1. The light is polarised, this has shown to be an advantage in that polarised light penetrates fog and mist more. It may make it easier to filter out for reducing light pollution?
2. The LED light wavelengths are narrow. This makes shadows sharper and the details in a rough surface look more intense. They also have a much narrower angle of view than other light sources.
3. White LEDs are not really producing true white. It's much more blue. Its a human eye reaction to the type of light.
I tried replacing my household CF bulbs with daylight bulbs and boy did the rest of the street notice my house! At night I could see the more natural white light windows of my house for a long way away. They really stand out.
The detail of surfaces looks much more intense and real. The dirt and unevenness of paint stood out more.
Of course this could have been a physiological POV due to the newness of the scene.
Wife said I had to change them back to normal CF lights!
No doubt this same effect will be felt by the public but will fade as more streets get converted. But expect public resistance. People will not like walking down alternatively coloured lit streets.
I imagine if a street had LED white light then the councils could be asked to clean up the street more! People will certainly notice their state.
One street in Edinburgh uses daylight coloured (~8,000K) lamps at night and it really looks and feels like you're under a shaded tent during the day even though it's 2am! A little surreal when you come out of a Pub I can tell you!:-)
LEDs street lighting will take some getting used to by the public.
I suspect it will reduce criminal activity, at least initially.
Let's hope that before anyone does some serious tests that they go to their Doctor and get their ear channels cleaned.
Nothing like a bit of wax in there to upset results.
You don't need remote desktop to start/stop programs, reboot, poweer down in XP.
Just have a folder you can dump files into.
Webfolders will do this and just needs an Internet link.
Then you set up a local script that looks in the folder every 5 mins and runs any.bat file placed in there.
You can start, stop, reboot programs in there.
Alternatively use psexec by sysinternals to run a remote command. Though this will need a vpn link.
I can stop/start USB devices, run/stop programs, reboot, find out what is running on it all 3000miles away.
Very easy. I do it over a 56K modem.
In the UK the Beeb (BBC Micro) machine was King with its BBC BASIC written in 16K of ROM on a 6502 back in the early 1980s and then on a ARM cpu.
Often hailed as the fastest interpreted BASIC ever invented too. Boy could these guys code.
You can still get a version that runs on ARM or x86 today.
Who needs 'goto', gosub or line numbers? Not BBC BASIC.
The Beeb Team even turned away Bill Gates when he flew over to the UK to offer to sell them his crappy unsophisticated version BASIC.
They politely turned him down and showed him a working network computer system. A first for him it seems as they had to explain what a network was to him.
Ah the good old days.:-)
PS is better because Gimp, like most open source programs, relies on too many Cooks and no central leader like Ubunta has.
Most of the effects in Gimp are not standardised in their user interface Look, they never open where I last put them. The user is asked to learn each separate one as they use different methods. This increases the learning curve of GIMP.
PS allows you to see the effect of say a blur in the main window before you render it. Gimp doesn't, it give you a poky wee preview window.
Plus Gimp is slow, really slow. I've only got PS 7 but Gimp 2.4 is so slow at rendering its filters. See PS zoom through a Gaussian blur...
Once I had used the PS liquify tool and discovered Gimp doesn't have it, I made the move across to PS7 I got second hand. No contest. Yet this important tool is not yet in Gimp 2.4.
Also things like the zoom tool in Gimp are really screwed up. When I select an area to zoom up to, it makes the image window bigger! As a User if I've set a image window to a certain size, I'd like it to remain that size thank you very much! But no, Gimp decides I need it bigger.:-) It even has an option called 'Resize window on Zoom' which is initially on. But even with this option off, Gimp still resizes the image window! This really slows me down and I charge by the hour!
It is this lack of thought into the user interface where PS wins over Gimp every time.
One thing I also missed in Gimp was being able to set up preset tools so I can have say two settings for a filter like Gaussian blur and choose quickly between them.
Time for Gimp community to think more of the User than programmers simply putting in more and more exotic effects we'll never use?
IIRC Arthur C Clarke mentions in his book on the making of 2001 Space Odyssey that NASA in the 1960s had a couple of Chimps trained to be exposed to low pressure environments. So he had a sound science backed data to base the space walking scene. Mind you, he doesn't say if the chimps lived....;-)
NASA also developed a 'rubber band' principle space suit that was very thin. The trouble with this design that caused it to get abandoned was that at the joints of the arm, leg, neck, etc. where the material folded caused serious pressure reducing points.
You can still see these prototype suits on the NASA web site. They look amazingly thin!
Hold on there. Didn't NASA offer all their lunar shots as high-res TIFFs way back in the 1990's? I remember demonstrating the 'Internet' to classes back then and one of the key points was being able to look at very high-res TIFF pictures of Neil Armstrong's fuzzy out of focus shots!
Then suddenly they were withdrawn.
Probably the bandwidth at that time made it far too expensive!
"surely Eris would be considered the 10th planet."
No, no, no.... Mondas is the Solar Systems 10th Planet.
Mondas was Earth's twin planet, identical down to even the size and shapes of its continents. Millions of years ago, it was the tenth planet of the Solar System, until somehow it drifted out of its orbit and journeyed into deep space.
A.com domain I had for 7 years lapsed due to an error by my ISP.
I couldn't afford the £100 to get it out of its suspended state so I had to let it be deleted before I could re-purchase it for £10.
On the day of the deletion I found a search engine host site had bought it.
I reported it to icann and they told me an interesting trick.
Use a WHOIS tool to see who had my site.
These companies put up the lapsed site automatically and see if there is any web traffic on it. If after 5-7 days it's unvisited the company can get a refund. Yes they actually get their money back for registering the domain and so can try 'baiting the hook' with another lapsed domain.
Of course when it gets deleted, another company takes up the game...
My site went through 5 different domain 'stealers' every 5 days before finally I could re-purchase my domain again!
Seemingly this is happening hundreds of times a day. And all because it doesn't really cost them anything!
Not many people seem to know this...
Plain IMAP isn't enough these days. Most IMAP servers don't offer good enough mail and spam filtering.
I use a IMAP email server and soon found that what with my email client having spam filters, mail rules for redirecting mail to folders, multiple identities for all my mailing lists, etc. that as soon as I updated my home PC, I then needed to update my laptop machine and vice versa.
The solution?
I use Thunderbird and I sync all the files it uses between my two machines using 'Unison'. About 1MB worth.
It works too.
I did try placing the portable TB on a USB stick but it's so damn slow.
Now what would be nice would be if Thunderbird could do this sync'ing itself.
I see no reason why it couldn't dump its own important files into a IMAP folder and then on opening it could compare the files in this folder and then on the machine. That way it's always up to date.
Right so everyone here is debating pretty pointless on it.
And the world is saying 'tut tut how awful'.
So just what can the UN and other bodies actually do about it?
It's not as if they're going to invade the country is it?
Maybe they'll apply 'sanctions'. Which always take 5 - 10 years to actually do anything, if at all.
So whilst the World moans about it, the NK will just get on with building more of these weapons and no doubt we'll see a few more tests.
If you are interested in reading more on how the experts restore old stock then you can't do better than visit the 'Doctor Who Restoration' web site. These bunch of guys have to restore awful video and film masters from the sixties.
http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
Look up in the DVD releases section: 'Lost in Time' or the detailed 'The Seeds of Death' article.
They have before and after examples that will blow your mind!
I've got masses of 20 year old VHS and Video 8 footage of valuable interviews of Doctor Who (the BBC TV show) stars and the like.
I spoke to the Doctor Who Restoration Team who *really* know how to restore or archive old video material.
http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
Their advice to me was to record the material, using a Timebase Corrector device onto DV tape. But not the standard domestic DV tapes you see in the shops. Use the DVCAM format.
DVCAM tape have a bigger track width on the tape so have more of a chance of keeping the data over time.
DVCAM is used by the professional Video industry so they'll keep the recording/playback machines for decades.
DVCAM can be used with standard miniDV tapes so you'll get 40mins per tape or if you use a standard sized DVCAM tape you'll get up to 180mins (SP).
DV tape has a life of around 10 years. But when you need to make a copy you just need to make a straight tape to tape copy. No loss of quality as it's digital.
Any professional editing company will do all of this for you.
As a Microsoft trained IT support person and having had jobs in the IT industry for the past 15 years I've had to learn to support users of Microsoft, Apple, Acorn, Commodore, Atari and Linux Operating Systems.
Which one do I use at home?
It has to be RISC OS by Acorn.
I wish some person would do a proper study of the various OSes and include this UKmade OS because it rocks!
When using this OS I feel so much more productive and it certainly irritates me the least. Must be the 3 button Mouse it uses, or perhaps it's the way it seems to be put together as it's so easy to add functionally without rebooting for example.
I believe a clone of its Filer part can be found for Linux Gnome under the name ROX.
Amazingly RISC OS has been around since 1990(!) and is quite refreshing to use a GUI that isn't just a rehash of Windows.
You'd have to go quite far back in time as the Police box came into existence in the 1930s!
Doctor Who started in 1963.
:-)
Strangely enough old Police box models designed for use on railway models are quite collectable to Dr. Who fans.
I remember being told by a fan that the original hollow black iron models (about 3 inches high) are worth a good few quid whilst the blue ones are only good for a fiver.
Amazing how anything Who related is worth money.
I've still got my square CD of Dr. Who music (serial #2) that I bought donkey years ago at a charity auction. Its supppose to be worth a fair bit to music and Who collectors.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
You should try looking at the larger LEDs, they produce heat.
So much so they have to be mounted in heatsinks.
Here is a couple of points on LEDs.
1. The light is polarised, this has shown to be an advantage in that polarised light penetrates fog and mist more. It may make it easier to filter out for reducing light pollution?
2. The LED light wavelengths are narrow. This makes shadows sharper and the details in a rough surface look more intense. They also have a much narrower angle of view than other light sources.
3. White LEDs are not really producing true white. It's much more blue. Its a human eye reaction to the type of light.
I tried replacing my household CF bulbs with daylight bulbs and boy did the rest of the street notice my house! At night I could see the more natural white light windows of my house for a long way away. They really stand out.
The detail of surfaces looks much more intense and real. The dirt and unevenness of paint stood out more.
Of course this could have been a physiological POV due to the newness of the scene.
Wife said I had to change them back to normal CF lights!
No doubt this same effect will be felt by the public but will fade as more streets get converted. But expect public resistance. People will not like walking down alternatively coloured lit streets.
I imagine if a street had LED white light then the councils could be asked to clean up the street more! People will certainly notice their state.
One street in Edinburgh uses daylight coloured (~8,000K) lamps at night and it really looks and feels like you're under a shaded tent during the day even though it's 2am! A little surreal when you come out of a Pub I can tell you! :-)
LEDs street lighting will take some getting used to by the public.
I suspect it will reduce criminal activity, at least initially.
Let's hope that before anyone does some serious tests that they go to their Doctor and get their ear channels cleaned. Nothing like a bit of wax in there to upset results.
You don't need remote desktop to start/stop programs, reboot, poweer down in XP. Just have a folder you can dump files into. Webfolders will do this and just needs an Internet link. Then you set up a local script that looks in the folder every 5 mins and runs any .bat file placed in there.
You can start, stop, reboot programs in there.
Alternatively use psexec by sysinternals to run a remote command. Though this will need a vpn link.
I can stop/start USB devices, run/stop programs, reboot, find out what is running on it all 3000miles away.
Very easy. I do it over a 56K modem.
Often hailed as the fastest interpreted BASIC ever invented too. Boy could these guys code.
You can still get a version that runs on ARM or x86 today.
Who needs 'goto', gosub or line numbers? Not BBC BASIC.
The Beeb Team even turned away Bill Gates when he flew over to the UK to offer to sell them his crappy unsophisticated version BASIC.
They politely turned him down and showed him a working network computer system. A first for him it seems as they had to explain what a network was to him. Ah the good old days. :-)
Simply visit http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.startrek.com/ or is that too obvious? ;-))
Most of the effects in Gimp are not standardised in their user interface Look, they never open where I last put them. The user is asked to learn each separate one as they use different methods. This increases the learning curve of GIMP.
PS allows you to see the effect of say a blur in the main window before you render it. Gimp doesn't, it give you a poky wee preview window.
Plus Gimp is slow, really slow. I've only got PS 7 but Gimp 2.4 is so slow at rendering its filters. See PS zoom through a Gaussian blur...
Once I had used the PS liquify tool and discovered Gimp doesn't have it, I made the move across to PS7 I got second hand. No contest. Yet this important tool is not yet in Gimp 2.4.
Also things like the zoom tool in Gimp are really screwed up.
When I select an area to zoom up to, it makes the image window bigger!
As a User if I've set a image window to a certain size, I'd like it to remain that size thank you very much! But no, Gimp decides I need it bigger.
It even has an option called 'Resize window on Zoom' which is initially on. But even with this option off, Gimp still resizes the image window!
This really slows me down and I charge by the hour!
It is this lack of thought into the user interface where PS wins over Gimp every time.
One thing I also missed in Gimp was being able to set up preset tools so I can have say two settings for a filter like Gaussian blur and choose quickly between them.
Time for Gimp community to think more of the User than programmers simply putting in more and more exotic effects we'll never use?
Double EEs? What is that when it is at home?
IIRC Arthur C Clarke mentions in his book on the making of 2001 Space Odyssey that NASA in the 1960s had a couple of Chimps trained to be exposed to low pressure environments. So he had a sound science backed data to base the space walking scene. Mind you, he doesn't say if the chimps lived.... ;-)
NASA also developed a 'rubber band' principle space suit that was very thin. The trouble with this design that caused it to get abandoned was that at the joints of the arm, leg, neck, etc. where the material folded caused serious pressure reducing points. You can still see these prototype suits on the NASA web site. They look amazingly thin!
Then suddenly they were withdrawn. Probably the bandwidth at that time made it far too expensive!
Glad to see they're coming back though...
Did no one watch Blue Peter when they extracted their time capsule? Water and air pollution are the biggest problems leaving things under ground...
"surely Eris would be considered the 10th planet."
;-)
No, no, no.... Mondas is the Solar Systems 10th Planet.
Mondas was Earth's twin planet, identical down to even the size and shapes of its continents. Millions of years ago, it was the tenth planet of the Solar System, until somehow it drifted out of its orbit and journeyed into deep space.
Ask any (classic) Dr. Who Fan...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondas_(Doctor_Who)
Just what the world needs. A more inefficient way to power things...! :-((
Are these guys living on the same planet as the rest of us?
A .com domain I had for 7 years lapsed due to an error by my ISP.
I couldn't afford the £100 to get it out of its suspended state so I had to let it be deleted before I could re-purchase it for £10.
On the day of the deletion I found a search engine host site had bought it.
I reported it to icann and they told me an interesting trick.
Use a WHOIS tool to see who had my site.
These companies put up the lapsed site automatically and see if there is any web traffic on it. If after 5-7 days it's unvisited the company can get a refund. Yes they actually get their money back for registering the domain and so can try 'baiting the hook' with another lapsed domain.
Of course when it gets deleted, another company takes up the game...
My site went through 5 different domain 'stealers' every 5 days before finally I could re-purchase my domain again!
Seemingly this is happening hundreds of times a day. And all because it doesn't really cost them anything!
Not many people seem to know this...
Plain IMAP isn't enough these days.
:-)
Most IMAP servers don't offer good enough mail and spam filtering.
I use a IMAP email server and soon found that what with my email client having spam filters, mail rules for redirecting mail to folders, multiple identities for all my mailing lists, etc. that as soon as I updated my home PC, I then needed to update my laptop machine and vice versa.
The solution?
I use Thunderbird and I sync all the files it uses between my two machines using 'Unison'. About 1MB worth.
It works too.
I did try placing the portable TB on a USB stick but it's so damn slow.
Now what would be nice would be if Thunderbird could do this sync'ing itself.
I see no reason why it couldn't dump its own important files into a IMAP folder and then on opening it could compare the files in this folder and then on the machine. That way it's always up to date.
A futile hope I know...
Right so everyone here is debating pretty pointless on it. And the world is saying 'tut tut how awful'. So just what can the UN and other bodies actually do about it? It's not as if they're going to invade the country is it? Maybe they'll apply 'sanctions'. Which always take 5 - 10 years to actually do anything, if at all. So whilst the World moans about it, the NK will just get on with building more of these weapons and no doubt we'll see a few more tests.
Nice article. But nothing new.
If you are interested in reading more on how the experts restore old stock then you can't do better than visit the 'Doctor Who Restoration' web site.
These bunch of guys have to restore awful video and film masters from the sixties.
http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
Look up in the DVD releases section:
'Lost in Time' or the detailed 'The Seeds of Death' article.
They have before and after examples that will blow your mind!
BTW, I tested the tip of my index finger - 95deg F
So that's the look I get when I say I've been using a UK GUI OS like RISC OS for decades.
Who needs a computer?
:-)
a ts
I've the same problem.
I've got masses of 20 year old VHS and Video 8 footage of valuable interviews of Doctor Who (the BBC TV show) stars and the like.
I spoke to the Doctor Who Restoration Team who *really* know how to restore or archive old video material.
http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
Their advice to me was to record the material, using a Timebase Corrector device onto DV tape. But not the standard domestic DV tapes you see in the shops. Use the DVCAM format.
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#DVform
DVCAM tape have a bigger track width on the tape so have more of a chance of keeping the data over time.
DVCAM is used by the professional Video industry so they'll keep the recording/playback machines for decades.
DVCAM can be used with standard miniDV tapes so you'll get 40mins per tape or if you use a standard sized DVCAM tape you'll get up to 180mins (SP).
DV tape has a life of around 10 years.
But when you need to make a copy you just need to make a straight tape to tape copy. No loss of quality as it's digital.
Any professional editing company will do all of this for you.
Which one do I use at home?
It has to be RISC OS by Acorn.
I wish some person would do a proper study of the various OSes and include this UKmade OS because it rocks!
When using this OS I feel so much more productive and it certainly irritates me the least. Must be the 3 button Mouse it uses, or perhaps it's the way it seems to be put together as it's so easy to add functionally without rebooting for example.
I believe a clone of its Filer part can be found for Linux Gnome under the name ROX.
Amazingly RISC OS has been around since 1990(!) and is quite refreshing to use a GUI that isn't just a rehash of Windows.
http://www.iyonix.com/
http://www.riscos.com/
http://rox.sourceforge.net/comments.php3
Doctor Who started in 1963.
Strangely enough old Police box models designed for use on railway models are quite collectable to Dr. Who fans.
I remember being told by a fan that the original hollow black iron models (about 3 inches high) are worth a good few quid whilst the blue ones are only good for a fiver.
Amazing how anything Who related is worth money.
I've still got my square CD of Dr. Who music (serial #2) that I bought donkey years ago at a charity auction. Its supppose to be worth a fair bit to music and Who collectors. :-)