Irfanview. It's free for personal use, easy to find, and easy to use. It even does batch conversions quite well.
Open image. Click-drag a box to select an area to crop. Hit Menu-Something to crop. Then Menu-Something-Else to resize. I use it all the time for day to day work w/partial screen shots and other basic image tasks.
Picassa is great too, but in many cases it's a little too invasive for a quick screenshot fix or image resize.
I though seriously about creating a custom Knoppix CD to do this kind of thing. I even got as far as successfully customizing a Knoppix build. Then I happened to get a laptop with WiFi. I couldn't be bothered to get Knoppix to work with it -- and the last time I checked, there was no way to run this card in Linux w/WPA turned on. So, the little pet project died.
Plus, printers, access to email, and the general inconvenience of rebooting (twice! once to Knoppix, once back to whatever) put me off the whole thing. AND I'm a reasonably technical person... I wouldn't dream of getting my Mom to try it.
If you stick to regular ethernet, and use a PDF writer, and require a USB key for storage... things become better. Still it would still be a long way from being an adequate solution for a bank to require everyone to use it.
It's not like they hide the fact that it's only retail sales. It tells you different things than a "whole computer market" survey. What a "complete" survey would include isn't exactly clear either, would big iron fit in? Anyway, retail is a good number for seeing what home users are doing in the marketplace. Yes, some home users go to Dell, but by in large, they buy retail. So, in the past when AMD's share was smaller and shrinking, we could guess that Intel's "Intel Inside" or "Centrino" or big Mhz or something else was working. Now, with AMD share growing, either the home consumer is thinking more highly of AMD, or maybe they just don't know either way and buy whatever is on the shelves.
Anyway, my point is that this survey is as valid as any other as long as you think of it in the proper perspective.
If speed and capacity are not critical I would definitely recommend the smaller "laptop" enclosures. The 2.5inch drives don't use as much energy (so overheating is less likely). Since they use so little power, they can be USB powered, which keeps the cabling to a minimum. Plus they're sooo much smaller that it's a relative pleasure to move them around.
The downsides are that GB per GB, the drives are more expensive. They're also slower than desktop hard drives since they have lower bit density and generally lower rotational speeds. And drives are not available in the same capacities. The biggest 2.5 inch drives are about 100GB (i think), versus 500GB for the latest 3.5 inch drives.
My dentist now uses a fibreoptic thingy attached to what amounts to a digital camera sensor for looking around inside mouths... it's not quite mission critical, but it's close.
I agree with the AC. With special emphasis on the fact that these are the exact same prints that are made from film -- the front end processing is different of course, but the end prints are made of the same chemical processes and materials. So they will last exactly as long as traditional prints, i.e. a whole lot longer than the vast majority of inkjet prints.
There are newer pigment based prints that are supposed to last a long time, but I don't really know much about their cost or longevity.
I wouldn't ever consider building a PC for a client these days. Why build for someone as a consultant? You're just asking for trouble. Machines have fairly high failure rates no matter what brand or components you use. I'd rather point people to Dell so that when something breaks, I'm covered. =) Besides, with PC prices the way they are, how much can you save your clients anyway? Especially once you factor in the cost of your time.
My best guess is that MS's monopoly over the Office suite market will end when China, India, South America and co. become important in the software market to lead large-scale changes.
We all know that the functionality of OOo is good enough for the vast majority of users. Why don't most of us switch? Because of switching costs. The file format is critical because it's how we send documents to each other. And most of us need to send and receive files from vendors, customers, and peers without pissing each other off with obscure file formats that impede work flow. Plus, since everyone knows and uses MS, there's a familiarity benefit - we've all used it at school, at work, and we have friends who use it.
In the places where computer penetration is much lower than "the West" the network benefits of using MS software are much, much weaker. I.e, since few people have MS Office installed, there is minimal file format advantage or familiarity advantage to using MS Office. Also, in those places, the relative cost of MS Software is much higher than the open source alternatives. Even if MS released a USD 50 Office + Windows combo in China, that would be the equivalent of at least a weeks labour for the average worker there. Plus, that would invite rampant grey market imports back to the West.
IMHO, I think that it's inevitable that the rapidly developing nations will adopt OSS, especially OpenOffice. When that portion of the global computer market becomes large enough, we'll start to see mass migrations in the West as well.
Remember, back in the ancient times there weren't that many copies of anything printed (printing presses didn't exist). Today, we've got so much more data that we're saving, that if even a small percentage survives 100 years, future archeologists will have more raw data to work with than they'll know what to do with it.
However, to help those in the future, maybe a repository of emulators, hardware designs, RFC's, and source code should be created. Perhaps we could make a fresh collection of relevant data files every 10 years and put several copies in cold storage around the world.
I've been wondering about that too. (I also miss the POP access to my Yahoo box... not that it matters to me anymore. )
My two guess with GMail and POP:
1) they'll make it a premium (i.e. non-free) feature just like Yahoo.
or, my better guess..
2) they'll slip in targeted ads (with appropriate links) right into the messages as they are downloaded. I'm imagining a little banner of adsense ads at the very top of each email -- converting text emails to HTML if they have to. Why not? They've got the technology to pull that off.
I'm now firmly committed to using Mozilla for web browsing. But for folks who have older computers with say, 64 or 128 MB of RAM, Moz is just too much of a memory hog. For me, Opera is a nice medium between the overly vulnerable IE (especially pre XP SP2 - ie. almost everyone who has less 256mb of RAM) and Mozilla.
Now, without the ads, their 800x600 15 inch monitors are much more useful too. =)
Besides the electrical code violations, you'll loose flexibility in what you can power in the room. Laser printers and other very high current appliances (maybe microwaves?) will not be good for your UPS. I've seen laser printers cause UPS's reset themselves. It's not fun having workstations loose power every time someone tries to print. =)
I think that Dell, IBM, etc. receive a commission whenever someone upgrades from the Office Trial (that is now bundled on most OEM PC's) to the full MS Office product. I know I read an article about this in regards to antivirus trials.
So, unless someone is willing to pay Dell to install OOo, it ain't gonna happen any time soon. Now your local mom and pop computer store on the other hand...
then wouldn't it be practically impossible for a cyber squatter to snatch a domain that is actually in use? If "all services are shut off" doesn't that mean that the website and/or email will cease?
IMHO, over time this will become part of a more secure credit card system. It's much harder to clone an RFID than it is to clone the mag stripe and graphics of current cards.
It won't completely fix credit card security (think online purchases and manual imprints), but it will help.
Plus it gives MC some marketing bullet points for providing advanced "RFID super-technology" to its members first.
I decided to take a peak at how this affected the Baidu (BIDU on Nasdaq) stock. (It didn't, this lawsuite seems to have happened after hours, so I'll have to wait for tomorrow to see any real affects.)
However, I was shocked to see the price chart of the stock for last week, on Yahoo finance. What the heck is that? Up 50% then down to where it started within three days? It reminds me of the summer of 2000...
The article was more about how to make a good open source application better quicker and to how to make its user base grow. A shorter release cycle lets people use new features, and test new features faster. It also lets people feel that there is actual progress. Features are no use to me if they're stuck in the CVS tree somewhere. I'm sure not going to download and compile OOo for CVS just to get feature x, y, or z. It's not really about boosting the version number, that's arbitrary anyways.
I can remember thinking that OOo was "almost good" enough for years now. The multi-user install is/was (?) weird in 1.x for Windows users, and it loaded sooo slow. Two years later, and I have no idea if these two things have been fixed/improved.
IMHO, it's because browser support sucks with all bleeding edge web "standards". It's not so much that modern browsers (e.g. Firefox 1.0+, IE6+) are a problem, but the fact that old web browsers (e.g. NS4, IE4) take years to die off from "common" useage. I still see a few "version 4" browsers show up in my web server logs... but the numbers are small enough now that in most cases, I don't really care if my site works for them or not.
Others have mentioned proper diagramming software like Visio. For the free software/OSS type person, there is Dia (google it). It works reasonably well on both Linux and Windows.
If only I could find a web based wiki-drawing tool...
It's too bad that I've been phasing out my Yahoo email account. Anyone know of an opensource webmail package that is even close to this interface? Squirrelmail is looking a little shabby in comparison.
PS. Screenshots are/.'ed. Try mirrordot or coral cache
10% is not that bad if there is no other practical alternative. Think about it from PayPal's perspective, they're going to handle an entire transaction for only $0.10. My bank will gladly charge me $0.50 for an electronic transaction.
NASA has previously sent data into space for others to find. The one I remember hearing about is the data disc stored on the Voyager probes. Obligatory wiki link.
Everyone, including NASA, knows that the odds of anything receiving this disc in the future are slim (but not none) -- but that doesn't mean you don't try! Besides, what's the worst that could happen? If we tick-off some aliens with an image that somehow translates across time and space to be something abhorently insulting, and in turn, they find and vaporize Earth, well, that's just plain bad luck. =)
You can probably afford an extra PC to run Windows just for trading. Besides, you will always run the risk that the trading platform isn't tested as well on Linux. One bad event could easily cost you more than an extra PC (or VMWare). To keep things tidy, consider Windows XP Pro + Remote Desktop + the Linux rdesktop (?) client. Cheap, quick, and you'll be able to play all the greatest games after hours.
IMHO, if possible, it's best to ask friends who have sites which have similar traffic profiles to your whom they use AND if they would recommend them to others.
If that isn't applicable to your situation, I would get a half a dozen companies that fit your criteria - price, capacity, etc. and then search the major web master hangouts like webmasterworld.com and sitepointforums.com and even google for previous posts of problems with those webhosts. E.g. "testwebhost.com problem" or "testwebhost.com downtime" or "testwebhost.com bad support".
Just remember to keep the results in perspective, every large webhost (and company in general) is going to have a few problems now and then. You want to find a webhost that has relatively few.
I'm sure that there are webhosts that charge $5/mo that are great, but more often than not, you get what you pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
Irfanview. It's free for personal use, easy to find, and easy to use. It even does batch conversions quite well.
Open image. Click-drag a box to select an area to crop. Hit Menu-Something to crop. Then Menu-Something-Else to resize. I use it all the time for day to day work w/partial screen shots and other basic image tasks.
Picassa is great too, but in many cases it's a little too invasive for a quick screenshot fix or image resize.
I though seriously about creating a custom Knoppix CD to do this kind of thing. I even got as far as successfully customizing a Knoppix build. Then I happened to get a laptop with WiFi. I couldn't be bothered to get Knoppix to work with it -- and the last time I checked, there was no way to run this card in Linux w/WPA turned on. So, the little pet project died.
Plus, printers, access to email, and the general inconvenience of rebooting (twice! once to Knoppix, once back to whatever) put me off the whole thing. AND I'm a reasonably technical person... I wouldn't dream of getting my Mom to try it.
If you stick to regular ethernet, and use a PDF writer, and require a USB key for storage... things become better. Still it would still be a long way from being an adequate solution for a bank to require everyone to use it.
It's not like they hide the fact that it's only retail sales. It tells you different things than a "whole computer market" survey. What a "complete" survey would include isn't exactly clear either, would big iron fit in? Anyway, retail is a good number for seeing what home users are doing in the marketplace. Yes, some home users go to Dell, but by in large, they buy retail. So, in the past when AMD's share was smaller and shrinking, we could guess that Intel's "Intel Inside" or "Centrino" or big Mhz or something else was working. Now, with AMD share growing, either the home consumer is thinking more highly of AMD, or maybe they just don't know either way and buy whatever is on the shelves.
Anyway, my point is that this survey is as valid as any other as long as you think of it in the proper perspective.
If speed and capacity are not critical I would definitely recommend the smaller "laptop" enclosures. The 2.5inch drives don't use as much energy (so overheating is less likely). Since they use so little power, they can be USB powered, which keeps the cabling to a minimum. Plus they're sooo much smaller that it's a relative pleasure to move them around.
The downsides are that GB per GB, the drives are more expensive. They're also slower than desktop hard drives since they have lower bit density and generally lower rotational speeds. And drives are not available in the same capacities. The biggest 2.5 inch drives are about 100GB (i think), versus 500GB for the latest 3.5 inch drives.
My dentist now uses a fibreoptic thingy attached to what amounts to a digital camera sensor for looking around inside mouths... it's not quite mission critical, but it's close.
I agree with the AC. With special emphasis on the fact that these are the exact same prints that are made from film -- the front end processing is different of course, but the end prints are made of the same chemical processes and materials. So they will last exactly as long as traditional prints, i.e. a whole lot longer than the vast majority of inkjet prints.
There are newer pigment based prints that are supposed to last a long time, but I don't really know much about their cost or longevity.
I wouldn't ever consider building a PC for a client these days. Why build for someone as a consultant? You're just asking for trouble. Machines have fairly high failure rates no matter what brand or components you use. I'd rather point people to Dell so that when something breaks, I'm covered. =) Besides, with PC prices the way they are, how much can you save your clients anyway? Especially once you factor in the cost of your time.
My best guess is that MS's monopoly over the Office suite market will end when China, India, South America and co. become important in the software market to lead large-scale changes.
We all know that the functionality of OOo is good enough for the vast majority of users. Why don't most of us switch? Because of switching costs. The file format is critical because it's how we send documents to each other. And most of us need to send and receive files from vendors, customers, and peers without pissing each other off with obscure file formats that impede work flow. Plus, since everyone knows and uses MS, there's a familiarity benefit - we've all used it at school, at work, and we have friends who use it.
In the places where computer penetration is much lower than "the West" the network benefits of using MS software are much, much weaker. I.e, since few people have MS Office installed, there is minimal file format advantage or familiarity advantage to using MS Office. Also, in those places, the relative cost of MS Software is much higher than the open source alternatives. Even if MS released a USD 50 Office + Windows combo in China, that would be the equivalent of at least a weeks labour for the average worker there. Plus, that would invite rampant grey market imports back to the West.
IMHO, I think that it's inevitable that the rapidly developing nations will adopt OSS, especially OpenOffice. When that portion of the global computer market becomes large enough, we'll start to see mass migrations in the West as well.
Remember, back in the ancient times there weren't that many copies of anything printed (printing presses didn't exist). Today, we've got so much more data that we're saving, that if even a small percentage survives 100 years, future archeologists will have more raw data to work with than they'll know what to do with it.
However, to help those in the future, maybe a repository of emulators, hardware designs, RFC's, and source code should be created. Perhaps we could make a fresh collection of relevant data files every 10 years and put several copies in cold storage around the world.
I've been wondering about that too. (I also miss the POP access to my Yahoo box... not that it matters to me anymore. )
My two guess with GMail and POP:
1) they'll make it a premium (i.e. non-free) feature just like Yahoo.
or, my better guess..
2) they'll slip in targeted ads (with appropriate links) right into the messages as they are downloaded. I'm imagining a little banner of adsense ads at the very top of each email -- converting text emails to HTML if they have to. Why not? They've got the technology to pull that off.
I'm now firmly committed to using Mozilla for web browsing. But for folks who have older computers with say, 64 or 128 MB of RAM, Moz is just too much of a memory hog. For me, Opera is a nice medium between the overly vulnerable IE (especially pre XP SP2 - ie. almost everyone who has less 256mb of RAM) and Mozilla.
Now, without the ads, their 800x600 15 inch monitors are much more useful too. =)
Isn't competition nice when it works?
Besides the electrical code violations, you'll loose flexibility in what you can power in the room. Laser printers and other very high current appliances (maybe microwaves?) will not be good for your UPS. I've seen laser printers cause UPS's reset themselves. It's not fun having workstations loose power every time someone tries to print. =)
I think that Dell, IBM, etc. receive a commission whenever someone upgrades from the Office Trial (that is now bundled on most OEM PC's) to the full MS Office product. I know I read an article about this in regards to antivirus trials.
So, unless someone is willing to pay Dell to install OOo, it ain't gonna happen any time soon. Now your local mom and pop computer store on the other hand...
then wouldn't it be practically impossible for a cyber squatter to snatch a domain that is actually in use? If "all services are shut off" doesn't that mean that the website and/or email will cease?
IMHO, over time this will become part of a more secure credit card system. It's much harder to clone an RFID than it is to clone the mag stripe and graphics of current cards.
It won't completely fix credit card security (think online purchases and manual imprints), but it will help.
Plus it gives MC some marketing bullet points for providing advanced "RFID super-technology" to its members first.
I decided to take a peak at how this affected the Baidu (BIDU on Nasdaq) stock. (It didn't, this lawsuite seems to have happened after hours, so I'll have to wait for tomorrow to see any real affects.)
However, I was shocked to see the price chart of the stock for last week, on Yahoo finance. What the heck is that? Up 50% then down to where it started within three days? It reminds me of the summer of 2000...
I totally agree. To me, Access is like the swiss army knife of data processing.
.mdb file and you are done.
Have a list to mangle? Shove it in a table or two and run some queries on them.
Want to query to totally unrelated databases that use totally different database servers? Link the tables via ODBC and run queries.
Create a really basic data entry tool? Build a form that feeds a table in literally minutes.
Want to easily move that little form to another computer for someone else to fill in? Just copy that ONE
Plus, if you want to move into something with a real database, well, Access makes a great front end to your full featured database.
I'm not a huge MS fan, but they do have some excellent products. Access, and Exchange/Outlook and SQL Server come to mind.
The article was more about how to make a good open source application better quicker and to how to make its user base grow. A shorter release cycle lets people use new features, and test new features faster. It also lets people feel that there is actual progress. Features are no use to me if they're stuck in the CVS tree somewhere. I'm sure not going to download and compile OOo for CVS just to get feature x, y, or z. It's not really about boosting the version number, that's arbitrary anyways.
I can remember thinking that OOo was "almost good" enough for years now. The multi-user install is/was (?) weird in 1.x for Windows users, and it loaded sooo slow. Two years later, and I have no idea if these two things have been fixed/improved.
IMHO, it's because browser support sucks with all bleeding edge web "standards". It's not so much that modern browsers (e.g. Firefox 1.0+, IE6+) are a problem, but the fact that old web browsers (e.g. NS4, IE4) take years to die off from "common" useage. I still see a few "version 4" browsers show up in my web server logs... but the numbers are small enough now that in most cases, I don't really care if my site works for them or not.
Others have mentioned proper diagramming software like Visio. For the free software/OSS type person, there is Dia (google it). It works reasonably well on both Linux and Windows. If only I could find a web based wiki-drawing tool...
It's too bad that I've been phasing out my Yahoo email account. Anyone know of an opensource webmail package that is even close to this interface? Squirrelmail is looking a little shabby in comparison.
/.'ed. Try mirrordot or coral cache
PS. Screenshots are
10% is not that bad if there is no other practical alternative. Think about it from PayPal's perspective, they're going to handle an entire transaction for only $0.10. My bank will gladly charge me $0.50 for an electronic transaction.
NASA has previously sent data into space for others to find. The one I remember hearing about is the data disc stored on the Voyager probes. Obligatory wiki link.
Everyone, including NASA, knows that the odds of anything receiving this disc in the future are slim (but not none) -- but that doesn't mean you don't try! Besides, what's the worst that could happen? If we tick-off some aliens with an image that somehow translates across time and space to be something abhorently insulting, and in turn, they find and vaporize Earth, well, that's just plain bad luck. =)
You can probably afford an extra PC to run Windows just for trading. Besides, you will always run the risk that the trading platform isn't tested as well on Linux. One bad event could easily cost you more than an extra PC (or VMWare). To keep things tidy, consider Windows XP Pro + Remote Desktop + the Linux rdesktop (?) client. Cheap, quick, and you'll be able to play all the greatest games after hours.
IMHO, if possible, it's best to ask friends who have sites which have similar traffic profiles to your whom they use AND if they would recommend them to others.
If that isn't applicable to your situation, I would get a half a dozen companies that fit your criteria - price, capacity, etc. and then search the major web master hangouts like webmasterworld.com and sitepointforums.com and even google for previous posts of problems with those webhosts. E.g. "testwebhost.com problem" or "testwebhost.com downtime" or "testwebhost.com bad support".
Just remember to keep the results in perspective, every large webhost (and company in general) is going to have a few problems now and then. You want to find a webhost that has relatively few.
I'm sure that there are webhosts that charge $5/mo that are great, but more often than not, you get what you pay for.