Converting an AVI or MPEG stream into a VCD-compliant MPEG stream is so non-difficult as to be laughable.
...but your argument that it's too difficult or time consuming to put the show on VCD just doesn't fly for me...
...you might almost have an argument.
I know it's trivial, I've done it before. I just don't want to bother.
Contemplate that for a second: I don't want to bother.
More importantly: I won't bother to. Neither do I think many other folks would.
I've no interest in every two weeks downloading the latest Cringley-whatever, burning it to VCD, playing it. I just don't care that much about it. Online, if it were fast, and reasonable quality - Maybe. It would depend on the topics, it would depend on my free time, it would depend on how good previous editions had been. But to go out of my way? No.
I'm not making an argument, I'm not apologizing for my disinterest, I don't care how it flies or not with you (really I don't give a shit) - I'm just telling you how it is.
You may wait with bated breath for the latest installment, put it on a special monitor, set aside some personal "quality time" for it, but I think you'll be one of the few.
The reality is that the online experience is an immediate one and speedbumps are aren't bumps: They're mountains.
Requiring folks use p2p to download: Death.
Requiring folks to download a special plug-in: Death.
Requiring folks download a big file then play it later: Death.
Requiring folks to have a specific type of player to view it: Death.
Oh some will do it, but I expect it'll be a fraction, a small fraction, of the folks who read his column now. At least if it were in some sort of hyperlinked SMIL-type format, or QT, or whatever, then only the relevant portions of the appropriate depth could be downloaded, and presumably fast enough so they could stream. But finding, downloading, munging, then playing a big file? No thanks.
And if you approve or not? Like I could care. Get some perspective on yourself.
Great, legions of office workers poking the their boss's eyes out to log in every morning, doubtlessly from left to right.
Next up will be the "Tapping System" where folks will rap out "Haircut & A Shave" on their desk to log in.
What other quirks of human nature will next be put to use trying to identify folks? The "Mictation Flex Rate"? The "Eyebrow Lift/Tongue Roll"? How about the "Tell the Same Stupid Joke" one; I've had co-workers who've been able to do those hundreds of times over & over without a single variation.
Or just teach folks how to use good paswords, put in some really good acceptance tests, and make it clear that if security is compromised by their poor password choice they'll be held responsable, same as leaving the door to the safe open.
In the novel 2001, the joke about HAL was that H, A, L are one letter before I, B, M, so HAL was one step ahead of IBM.
Actually Arthur C. Clarke has denied this repeatedly, loudly, and at this point irritably. He even wrote Byte Magazine a few years ago correcting their reference to this geek lore. He claims this is just one of those accidents that happens and indeed in his book "The Worlds of 2001" goes into a bit on how HAL's name actually did come about: Pretty much happenstance, it was "Athena" through most of drafts.
IBM/HAL, Santa/Saten, its all part of a biiig plot...
Personally I'm glad it appears the column will be kept, or perhaps expanded. Frankly I'm never excited to watch things on my monitor but prefer to read them. I've got a TV tuner and plenty of codecs, a fine screen and all but still I prefer my video on the TV laying on the couch with my feet up. Even when I do watch webcasts I find myself cutting out halfway through to come back later and read the transcript, check the commentary. Indeed I'd prefer this the other way round: Read the column and jump to the video if I'm intrigued.
Step 1: Download.
Step 2: Convert to VCD.
Step 3: Burn to CD or CDRW.
Step 4: Insert into any DVD player worth owning, or inexpensive VCD players.
Better: Spend the time & effort on any of a half dozen more interesting, more rewarding, less-of-a-hassle activities.
Sort socks
Clean out shed
Fix the IDs on the MP3 collection
Make a great dinner for the honey & reap the rewards
Sorry, Bob may put out a great program but there's no way I'd bother to burn it to a VCD to watch in the other room. Hell I've got a couple gig of porn VCDs littering the scratch drive I'd be motivated to burn to VCD before that.
Wasn't there a Science Fiction story in which a major plot element was a large hunk of chicken flesh grown to feed a community?
It's a SF cliché; any number of stories refer to vat-grown meat blobs. Asimov, Heinlein, Bova, Niven, Pournelle, lots of folks have this in stories from the 1950's on, maybe before.
When is/. just going to get rights to post Cringely's columns? 50% of them make the main queue, he's certainly more popular then Katz.
Cringley is careful in the beginning to make it clear the video isn't meant to streamed but downloaded and watched later, shared around, put on p2p networks. Then he goes on to explain that the necessary bandwidth has been made available. So what of it; just make it streaming in an easily savable format and ask folks to share, why make a big deal of it?
Four versions is an interesting idea. More interesting would be to use something like SMIL to let folks navigate their own way through the video, in effect hyperlink it. If the intro blurb interests you get the expanded version or go right to the source material. Embed citations and links to outside material right in the stream so folks can pop out to follow up references. There's no need to make it just like linear video-only TV, stick in real material folks can pull out.
Personally I'm glad it appears the column will be kept, or perhaps expanded. Frankly I'm never excited to watch things on my monitor but prefer to read them. I've got a TV tuner and plenty of codecs, a fine screen and all but still I prefer my video on the TV laying on the couch with my feet up. Even when I do watch webcasts I find myself cutting out halfway through to come back later and read the transcript, check the commentary. Indeed I'd prefer this the other way round: Read the column and jump to the video if I'm intrigued.
Finally comes the dreaded format issues: Which? I suppose this depends a lot on the sponsor really. If it's Apple then will there be non-QT or at least non-Soronson versions? (QT 6 with MPEG4 anyone?) If MS non MS-specific versions? If Real ones that don't require their ghastly "Player" miscegenation? There are lots of possibilities here, I just hope we don't get a talking-head production aping "The Computer Chronicles" or TechTV.
We've got funky electrical/magnetic problems going on in our office splace - any ideas?
Funky power is going to shorten the life of your hardware significantly. I used to work at a company where a series of IS servers "mysteriously" kept failing. When it became my turn to rebuild the fool thing I discovered it wasn't in our many-million-dollar server facility but down the hall from it, under a counter, plugged in next to a photocopier, big old laser printer and two fax machines. After discovering this and taking a look at the transients I'm was impressed they were lasting as long as they did. In your case hiding the problem with LCD displays isn't going to solve it.
On the other hand it could be lighting. Tube lighting flickers a lot and that can interact with the refresh rates on your monitors, particularly if you've all the same brand of monitors or your OS or staff keep setting them to the same refresh rates. Test this by adjusting the refresh rates of some monitors via software. Make one 65Hz, another 75Hz, if you can make another 85Hz. Also try working without the tube lighting. Get in some fill (torchier) and task (desklamp) lighting, preferably incandescent, and see if they obviate the problem.
So, if its not your eyes what devices are within 10m (same floor, floors above & below)? What devices are on the same circuits as your server? Are any of them motors, generators, heavy or intermittent draw devices? This includes laser printers, big fax machines, refrigerators, microwave ovens, etc. Survey all of this, ask your neighbors, ask to take a little tour for yourself, talk to the facilities folks.
Put servers on separate UPS's with power-line conditioning. It'll provide a backup to that generator (they know when to fail), clean up your supply, provide a bridge between the mains failing and the generator kicking in, just make everything a while lot more stable for your more expensive and critical hardware. Have purchasing get you a separate UPS/conditioner for each server and for heavens sake don't plug the monitors into them. If you really need server monitors when the power goes out get small flat-panel ones and plug them into their own UPSes (will give you handy spares you can sacrifice at need.) BTW these UPSes need not be power-all-day mondo models, just enough so that if that generator doesn't come on or there is some other problem they'll give everything time to shut down properly.
Replace the UPSes, "surge protectors" and the like every year or two. After enough hits the cheapie surge protectors become unresponsive and are essentially extension cords. The batteries on a UPS also age and start to loose charge faster. When you replace them migrate them down the critical path if you want but for heavens sake spray paint them, permanent marker them, something so they don't end up plugged into something really critical again.
Call an electrician. Seriously. 5 minutes with the hardware hanging from their belt and you'll have the comfort of knowing something. Also buy a compass, about US$15 or US$20 for a decent orienteering one. Walk it around the room to see if it shows any bobbles, it might help you track down the problem, or at least determine if the effect is strictly optical, electrical or there is a magnetic component too.
So between the time, services and hardware we're talking a few hundred bucks. Is that overkill? No way. That's popcorn compared to the disruption if one of your critical devices fails catastrophically, also nobody wants to work in a flickery environment. You wouldn't put up with a random "Feep" noise, why expect folks to deal with the visual equivalent? Staring at displays all day is tough enough without letting them degenerate into flickery ones.
Oh, and if nothing else works, remember the order of propitiation: Chicken, Goat, Virgin. If you ending up needing the last one call Corp HQ's IS, we usually have one or two on staff we could spare (we keep them just for this purpose.)
Well thank you for your helpful and informative posting. I've no doubt it will be well appreciated by those folks who haven't had your fortunate experience.
I've had any number of friends and clients report problems, particularly those in device-rich environments like offices. Indeed one recently had to decide between their new Siemens 4200-series 2.4 GHz consumer phone system I'd recommended and their WiFi base station just brought in as part of another project. The same is true for the customer who watched his presentation go down in flames when a bevy of Bluetooth devices in the room slowed the 802.11b link he was on down to uselessness.
No doubt the authors of numerous articles on this exact topic (see Google) will also be cheered to hear that you've exhaustively researched & tested this and determined their own results are in fact wrong.
Where would we all be without your support and cheerful insight?
Well all I can say is I've rarely had problems. Last weekend there was an email outtage but that was the first I've ever noticed. As for the rest of it I've not heard of another free & advertising free host with the space, speed & services of mac.com. Your other examples all add taglines, require web interfaces, inserts ads, etc.
Heck check out Internet Help Desk video (QT & WMP) and tell me any other free service would offer this unlimited bandwidth?
I've got a free account with POP3, IMAP4 (5 MB storage), SMTP, HTTP & WebDAV (with 20 MB storage) all without advertising. Stable, reliable, (very) fast, without transfer limits, great interface. If I want to pay I can up my storage at $10/10MB per year to a GB. Oh, and their MIME settings are complete and properly configured.
The only requirement is that one use a Mac (or Mac-claiming browser) to set up the account; it's at Mac.com. That said aside from certain administrative functions it works perfectly well from the Wintel & *nix sides too. Mail, web serving, WebDAV all are platform independent, indeed MS Windows 2K & XP include WebDAV clients that work perfectly with Apple's iDisk service.
See one in a store? No. Going to see one in a store? No.
First off Apple generally uses pretty high quality components. Their LCD is a sight nicer then your $300 closeout special. Apple also integrates everything a hell of a lot better. Of course that's a lot easier when the OS comes from the same vendor (where's yours?) Indeed right there is half of the value of the machine, it runs MacOS X. And of course the included applications, not shovelware but good stuff that works with the hardware and works intuitively.
Of course there's also the point of the screen being on a pedestal. That's unique in the industry and totally rocks - it's amazing how seductive it is to have a display one can casually reach out & reposition, tilt, angle. It really does change the experience and some panel-on-pegs is not the same at all.
Then there's that whole service & support thing. You may disdain it but the iMac is the intro level computer and ask any real vendor - it costs, it costs a lot to support folks. Phones, websites, repairs, parts, trained folks, etc. You may be willing to spend half a day getting your CD burner to work; most folks just want one that works and if it doesn't a number to call and a quick & easy resolution path.
Am I a Macolyte? No. I have a few, and yeah the mac.com address (free, stable, fast, offers POP, IMAP, SMTP, WebDAV, HTTP, no adverts, can't beat that) but I've also a room full of PCs. Which do I recommend to folks? Depends on what they want to do and how they like to work.
For some things Macs are spot on, for others PCs are a better choice. Macs are price competitive (your apples-to-oranges comparison notwithstanding) as one long as one avoids the Apple memory. The iMac is a great intro or home machine, trivial to set up and fast enough. I also find the laptops to be good deals with rugged cases & long battery life. The G4s are fine machines though they do cost the dickens but if ya need them there they are. Depending on your business a Mac might or might not be appropriate, certainly in some fields a Wintel box is a much better choice, others a Mac fits the bill.
But you, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Fine. But don't go making stupid statements and not expect to get called on them. Nor come looking for an argument or to act out your frustrations at whatever. We've both had our say and at this point any further discussion would be almost like baiting those foamers one sometimes finds on streetcorners - just inane & embarrassing for all around.
Exactly. You can not build a Mac from parts. You have to pay Apple's premium price for inferior hardware.
Really?
Interestingly when the new iMacs came out every journalist thought to get clever and actually went out and compared it with other similar machines from Dell, Gateway, etc (your $500 special comes with crap components, no integration, no OS or software & no support.) The universal result? The new iMac was about spot on for price. It had FireWire where PCs might have USB2, other little differences, but for each reviewer it was about a hundred bucks up or down in price with an equivalent PC.
Apple is "in the black" on the backs of their sucker die hard fanboys.
Oh, so you're just some trolling wacko yearning for the old my-OS-is-bigger-then-your-OS days. What, the Viagra give out so now you gotta get your jollies baiting Macolytes? Go try and twiddle your BIOS again.
802.11b & Bluetooth have one problem - they conflict. So do 2.4 GHz cordless phones and microwave ovens for that matter. Indeed some folks are finding old 900 MHz cordless phones and baby monitors to be more reliable then the increasingly trafficked 2.4 GHz Industrial-Scientific-Medical bands.
So, with Apple leading the renaissance in wireless networking (it was their introduction of the AirPort that kicked of this current wave of activity) how will they reconcile this with Bluetooth? All of their computers ship with wireless card slots and built-in antennas; they all also ship with USB ports (also popularized by Apple.) Which is to drown out the other? While it's true that they can co-exist it is at the expense of greatly reduced data rates, already an issue for folks used to 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (standard on many Mac models) Ethernet.
My own bet is that before or along-with any USB-BlueTooth product introduction Apple will ship a revised AirPort, or at least a software tweak with a built in Bluetooth-friendly autonegotiation. Or, failing that we'll see the release of an AirPort II featuring 802.11a (at 5 GHz and capable of 54 Mbps) thus safely different from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, 802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth, HomeRF, and a half dozen other wireless applications.
As to microwave ovens - well 2.4 Ghz is the resonant frequency of water so no change possible there. However it is something to think about as you hold these various new wireless devices up next to your body.
Cape Wind is a project to place 175 wind turbines off the shore of Cape Cod Massachusetts on a shallow sand bank in Nantucket Sound.
The turbines will stand 130 meters (426 feet) tall, are to be spread over 65 square kilometers (25 square miles) and supply up to 420 megawatts of power at peak. They'll be just visable from the shore at 8 kilometers (5 miles) distance where they should blur into the sea chop.
Scheduled to begin construction in 2003 and be operationial by 2005 the $600 million project has thus far kept on track and met all impact reviews. It has proven to be particularly economically viable in the ecologically sensitive but rapidly growing Cape Cod area which has unusually high energy rates and a large volume of steady offshore winds.
This isn't as unusual as wave turbines and the like (though it's size is notable) but it is a clever solution to the sound and sight pollution that have been issues with land-based wind farms. While not completely out-of-sight/out-of-mind these will be far enough from folks that they shouldn't be an issue. Furthermore these modern designs have incorporated lessons learned from previous generations and should be wildlife-friendly.
According to the owner's manual (if I remember correctly), in order to recallibrate the compass, you first had to move the car to position at least 10 miles from any metal object!
Bullshit.
No consumer-level magnetic compass device is sensitive enough to detect metal more then a few meters away, certianly not more then 10m. Furthermore something designed to operate in the challenging environment of a car is not going to be all that responsive to local or transient conditions.
Doubtless what you are misremembering (and clearly didn't think through either) was that one would need to drive some distance between points to calibrate the compass by creating a sufficiently long baseline. Metallic objects would have had little or no effect, certianly parking 10m or so from other vehicles or structures would have been more then sufficient.
... seeing as how Siberia is quite a flight from Northern Canada.
Yeah, about an hour or two by air depending on how and where you plan to land. Stop looking at those silly Mercator Projection maps and get something that shows northern latitudes a bit more accurately, or invest in a globe.
...many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children
Many?
What - 5, 6? Perhaps a dozen a season? On a planet of 6 billion folks that's "many"? That isn't even a lot compared to any other notable location: How many kids have been conceived within a few km of Niagara Falls by honeymooners? Or what about all of the Asian folks intentionally born in supposedly "lucky" years?
By the way, for only having 200 fulltime inhabitants tourism is a major industry in Resolute Bay with 4 hotels, several charter airline services and a number of tour operators. That the occasional couple decides gave a go at it near the magnetic pole is hardly surprising nor are the numbers unexpected.
Today Apple is an also-ran and has been for some time now. Microsoft has kept them on life support because they are useful as token "competition."
Well, that's one opinion.
Another that the Mac is a viable alternative platform. It offers features not found in MS's OS's nor in the beige-box PC market. MS does make a LOT of money from Mac owners, their products on MacOS are not only self-supporting but also very profitable. Finally Apple acts as a valuable R&D house for the industry and it is through MS's close relationship with them that they get access to Apple's thinking.
So, is Apple on "life support"? Well, with 4 billion US in the bank and being one of the few healthy PC manufacturers they seem robust enough. Yes they only have a small fraction of the market but then that is true for any number of companies in any number of industries. Is MS Office a key application for Apple? Sure, but then MS has no way to cease development on it without making themselves look completely predatory.
CHRP: Common Hardware Reference Platform. 1995 AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) strategy for doing the same thing but with details like OpenFirmware defined. Motorola lost several hundred million dollars when Apple killed it's licensing program and they were stuck with warehouses full of CHRP motherboards. Be's BeBox were based on a superset of CHRP. This evolved into Apple's modern line of Macs as well as IBM's RS/6000.
Operating systems that were to run on this hardware:
Windows NT (up to versions 3.5.1 and 4.0, Service Pack 2), AIX (still does on the RS/6000 & AS/400), OS/2-PPC, Solaris, ChorusOS, Netware, Taligent (never released), WorkplaceOS, LynxOS, MkLinux, LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, MacOS.
Most folks aren't aware that Apple actually did ship some fully CHRP boxes, the Apple Network Server 500 & 700. These ran AIX by the way, from Apple.
Also any number of other CHRP-derived boards have shipped over the years, most based on Motorola's VME series but IBM has also released plans.
On a related topic there was a widespread rumor in '95 that had lots of legs of IBM's PowerPC 615 project. This was supposedly an x86 (486?) core on chip alongside a PPC (604?) core. They'd share data paths, cache, other portions but would be able to run either x86 or PPC OS's. Nothing ever publicly came of it.
Apple's MacOS is not based on the exact same code as is Darwin. Any number of times Apple's developers have confirmed that while the two code-bases are regularly synched they are not one and the same and some portions of the MacOS X core code never makes it to Darwin.
Apple hasn't used proprietary ROMS for years. Instead they use their code based "New World ROM" that get loaded as a system component. There is no need to talk about stealing one and burning them, they're right there in any MacOS install.
However Apple designs their own Northbridge & Southbridge chips. It is with these that the "New World ROM" interacts which means that non-Apple Northbridge & Southbridge chips wouldn't work. Therefore unless one wants to figure out how to get Darwin to boot on 3rd party Northbridge & Southbridge chips and then to get MacOS X to accept this underpinning you won't get very far.
Finally, congrats; you'd have managed to make a non-Apple Mac. This has been done before, indeed it is rumored there was a version of the IBM RS 6000 that would boot MacOS long ago. However you've now also throw away that tight integration of hardware & software that makes Apple's products special and likely not saved much money in the long run anyway.
For a while, apple had the right idea. They tried IBM's strategy of making the platform open, then they chicken shitted out and went back to making their own boxes. I can't recall the manufacturers name, but there was PPC boards made by other manufacturers for a while. Why apple did an about face on this issue I will never know.
IBM never had a "strategy" of making an open platform. Instead they fought clones tooth and nail with every means at their disposal and when they finally lost that battle attempted to redefine the market with proprietary PS/2s running Micro Channel. That their architecture created its own industry was as much a shock to IBM as anyone and was never a part of any big plan.
On the other hand Apple did try using licensees to get into markets they couldn't enter themselves. The idea was 3rd parties could buy Mac licenses and purchase Mac ROMs and MacOS 7 and sell into education, far east markets, gamers ("Pippin"), and super high-end markets that Apple hadn't the capacity or margins to work in. Instead they promptly began cannibalizing Apple's own markets and were eventually shut down before they bled Apple to death. Every box they sold was one Apple didn't and their licensing fees didn't nearly make up the difference.
Finally, there have been any number of third parties making PPC boards over the years as well as Motorola. However there's little economy of scale so Apple PPC boards are generally just as cheap or cheaper. There is also always IBM PPC hardware. If you're just looking for a constant flow of motherboard upgrades yeah, that's not where the market is at. On the other hand Apple hardware holds it's value a lot longer then PC stuff so you can usually sell it and buy a whole new box with a better return on value then you'd get with a generation or two behind x86 box.
It's not Open but it is scriptable, is not an additional cost, and is available on a Unix OS (MacOS X) Indeed through Apple's Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) one can use any number of scripting languages such as Python, Perl, and even JavaScript to interact with the application.
Feed it a document, tell it to summarize and back will come a generally useful précis. For folks directly on a Mac (MacOS 8.6 or newer incl. X) simply highlight a document or portion of text and select "Summarize" from the contextual menu.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
That's why folks care about the yEnc issue. If it were a fight over, say, a Gopher implementation do you imagine there'd be much discussion?
Usenet is in trouble, it may be mortally wounded, but it'll be around for awhile yet and in that time lots of folks use it.
I know it's trivial, I've done it before. I just don't want to bother.
Contemplate that for a second: I don't want to bother.
More importantly: I won't bother to. Neither do I think many other folks would.
I've no interest in every two weeks downloading the latest Cringley-whatever, burning it to VCD, playing it. I just don't care that much about it. Online, if it were fast, and reasonable quality - Maybe. It would depend on the topics, it would depend on my free time, it would depend on how good previous editions had been. But to go out of my way? No.
I'm not making an argument, I'm not apologizing for my disinterest, I don't care how it flies or not with you (really I don't give a shit) - I'm just telling you how it is.
You may wait with bated breath for the latest installment, put it on a special monitor, set aside some personal "quality time" for it, but I think you'll be one of the few.
The reality is that the online experience is an immediate one and speedbumps are aren't bumps: They're mountains.
Requiring folks use p2p to download: Death.
Requiring folks to download a special plug-in: Death.
Requiring folks download a big file then play it later: Death.
Requiring folks to have a specific type of player to view it: Death.
Oh some will do it, but I expect it'll be a fraction, a small fraction, of the folks who read his column now. At least if it were in some sort of hyperlinked SMIL-type format, or QT, or whatever, then only the relevant portions of the appropriate depth could be downloaded, and presumably fast enough so they could stream. But finding, downloading, munging, then playing a big file? No thanks.
And if you approve or not? Like I could care. Get some perspective on yourself.
Next up will be the "Tapping System" where folks will rap out "Haircut & A Shave" on their desk to log in.
What other quirks of human nature will next be put to use trying to identify folks? The "Mictation Flex Rate"? The "Eyebrow Lift/Tongue Roll"? How about the "Tell the Same Stupid Joke" one; I've had co-workers who've been able to do those hundreds of times over & over without a single variation.
Or just teach folks how to use good paswords, put in some really good acceptance tests, and make it clear that if security is compromised by their poor password choice they'll be held responsable, same as leaving the door to the safe open.
Nahhh, there's gotta be a technolgy fix...
IBM/HAL, Santa/Saten, its all part of a biiig plot...
Better: Spend the time & effort on any of a half dozen more interesting, more rewarding, less-of-a-hassle activities.
Sorry, Bob may put out a great program but there's no way I'd bother to burn it to a VCD to watch in the other room. Hell I've got a couple gig of porn VCDs littering the scratch drive I'd be motivated to burn to VCD before that.
Bob Cringley vs Fallen Angel III; sorry no contest.
It's a SF cliché; any number of stories refer to vat-grown meat blobs. Asimov, Heinlein, Bova, Niven, Pournelle, lots of folks have this in stories from the 1950's on, maybe before.
- Funky power is going to shorten the life of your hardware significantly. I used to work at a company where a series of IS servers "mysteriously" kept failing. When it became my turn to rebuild the fool thing I discovered it wasn't in our many-million-dollar server facility but down the hall from it, under a counter, plugged in next to a photocopier, big old laser printer and two fax machines. After discovering this and taking a look at the transients I'm was impressed they were lasting as long as they did. In your case hiding the problem with LCD displays isn't going to solve it.
-
On the other hand it could be lighting. Tube lighting flickers a lot and that can interact with the refresh rates on your monitors, particularly if you've all the same brand of monitors or your OS or staff keep setting them to the same refresh rates. Test this by adjusting the refresh rates of some monitors via software. Make one 65Hz, another 75Hz, if you can make another 85Hz. Also try working without the tube lighting. Get in some fill (torchier) and task (desklamp) lighting, preferably incandescent, and see if they obviate the problem.
-
So, if its not your eyes what devices are within 10m (same floor, floors above & below)? What devices are on the same circuits as your server? Are any of them motors, generators, heavy or intermittent draw devices? This includes laser printers, big fax machines, refrigerators, microwave ovens, etc. Survey all of this, ask your neighbors, ask to take a little tour for yourself, talk to the facilities folks.
-
Put servers on separate UPS's with power-line conditioning. It'll provide a backup to that generator (they know when to fail), clean up your supply, provide a bridge between the mains failing and the generator kicking in, just make everything a while lot more stable for your more expensive and critical hardware. Have purchasing get you a separate UPS/conditioner for each server and for heavens sake don't plug the monitors into them. If you really need server monitors when the power goes out get small flat-panel ones and plug them into their own UPSes (will give you handy spares you can sacrifice at need.) BTW these UPSes need not be power-all-day mondo models, just enough so that if that generator doesn't come on or there is some other problem they'll give everything time to shut down properly.
-
Replace the UPSes, "surge protectors" and the like every year or two. After enough hits the cheapie surge protectors become unresponsive and are essentially extension cords. The batteries on a UPS also age and start to loose charge faster. When you replace them migrate them down the critical path if you want but for heavens sake spray paint them, permanent marker them, something so they don't end up plugged into something really critical again.
-
Call an electrician. Seriously. 5 minutes with the hardware hanging from their belt and you'll have the comfort of knowing something. Also buy a compass, about US$15 or US$20 for a decent orienteering one. Walk it around the room to see if it shows any bobbles, it might help you track down the problem, or at least determine if the effect is strictly optical, electrical or there is a magnetic component too.
So between the time, services and hardware we're talking a few hundred bucks. Is that overkill? No way. That's popcorn compared to the disruption if one of your critical devices fails catastrophically, also nobody wants to work in a flickery environment. You wouldn't put up with a random "Feep" noise, why expect folks to deal with the visual equivalent? Staring at displays all day is tough enough without letting them degenerate into flickery ones.Oh, and if nothing else works, remember the order of propitiation: Chicken, Goat, Virgin. If you ending up needing the last one call Corp HQ's IS, we usually have one or two on staff we could spare (we keep them just for this purpose.)
Well thank you for your helpful and informative posting. I've no doubt it will be well appreciated by those folks who haven't had your fortunate experience.
I've had any number of friends and clients report problems, particularly those in device-rich environments like offices. Indeed one recently had to decide between their new Siemens 4200-series 2.4 GHz consumer phone system I'd recommended and their WiFi base station just brought in as part of another project. The same is true for the customer who watched his presentation go down in flames when a bevy of Bluetooth devices in the room slowed the 802.11b link he was on down to uselessness.
No doubt the authors of numerous articles on this exact topic (see Google) will also be cheered to hear that you've exhaustively researched & tested this and determined their own results are in fact wrong.
Where would we all be without your support and cheerful insight?
Well all I can say is I've rarely had problems. Last weekend there was an email outtage but that was the first I've ever noticed. As for the rest of it I've not heard of another free & advertising free host with the space, speed & services of mac.com. Your other examples all add taglines, require web interfaces, inserts ads, etc.
Heck check out Internet Help Desk video (QT & WMP) and tell me any other free service would offer this unlimited bandwidth?
The only requirement is that one use a Mac (or Mac-claiming browser) to set up the account; it's at Mac.com. That said aside from certain administrative functions it works perfectly well from the Wintel & *nix sides too. Mail, web serving, WebDAV all are platform independent, indeed MS Windows 2K & XP include WebDAV clients that work perfectly with Apple's iDisk service.
See one in a store? No. Going to see one in a store? No.
First off Apple generally uses pretty high quality components. Their LCD is a sight nicer then your $300 closeout special. Apple also integrates everything a hell of a lot better. Of course that's a lot easier when the OS comes from the same vendor (where's yours?) Indeed right there is half of the value of the machine, it runs MacOS X. And of course the included applications, not shovelware but good stuff that works with the hardware and works intuitively.
Of course there's also the point of the screen being on a pedestal. That's unique in the industry and totally rocks - it's amazing how seductive it is to have a display one can casually reach out & reposition, tilt, angle. It really does change the experience and some panel-on-pegs is not the same at all.
Then there's that whole service & support thing. You may disdain it but the iMac is the intro level computer and ask any real vendor - it costs, it costs a lot to support folks. Phones, websites, repairs, parts, trained folks, etc. You may be willing to spend half a day getting your CD burner to work; most folks just want one that works and if it doesn't a number to call and a quick & easy resolution path.
Am I a Macolyte? No. I have a few, and yeah the mac.com address (free, stable, fast, offers POP, IMAP, SMTP, WebDAV, HTTP, no adverts, can't beat that) but I've also a room full of PCs. Which do I recommend to folks? Depends on what they want to do and how they like to work.
For some things Macs are spot on, for others PCs are a better choice. Macs are price competitive (your apples-to-oranges comparison notwithstanding) as one long as one avoids the Apple memory. The iMac is a great intro or home machine, trivial to set up and fast enough. I also find the laptops to be good deals with rugged cases & long battery life. The G4s are fine machines though they do cost the dickens but if ya need them there they are. Depending on your business a Mac might or might not be appropriate, certainly in some fields a Wintel box is a much better choice, others a Mac fits the bill.
But you, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Fine. But don't go making stupid statements and not expect to get called on them. Nor come looking for an argument or to act out your frustrations at whatever. We've both had our say and at this point any further discussion would be almost like baiting those foamers one sometimes finds on streetcorners - just inane & embarrassing for all around.
Really?
Interestingly when the new iMacs came out every journalist thought to get clever and actually went out and compared it with other similar machines from Dell, Gateway, etc (your $500 special comes with crap components, no integration, no OS or software & no support.) The universal result? The new iMac was about spot on for price. It had FireWire where PCs might have USB2, other little differences, but for each reviewer it was about a hundred bucks up or down in price with an equivalent PC.
Oh, so you're just some trolling wacko yearning for the old my-OS-is-bigger-then-your-OS days. What, the Viagra give out so now you gotta get your jollies baiting Macolytes? Go try and twiddle your BIOS again.
So, with Apple leading the renaissance in wireless networking (it was their introduction of the AirPort that kicked of this current wave of activity) how will they reconcile this with Bluetooth? All of their computers ship with wireless card slots and built-in antennas; they all also ship with USB ports (also popularized by Apple.) Which is to drown out the other? While it's true that they can co-exist it is at the expense of greatly reduced data rates, already an issue for folks used to 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (standard on many Mac models) Ethernet.
My own bet is that before or along-with any USB-BlueTooth product introduction Apple will ship a revised AirPort, or at least a software tweak with a built in Bluetooth-friendly autonegotiation. Or, failing that we'll see the release of an AirPort II featuring 802.11a (at 5 GHz and capable of 54 Mbps) thus safely different from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, 802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth, HomeRF, and a half dozen other wireless applications.
As to microwave ovens - well 2.4 Ghz is the resonant frequency of water so no change possible there. However it is something to think about as you hold these various new wireless devices up next to your body.
The turbines will stand 130 meters (426 feet) tall, are to be spread over 65 square kilometers (25 square miles) and supply up to 420 megawatts of power at peak. They'll be just visable from the shore at 8 kilometers (5 miles) distance where they should blur into the sea chop.
Scheduled to begin construction in 2003 and be operationial by 2005 the $600 million project has thus far kept on track and met all impact reviews. It has proven to be particularly economically viable in the ecologically sensitive but rapidly growing Cape Cod area which has unusually high energy rates and a large volume of steady offshore winds.
This isn't as unusual as wave turbines and the like (though it's size is notable) but it is a clever solution to the sound and sight pollution that have been issues with land-based wind farms. While not completely out-of-sight/out-of-mind these will be far enough from folks that they shouldn't be an issue. Furthermore these modern designs have incorporated lessons learned from previous generations and should be wildlife-friendly.
Bullshit.
No consumer-level magnetic compass device is sensitive enough to detect metal more then a few meters away, certianly not more then 10m. Furthermore something designed to operate in the challenging environment of a car is not going to be all that responsive to local or transient conditions.
Doubtless what you are misremembering (and clearly didn't think through either) was that one would need to drive some distance between points to calibrate the compass by creating a sufficiently long baseline. Metallic objects would have had little or no effect, certianly parking 10m or so from other vehicles or structures would have been more then sufficient.
Reading for Comprehension: It works for others...
Yeah, about an hour or two by air depending on how and where you plan to land. Stop looking at those silly Mercator Projection maps and get something that shows northern latitudes a bit more accurately, or invest in a globe.
What - 5, 6? Perhaps a dozen a season? On a planet of 6 billion folks that's "many"? That isn't even a lot compared to any other notable location: How many kids have been conceived within a few km of Niagara Falls by honeymooners? Or what about all of the Asian folks intentionally born in supposedly "lucky" years?
By the way, for only having 200 fulltime inhabitants tourism is a major industry in Resolute Bay with 4 hotels, several charter airline services and a number of tour operators. That the occasional couple decides gave a go at it near the magnetic pole is hardly surprising nor are the numbers unexpected.
Another that the Mac is a viable alternative platform. It offers features not found in MS's OS's nor in the beige-box PC market. MS does make a LOT of money from Mac owners, their products on MacOS are not only self-supporting but also very profitable. Finally Apple acts as a valuable R&D house for the industry and it is through MS's close relationship with them that they get access to Apple's thinking.
So, is Apple on "life support"? Well, with 4 billion US in the bank and being one of the few healthy PC manufacturers they seem robust enough. Yes they only have a small fraction of the market but then that is true for any number of companies in any number of industries. Is MS Office a key application for Apple? Sure, but then MS has no way to cease development on it without making themselves look completely predatory.
PowerPC Reference Platform. 1993-ish IBM strategy for building standardized PPC motherboards.
CHRP:
Common Hardware Reference Platform. 1995 AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) strategy for doing the same thing but with details like OpenFirmware defined. Motorola lost several hundred million dollars when Apple killed it's licensing program and they were stuck with warehouses full of CHRP motherboards. Be's BeBox were based on a superset of CHRP. This evolved into Apple's modern line of Macs as well as IBM's RS/6000.
Operating systems that were to run on this hardware:
Windows NT (up to versions 3.5.1 and 4.0, Service Pack 2), AIX (still does on the RS/6000 & AS/400), OS/2-PPC, Solaris, ChorusOS, Netware, Taligent (never released), WorkplaceOS, LynxOS, MkLinux, LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, MacOS.
Most folks aren't aware that Apple actually did ship some fully CHRP boxes, the Apple Network Server 500 & 700. These ran AIX by the way, from Apple.
Also any number of other CHRP-derived boards have shipped over the years, most based on Motorola's VME series but IBM has also released plans.
On a related topic there was a widespread rumor in '95 that had lots of legs of IBM's PowerPC 615 project. This was supposedly an x86 (486?) core on chip alongside a PPC (604?) core. They'd share data paths, cache, other portions but would be able to run either x86 or PPC OS's. Nothing ever publicly came of it.
On the other hand Apple did try using licensees to get into markets they couldn't enter themselves. The idea was 3rd parties could buy Mac licenses and purchase Mac ROMs and MacOS 7 and sell into education, far east markets, gamers ("Pippin"), and super high-end markets that Apple hadn't the capacity or margins to work in. Instead they promptly began cannibalizing Apple's own markets and were eventually shut down before they bled Apple to death. Every box they sold was one Apple didn't and their licensing fees didn't nearly make up the difference.
Finally, there have been any number of third parties making PPC boards over the years as well as Motorola. However there's little economy of scale so Apple PPC boards are generally just as cheap or cheaper. There is also always IBM PPC hardware. If you're just looking for a constant flow of motherboard upgrades yeah, that's not where the market is at. On the other hand Apple hardware holds it's value a lot longer then PC stuff so you can usually sell it and buy a whole new box with a better return on value then you'd get with a generation or two behind x86 box.
It's not Open but it is scriptable, is not an additional cost, and is available on a Unix OS (MacOS X) Indeed through Apple's Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) one can use any number of scripting languages such as Python, Perl, and even JavaScript to interact with the application.
Feed it a document, tell it to summarize and back will come a generally useful précis. For folks directly on a Mac (MacOS 8.6 or newer incl. X) simply highlight a document or portion of text and select "Summarize" from the contextual menu.