etc) instead of in the antenna, which may have a more favorable orientation (high, and away from the level of your house/stereo wiring), but I would re-iterate that your stereo has no business picking up RF, even in the presence of relatively strong fields, and the better solution for all involved would have been to place bypass capacitors on the speaker terminals, and if necessary, RF chokes.
Other issues that might arise around the house that involve non-RF receivers (like phones, light dimmers, etc.) all involve fixes that need to be applied to the affected unit. Fixing the transmitter (except switching it off) will do nothing to aleviate the problem. And no, switching off the transmitter is not a proper solution. As much as you might hate it, a properly licensed FCC station, operating within established guidelines and limits, is not apriori considered the 'bad guy' in any givem interference situation.
In fact, these days, I would say in the majority of interference cases, the shoe is incresingly on the other foot. Over the past dozen or so years, I've had to put with with an increasing cacaphony of consumer electronic devices, both in my home and in my nearby neighbors, that have raised the noise floor considerably, so much so now, that I have had problems recently working VHF and UHF satellites reliably. The HF band is a mess of buzzes, birdies, and other digitally generated garbage, from things as disparate as RF-dirty light dimmers and light-sensing porch light switches, squeqqing switching power supplies in always-on subwoofer amplifiers, and X-10 power line control modules.
Add to that that my mobile HF installation has suffered long from Ford's inability to produce an in-tank fuel pump since the early 90's, and I find that I can't even effectively use HF mobile, unless I kill the engine. I'm still having a running battle with Ford over that one, since they have a fix, but want to charge my over $400 for labor to install it. This is a case of a Part 15 infraction, and the FCC's stance is that it is my responsibility to fix it, and Ford is willing to supply an RF fix kit, but it takes a qualified mechanic to install it, since it involves dropping the fuel tank -- not for the shade-tree mechanic.
So, the next time you have RF interference problems, please stop to consider what a really crowded RF spectrum things have become, and give the hams a break. They certainly have had to put with a lot of interference from all your playtoys over the years.
3000 spams a month? Surely you must be kidding. I get 3000 every couple of days, the curse of owning a domain for about ten years or so...
Rachet and Clank Suck Cannon
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 1
Eh, Ratchet and Clank has prior art in this area, with their very effective Suck Cannon. You can even use the Morpho Ray to turn anything into chickens, and then suck 'em up with the Suck Cannon. Best feature is that you can than use the Suck Cannon to fire those chickens at anything else you care to mow down.
You getcha' ammo for nothin', and your chickens for free...
Aside from the illustrations in the book (I posted some of them on my cube walls in the past), the barf bag (still attached to the back inside cover) was the real find. It helped convinced those Windows smucks I have to work with from time to time that even us Unix weenies have a sense of humor...
Back in the days when it was popular to make pirate copies of 8 track tapes, Elvis was traveling with his manager and stopped at a gas station in the Tennessee mountains. The tape display was full of pirate tapes, including some Elvis tapes. Elvis got the fire hatchet and busted up the display. When the owner whined, "What am I going to tell the guy when he comes for his money?" Elvis, said, "Tell him 'Killer' was here."
Oh, I wouldn't deny your fun as a hobbyist. I should know, I've been a ham radio nut for over thirty years. In spite of the fact that I can buy (almost) all of the latest digital equipment (budget and XYL notwithstanding 8-), there is still that yen to do some 'homebrewing' of things like antennas, kits, etc., including encouraging my young grandson to do the same.
For professionals that need to be productive in today's competitive environment, though, I find that most that still use film have long since farmed out their darkroom work to some trusted local labs. At a recent Nikon Digital School of Photography session, I sat next to a professional wedding photographer, and was able to share notes with them about what kinds of things they find important in their work. It was certainly different than my viewpoint as an advanced amateur photographer (who has developed and printed his own film in the past, thank you 8-).
Many pros are 'on the edge' at the moment, trying to decide if the current state of the art, and the trouble of learning something complex like PhotoShop is worth the trouble and the likely temporary loss of productivity they will experience by modifying the workflow they've become accustomed to.
As far as PhotoShop goes, at the moment, most pros are being told to 'do it themselves' which doesn't always go over well with the ones that have become comfortable sending things to outside labs. It's kind of like the office productivity paradox, where putting computers on all the desks turned everyone into their own secretary, rather than 'dashing off' a memo and letting someone else deal with the margins, spelling, grammer, etc. After spending billions on sophisticated computer equipment so everyone could 'do it themselves' we aren't any more productive now than in the 60's, when everyone gave dictation to secretaries in the typing pool.
So, 'do it yourself' if you like, but don't use that as a reason to invalidate others' reasons for not wanting to it in the darkroom.
Be patient, Grasshopper. What used to cost $39K a couple of years ago, is now going for $8K. While the pros agonize over when medium and large format backs come down out of the stratosphere, 35 mm size sensors will quickly reach the 'pro-sumer' and then the amateur market. I would predict that the minute something like the Canon EOS 1Ds becomes available for under, say $2K, there will be a rush to 35 mm-format digital SLRs in the pro-sumer crowd. The rest, as they say, is history.
I used to think as you do, until I spent some time at http://www.luminous-landscape.com.
In particular, read the reviews posted by a real, live professional photographer on the 11MP Canon EOS 1Ds. Listen to what Michael has to say. He has shot thousands of 35 mm and also large and medium format pictures, landscape, street, and wildlife. He has switched essentially from 35 mm film format (his Canon 1V) to the EOS 1Ds (with his Canon D60 as a lower-resolution backup), and is not sorry one bit. He still has his medium format cameras, though, as a hedge until digital backs for those cameras come down out of the stratosphere.
Not everyone wants to spend time in a pitch-black color darkroom, where you can't even use a safety light, with all those chemicals and mess, especially if they ultimately end up scanning the resulting film for digital retouching and printing. The enlarger is dead, my friend. See what Michael and others have to say about professional inkjet printers like the Epson 2200.
Yeah, I got an ABIT with a 700 MHz Athlon a little over a year ago, to replace the first board that came in the machine, that had become very flaky. The first board was an AMD 266 MHz Microstar, which I hear also had bad caps.
So, the upshot is that I replace one bad cap board with another one, and about a year later, it goes bad. At least maybe I'll be able to get ABIT to fix this one.
In the meantime, I'm on my third MB in this machine. Using an ASUS with an honest-to-god Intel processor and chipset. Among other things, I'm tired of chasing down 3rd-party finger pointing incompatibilities, when somebody's butt-thumper video board doesn't play nice with somebody's Intel-clone chipset.
Everytime I have to change MB's though, it costs me a bundle, because the video board, power supply, and RAM usually have to upgraded, due to increased requirements or incompatibilities.
In spite of the judgement against them many years ago, I don't believe that Nintendo has changed their strong arm tactics with retailers in the US since. Hasn't anyone noticed that when there is a big 'sale' on Nintendo boxes that all the retailers in town advertise the *exact same price right down to the penny*? Hmm? That doesn't happen by accident, boys and girls. I know the manager of a local ToysRUs and have listened to the complaints about Nintendo's threats to drop them as a retailer if they attempt to undersell any of their competitors. Once upon a time, there was a federal law enacted known as 'fair trade' that was supposed to protect retailers from aggressive mail order houses. Instead, the manufacturers are using the law to crack the whip on their retailers, preventing them from competing on price/margin in the marketplace. The whole things disgusts me...
I've used WebViewer on my Samsung A500 (Sprint PCS phone) and found that I can't enter text in the search box on http://www.google.com/palm. This is a really bad limitation, and in spite of a lot of back and forth with the nice tech support folks, they can't fix it because they don't have an A500, and can't reproduce it on the models they have on hand. So J2ME is not exactly the standard platform (apparently) that everyone claims it is. I'm waiting for someone to put out a proper HTML browser for the Samsung, because the WAP 2.0 one built in to the unit just plain sucks.
Slashdot Mirror
At the moment, things are in a kind of Mexican standoff with Sprint. Hooking a PDA or laptop to one of their cell phones is against their Terms of Service (no kidding, in spite of the fact that they *sell* PDAphones like the Samsung i330, and connectable ones like the Samsung A500, but then try to bury all the cables so no one can connect to them), but it doesn't stop a small, determined group of users from being able to get reasonable connectivity at will, to check on email, or to get their Slash fix. 8-)
Sprint sells a PCMCIA card for $300, along with a so-called 'data account' for $120 a month for 80 Mbytes max. This is laughable, considering that any of their Vision-enabled phones that support a pass-through connection will do just fine, and all Vision phones have an unlimited data allowance. Why would anyone in their right mind buy the data card and account?
Sprint is mortally afraid that if they start shipping Bluetooth-enabled phones that will become so easy for folks to hook up, they will lose what little control they think they have over the situation now (mainly making it hard to find the cables for some of the phones, but for ones like the Samsung i330, which is a Palm, it comes with a syncing cradle that doubles very nicely as a passthrough modem connection, thank you very much 8-).
If the companies weren't so busy worrying about how they can ultimately control everyone's online experience, we would all be a lot farther along, and there would be an even bigger market for everyone to share.
Thanks for that pointer (although we could do without the pop-up junk).
The Bill Knapp's restaurant chain (now defunt) had a button in the wall, that when depressed, would play a rendition of Happy Birthday over the music system, while the waitpern brought out one of those little free chocolate cakes for the birthday person.
One of the manager's monthly report items to Bill Knapp's corporate was an accounting of the number of times the Happy Birthday song button had been pushed, presumably so that Bill Knapp's corporate offices could settle with the copyright holders.
OK, let's try this again. I know the RIAA says that they are concerned about music sharing in general, but so far, their techniques involve scanning MP3 files looking for violations.
.ogg files, mainly becuase I believe that the RIAA is so clueless it will take them another few years to even realize that folks can harbor music collections in some other format than all the proprietary commercial ones out there (MP3, WMP, WAV, etc, etc)
.oggs publicly, but I do carry them around with me from place to place on various media (CD-R/RW, CF, USB HD), including work, and just want to enjoy my music, not spend a lot of time explaining where I got all those MP3s (not!) from.
So far, I've not heard of *anyone* being accidentally accused of illegal song swapping when the RIAA stumbled over their collection of
I mainly brought up the Ogg issue, because a number of folks have complained about the possibility (quite real, from recent accounts) of being hassled by the RIAA for legal music collections that were somehow 'discovered' to be on their personal or work computers. Not that using Ogg is a total solution, but a combination of common sense and staying under the radar, by using something besides what all the illegal song swappers seem to be currently using, should help to keep your life a little more hassle-free.
You can use MP3 if you want, but I'll be smug and say that I stand less of a chance of getting a knock on the door from the RIAA and/or their minions someday than you. And no, I don't post my
If that doesn't make any sense to you, then just write me off as a kook, if that makes you feel any better. I like ogg, not only because of freedom from MP3s patent issues, but I've found it produces smaller, better sounding files (to my ears) than MP3 does.
Check out tckOggRipper, at TheKompany.com. It's a free download, and you can get ones for both Linux and Windows (maybe Mac, too, I don't recall).
To be more clear, if you eschew MP3 format entirely, and use Ogg instead, then you won't get hassled by the RIAA, even accidentally. Further, you will be helping to move away from the patent issues surrounding MP3 format.
The more folks that find (and support) companies that support Ogg, the better off everyone will be.
What better excuse than to keep the RIAA away from your door?
I rip my own CD collection with Ogg Vorbis. .ogg format is unemcumbered by patents (unlike MP3 -- is *your* ripper legal?).
Except for some genre music (Celtic, Jazz, etc) from unsigned artists I've obtained (legally) from the old MP3.COM site (before it was vilified), I have *no* MP3's for the RIAA to find, even if they manage to bust in through my firewall (or my front door, with or without a search warrant).
All of my ripping is for migrating from one media to another, and is protected by fair use.
The RIAA can go suck an egg, for all I care.
If you already have a PS2, just stick a network interface on it ($30), and get the QCast Tuner software ($50) from BroadQ.
Their server runs on Java, and will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
Turns the PS2 into a nice multimedia platform.
A recent TV news report in the metro Detroit area featured a used-car dealership that used exactly such tactics, only even worse than you imagine.
Their customers are considered 'high-risk' borrowers, so they must make payments once a week, in person, at the dealership. In addition, if they miss a payment, their car dies in the middle of the street somewhere, courtesy of an intelligent kill switch that must be reset at the dealership. If the customer abandons the car, it is a simply matter for the dealership to locate it and pick it up.
The TV station interviewed some customers to get their feedback on the system, and they all said something to the effect that "they were glad to be able to get wheels at all, and they were grateful that this dealership had found a way to help them out".
I'd say it takes someone in a pretty desparate situation to knowingly get into a deal like that. It makes me shudder. Reminds me of a recent EPIC article about 'Poverty and Privacy' (or how those in poverty don't get any privacy).
This kind of thing is pervasive in the 'real' world. I really don't want to welcome that kind of 'feature creep' into geekdom.
Ah, this brings back memories, all right. I had a KSR 28 (no paper tape reader/punch) hooked to a Digital Group Z-80 based CP/M system (wrote the CP/M Bios myself, to use the NEC floppy controller that was in the system).
An interesting feature of the Digital Group system was 'minimal hardware', in that there was no serial chip at all in the I/O. Rather, you used a 'bit-banger' parallel to serial software timing loop, to send bits serially out on of the parallel I/O lines.
So the challenge was modifying the supplied 8-bit ASCII serial driver to send at a different baud rate and number of data bits (not too difficult) and 1 and 1/2 stop bits (that turned out to be tricky, IIRC, for some reason). On yeah, you also had to implement a lookup table scheme for transliterating ASCII to/from Baudot, and don't forget that Baudot has a 'letters' and 'figures' state that must be kept track of. Also, no lower-case alphas.
Anyway, loads of fun, and you certainly learn a lot of low-level kinds of stuff when hacking on systems like that. Very useful for working on embedded systems as a profession later in life.
Now, how about showing some civility and by not implying that I might have lied about reading the FCC regs? I agree with everything in your above post. And I'll grant you the civility if you will grant us the courtesy of labeling 'your belief' as such, instead of presenting as fact, as you appear to have done previously. As a matter of fact, I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt, and apologize. It's just that I'm tired myself of the poor state of consumer electronics brought about precisely becuase of the above Part 15 lip-service situation.
If a piece of consumer electronics is FCC approved, then it should not be the responsibility of the consumer to have anything "fixed." That's a fallacy, and you know it, if you've read the FCC regs as you've claimed.
I'd say you were lucky in at least one respect. A stereo that shows interference in the speakers when turned off, is glaringly at fault. If means that the speaker wires are acting as antennas, and feeding RF back into the speaker terminals on the receiver. Back feeding current like this into speaker terminals is usually met with a non-linear load, which will then rectify the RF and produce the interference you were hearing. This is never the fault of the transmitting station, and cannot be cured by reducing power or installing filters on the transmitter. It is quite possible, of course, to reduce it below a certain threshold, past which you cannot hear the interference any more, by taking some of the measures you indicated that the ham operator took, particularly reducing power, and getting a more efficient power transfer match to his antenna. Reducing power is an obvious one, but fixing a poor antenna match may not seem so. It would likely have to do with how much loose RF was running around on other conductors (including house wiring, gutters, etc) instead of in the antenna, which may have a more favorable orientation (high, and away from the level of your house/stereo wiring), but I would re-iterate that your stereo has no business picking up RF, even in the presence of relatively strong fields, and the better solution for all involved would have been to place bypass capacitors on the speaker terminals, and if necessary, RF chokes. Other issues that might arise around the house that involve non-RF receivers (like phones, light dimmers, etc.) all involve fixes that need to be applied to the affected unit. Fixing the transmitter (except switching it off) will do nothing to aleviate the problem. And no, switching off the transmitter is not a proper solution. As much as you might hate it, a properly licensed FCC station, operating within established guidelines and limits, is not apriori considered the 'bad guy' in any givem interference situation. In fact, these days, I would say in the majority of interference cases, the shoe is incresingly on the other foot. Over the past dozen or so years, I've had to put with with an increasing cacaphony of consumer electronic devices, both in my home and in my nearby neighbors, that have raised the noise floor considerably, so much so now, that I have had problems recently working VHF and UHF satellites reliably. The HF band is a mess of buzzes, birdies, and other digitally generated garbage, from things as disparate as RF-dirty light dimmers and light-sensing porch light switches, squeqqing switching power supplies in always-on subwoofer amplifiers, and X-10 power line control modules. Add to that that my mobile HF installation has suffered long from Ford's inability to produce an in-tank fuel pump since the early 90's, and I find that I can't even effectively use HF mobile, unless I kill the engine. I'm still having a running battle with Ford over that one, since they have a fix, but want to charge my over $400 for labor to install it. This is a case of a Part 15 infraction, and the FCC's stance is that it is my responsibility to fix it, and Ford is willing to supply an RF fix kit, but it takes a qualified mechanic to install it, since it involves dropping the fuel tank -- not for the shade-tree mechanic. So, the next time you have RF interference problems, please stop to consider what a really crowded RF spectrum things have become, and give the hams a break. They certainly have had to put with a lot of interference from all your playtoys over the years.
3000 spams a month? Surely you must be kidding. I get 3000 every couple of days, the curse of owning a domain for about ten years or so...
You getcha' ammo for nothin', and your chickens for free...
Aside from the illustrations in the book (I posted some of them on my cube walls in the past), the barf bag (still attached to the back inside cover) was the real find. It helped convinced those Windows smucks I have to work with from time to time that even us Unix weenies have a sense of humor...
Back in the days when it was popular to make pirate copies of 8 track tapes, Elvis was traveling with his manager and stopped at a gas station in the Tennessee mountains. The tape display was full of pirate tapes, including some Elvis tapes. Elvis got the fire hatchet and busted up the display. When the owner whined, "What am I going to tell the guy when he comes for his money?" Elvis, said, "Tell him 'Killer' was here."
Sorry, the SD slot on the Zaurus is not I/O enabled. If you want to run Bluetooth, you will need to plug it in the CF slot...
For professionals that need to be productive in today's competitive environment, though, I find that most that still use film have long since farmed out their darkroom work to some trusted local labs. At a recent Nikon Digital School of Photography session, I sat next to a professional wedding photographer, and was able to share notes with them about what kinds of things they find important in their work. It was certainly different than my viewpoint as an advanced amateur photographer (who has developed and printed his own film in the past, thank you 8-).
Many pros are 'on the edge' at the moment, trying to decide if the current state of the art, and the trouble of learning something complex like PhotoShop is worth the trouble and the likely temporary loss of productivity they will experience by modifying the workflow they've become accustomed to.
As far as PhotoShop goes, at the moment, most pros are being told to 'do it themselves' which doesn't always go over well with the ones that have become comfortable sending things to outside labs. It's kind of like the office productivity paradox, where putting computers on all the desks turned everyone into their own secretary, rather than 'dashing off' a memo and letting someone else deal with the margins, spelling, grammer, etc. After spending billions on sophisticated computer equipment so everyone could 'do it themselves' we aren't any more productive now than in the 60's, when everyone gave dictation to secretaries in the typing pool.
So, 'do it yourself' if you like, but don't use that as a reason to invalidate others' reasons for not wanting to it in the darkroom.
Be patient, Grasshopper. What used to cost $39K a couple of years ago, is now going for $8K. While the pros agonize over when medium and large format backs come down out of the stratosphere, 35 mm size sensors will quickly reach the 'pro-sumer' and then the amateur market. I would predict that the minute something like the Canon EOS 1Ds becomes available for under, say $2K, there will be a rush to 35 mm-format digital SLRs in the pro-sumer crowd. The rest, as they say, is history.
In particular, read the reviews posted by a real, live professional photographer on the 11MP Canon EOS 1Ds. Listen to what Michael has to say. He has shot thousands of 35 mm and also large and medium format pictures, landscape, street, and wildlife. He has switched essentially from 35 mm film format (his Canon 1V) to the EOS 1Ds (with his Canon D60 as a lower-resolution backup), and is not sorry one bit. He still has his medium format cameras, though, as a hedge until digital backs for those cameras come down out of the stratosphere.
Not everyone wants to spend time in a pitch-black color darkroom, where you can't even use a safety light, with all those chemicals and mess, especially if they ultimately end up scanning the resulting film for digital retouching and printing. The enlarger is dead, my friend. See what Michael and others have to say about professional inkjet printers like the Epson 2200.
So, the upshot is that I replace one bad cap board with another one, and about a year later, it goes bad. At least maybe I'll be able to get ABIT to fix this one.
In the meantime, I'm on my third MB in this machine. Using an ASUS with an honest-to-god Intel processor and chipset. Among other things, I'm tired of chasing down 3rd-party finger pointing incompatibilities, when somebody's butt-thumper video board doesn't play nice with somebody's Intel-clone chipset.
Everytime I have to change MB's though, it costs me a bundle, because the video board, power supply, and RAM usually have to upgraded, due to increased requirements or incompatibilities.
In spite of the judgement against them many years ago, I don't believe that Nintendo has changed their strong arm tactics with retailers in the US since. Hasn't anyone noticed that when there is a big 'sale' on Nintendo boxes that all the retailers in town advertise the *exact same price right down to the penny*? Hmm? That doesn't happen by accident, boys and girls. I know the manager of a local ToysRUs and have listened to the complaints about Nintendo's threats to drop them as a retailer if they attempt to undersell any of their competitors. Once upon a time, there was a federal law enacted known as 'fair trade' that was supposed to protect retailers from aggressive mail order houses. Instead, the manufacturers are using the law to crack the whip on their retailers, preventing them from competing on price/margin in the marketplace. The whole things disgusts me...
I've used WebViewer on my Samsung A500 (Sprint PCS phone) and found that I can't enter text in the search box on http://www.google.com/palm. This is a really bad limitation, and in spite of a lot of back and forth with the nice tech support folks, they can't fix it because they don't have an A500, and can't reproduce it on the models they have on hand. So J2ME is not exactly the standard platform (apparently) that everyone claims it is. I'm waiting for someone to put out a proper HTML browser for the Samsung, because the WAP 2.0 one built in to the unit just plain sucks.