I've taken 5000 pictures with my digital camera. Development costs: $0 Experience: priceless
What if I had a film camera? 5000 pictures / 24 pictures per roll ~ 208 rolls. 208 rolls at $8 for developement = $1666 Experience: Chapter 11 bankruptcy
I've only had my digital camera for a year. I agree, however, that if the poster is new to photography, a digital SLR is overkill. However, a simple digital camera with manual settings in the sub-$300 range will suffice. But, for a learning photographer, digital cameras and pictures allow them to take as many shots they want, get instant feedback on how they did, and allow them to correct their mistakes instantly and try again....*without* having to develope all of those crappy shots! Digital is definitely the way to go. I mean, even Kodak is getting out of the film industry.
"You gotta remember that these are just light capturing computers. Canon does not make computer... HP makes great computers."
Just because a camera is "digital" doesn't mean that suddenly, all of the other parts of the camera are unimportant. Before that light can even make it to that "computer", it first has to go through a lense, aperature, and shutter to make it to the CCD. If your camera has a shitty lense, artifacts and distortions will be apparent and obvious. If your camera has shitty mechanics on the aperture or shutter, your pictures will be obviously be degraded and somewhat.....surprising. The quality of the CCD is also important. Most are 3 color CCD's, however a few companies are now shipping with 4 color CCD's. Again, a shitty CCD will cause colors to bleed, blurriness, etc. in your photos. Oh, but wait...it's all just about the "computer". Last I heard, HP was *not* a forerunner in photographic optics, nor CCD's.
And, more specifically, my mother actually won an HP 945 in a contest. I played with it a few weeks ago. That camera is a piece of shit. It doesn't have a 56X zoom, first of all. It has a 8X optical zoom, and an 7X digital zoom. But anyone who knows anything knows that digital zooms are bullshit. The manual settings on the camera were very limited. Sure you could choose some aperature settings, but the selections were not nearly as rich as I've seen on other cameras (my less expensive Canon A60, for example). And exposure settings are even worse. It is horribly slow. Shot-to-shot times are on the average of a couple of seconds. Plus, it's autofocusing is slow as molasses as well. When you take a picture or zoom, the LCD turns black. Also, when you move the camera around, the video on the LCD turns jittery like bad stop animation. Uh...where is that great "computer" HP is supposed to be putting in this camera?
"Unsolicited telemarketing calls placed by computer or delivering a recorded message are illegal under Georgia law."
I get a recorded message everyday saying that someone had entered my name into a contest for a free month of satellite television....grrrrrrr.....it's *soooooo* bogus.
Storage? If you are not using the electricity from the solar panels, conventionally, it is stored in huge battery arrays. With this setup, it is converted to hydrogen and can be stored more easily in a big tank, or, if the tank is filled, that electricity is then fed back into the grid directly. That hydrogen tank probably doesn't need to be maintained like a battery array, and, if you'd like to upgrade, a bigger tank, or another auxilliary tank is probably cheaper than the equivalent batteries.
"...an installer made by a third party, hosted on a free web hosting service?"
I found this site linked from the main Gimp site. It doesn't look too sketchy to me. Why don't you use that? If you really want to compile from scratch, do it on Linux first with native Linux programs. When you get the hang of that, move to Windows. I'm all for sink-or-swim type trials, but, in this case, I think you'll sink. Very quickly.
You mention you'd like something smaller and lighter. The QuickPad comes in at 11.5" x 9" x 1.5", the AlphaSmart Dana at 12.4" x 9.3" x 1.9", and, for comparison, a 12" Powerbook is 10.9" x 8.6" x 1.18. The Powerbook weights twice as much as the other two, but is actually smaller than the word processors. So, you can get a work processor that is bigger, but weighs less, but can only do one thing and has a shitty screen. OR you can get a Powerbook that is smaller, can do many things, a great screen, and only weighs two pounds more. Is two pounds really going to make that much of a difference? Just get a smaller laptop. Assuming, of course, that money is not a constraint.
"They may have made a lemon with the ibook but if youre in warranty they will fix it." Very true. I don't think anyone is bashing their service while the computer is within warranty. I have heard nothing but spectacular things.
"I see lots of people complaining that their out of warranty ibook is failing, but that really ISN'T Apple's responsibility unfortunately." Again, you are technically correct. I think the problem arises in that, as a consumer, you would reasonably expect a laptop computer that is treated with reasonable care to last more than 12 months. Is this not a reasonable expectation of a $1000-$2000 piece of equipment? Laptops aren't rocket science anymore. Would you buy an iBook, knowing that it would die in exactly 365 days from purchase? This is why people are getting pissed. The iBook is not living up to the reasonable expection of a lifetime of more than 12 months. No matter what the *warranty* says. Because these iBooks are failing in such a short amount of time, in such numbers, I think it is safe to say that there is some sort of design flaw in the iBook that is causing this failure. This flaw was present at the time of purchase, and again, if you knew this flaw were present and your iBook would die in 366 days, would you have purchased it? Probably not. I think Apple would save a lot of face, and retain their reputation for high quality hardware and service if they fixed these folk's machines.
I tried VOCP. It looks good, but I was never able to get it working due to weird modem issues. I will reiterate what an above poster said: Be very careful about what modems you use!
Also, read all of the documentation before you get deep into it. Before attempting this, I didn't realize that that the sounds (answering message, etc) had to be in a *very* specific format for the modem, and that simple *.wav's would not do. VOCP comes with utilities to help this convertion though. Again, just read through everything, and make sure you understand what's going on and that your modem will actually work! Good luck.
Here are list of modems!
Hate traffic? If possible, don't get involved in it. Carpool, ride a bike, ride a bus, or *gasp* walk. A little infared transmitter isn't the answer to traffic issues. The answer is less cars.
Those who get a voucher from any of these deals should get together and donate all of their vouchers to an open source project. If you must, purchase a "license" to use that software. Put that money where it can be directly used against the Microsoft monopoly. Imagine Microsoft having to write 200 million dollars in checks to Redhat, MySQL, or Gnome. Hah! Oh, the irony.
The article is completely true. Here at the University of Georgia, there are people hired by Microsoft to give CS "presentations" highlighting new technologies. These people are called "student ambassadors". These "presentations" are pretty much advertisements for Microsoft products. Afterwards, raffles are held in which the prizes are copies of Windows XP Home Edition, a student version of.Net, or some other crap. I went to one, thinking it was legit, only to have to sit through a half hour presentation of how to make a useless web app with XML and Visual Studio.Net. It did draw quite a crowd, and all were soaking it up. In my experience with some of the CS majors, most have little to no experience with non-Microsoft tools and programs and no interest in gaining any, so I doubt, upon hitting the job market, that they will give up those tools and programs and learn something different. *sigh*
Has the Free Software Foundation ever considered publishing a complete GNU/Linux distribution?
Why *doesn't* FSF and RMS put out a distribution? He so adamant about his ideals, saying everyone should use only free software, but yet fails to provide a viable replacement and solution to my non-free software needs. Mr. Stallman, quit bitching and evangelizing and make your own distribution with only free software that I can download, install on my machine, and see if I can use it for my daily tasks. Why should I replace my current Debian desktop with some no name distribution from Spain? Give people a viable product with full FSF backing and they just might take you and your ideas a little more seriously.
So, the main issue is whether or not people will download songs from the Internet? By this, I mean that the downloaded song will be the only copy of the song that the person will own. Will this work? For me, no. I want the actual CD so that I can make another copy should my hard drive die, I get a virus, h4xor3d, whatever. Okay, simple solution, buy the CD. Not quite. Too expensive. I cannot justify spending $15-$19 on a CD. Is there a solution? Offer me more for my $15-$20. Where? On the frickin' internet. By buying the CD, give me access to other resources online. Databases of artist information, artists similar to that artist, a list of concert dates, videos and other various multimedia, pictures, desktops and throw in a few select "live" mp3 or oggs every once in a while. Rather than view the buying of the CD as a final goal, consider it the beginning of a relationship that lasts as long as I like that artist and what he/she is doing creatively.
Ultimately, I want a physical device for the music (most important), but with these added features, I could rationalize the price of the CD's and might actually buy a few from you scoundrels. This "multimedia" content would have low overhead (make once, millions of downloads) and would add value to a CD and might actually make for more return business for the music industry. It would at least make me visit your website more often than now. Another note is that this "multimedia" content must be of very high quality, digitally. No 64kb/s mp3's, or super small videos that you can't even make out the artist's face. This was once called an "Enhanced" CD, I think, but being on the CD limits it use. Good idea, bad implementation.
Okay, so they failed on the visual aspect of the show. Good idea, maybe next time, keep it up. What about aural effects? Say a chime every time a packet was received by the target machine, or every 5th packet, etc? Different sounds for different packets. Maybe different sounds for packets aimed at different services. Each team could provide a "themed" sound board, and thus you could tell which team was attacking which service merely by the sound. Depending on how many teams are simulaneously attacking, it could be neat, or just really irritating. In addition to some good graphics, and actual possibility of a hack, it might a better night out of a bad night.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why digital?"
Film development costs.
I've taken 5000 pictures with my digital camera.
Development costs: $0
Experience: priceless
What if I had a film camera?
5000 pictures / 24 pictures per roll ~ 208 rolls.
208 rolls at $8 for developement = $1666
Experience: Chapter 11 bankruptcy
I've only had my digital camera for a year. I agree, however, that if the poster is new to photography, a digital SLR is overkill. However, a simple digital camera with manual settings in the sub-$300 range will suffice. But, for a learning photographer, digital cameras and pictures allow them to take as many shots they want, get instant feedback on how they did, and allow them to correct their mistakes instantly and try again....*without* having to develope all of those crappy shots! Digital is definitely the way to go. I mean, even Kodak is getting out of the film industry.
What the hell are you talking about?
p inions.asp? prodkey=hp_945h otosmart_945/450 5-6501_16-30472047.htmle views/article/0,aid,11525 4,00.asp
"You gotta remember that these are just light capturing computers. Canon does not make computer... HP makes great computers."
Just because a camera is "digital" doesn't mean that suddenly, all of the other parts of the camera are unimportant. Before that light can even make it to that "computer", it first has to go through a lense, aperature, and shutter to make it to the CCD. If your camera has a shitty lense, artifacts and distortions will be apparent and obvious. If your camera has shitty mechanics on the aperture or shutter, your pictures will be obviously be degraded and somewhat.....surprising. The quality of the CCD is also important. Most are 3 color CCD's, however a few companies are now shipping with 4 color CCD's. Again, a shitty CCD will cause colors to bleed, blurriness, etc. in your photos.
Oh, but wait...it's all just about the "computer". Last I heard, HP was *not* a forerunner in photographic optics, nor CCD's.
And, more specifically, my mother actually won an HP 945 in a contest. I played with it a few weeks ago. That camera is a piece of shit. It doesn't have a 56X zoom, first of all. It has a 8X optical zoom, and an 7X digital zoom. But anyone who knows anything knows that digital zooms are bullshit. The manual settings on the camera were very limited. Sure you could choose some aperature settings, but the selections were not nearly as rich as I've seen on other cameras (my less expensive Canon A60, for example). And exposure settings are even worse. It is horribly slow. Shot-to-shot times are on the average of a couple of seconds. Plus, it's autofocusing is slow as molasses as well. When you take a picture or zoom, the LCD turns black. Also, when you move the camera around, the video on the LCD turns jittery like bad stop animation. Uh...where is that great "computer" HP is supposed to be putting in this camera?
More opinions:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_o
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/HP_P
http://www.pcworld.com/r
Worst. Advice. Ever.
Also, here is another useful link to other Georgia residents.
If you live in Georgia, see this page.
I get a recorded message everyday saying that someone had entered my name into a contest for a free month of satellite television....grrrrrrr.....it's *soooooo* bogus.
Blasphemy! It's "MacGyver" NOT "McGyver".
;)
Arrrrrrh!
*rips out hair*
best.show.ever
Storage?
If you are not using the electricity from the solar panels, conventionally, it is stored in huge battery arrays. With this setup, it is converted to hydrogen and can be stored more easily in a big tank, or, if the tank is filled, that electricity is then fed back into the grid directly. That hydrogen tank probably doesn't need to be maintained like a battery array, and, if you'd like to upgrade, a bigger tank, or another auxilliary tank is probably cheaper than the equivalent batteries.
I found this site linked from the main Gimp site. It doesn't look too sketchy to me. Why don't you use that?
If you really want to compile from scratch, do it on Linux first with native Linux programs. When you get the hang of that, move to Windows. I'm all for sink-or-swim type trials, but, in this case, I think you'll sink. Very quickly.
You mention you'd like something smaller and lighter. The QuickPad comes in at 11.5" x 9" x 1.5", the AlphaSmart Dana at 12.4" x 9.3" x 1.9", and, for comparison, a 12" Powerbook is 10.9" x 8.6" x 1.18. The Powerbook weights twice as much as the other two, but is actually smaller than the word processors. So, you can get a work processor that is bigger, but weighs less, but can only do one thing and has a shitty screen. OR you can get a Powerbook that is smaller, can do many things, a great screen, and only weighs two pounds more. Is two pounds really going to make that much of a difference? Just get a smaller laptop.
Assuming, of course, that money is not a constraint.
Ahhhh....thanks! I had forgotten about Powell's!
Here's the only one I could find. Not much detail, but you get the idea.
"They may have made a lemon with the ibook but if youre in warranty they will fix it."
Very true. I don't think anyone is bashing their service while the computer is within warranty. I have heard nothing but spectacular things.
"I see lots of people complaining that their out of warranty ibook is failing, but that really ISN'T Apple's responsibility unfortunately."
Again, you are technically correct. I think the problem arises in that, as a consumer, you would reasonably expect a laptop computer that is treated with reasonable care to last more than 12 months. Is this not a reasonable expectation of a $1000-$2000 piece of equipment? Laptops aren't rocket science anymore. Would you buy an iBook, knowing that it would die in exactly 365 days from purchase? This is why people are getting pissed. The iBook is not living up to the reasonable expection of a lifetime of more than 12 months. No matter what the *warranty* says. Because these iBooks are failing in such a short amount of time, in such numbers, I think it is safe to say that there is some sort of design flaw in the iBook that is causing this failure. This flaw was present at the time of purchase, and again, if you knew this flaw were present and your iBook would die in 366 days, would you have purchased it? Probably not. I think Apple would save a lot of face, and retain their reputation for high quality hardware and service if they fixed these folk's machines.
I tried VOCP. It looks good, but I was never able to get it working due to weird modem issues. I will reiterate what an above poster said: Be very careful about what modems you use! Also, read all of the documentation before you get deep into it. Before attempting this, I didn't realize that that the sounds (answering message, etc) had to be in a *very* specific format for the modem, and that simple *.wav's would not do. VOCP comes with utilities to help this convertion though. Again, just read through everything, and make sure you understand what's going on and that your modem will actually work! Good luck. Here are list of modems!
Check out these folks. They have everything you need for your purposes. Here is their wiki for some more info about the actual softare involved..
That's not a bong, it's a vase! :)
Hate traffic? If possible, don't get involved in it. Carpool, ride a bike, ride a bus, or *gasp* walk. A little infared transmitter isn't the answer to traffic issues. The answer is less cars.
Those who get a voucher from any of these deals should get together and donate all of their vouchers to an open source project. If you must, purchase a "license" to use that software. Put that money where it can be directly used against the Microsoft monopoly. Imagine Microsoft having to write 200 million dollars in checks to Redhat, MySQL, or Gnome. Hah! Oh, the irony.
Hmmmm....I kinda like the idea of a hot-dog-scented centerfold (or is that scenterfold?). :)
Playboy? Are you listening?
Sheesh. Now I have to microwave my library books as well? I wonder if they'll mind the books coming back smelling like hot dogs?
StopRFID FAQ
Hey, Uncle George!
Where are we going in this handbasket? Me and the USA have to go pee!
The article is completely true. Here at the University of Georgia, there are people hired by Microsoft to give CS "presentations" highlighting new technologies. These people are called "student ambassadors". These "presentations" are pretty much advertisements for Microsoft products. Afterwards, raffles are held in which the prizes are copies of Windows XP Home Edition, a student version of .Net, or some other crap. I went to one, thinking it was legit, only to have to sit through a half hour presentation of how to make a useless web app with XML and Visual Studio .Net. It did draw quite a crowd, and all were soaking it up. In my experience with some of the CS majors, most have little to no experience with non-Microsoft tools and programs and no interest in gaining any, so I doubt, upon hitting the job market, that they will give up those tools and programs and learn something different. *sigh*
Has the Free Software Foundation ever considered publishing a complete GNU/Linux distribution?
Why *doesn't* FSF and RMS put out a distribution? He so adamant about his ideals, saying everyone should use only free software, but yet fails to provide a viable replacement and solution to my non-free software needs.Mr. Stallman, quit bitching and evangelizing and make your own distribution with only free software that I can download, install on my machine, and see if I can use it for my daily tasks. Why should I replace my current Debian desktop with some no name distribution from Spain? Give people a viable product with full FSF backing and they just might take you and your ideas a little more seriously.
Duh! Open source is a virus, right? What better way to see who's running Linux than a virus scanner! Of course!
So, the main issue is whether or not people will download songs from the Internet? By this, I mean that the downloaded song will be the only copy of the song that the person will own. Will this work? For me, no. I want the actual CD so that I can make another copy should my hard drive die, I get a virus, h4xor3d, whatever. Okay, simple solution, buy the CD. Not quite. Too expensive. I cannot justify spending $15-$19 on a CD. Is there a solution? Offer me more for my $15-$20. Where? On the frickin' internet. By buying the CD, give me access to other resources online. Databases of artist information, artists similar to that artist, a list of concert dates, videos and other various multimedia, pictures, desktops and throw in a few select "live" mp3 or oggs every once in a while. Rather than view the buying of the CD as a final goal, consider it the beginning of a relationship that lasts as long as I like that artist and what he/she is doing creatively.
Ultimately, I want a physical device for the music (most important), but with these added features, I could rationalize the price of the CD's and might actually buy a few from you scoundrels. This "multimedia" content would have low overhead (make once, millions of downloads) and would add value to a CD and might actually make for more return business for the music industry. It would at least make me visit your website more often than now. Another note is that this "multimedia" content must be of very high quality, digitally. No 64kb/s mp3's, or super small videos that you can't even make out the artist's face. This was once called an "Enhanced" CD, I think, but being on the CD limits it use. Good idea, bad implementation.
What, no "in Russia, Beamers drive you!" jokes? Come on, you guys are slacking!
Okay, so they failed on the visual aspect of the show. Good idea, maybe next time, keep it up. What about aural effects? Say a chime every time a packet was received by the target machine, or every 5th packet, etc? Different sounds for different packets. Maybe different sounds for packets aimed at different services. Each team could provide a "themed" sound board, and thus you could tell which team was attacking which service merely by the sound. Depending on how many teams are simulaneously attacking, it could be neat, or just really irritating. In addition to some good graphics, and actual possibility of a hack, it might a better night out of a bad night.