I'm sure this will get mod'd a troll or flamebait, but let's face it. These torrent sites may of not of been hosting copyrighted information, but they were definately providing people the means to download copyrighted content without paying for it; often against their local laws.
I have hard time pittying them trying to make money by selling ads while trying to help others to break the law. Note that "helping someone break the law" is generally considered an "accomplice" which is illegal in many countries. Not to mention trying to profit from such assitance often incurs additional penalties.
The reality is that they knew they were helping people break the law and they tried to rub the noses of the RIAA/MPAA/etc in it and their bluff was called.
Honestly, if these sites contained a significant percentage of torrents for works which could be freely shared (freeware, BSD, GPL'd, software, etc) then I'd be upset at their closure. But at least 95% of the torrents were for porn, games, movies, music, etc for which the creater wishes to be paid for.
I agree with most people's opinion though, all this means is that someone will come up with some new P2P technology that either decentralizes the indexes or allows them to hide (freenet or tor anyone?)
Nice thing about working for my company (Juniper Networks) is that they'll match (most) any charitable donation up to $1000/yr. A lot of companies do this, so be sure to find out if yours does too.
Anyways, each year I give to the EFF (should be obvious why) and Ducks Unlimited (www.ducks.org) who help protect America's wetlands.
Agreed, that smaller pixel size is prone to higher noise, but that seems to be much more sensor size vs megapixles problem then CMOS vs CCD. Of course, perhaps Canon's Digic/DigicII chip or microlenses are just really good at fixing this problem, but from a consumer perspective, that's pretty irrelevant.
I won't argue that all Canons are better then all Nikons have less noise. But I can say that the current crop of Canon DSLR's (1Ds MarkII, 1D Mark II, 20D, DRebel) have noticibly less noise then their Nikon competition (1DX, 2DH, D100, D70) at the same relative pricepoint/feature set.
Of course Nikon's have generally better AF and exposure, so there's plenty of reasons to buy a Nikon.
On a side note, it'll be interesting to see how well the Nikon 2DX performs with it's CMOS sensor (a first for Nikon). Canon doesn't currently sell a DSLR with such high MP in such a small sensor. The 1DsII is full frame @ 16.6MP and the 1DII is 1.3x crop @ 8.2MP, so the 2DX has much higher photosensor density then either of those.
Yes, DSLR's will get dust. If you shoot the sky or white walls (really any background that is light in color and relatively plain) you'll see small brown fuzzies, especially at higher apperatures.
The good news is that cleaning your sensor is pretty easy to do if you know what you're doing and relatively cheap.
Rather then detailing what you need and how to do it, go here:
I agree with most of what you said, other then CCD vs. CMOS comments.
1) "CMOS sensors are smaller then CCD". I'm not sure what you're talking here since there are full-frame CMOS sensors (Canon 1Ds series) unlike CCD sensors. Of course there are medium format digital backs which I forget which are CCD or CMOS, but if you're going to spend $25,000 on a MF digtal back, you're prolly not looking for slashdot for advice.:)
2) Noise. Right now Canon has *lower* noise CMOS sensors then Nikon's CCD sensors- especially at high ISO settings. At low settings (100-200) they're virtually equivalent, but at 400 you Canon starts taking a lead and by 800 the difference is very noticable.
This is going to be my last post since I think it's going down the drain...
Basically, I've seen the same picture (landscapes w/ flowers mostly) printed on both i9900 and 2200. Having not taken the picture nor being familar with the actual subject, I can't say which is more "realistic".
What I can say however is I liked the output of the Canon more then of the Epson. Resolution w/o using a loupe appeared equivalent, but the colors were brighter/vivid which appealed to me without being horribly over-saturated that it appeared fake. Basically, I preferred the i9900 print over the 2200... regardless of how technically sound that decision is, it's still my opinion.:)
Anyways, this was more relvant to me then 1000 random Google images since this is the kind of photo I'm likely to take and print.
Based on that and that it's faster, quieter, cheaper, smaller footprint, no problems with glossy, from a unscientific sampling appeared to have fewer head clogging problems (not to mention the print head on the i9900 is user replaceable), and the simple fact that I figured a printer I buy now would have a useful life of about 2 years, I went with the Canon. Had print archavial been more important, I would of definately gone with the 2200.
Well I would assume you print an animated 3D rendering one frame at at time... just like any other multi-frame source such as film or digital video.
Regardless of how you look at the color space between a 2200 and i9900, when you look at the printed output, the 2200 looks dull and washed out in comparision. At least all the samples I've ever seen. Not surprising because it's a well known fact that pigment inks (at least in my price point) do not have as wide of a color gammut as dye inks.
Now perhaps every sample (including the ones Epson has on display at the store) I've seen had the Epson 2200 miscalibrated or using the wrong profile while they had their Canon professionally calibrated in a great conspiracy thanks to Canon paying out exhorbant bribes, but I seriously doubt it. Maybe my friends who own Epson printers were lying to me when their said my i9900 prints were more vibrant then what they get out of their printers. This isn't to say that the Epson 2200 isn't capable of producing awesome prints... it is, just not as impressive as other printers. Of course those other printers have their own set of problems.
Honestly, I didn't look closely at the 1280 since it at first look didn't really seem to compete w/ the 2200 or i9900. As for the Lyson inks, I couldn't find a rating for the 1280, but I did for the 1270... they're rated for 19 years. The Epson are 27. Canon BCI-6 are rated for 25. I expect all three to be *very* optimistic.
I honestly don't believe in archival over 5yrs with any dye based ink regardless of who makes it. Maybe you can get 10 yrs, but someone in another city will likely not. Hell, most dye/paper combinations won't even give you 3 years. There are just too many variables in theses accelerated tests to really get anything other then relative numbers. Ie: this paper/ink combo is better then that other one, but there's no guarrantee for how long either will actually last for the consumer.
Of course if you put the picture in an album and only look at it occasionally, then those times go up dramatically. But I prefer to hang my pictures up so people can actually see them, so I'm not going to get good life out of any dye ink.
Yes, I've seen it. For me it was unacceptable... although admitidly I didn't try any 3rd party spray (as I said before, you're the first person I can recall suggest doing so). Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too, which isn't cool either. Maybe the ones that fix the bronzing don't do that or maybe they do, I don't have a clue.
Perhaps for printing animated 3D renderings it's ok, but when taking pictures of landscapes and wildlife the untreated pictures it was a serious problem for me. I know if you read the dpreview.com forums you'll find plenty of other people who found the 2200 inappropirate for glossy (although I'm sure there are plenty of people for whom it meets their needs... just like Windows is good enough for some people I guess:)
Alas, when it comes down to it, neither Canon or Epson (or anyone for that matter) makes a printer which meets *my* needs today:
1) <= $700 2) Semi-Archival (10yrs is good enough for me, since I don't sell my pics. I figure in 10 years I'll just re-print the really good ones on a new printer which has higher dpi and wider gammut anyways.) 3) Wide-carriage (must be able to print 13x19) 4) Wide gammut with bright colors 5) Quality on Matte and Glossy paper 6) Able to find a 3rd party CFS system so I don't have to sell my right arm on ink
The 2200, R800 and i9900 all miss at least one of those. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Epson, they make great printers... although having to re-chip your cartridges is a PITA and Epson print heads tend to have more clogging probelms then Canon even with regular use due to the ink being thicker; but both of those issues are overlookable if they'd just make a 2200 version of the R800.
All I know is that Epson didn't announce the US version of the wide-carriage R800 at Photokina which is where they have historically announced US/European printers for the next 6+ months. While I'm sure sooner or later Epson will provide us with such a printer, it will most likely be at least 6 months.
Sorry, but a "protective spray" doesn't fix the bronzing issue. Surely if these protective sprays had this great 2nd feature they'd be marketed as such. At least you're the first person I've ever heard to suggest such. And lastly, IMHO, the problem is more severe then then you're suggesting.
Anyways, I stand corrected on the R800 inks; I forgot they swapped out the light colors. Honestly I don't know if any other printer has a larger gammut then the R800, such info is hard to come by. I do know that the Canon i9900 has 8 colors so it should have a simular or even larger gammut. The Epson's do definately have darker blacks though.
Well I won't argue that the best display available is something like a Sony Artisan, but there are a lot of pro's who are plenty happy with the Apple Cinema displays. And I definately would disagree that if you use an Apple Cinema HD display your prints won't look good... at least mine look perfectly good to me.
If you want your entire workflow calibrated for WYSIWYG color output, I don't think you'll find it. About a year ago I bought a Canon 10D and wanted:
1) Linux based RAW to TIFF converter 2) Linux monitor calibration 3) ICC support for printing
I was able to find a free tool to do the RAW conversion, but I was disappointed with the output. Color's were washed out because it didn't understand colorspaces and there were no controls for adjusting exposure (one of the big selling points of using RAW).
I was unable to find any Spyder (hardware to calibrate your monitor) which worked with Linux. If you have *really* good eyes, you might be able to do it via software, but I found the results were completely inconsistant for generating prints.
There was some limited ICC printer support in Gimp, but Gimp is no Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, Gimp is a great tool and is of commerical quality, but PS is *much* more advanced and has a much larger user community around it providing free and commerical plugins as well as help on retouching photos.
Basically, if you're only interested in posting on the web in sRGB @ 72dpi, then Linux is probably good enough for your needs. People who are viewing the images won't have their monitors properly calibrated anyways, so it won't really matter. But once you want photo quality output, your best platform is still a Mac (I ended up getting a G5 1.8 and Cinema HD LCD) with Windows a close second.
The problem that a lot of people have with the Epson Ultrachrome inks is that they have a smaller color gammut vs. traditional dye based inks used in other printers. This makes pictures printed w/ the Ultrachrome inks appear dull and flat compared to Canon and HP.
Not to mention, Epson still doesn't sell a wide-carriage printer (capable of printing larger then 8.5x11) using Ultrachrome inks which doesn't have the bronzing problem on glossy paper here in the US. Apparently they've announced one for the Japanese market, but they've yet to say anything for the US/European markets; and Epson does have a history of not bringing all their models to all markets, so nobody knows if a wide carriage version of the R800 will ever come to the US.
Also, I don't know where you're getting your info on the Epson 2200, but according to the Epson website it has 4 picoliter droplets, not "a minimum of 3". The Canon i9900 has 2 picoliter. Also the 2200 resolution isn't 2880 x 2880, it's 2880 x 1440. The Canon i9900 is 4800 x 2400 and not surprisingly many people find the i9900 to be sharper then the 2200. Not to mention the i9900 is a LOT faster and quieter then the 2200.
And no, the R800 does NOT have a wider color gammet then any other consumer level printer. Dye based inks are still superior in that regard. The only thing the R800 does is add an 8th tank of "gloss enhancer" which helps reduce but doesn't completely eliminate the bronzing effect on glossy paper- it doesn't change the gammut.
Don't get me wrong, Epson right now is the *best* at making archival quality prints. But if archival isn't important to you, then the there are better and cheaper solutions.
Bzzzt. Only HP printers include the print head in the print cartridge. Both Epson and Canon seperate the two. On Canon's higher end printers (like the i9900) the print head is user-replaceable... dunno about the lower end models.
Also, Canon is advertizing 100 year life for photos stored in an album w/ this ink. 30yrs for under glass (think picture frame) and 10yrs in open air.
Honestly, I really really hope that you can use the BCI-7 inks with existing Canon BCI-6 printers (I bought a i9900 just last week) but I highly doubt it.
Uh, obviously you've never actually read an issue of the CSM otherwise you'd never make such a remark. While it is published by a church (not one I particularly care for btw), it is one of the best researched independant publications in print since they actually have reporters in foreign countries rather then just relying on AP/Newswire/etc. Not quite up to Economist standards in my unhumble opinion, but worth at least looking into.
Since I don't have a subscription, I can't verify this, but as I recall, the 3-series rates a lot better then the 5 and 7 series when it comes to the electrical/power systems. Basically, the 5 and 7 get all the fancy new features (iDrive, etc) with all the associated bugs, and by the time it trickles down to the 3, it works fine.
Of course, I have an '04 330CiC (one of *the* very first to hit the states) and there was an electrical problem with the AC which caused a constant drain of ~0.8Amps on the battery so if you didn't drive it every few days you'd find a dead battery... took it into the dealer and they fixed it and haven't had a problem since.
First one is free and isn't likely to happen: ask your ISP to add a reverse DNS record which matches your forward DNS mapping. They'll bitch and whine and say you technically have a dynamic IP and if you want a static to upgrade. Sucks.
Second option: find out if your ISP will allow you to relay your email out through their mail servers. Many will, some won't.
Third option costs $15/year but will work in all cases. Go to pobox.com and sign up for one of their life-time emails. Then configure your MTA to use SASL and to relay all outbound mail to pobox.com's mail servers. I've used this for a few months now and have to say I'm really happy with it.
Someone mod the parent up. I just lost my moderator points and I've been fighting to get debian sarge installed on my desktop for 2 days. I'm no newbie either... I just threw away a floppy disk labeled: "Slackware/Linux 1.0.9 kernel boot disk" last week b/c it couldn't be read by my floppy drive anymroe.
I'm amazed at everyone here complaining about how unfair, mean, or Joel is being about the resumes he gets and what he does with them.
Frankly I think Joel is being nice. Most people's resumes I've seen suck- really suck. It boggles my mind what people think constitues a "good resume". Most have misspelled words (my spelling sucks, hence I use a spell checker for important documents), have horrible formatting, or look like a laundry list of acronymns/skills with no way for me to determine how well you know things or what experiance you have.
And don't get me started with those people who send a CV (long ass resume that I'll never read) when applying for a development or IT position. If you've got more then 1 page of resume for each 5-10 years of work experiance then your resume is too damned long!
Oh, and don't lie on your resume. It's amazing how easy it is to figure out when someone does and trust me, you've been black-balled for life by me if you do that. <sing>It's a small world</sing>
Basically a resume/cover letter is one thing: a paper representation of yourself which will cause the person to read it to want to get the real you.
A few recommendations: 1) Customize your resume/cover letter for the company/job requirements. This is more useful once you've got a lot of work experiance and you need to trip crap out so that it's not too long.
2) Your resume should show not just what you did, but what positive impact you had on the company. Did you save them lots of $$$? Keep difficult/high paying customers happy?
3) Show confidence, but not arrogance. It's a hard line to walk, but walk it you must.
4) Show that you've grown/improved and that you're interested in continuing to do so.
5) If you're in a technical field, don't worry about showing you're a "team player" in your resume, they'll figure it out in the interview. Good written communication skills however is what your resume/cover is all about. Be clear and to the point.
First let me clarify a few things: 1) I've been working in the computer field (first IT then engineering) since '93. 2) I never finished college (changed majors 3 times in 6 years). 3) I have a resume that a lot of people would kill for. 4) I got one certification (Novell CNE 3.x way back in '95) which I never renewed. 5) I interview well. I've people think I had a masters during the interview process until I mention I didn't finish my BS. 6) I got lucky- I was able to get a lot of my experiance during the.com boom when experiance wasn't important. People just now starting out are going to have it A LOT harder then I did.
So what I've learned when I interview and when I interview others is: 1) If you have a lot of *relvant* experiance, I/they don't care if you have a degree or certification. Real world experiance trumps all. 2) Certifications are tie-breakers... just shows one person is a little more serious then the other. I've met too many paper CNE's, MCSE's, etc to count them as actually "useful". The CCIE is about the only certification that I and many people count as useful. 3) Don't write "expert in XXXX" unless you are one. When I see the word "expert" in a topic I know pretty well, that's where I go first with the hard questions. I've had people tell me they're an expert in TCP/IP and couldn't tell me all the flags and their meanings in a TCP header. Since I had the free time, I spent the next hour trying to make him cry. (Yes, I can be an asshole.:) 4) Illustrating in some manner that you do a good job of learning on the job and picking up new things is critical. 5) A lot of people/companies won't even bother to interview someone without a degree or certification right now because there are so many people trying for the same position- they are in effect using it as a means to reduce the number of resumes they have to look out. 6) If you get an interview, ASK SOME QUESTIONS! Do a little research about the company and ask intelligent, thoughtful questions which show you did some research. 7) If someone asks you an open ended question or where they ask you a question designed to see how you think, ask questions to narrow down the question. 8) In this job market if you don't have experiance, look at temp agencies for work. It'll be crappy work, but finding FTE w/o it is nearly impossible since you're competing against people who do have it. 9) Find ways to stand out in the crowd. You need to find something to put on your resume that nobody else will have.
You didn't give any indication the size of the project or what the company is interested in. Do they just want to give you money and you work on the project as you see fit or are there specific enhancements they'd like to see? How much work are they asking you to do? Do they want/need these enhancements by a certain date? Are these enhancements going to be rolled back into the main tree for everyone? Are these enhancement modular or is it just one big feature that's hard to break down?
Regardless, I'd probably recommend that you work as a contractor for them. Depending on the amount of work/$$$ they're interested in, you should be able to determine if it makes more sense to be hourly or piece-work. Basically you want to be able to get paid semi-regularly as you get things done so that both you and the company have a good way to measure your progress.
Oh god no. My company standardized on the Dell C640 and I just got one. Almost every day I seriously think about going back to my old IBM 600X. The cheap plastic case of the Dell is exactly that- cheap plastic. The flex on the palm rest above the cdrom drive is horrible. The damned thing runs so hot, I have to put a book between it and my lap. The onboard Winmodem (not every hotel has ethernet) doesn't work under Linux. Suspend/Standby doesn't seem to work under Linux either, although I haven't given up quite yet. Honestly, the screen is nice, but I'm still not used to using a touchpad (it has a trackpoint like the 600X but it doesn't feel right for some reason).
The people who run XP on the thing are always complaning about how unstable it is. Not sure if it's our IT group fucking things up or some driver issue. RH9 is stable and runs well, other then the damned suspend issue (enabling DRI under X seems to make things worse). Video is accellerated under X (DRI works), but isn't impressive, about 525fps w/ glxgears.
Performance is pretty decent though- definately blows away my old P3-450 IBM. Battery life is about 2.5hrs under real world use which I'm happy with. I'm just glad that the company bought it for me, had I spent the money on it, I would of been very disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure this will get mod'd a troll or flamebait, but let's face it. These torrent sites may of not of been hosting copyrighted information, but they were definately providing people the means to download copyrighted content without paying for it; often against their local laws.
I have hard time pittying them trying to make money by selling ads while trying to help others to break the law. Note that "helping someone break the law" is generally considered an "accomplice" which is illegal in many countries. Not to mention trying to profit from such assitance often incurs additional penalties.
The reality is that they knew they were helping people break the law and they tried to rub the noses of the RIAA/MPAA/etc in it and their bluff was called.
Honestly, if these sites contained a significant percentage of torrents for works which could be freely shared (freeware, BSD, GPL'd, software, etc) then I'd be upset at their closure. But at least 95% of the torrents were for porn, games, movies, music, etc for which the creater wishes to be paid for.
I agree with most people's opinion though, all this means is that someone will come up with some new P2P technology that either decentralizes the indexes or allows them to hide (freenet or tor anyone?)
Mod parent up +1 informative.
Nice thing about working for my company (Juniper Networks) is that they'll match (most) any charitable donation up to $1000/yr. A lot of companies do this, so be sure to find out if yours does too.
Anyways, each year I give to the EFF (should be obvious why) and Ducks Unlimited (www.ducks.org) who help protect America's wetlands.
Agreed, that smaller pixel size is prone to higher noise, but that seems to be much more sensor size vs megapixles problem then CMOS vs CCD. Of course, perhaps Canon's Digic/DigicII chip or microlenses are just really good at fixing this problem, but from a consumer perspective, that's pretty irrelevant.
I won't argue that all Canons are better then all Nikons have less noise. But I can say that the current crop of Canon DSLR's (1Ds MarkII, 1D Mark II, 20D, DRebel) have noticibly less noise then their Nikon competition (1DX, 2DH, D100, D70) at the same relative pricepoint/feature set.
Of course Nikon's have generally better AF and exposure, so there's plenty of reasons to buy a Nikon.
On a side note, it'll be interesting to see how well the Nikon 2DX performs with it's CMOS sensor (a first for Nikon). Canon doesn't currently sell a DSLR with such high MP in such a small sensor. The 1DsII is full frame @ 16.6MP and the 1DII is 1.3x crop @ 8.2MP, so the 2DX has much higher photosensor density then either of those.
Yes, DSLR's will get dust. If you shoot the sky or white walls (really any background that is light in color and relatively plain) you'll see small brown fuzzies, especially at higher apperatures.
The good news is that cleaning your sensor is pretty easy to do if you know what you're doing and relatively cheap.
Rather then detailing what you need and how to do it, go here:
http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning
I agree with most of what you said, other then CCD vs. CMOS comments.
:)
1) "CMOS sensors are smaller then CCD". I'm not sure what you're talking here since there are full-frame CMOS sensors (Canon 1Ds series) unlike CCD sensors. Of course there are medium format digital backs which I forget which are CCD or CMOS, but if you're going to spend $25,000 on a MF digtal back, you're prolly not looking for slashdot for advice.
2) Noise. Right now Canon has *lower* noise CMOS sensors then Nikon's CCD sensors- especially at high ISO settings. At low settings (100-200) they're virtually equivalent, but at 400 you Canon starts taking a lead and by 800 the difference is very noticable.
This is going to be my last post since I think it's going down the drain...
:)
Basically, I've seen the same picture (landscapes w/ flowers mostly) printed on both i9900 and 2200. Having not taken the picture nor being familar with the actual subject, I can't say which is more "realistic".
What I can say however is I liked the output of the Canon more then of the Epson. Resolution w/o using a loupe appeared equivalent, but the colors were brighter/vivid which appealed to me without being horribly over-saturated that it appeared fake. Basically, I preferred the i9900 print over the 2200... regardless of how technically sound that decision is, it's still my opinion.
Anyways, this was more relvant to me then 1000 random Google images since this is the kind of photo I'm likely to take and print.
Based on that and that it's faster, quieter, cheaper, smaller footprint, no problems with glossy, from a unscientific sampling appeared to have fewer head clogging problems (not to mention the print head on the i9900 is user replaceable), and the simple fact that I figured a printer I buy now would have a useful life of about 2 years, I went with the Canon. Had print archavial been more important, I would of definately gone with the 2200.
*sigh*
Well I would assume you print an animated 3D rendering one frame at at time... just like any other multi-frame source such as film or digital video.
Regardless of how you look at the color space between a 2200 and i9900, when you look at the printed output, the 2200 looks dull and washed out in comparision. At least all the samples I've ever seen. Not surprising because it's a well known fact that pigment inks (at least in my price point) do not have as wide of a color gammut as dye inks.
Now perhaps every sample (including the ones Epson has on display at the store) I've seen had the Epson 2200 miscalibrated or using the wrong profile while they had their Canon professionally calibrated in a great conspiracy thanks to Canon paying out exhorbant bribes, but I seriously doubt it. Maybe my friends who own Epson printers were lying to me when their said my i9900 prints were more vibrant then what they get out of their printers. This isn't to say that the Epson 2200 isn't capable of producing awesome prints... it is, just not as impressive as other printers. Of course those other printers have their own set of problems.
Honestly, I didn't look closely at the 1280 since it at first look didn't really seem to compete w/ the 2200 or i9900. As for the Lyson inks, I couldn't find a rating for the 1280, but I did for the 1270... they're rated for 19 years. The Epson are 27. Canon BCI-6 are rated for 25. I expect all three to be *very* optimistic.
I honestly don't believe in archival over 5yrs with any dye based ink regardless of who makes it. Maybe you can get 10 yrs, but someone in another city will likely not. Hell, most dye/paper combinations won't even give you 3 years. There are just too many variables in theses accelerated tests to really get anything other then relative numbers. Ie: this paper/ink combo is better then that other one, but there's no guarrantee for how long either will actually last for the consumer.
Of course if you put the picture in an album and only look at it occasionally, then those times go up dramatically. But I prefer to hang my pictures up so people can actually see them, so I'm not going to get good life out of any dye ink.
Yes, I've seen it. For me it was unacceptable... although admitidly I didn't try any 3rd party spray (as I said before, you're the first person I can recall suggest doing so). Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too, which isn't cool either. Maybe the ones that fix the bronzing don't do that or maybe they do, I don't have a clue.
:)
Perhaps for printing animated 3D renderings it's ok, but when taking pictures of landscapes and wildlife the untreated pictures it was a serious problem for me. I know if you read the dpreview.com forums you'll find plenty of other people who found the 2200 inappropirate for glossy (although I'm sure there are plenty of people for whom it meets their needs... just like Windows is good enough for some people I guess
Alas, when it comes down to it, neither Canon or Epson (or anyone for that matter) makes a printer which meets *my* needs today:
1) <= $700
2) Semi-Archival (10yrs is good enough for me, since I don't sell my pics. I figure in 10 years I'll just re-print the really good ones on a new printer which has higher dpi and wider gammut anyways.)
3) Wide-carriage (must be able to print 13x19)
4) Wide gammut with bright colors
5) Quality on Matte and Glossy paper
6) Able to find a 3rd party CFS system so I don't have to sell my right arm on ink
The 2200, R800 and i9900 all miss at least one of those. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Epson, they make great printers... although having to re-chip your cartridges is a PITA and Epson print heads tend to have more clogging probelms then Canon even with regular use due to the ink being thicker; but both of those issues are overlookable if they'd just make a 2200 version of the R800.
All I know is that Epson didn't announce the US version of the wide-carriage R800 at Photokina which is where they have historically announced US/European printers for the next 6+ months. While I'm sure sooner or later Epson will provide us with such a printer, it will most likely be at least 6 months.
Sorry, but a "protective spray" doesn't fix the bronzing issue. Surely if these protective sprays had this great 2nd feature they'd be marketed as such. At least you're the first person I've ever heard to suggest such. And lastly, IMHO, the problem is more severe then then you're suggesting.
Anyways, I stand corrected on the R800 inks; I forgot they swapped out the light colors. Honestly I don't know if any other printer has a larger gammut then the R800, such info is hard to come by. I do know that the Canon i9900 has 8 colors so it should have a simular or even larger gammut. The Epson's do definately have darker blacks though.
Well I won't argue that the best display available is something like a Sony Artisan, but there are a lot of pro's who are plenty happy with the Apple Cinema displays. And I definately would disagree that if you use an Apple Cinema HD display your prints won't look good... at least mine look perfectly good to me.
Until Cinepaint/Gimp supports CMYK, it's a non-starter for professionals or serious amateurs interested in printing.
If you want your entire workflow calibrated for WYSIWYG color output, I don't think you'll find it. About a year ago I bought a Canon 10D and wanted:
1) Linux based RAW to TIFF converter
2) Linux monitor calibration
3) ICC support for printing
I was able to find a free tool to do the RAW conversion, but I was disappointed with the output. Color's were washed out because it didn't understand colorspaces and there were no controls for adjusting exposure (one of the big selling points of using RAW).
I was unable to find any Spyder (hardware to calibrate your monitor) which worked with Linux. If you have *really* good eyes, you might be able to do it via software, but I found the results were completely inconsistant for generating prints.
There was some limited ICC printer support in Gimp, but Gimp is no Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, Gimp is a great tool and is of commerical quality, but PS is *much* more advanced and has a much larger user community around it providing free and commerical plugins as well as help on retouching photos.
Basically, if you're only interested in posting on the web in sRGB @ 72dpi, then Linux is probably good enough for your needs. People who are viewing the images won't have their monitors properly calibrated anyways, so it won't really matter. But once you want photo quality output, your best platform is still a Mac (I ended up getting a G5 1.8 and Cinema HD LCD) with Windows a close second.
The problem that a lot of people have with the Epson Ultrachrome inks is that they have a smaller color gammut vs. traditional dye based inks used in other printers. This makes pictures printed w/ the Ultrachrome inks appear dull and flat compared to Canon and HP.
Not to mention, Epson still doesn't sell a wide-carriage printer (capable of printing larger then 8.5x11) using Ultrachrome inks which doesn't have the bronzing problem on glossy paper here in the US. Apparently they've announced one for the Japanese market, but they've yet to say anything for the US/European markets; and Epson does have a history of not bringing all their models to all markets, so nobody knows if a wide carriage version of the R800 will ever come to the US.
Also, I don't know where you're getting your info on the Epson 2200, but according to the Epson website it has 4 picoliter droplets, not "a minimum of 3". The Canon i9900 has 2 picoliter. Also the 2200 resolution isn't 2880 x 2880, it's 2880 x 1440. The Canon i9900 is 4800 x 2400 and not surprisingly many people find the i9900 to be sharper then the 2200. Not to mention the i9900 is a LOT faster and quieter then the 2200.
And no, the R800 does NOT have a wider color gammet then any other consumer level printer. Dye based inks are still superior in that regard. The only thing the R800 does is add an 8th tank of "gloss enhancer" which helps reduce but doesn't completely eliminate the bronzing effect on glossy paper- it doesn't change the gammut.
Don't get me wrong, Epson right now is the *best* at making archival quality prints. But if archival isn't important to you, then the there are better and cheaper solutions.
Bzzzt. Only HP printers include the print head in the print cartridge. Both Epson and Canon seperate the two. On Canon's higher end printers (like the i9900) the print head is user-replaceable... dunno about the lower end models.
Also, Canon is advertizing 100 year life for photos stored in an album w/ this ink. 30yrs for under glass (think picture frame) and 10yrs in open air.
Honestly, I really really hope that you can use the BCI-7 inks with existing Canon BCI-6 printers (I bought a i9900 just last week) but I highly doubt it.
Uh, obviously you've never actually read an issue of the CSM otherwise you'd never make such a remark. While it is published by a church (not one I particularly care for btw), it is one of the best researched independant publications in print since they actually have reporters in foreign countries rather then just relying on AP/Newswire/etc. Not quite up to Economist standards in my unhumble opinion, but worth at least looking into.
Since I don't have a subscription, I can't verify this, but as I recall, the 3-series rates a lot better then the 5 and 7 series when it comes to the electrical/power systems. Basically, the 5 and 7 get all the fancy new features (iDrive, etc) with all the associated bugs, and by the time it trickles down to the 3, it works fine.
Of course, I have an '04 330CiC (one of *the* very first to hit the states) and there was an electrical problem with the AC which caused a constant drain of ~0.8Amps on the battery so if you didn't drive it every few days you'd find a dead battery... took it into the dealer and they fixed it and haven't had a problem since.
-Aaron
First one is free and isn't likely to happen: ask your ISP to add a reverse DNS record which matches your forward DNS mapping. They'll bitch and whine and say you technically have a dynamic IP and if you want a static to upgrade. Sucks.
Second option: find out if your ISP will allow you to relay your email out through their mail servers. Many will, some won't.
Third option costs $15/year but will work in all cases. Go to pobox.com and sign up for one of their life-time emails. Then configure your MTA to use SASL and to relay all outbound mail to pobox.com's mail servers. I've used this for a few months now and have to say I'm really happy with it.
Someone mod the parent up. I just lost my moderator points and I've been fighting to get debian sarge installed on my desktop for 2 days. I'm no newbie either... I just threw away a floppy disk labeled: "Slackware/Linux 1.0.9 kernel boot disk" last week b/c it couldn't be read by my floppy drive anymroe.
I'm amazed at everyone here complaining about how unfair, mean, or Joel is being about the resumes he gets and what he does with them.
Frankly I think Joel is being nice. Most people's resumes I've seen suck- really suck. It boggles my mind what people think constitues a "good resume". Most have misspelled words (my spelling sucks, hence I use a spell checker for important documents), have horrible formatting, or look like a laundry list of acronymns/skills with no way for me to determine how well you know things or what experiance you have.
And don't get me started with those people who send a CV (long ass resume that I'll never read) when applying for a development or IT position. If you've got more then 1 page of resume for each 5-10 years of work experiance then your resume is too damned long!
Oh, and don't lie on your resume. It's amazing how easy it is to figure out when someone does and trust me, you've been black-balled for life by me if you do that. <sing>It's a small world</sing>
Basically a resume/cover letter is one thing: a paper representation of yourself which will cause the person to read it to want to get the real you.
A few recommendations:
1) Customize your resume/cover letter for the company/job requirements. This is more useful once you've got a lot of work experiance and you need to trip crap out so that it's not too long.
2) Your resume should show not just what you did, but what positive impact you had on the company. Did you save them lots of $$$? Keep difficult/high paying customers happy?
3) Show confidence, but not arrogance. It's a hard line to walk, but walk it you must.
4) Show that you've grown/improved and that you're interested in continuing to do so.
5) If you're in a technical field, don't worry about showing you're a "team player" in your resume, they'll figure it out in the interview. Good written communication skills however is what your resume/cover is all about. Be clear and to the point.
First let me clarify a few things: .com boom when experiance wasn't important. People just now starting out are going to have it A LOT harder then I did.
:)
1) I've been working in the computer field (first IT then engineering) since '93.
2) I never finished college (changed majors 3 times in 6 years).
3) I have a resume that a lot of people would kill for.
4) I got one certification (Novell CNE 3.x way back in '95) which I never renewed.
5) I interview well. I've people think I had a masters during the interview process until I mention I didn't finish my BS.
6) I got lucky- I was able to get a lot of my experiance during the
So what I've learned when I interview and when I interview others is:
1) If you have a lot of *relvant* experiance, I/they don't care if you have a degree or certification. Real world experiance trumps all.
2) Certifications are tie-breakers... just shows one person is a little more serious then the other. I've met too many paper CNE's, MCSE's, etc to count them as actually "useful". The CCIE is about the only certification that I and many people count as useful.
3) Don't write "expert in XXXX" unless you are one. When I see the word "expert" in a topic I know pretty well, that's where I go first with the hard questions. I've had people tell me they're an expert in TCP/IP and couldn't tell me all the flags and their meanings in a TCP header. Since I had the free time, I spent the next hour trying to make him cry. (Yes, I can be an asshole.
4) Illustrating in some manner that you do a good job of learning on the job and picking up new things is critical.
5) A lot of people/companies won't even bother to interview someone without a degree or certification right now because there are so many people trying for the same position- they are in effect using it as a means to reduce the number of resumes they have to look out.
6) If you get an interview, ASK SOME QUESTIONS! Do a little research about the company and ask intelligent, thoughtful questions which show you did some research.
7) If someone asks you an open ended question or where they ask you a question designed to see how you think, ask questions to narrow down the question.
8) In this job market if you don't have experiance, look at temp agencies for work. It'll be crappy work, but finding FTE w/o it is nearly impossible since you're competing against people who do have it.
9) Find ways to stand out in the crowd. You need to find something to put on your resume that nobody else will have.
The actual quote is:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
You didn't give any indication the size of the project or what the company is interested in. Do they just want to give you money and you work on the project as you see fit or are there specific enhancements they'd like to see? How much work are they asking you to do? Do they want/need these enhancements by a certain date? Are these enhancements going to be rolled back into the main tree for everyone? Are these enhancement modular or is it just one big feature that's hard to break down?
Regardless, I'd probably recommend that you work as a contractor for them. Depending on the amount of work/$$$ they're interested in, you should be able to determine if it makes more sense to be hourly or piece-work. Basically you want to be able to get paid semi-regularly as you get things done so that both you and the company have a good way to measure your progress.
Yes, that's exactly what he said. Somebody mod this parent up.
Oh god no. My company standardized on the Dell C640 and I just got one. Almost every day I seriously think about going back to my old IBM 600X. The cheap plastic case of the Dell is exactly that- cheap plastic. The flex on the palm rest above the cdrom drive is horrible. The damned thing runs so hot, I have to put a book between it and my lap. The onboard Winmodem (not every hotel has ethernet) doesn't work under Linux. Suspend/Standby doesn't seem to work under Linux either, although I haven't given up quite yet. Honestly, the screen is nice, but I'm still not used to using a touchpad (it has a trackpoint like the 600X but it doesn't feel right for some reason).
The people who run XP on the thing are always complaning about how unstable it is. Not sure if it's our IT group fucking things up or some driver issue. RH9 is stable and runs well, other then the damned suspend issue (enabling DRI under X seems to make things worse). Video is accellerated under X (DRI works), but isn't impressive, about 525fps w/ glxgears.
Performance is pretty decent though- definately blows away my old P3-450 IBM. Battery life is about 2.5hrs under real world use which I'm happy with. I'm just glad that the company bought it for me, had I spent the money on it, I would of been very disappointed.