We're told it was to save energy, which is bull, what it really is about is increasing the amount of time kids can trick-or-treat on Oct 31 by one hour and thus increase demand for candy.
The major lobby groups for the candy industry have spent the last 20 years trying to make everyone think it'll save some power.
You can set it to zero. That's fine but you would have to use stenography to place what was supposed to be in the black box inside the rest of the picture. Perhaps through a 'faulty' watermarking routine.
For the camera I use a Canon 300D (recently upgraded to a 450D) and a 300mm lens. I've seen people do mosaics with a 600L lens to create a virtual 50mm lens that would crash most PCs even trying to load, let alone actually stitch.
That's not really all that new. Motorized panorama heads have been around for a long time. People have even built them from Lego Technics.
As an avid pano/gigapixel photographer myself I'm interested in any new entry into the excessively priced head market. I'm using a Kadian Quickpan Pro that cost me $400 a few years ago. An automated system would be very nice but the cost is usually horrific. I've even had a head custom built at one point.
As for the use, I like to take big pictures. I have a 6ft x 3ft print hanging on my wall. The print is 400dpi taken from a 43000x22000 (just shy of 1GP). People see the picture and say it looks nice then walk a little closer, and closer, and closer. Pretty soon they are standing 4" away and excitedly reading the serial number on the front of a train car that is only 2" across on the print.
Given my horrible luck with CD/DVD based protection systems I wouldn't mind that much if it phoned home from time to time assuming normal privacy concerns are met.
As a person with cable based internet there isn't a time when I'm not at home.
I think PC gaming is heading toward the persistent online authenticity check system. People look at games like Crysis which has been pirated to an extreme then WoW which was virtually immune to piracy for nearly two years and even now it requires a fair amount of fiddling and you can't play on the real servers.
I'm surprised at the 10 days though. That seems kind of long to me. Sounds like something a cracker could exploit. If there is a timer there is a way to stop it.
It blows my mind when I see someone logged into their bank/email/etc from a public terminal.
I was once friends with a guy that carried around a PS/2 keylogger that he would plug into university terminals for a day or two then pick it up later. He just wanted to see what he could find. He found everything from people doing homework, cybersex, and even bank info. Now if he was actually out to do harm, he could have really made things bad for hundreds of people.
If it's not yours then just assume that it has a loudspeaker on it broadcasting everything you do to everyone around you.
And for those that think cut&paste, screen keyboards, etc will protect them. I personally installed a keylogger on a friend's PC to catch her then, 12 year old son, looking at porn. The log files had a play button which would replay every mouse movement, screen change, and keyboard input for up to 96 hours. This was about 7 years ago so I'm sure they've gotten better.
I understand the desire to sell more hardware to allow users to 'upgrade' but this just reaks. I hope this story gets a lot of media attention.
I think the problem for Creative is that AC'97 and it's successor all but destroyed their business.
They can no longer count on new PC sales as an avenue of revenue because built in motherboard solutions are "good enough" for most people. So better to burn the bridges of existing owners and hope they are forced to repurchase something they didn't need. More power to you Asus but why did you have to name your card Xonar? Ugh.
Mac fans, of the rabid kind, are happy with anything Apple does.
As far as how much better Vista was? I'm not sure what you read but Microsoft fans tend to not look across the fence but internally. I can point you to hundreds of XP vs Vista pages and hundreds deep posts on the same. Heck google "Vista vs Leopard" then "Vista vs XP" You get 268K for the first and 1.75 million for the second. Heck even Vista vs Linux turns up a million hits.
For the most part, MS fans really don't care what Apple does. Sure they might swipe the nifty launcher thing but generally they fight with each other. They only time MS fans get really riled up about Apple is when Apple does something idiotic, like put Safari in an iTunes update.
Mac security isn't an issue not because it is superior (it could be, I don't know) but because it is a small target. On a site I run I get 10,000 hits per month and 0.07% of them are Mac users. Yes, a stunning 700 people run Mac that visit the site. Just shy of 1% use Linux and the other 98% run Windows. If you were going to hack an OS, which target would you pick? The barn or the M&M?
6000K in a tiny space isn't really that big of a deal. Oh I'm sure it'll make a heck of a bang for its size but an arc / mig welder can exceed that temperature easily and people hang their heads inches away from welds as they do them. Though, like a welder, looking directly at the bulb could be bad.
6000K is hot but 6000K that is in 2mm^3 area at 200Kpa isn't that much compared to say 6000K in 100Kpa at 1m^3. The second would be very nasty be near if it suddenly was vented to the room while the first would feel like a warm fart.
I love some of the comments about permanent markers. Apparently those people have no idea what acetone (nail polish remover / paint thinner) does to a Jiffy. Permanent markers are about as permanent as a fart when it comes to that stuff.
I'm often floored at how much information people post on Facebook, Myspace, etc. I'm one of those weirdos that uses a screen name for everything and only a few people in the world know who I really am from my screen name.
I use decent passwords, and keep info that could be used to harm me to a minimum. I don't put a message up on Facebook saying how excited I am to have just bought a $750,000 new house and $37,500 new car or and here is my address and the key is under the doormat.
This was my boss's and her children's attitude prior to my employment. I'm the IT guy so of course I ended up fixing their PC when it got riddled with spyware/virii/worms/etc. When they asked me what those programs did I put the fear of God into them. I had them so scared they were on the phone changing bank passwords, switching from using "1132" as a password to something 16 digits long, deleting more private info off of places like Facebook etc.
Yes I stretched the truth about the dangers of the apps they had managed to be infected with but they are a hell of a lot better now. They shred mail and those fracking "you've been pre-approved!" credit offers.
They didn't get burned but I made them think like they narrowly dodged a bullet and they are better for it.
I not quite sure what the attraction is to shakey-cam style. I saw Blair Witch and spent about 50% of the movie looking at the seat in front of me or at the floor. A friend of mine that was working in a theater when BWP was out said he had to clean up at least two piles of vomit after each showing.
Seriously, what sort of person do you have to be to create a movie that causes people to throw-up, leave the theater, or sit there with their eyes closed?
I'll pass on Cloverfield until it hits video. At least watching movies like that on a TV are easier on the eyes...unless you happen to own a 150" plasma TV.
I saw the link and decided that I should at least write my MP. However after some digging I've yet to find the actual bill.
I'm not going to talk out of my ass because someone said that something wicked this way comes. I want to read it and find out if it is true. I guess I'll need to wait a few days for the actual bill to be presented then make the choice if I support it or not.
Time shifting, personal backups, and moving media from one form that I own to work with another device that I own are things that I consider reasonable and will do what I can to defend.
While I agree that it is somewhat dirty, that isn't a scam. The credit card company isn't looking to scam people out of money who never activated. They are looking for payment for the activation process which, while has negligible cost, still cost them money.
The easiest way for them to recover this is by applying the fee to the credit card. It's the stupid consumer's fault for not reading the contract and destroying the second, third, etc notices. From the sound of it, the company did everything they could to inform the client that there were costs to be paid with interest but the client wrongly chose to ignore it.
If you sign a contract you are obligated to keep your end of the agreement. Too bad for you that you didn't bother to read that there would be a $29 fee subject to late fees and interest. I bet that in the wall of text on the other side of the form it said exactly that. If you really want the card, take the form home and actually read it. I went through three different credit card applications before I found one that I felt was fair and it took me several house of reading.
Linux as it is now will NEVER be any sort of viable replacement to Windows. The biggest problem Linux has is its lack of a central authority. There are too many distributions with low standardization.
Linux could most certainly power a strong desktop client but with the direction it has at the moment and always has had that won't happen.
Not to mention that my PC at home running Vista will run any Windows application you throw at it. You claim of "Vistas difficulties with such things" seems a bit unfounded to me. I agree that you sometimes might have to drop into emulation mode which should be transparent to the user and therefore needs some attention. However, I have yet to find any app that won't work on Vista.
I've yet to see a photo/video of a ghost that convinced me of anything.
Thinks to consider: - We're biologically programmed to see faces/figures in randomness. Seeing a vague human-like face in smoke is not a ghost. It is smoke. - "They said it wasn't fake" Right... - Special effects to make ghosts seem to exist are easier than you think. Most of the time the cheesiest solution is the correct one. - Orbs are nothing. They are freaking motes of dust that are out of focus and caught in the lamp/flash from the camera. - Low frequency noise can do some freaky things to your brain. Things like fans, wind through a roof, etc are able to generate a tone that you might not notice or be able to hear but it can cause you to feel like your not alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound - There are more malicious people out there than you would like to think. "Real" hauntings have turned out to be vindictive neighbors more than a few times.
To be honest I would love for there to be ghosts. That is solid proof of an afterlife. However, with the evidence collected to date, I see no logical reason to believe in ghosts.
If they put them on ebay I bet hackers and geeks would swarm the auctions. A cheap (depending on what they want for it) VGA touch screen, small PC that you might be able to install a different OS to?
Sadly though, those $5000 machines will probably only sell for $200 tops online.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, I want Super Street Fighter II EX Turbo HD Remix Champion Edition Alpha: The World Warrior - Fight for the Future.
r u sayn i cant rite?
(Lameness filter prevention text)
We're told it was to save energy, which is bull, what it really is about is increasing the amount of time kids can trick-or-treat on Oct 31 by one hour and thus increase demand for candy.
The major lobby groups for the candy industry have spent the last 20 years trying to make everyone think it'll save some power.
Money, politics, corruption, take your pick.
AHAHA!
I had my speakers up pretty loud. That startled me then I started laughing and yet a piece of me cried at the destruction of our language.
I've a feeling that grammer nazies will patrol the comments to this story in full force.
Cover it with mirrors or tinfoil. Cook burgers with the sun.
You can set it to zero. That's fine but you would have to use stenography to place what was supposed to be in the black box inside the rest of the picture. Perhaps through a 'faulty' watermarking routine.
For the camera I use a Canon 300D (recently upgraded to a 450D) and a 300mm lens. I've seen people do mosaics with a 600L lens to create a virtual 50mm lens that would crash most PCs even trying to load, let alone actually stitch.
I love PTGui
That's not really all that new. Motorized panorama heads have been around for a long time. People have even built them from Lego Technics.
As an avid pano/gigapixel photographer myself I'm interested in any new entry into the excessively priced head market. I'm using a Kadian Quickpan Pro that cost me $400 a few years ago. An automated system would be very nice but the cost is usually horrific. I've even had a head custom built at one point.
As for the use, I like to take big pictures. I have a 6ft x 3ft print hanging on my wall. The print is 400dpi taken from a 43000x22000 (just shy of 1GP). People see the picture and say it looks nice then walk a little closer, and closer, and closer. Pretty soon they are standing 4" away and excitedly reading the serial number on the front of a train car that is only 2" across on the print.
Given my horrible luck with CD/DVD based protection systems I wouldn't mind that much if it phoned home from time to time assuming normal privacy concerns are met.
As a person with cable based internet there isn't a time when I'm not at home.
I think PC gaming is heading toward the persistent online authenticity check system. People look at games like Crysis which has been pirated to an extreme then WoW which was virtually immune to piracy for nearly two years and even now it requires a fair amount of fiddling and you can't play on the real servers.
I'm surprised at the 10 days though. That seems kind of long to me. Sounds like something a cracker could exploit. If there is a timer there is a way to stop it.
It blows my mind when I see someone logged into their bank/email/etc from a public terminal.
I was once friends with a guy that carried around a PS/2 keylogger that he would plug into university terminals for a day or two then pick it up later. He just wanted to see what he could find. He found everything from people doing homework, cybersex, and even bank info. Now if he was actually out to do harm, he could have really made things bad for hundreds of people.
If it's not yours then just assume that it has a loudspeaker on it broadcasting everything you do to everyone around you.
And for those that think cut&paste, screen keyboards, etc will protect them. I personally installed a keylogger on a friend's PC to catch her then, 12 year old son, looking at porn. The log files had a play button which would replay every mouse movement, screen change, and keyboard input for up to 96 hours. This was about 7 years ago so I'm sure they've gotten better.
I understand the desire to sell more hardware to allow users to 'upgrade' but this just reaks. I hope this story gets a lot of media attention.
I think the problem for Creative is that AC'97 and it's successor all but destroyed their business.
They can no longer count on new PC sales as an avenue of revenue because built in motherboard solutions are "good enough" for most people. So better to burn the bridges of existing owners and hope they are forced to repurchase something they didn't need. More power to you Asus but why did you have to name your card Xonar? Ugh.
I've been using site:www.example.com for years.
Mac fans, of the rabid kind, are happy with anything Apple does.
As far as how much better Vista was? I'm not sure what you read but Microsoft fans tend to not look across the fence but internally. I can point you to hundreds of XP vs Vista pages and hundreds deep posts on the same. Heck google "Vista vs Leopard" then "Vista vs XP" You get 268K for the first and 1.75 million for the second. Heck even Vista vs Linux turns up a million hits.
For the most part, MS fans really don't care what Apple does. Sure they might swipe the nifty launcher thing but generally they fight with each other. They only time MS fans get really riled up about Apple is when Apple does something idiotic, like put Safari in an iTunes update.
Mac security isn't an issue not because it is superior (it could be, I don't know) but because it is a small target. On a site I run I get 10,000 hits per month and 0.07% of them are Mac users. Yes, a stunning 700 people run Mac that visit the site. Just shy of 1% use Linux and the other 98% run Windows. If you were going to hack an OS, which target would you pick? The barn or the M&M?
6000K in a tiny space isn't really that big of a deal. Oh I'm sure it'll make a heck of a bang for its size but an arc / mig welder can exceed that temperature easily and people hang their heads inches away from welds as they do them. Though, like a welder, looking directly at the bulb could be bad.
6000K is hot but 6000K that is in 2mm^3 area at 200Kpa isn't that much compared to say 6000K in 100Kpa at 1m^3. The second would be very nasty be near if it suddenly was vented to the room while the first would feel like a warm fart.
A 250w street lamp is great but can a 30w version be created to compete with a 100w incandescent/40w compact florescent bulb?
Just curious to know if this is something that doesn't work unless you run it really high.
I now wait for news stories about children swallowing on of the bulbs or the video on YouTube of someone shooting a powered up bulb with a gun.
I love some of the comments about permanent markers. Apparently those people have no idea what acetone (nail polish remover / paint thinner) does to a Jiffy. Permanent markers are about as permanent as a fart when it comes to that stuff.
I'm often floored at how much information people post on Facebook, Myspace, etc. I'm one of those weirdos that uses a screen name for everything and only a few people in the world know who I really am from my screen name.
I use decent passwords, and keep info that could be used to harm me to a minimum. I don't put a message up on Facebook saying how excited I am to have just bought a $750,000 new house and $37,500 new car or and here is my address and the key is under the doormat.
This was my boss's and her children's attitude prior to my employment. I'm the IT guy so of course I ended up fixing their PC when it got riddled with spyware/virii/worms/etc. When they asked me what those programs did I put the fear of God into them. I had them so scared they were on the phone changing bank passwords, switching from using "1132" as a password to something 16 digits long, deleting more private info off of places like Facebook etc.
Yes I stretched the truth about the dangers of the apps they had managed to be infected with but they are a hell of a lot better now. They shred mail and those fracking "you've been pre-approved!" credit offers.
They didn't get burned but I made them think like they narrowly dodged a bullet and they are better for it.
I not quite sure what the attraction is to shakey-cam style. I saw Blair Witch and spent about 50% of the movie looking at the seat in front of me or at the floor. A friend of mine that was working in a theater when BWP was out said he had to clean up at least two piles of vomit after each showing.
Seriously, what sort of person do you have to be to create a movie that causes people to throw-up, leave the theater, or sit there with their eyes closed?
I'll pass on Cloverfield until it hits video. At least watching movies like that on a TV are easier on the eyes...unless you happen to own a 150" plasma TV.
I'll stop using 127.0.0.0 I know it wasn't right for me to start using it and I should have asked first.
I saw the link and decided that I should at least write my MP. However after some digging I've yet to find the actual bill.
I'm not going to talk out of my ass because someone said that something wicked this way comes. I want to read it and find out if it is true. I guess I'll need to wait a few days for the actual bill to be presented then make the choice if I support it or not.
Time shifting, personal backups, and moving media from one form that I own to work with another device that I own are things that I consider reasonable and will do what I can to defend.
While I agree that it is somewhat dirty, that isn't a scam. The credit card company isn't looking to scam people out of money who never activated. They are looking for payment for the activation process which, while has negligible cost, still cost them money.
The easiest way for them to recover this is by applying the fee to the credit card. It's the stupid consumer's fault for not reading the contract and destroying the second, third, etc notices. From the sound of it, the company did everything they could to inform the client that there were costs to be paid with interest but the client wrongly chose to ignore it.
If you sign a contract you are obligated to keep your end of the agreement. Too bad for you that you didn't bother to read that there would be a $29 fee subject to late fees and interest. I bet that in the wall of text on the other side of the form it said exactly that. If you really want the card, take the form home and actually read it. I went through three different credit card applications before I found one that I felt was fair and it took me several house of reading.
Linux as it is now will NEVER be any sort of viable replacement to Windows. The biggest problem Linux has is its lack of a central authority. There are too many distributions with low standardization.
Linux could most certainly power a strong desktop client but with the direction it has at the moment and always has had that won't happen.
Not to mention that my PC at home running Vista will run any Windows application you throw at it. You claim of "Vistas difficulties with such things" seems a bit unfounded to me. I agree that you sometimes might have to drop into emulation mode which should be transparent to the user and therefore needs some attention. However, I have yet to find any app that won't work on Vista.
I've yet to see a photo/video of a ghost that convinced me of anything.
Thinks to consider:
- We're biologically programmed to see faces/figures in randomness. Seeing a vague human-like face in smoke is not a ghost. It is smoke.
- "They said it wasn't fake" Right...
- Special effects to make ghosts seem to exist are easier than you think. Most of the time the cheesiest solution is the correct one.
- Orbs are nothing. They are freaking motes of dust that are out of focus and caught in the lamp/flash from the camera.
- Low frequency noise can do some freaky things to your brain. Things like fans, wind through a roof, etc are able to generate a tone that you might not notice or be able to hear but it can cause you to feel like your not alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound
- There are more malicious people out there than you would like to think. "Real" hauntings have turned out to be vindictive neighbors more than a few times.
To be honest I would love for there to be ghosts. That is solid proof of an afterlife. However, with the evidence collected to date, I see no logical reason to believe in ghosts.
If they put them on ebay I bet hackers and geeks would swarm the auctions. A cheap (depending on what they want for it) VGA touch screen, small PC that you might be able to install a different OS to?
Sadly though, those $5000 machines will probably only sell for $200 tops online.