Seriously, a few months ago durring the RIAA vs Kazaa user suits CNN would air tons of stories and have lots of self-rightous news anchor banter about 'illegal' p2p, then hop right over to the entertainment news highlighting all the time-warner-aol-whatever related album and movie hyping. No story on that topic that I saw was even remotely unbiased or covered facts. Just an unrelenting villanizing of p2p networking. Also included were stories about how broadband & p2p is killing music and movie industry. Hmm.. did AOL (a Time Warner Company!) pay for those stories?
My work luuuuvs office.. like they luuuuvs their gun.
Not that they use it for much but....
I've been trying for the last few years to get my users to switch over to OOo for many reasons. Office (97,2000 and XP) send our machines to hell as far as stability and speed goes. I have only had one problem with stability with OOo on an exotic piece of equipment. OOo runs much faster and doesn't do an alien facehugger installation on my boxes.
Most everyone here give OOo the big thumbs down. There are a few valid reasons (neeeded features and a few incompatibilities) but they are so trained in the idea of 'if it isn't word and excel it doesn't work' that it becomes an impossible barrier to having it gain acceptance.
I will get OOo complaints of incompatibility BEFORE the problem has even been tried!
example --"Install MS office on these machines because OOo probably has a problem reading my excel file"
Geez!
I open up the file in OOo and it reads fine.
"install ms office anyway!"
2days later
"your network is slow"
Now if they do find a file or application that OOo doesn't handle well, then I get the smug cat ass in your face behavior. Like bill is going to buy them a spaceship now or something.
My users are typically not like this with most issues, but MS vs Openoffice.. whew!
What I and others need from the OOo team is this:
1. A mass batch converter to OOo for all MS Office files with some error detection
This should extend even to an email attachment converter.
The converter should allow me to convert everything to native OOo, and then anything that had problems in the transition I can work on and convert. Conversion troubleshooting info should be easily accessible for others.
2. The ability to share workbooks like you can in excel (multi user simultaneous update)
Using DMX 512 like the article poster is doing is recommended. You can use a small dimmer set and dmx-512 controller like small bands use. check ebay for dmx-512. even the crappy American DJ controllers can fit your bill and make it very easy to save and repeat lighting setups you like. I wouldn't trade my light board for x-10 *ever*.
Farmer Brown's cow dies of some disease or car or something and cannot go to the slaughterhouse.
Rendering semi truck pulls up, throws out some chains with hooks on it.
They hook the cow, turn on the chain motors and drag it into the truck and move on to the next location.
Finally the truck stops at the rendering plant.
A huge metal door slides opens underneath the truck and the truck bed bottom falls dropping a huge load of dead bloated cattle and other animals!
Delicious! The fecal urine deathrot grease stew smell is everywhere.
I made it through the whole day inside but puked outside after seeing a large puddle of water blood urine and a flourecent floating piece of plastic with a number on it.
This was an ear tag.
**Complete with ripped off ear and part of the scalp.**
Inside are several 50 foot diameter 30 foot tall open tanks. BOILING! Metal staircases go over the tops of the open vats. When you put your hand on the stair rail your fingers sink deep into the sqishy rancid grease before hitting metal.
Very similar in consistancy to refrigerated butter but it's all very hot. Grease penetrates your lungs and it's well over 100 degrees (F) inside.
I slipped twice on the stairs almost sliding over the edge into a farm sized fry-daddy.
The workers said you *don't* get accustomed to the smell. I'm not weak when it comes to things like this but the scale and potency.. sheesh.
After pressure cooking Bessy and friends they separate all the catrilage and bone and grease and such grinding them up for later refinement.
Outside were various tanks and piles of product with spray painted customer lables like Maybeline, Max Factor, Quaker Oats, etc. None of this of course is for human consumption but makeup doen't count as food.
I was there trying to troubleshoot a chemical pump automation system for odor control which led me all through the place.
I used a bottle of dishwashing soap to get clean, threw away my clothes after several washing attempts.
Many things contribute daily to stopping the problems mentioned and
improving the online experience.
Experience is a great teacher too. When someones machine is
crippled by the latest and greatest virus they usually try to learn
quickly how avoid this in the future. In a company especially you
look and feel like a fool if your email is infected and you become
savvy QUICK!
The drivers license is an interesting example.
How many people did I observe driving poorly today.. hmm...
How many did you? Add them all up and you still have the same problem.
My wallet is thick enough with licenses and certifications (speaking of
the non tech related ones) and personally I hate them all. I'd
just like to be recognized as some sort of human w/o stamps and numbers
and such.
Still on the personal side i've been actively online since about age 8
(30ish now). I try to get as many kids online as possible. I'm sure
many of you out there do the same and I'm also sure that there are many
under 10 on./
My guess is that if you told them a license was required to access this
whole incredible world of neat stuff and they had to get their parents
to go along with it and they had to provide credential for everything
they would hate the idea and many that would otherwise be contributing
and learning alot would not be.
(come on admit that you would steal dad's logon and use it like crazy!)
A license to browse through the largest library?
"May i see your credentials so you can listen or talk in the largest
forum?"
Oh and we don't allow any anonymity anymore either.
Maybe we should turn off the net because some people in the class are
not playing right.
jeez!
Ahh then there is cost. This would create alot of pointless jobs
too. Loads of adminstrative costs. VeriSign would probably lick
their lips at the opportunity to manage a $6Trillion service like
that... Refresher courses, lobbyist pushing to link more to the logon
license than you ever could want, etc. yea!
Then you try to get other nations involved.
How would the missiles launch if they are not licensed to use the
net?!?
...Make the license to use the internet only availible ONLINE!
Most of these problems could be solved by a few public service
announcements leading people to the well written info already
available. Hell it's the internet give'em video.
I >REALLY< tired of this type of thinking (and i typically respect counterpane). I see it as a
bit elitist as well. If you stop treating people like cattle most
will stop behaving like them.
Open season on Hatch, RIAA, Microsoft, your neighbors, those pesky stonecutters, etc.
1. Create a nice little BSA type company (ahem Front ahem) and obtain your technological hunting permit!
2. Make a nice web-bugged copyrighted logo or image.. hell throw on a digital sig and digimark and any other drm thing you can think of on it.
3. Attach in email, or invite to web page with image. Include disclaimer,[or porn invite for senators] (optional?!)
4. Detect image hogging space in Hatch's IE cache. If deleted, he's obviously trying to avoid detection, and it's certainly undeletable..
5. Profi....
6. **->bubble, sizzle, sizzle bubble*****. Include all email servers etc. inside the organization on your 'melt list'
Most military systems have lots of copyrighted stuff on them too..
I'm sure all office workers at capitol hill don't have anything to hide.
hmm..
This sounds like fun.
PrimeOCR - primerecognition. Voting Engines
on
Accurate OCR?
·
· Score: 1
They use several engines and vote on the best.
Care
FineReader
Typereader
etc.. 6 or 8 of them. The results are very nice. The package is expensive. It is pretty programmer friendly. If you ask nice and give them some cash and they'll get you a demo. You usually talk to the owner over there too which is cool.
The products are simple and pretty neat. Their verifier is well designed too.
I don't work for them but a while back demo'd their suite. impressive (crashed on occasion but what ocr pack doesn't.)
If you get prime though, overclock like heck. They charged a lot extra per processor last i chekced.
--erics
notes:1) i don't work for cerious sw. 2)had no sleep in a day so post is a bit fuzzy.
I am sysadmin at a scanning company. We run in to this a lot.
For dividing the pics, use thumbs plus and make a batch process for
it. You'll need the same # of batch processes (5 i think in this
case, 1 per photo). you can link the batches together.
Yeah, i know.. its slashdot and i'm recommending a really kick butt
(but )windows app. It is worth every penny though.
You can use the auto crop feature after they are divided. Sometimes it
flakes so write the output file to a different directory.
I strongly suggest using a template for laying the photos on the scan
bed. A matte board cutter is a handy thing for this and gives you a
colored border.
Lay out the template so many corners meet at the top/center. This will allow
for quick manual cropping later if necessary and make it easy to
divide the pix.
To help further, sort your pix by size then you can get a pre-
programmed crop to work better.
We did (on flatbeds) over 100,000 pics of children from other
countries this way. Other countries have interesting film sizes.
thumbs makes it very easy to crop and deskew a large # of pics.
BTW; the new fujitsu color scanner is pretty nice for photos in batch
mode. it cannot compare to flatbed, but it can feed 100 photos in a
few mins. at 600dpi. I would equate its 600dpi to a flatbed 300dpi,
and a bit blurry.
Hope this helps!
-erics
Slashdot Mirror
10 year old geek (probably YOU):
Mom, can I have $120,000 so I can
learn autocad and 3d studio and
visual basic and oracle and....?
Mom: No that's too expensive dear
How long before we can afford it?
Mom: after we win the lottery maybe.
3d tron lightcycle game.
It does have a 3d fps feel to it but otherwise
is just like the 'snake' game on cel phone.
wonderful wonderful game.
Seriously, a few months ago durring the RIAA vs .. did AOL (a Time Warner Company!) pay for those stories?
Kazaa user suits CNN would air tons of stories and
have lots of self-rightous news anchor banter
about 'illegal' p2p, then hop right over to the
entertainment news highlighting all the time-warner-aol-whatever related album and movie hyping. No story on that topic that I saw was even remotely unbiased or covered facts. Just
an unrelenting villanizing of p2p networking.
Also included were stories about how broadband & p2p is killing music and movie industry. Hmm
My work luuuuvs office.. like they luuuuvs their gun.
Not that they use it for much but....
I've been trying for the last few years to get
my users to switch over to OOo for many reasons.
Office (97,2000 and XP) send our machines to hell as far as stability and speed goes. I have only had one problem with stability with OOo on an exotic piece of equipment. OOo runs much faster and doesn't do an alien facehugger installation on my boxes.
Most everyone here give OOo the big thumbs down. There are a few valid reasons (neeeded features and a few incompatibilities) but they are so trained in the idea of 'if it isn't word and excel it doesn't work' that it becomes an impossible barrier to having it gain acceptance.
I will get OOo complaints of incompatibility BEFORE the problem has even been tried!
example --"Install MS office on these machines because OOo probably has a problem reading my excel file"
Geez!
I open up the file in OOo and it reads fine.
"install ms office anyway!"
2days later
"your network is slow"
Now if they do find a file or application that OOo doesn't handle well, then I get the smug cat ass in your face behavior. Like bill is going to buy them a spaceship now or something.
My users are typically not like this with most issues, but MS vs Openoffice.. whew!
What I and others need from the OOo team is this:
1. A mass batch converter to OOo for all MS Office files with some error detection
This should extend even to an email attachment converter.
The converter should allow me to convert everything to native OOo, and then anything that had problems in the transition I can work on and convert. Conversion troubleshooting info should be easily accessible for others.
2. The ability to share workbooks like you can in excel (multi user simultaneous update)
This should help get them off the crack pipe.
Using DMX 512 like the article poster is doing
is recommended. You can use a small dimmer set
and dmx-512 controller like small bands use.
check ebay for dmx-512. even the crappy American DJ
controllers can fit your bill and make it very easy
to save and repeat lighting setups you like. I
wouldn't trade my light board for x-10 *ever*.
Nastiest contract job I have every worked....
For those that don't know what they do:
Farmer Brown's cow dies of some disease or car or something and cannot go to the slaughterhouse.
Rendering semi truck pulls up, throws out some chains with hooks on it.
They hook the cow, turn on the chain motors and drag it into the truck and move on to the next location.
Finally the truck stops at the rendering plant.
A huge metal door slides opens underneath the truck and the truck bed bottom falls dropping a
huge load of dead bloated cattle and other animals!
Delicious! The fecal urine deathrot grease stew smell is everywhere.
I made it through the whole day inside but puked outside after seeing a large puddle of
water blood urine and a flourecent floating piece of plastic with a number on it.
This was an ear tag.
**Complete with ripped off ear and part of the scalp.**
Inside are several 50 foot diameter 30 foot tall open tanks. BOILING! Metal staircases go over the
tops of the open vats. When you put your hand on the stair rail your fingers sink deep into the
sqishy rancid grease before hitting metal.
Very similar in consistancy to refrigerated butter but it's all very hot. Grease penetrates your
lungs and it's well over 100 degrees (F) inside.
I slipped twice on the stairs almost sliding over the edge into a farm sized fry-daddy.
The workers said you *don't* get accustomed to the smell. I'm not weak when it comes to things like this but the scale and potency.. sheesh.
After pressure cooking Bessy and friends they separate all the catrilage and bone and grease
and such grinding them up for later refinement.
Outside were various tanks and piles of product
with spray painted customer lables like Maybeline, Max Factor, Quaker Oats, etc.
None of this of course is for human consumption but makeup doen't count as food.
I was there trying to troubleshoot a chemical pump automation system for odor control which led me
all through the place.
I used a bottle of dishwashing soap to get clean, threw away my clothes after several washing attempts.
Much respect to those work there.
rant ahead-
./
...Make the license to use the internet only availible ONLINE!
This is a silly and unenforcable proposal!
Many things contribute daily to stopping the problems mentioned and improving the online experience.
Experience is a great teacher too. When someones machine is crippled by the latest and greatest virus they usually try to learn quickly how avoid this in the future. In a company especially you look and feel like a fool if your email is infected and you become savvy QUICK!
The drivers license is an interesting example.
How many people did I observe driving poorly today.. hmm...
How many did you? Add them all up and you still have the same problem.
My wallet is thick enough with licenses and certifications (speaking of the non tech related ones) and personally I hate them all. I'd just like to be recognized as some sort of human w/o stamps and numbers and such.
Still on the personal side i've been actively online since about age 8 (30ish now). I try to get as many kids online as possible. I'm sure many of you out there do the same and I'm also sure that there are many under 10 on
My guess is that if you told them a license was required to access this whole incredible world of neat stuff and they had to get their parents to go along with it and they had to provide credential for everything they would hate the idea and many that would otherwise be contributing and learning alot would not be.
(come on admit that you would steal dad's logon and use it like crazy!)
A license to browse through the largest library?
"May i see your credentials so you can listen or talk in the largest forum?"
Oh and we don't allow any anonymity anymore either.
Maybe we should turn off the net because some people in the class are not playing right.
jeez!
Ahh then there is cost. This would create alot of pointless jobs too. Loads of adminstrative costs. VeriSign would probably lick their lips at the opportunity to manage a $6Trillion service like that... Refresher courses, lobbyist pushing to link more to the logon license than you ever could want, etc. yea!
Then you try to get other nations involved.
How would the missiles launch if they are not licensed to use the net?!?
Most of these problems could be solved by a few public service announcements leading people to the well written info already available. Hell it's the internet give'em video.
I >REALLY< tired of this type of thinking (and i typically respect counterpane). I see it as a bit elitist as well. If you stop treating people like cattle most will stop behaving like them.
Open season on Hatch, RIAA, Microsoft, your neighbors, those pesky stonecutters, etc.
1. Create a nice little BSA type company (ahem Front ahem) and obtain your technological
hunting permit!
2. Make a nice web-bugged copyrighted logo or image.. hell throw on a digital sig and digimark and any other drm thing you can think of on it.
3. Attach in email, or invite to web page with image. Include disclaimer,[or porn invite for senators] (optional?!)
4. Detect image hogging space in Hatch's IE cache. If deleted, he's obviously trying to avoid detection, and it's certainly undeletable..
5. Profi....
6. **->bubble, sizzle, sizzle bubble*****. Include all email servers etc. inside the organization on your 'melt list'
Most military systems have lots of copyrighted stuff on them too..
I'm sure all office workers at capitol hill don't have anything to hide.
hmm..
This sounds like fun.
They use several engines and vote on the best. Care FineReader Typereader etc.. 6 or 8 of them. The results are very nice. The package is expensive. It is pretty programmer friendly. If you ask nice and give them some cash and they'll get you a demo. You usually talk to the owner over there too which is cool. The products are simple and pretty neat. Their verifier is well designed too. I don't work for them but a while back demo'd their suite. impressive (crashed on occasion but what ocr pack doesn't.) If you get prime though, overclock like heck. They charged a lot extra per processor last i chekced. --erics
notes:1) i don't work for cerious sw. 2)had no sleep in a day so post is a bit fuzzy. I am sysadmin at a scanning company. We run in to this a lot. For dividing the pics, use thumbs plus and make a batch process for it. You'll need the same # of batch processes (5 i think in this case, 1 per photo). you can link the batches together. Yeah, i know.. its slashdot and i'm recommending a really kick butt (but )windows app. It is worth every penny though. You can use the auto crop feature after they are divided. Sometimes it flakes so write the output file to a different directory. I strongly suggest using a template for laying the photos on the scan bed. A matte board cutter is a handy thing for this and gives you a colored border. Lay out the template so many corners meet at the top/center. This will allow for quick manual cropping later if necessary and make it easy to divide the pix. To help further, sort your pix by size then you can get a pre- programmed crop to work better. We did (on flatbeds) over 100,000 pics of children from other countries this way. Other countries have interesting film sizes. thumbs makes it very easy to crop and deskew a large # of pics. BTW; the new fujitsu color scanner is pretty nice for photos in batch mode. it cannot compare to flatbed, but it can feed 100 photos in a few mins. at 600dpi. I would equate its 600dpi to a flatbed 300dpi, and a bit blurry. Hope this helps! -erics