Capture a TV show, edit out the commercials, and burn it to DVD... If you're fairly fast at the editing, you'll find waiting for the hard drive to catch-up to be a big annoyance, and a big waste of your time. 9GBs of RAM isn't exactly a practical alternative.
That's basically what I do on my one box. Capture straight to MPEG2, then cut the commercials in TMPGEnc DVD Author prior to putting it on a DVD. My source material is around 11.5GB for 3.5 hours (I record 7:45pm to 11:15pm every day, then chop to what I keep).
Right now, that box has 7200rpm drives and 1GB of RAM. Cutting is laggy, until system caches enough of the file into RAM. Moving from point to point on a fresh file takes a second or three for it to read the file and thumbnail, then it gets pretty snappy.
Even with re-encoding the video to AC3, I'm still disk-bound. Even when my source MPEG files are on one 7200rpm drive and my target drive for the DVD build is on a 2nd 7200rpm drive. The dual-Opteron 246 CPU utilization is typically ~10-20% and it takes me about 16 minutes to create the DVD with a pair of 43 minute episodes.
I'm debating the $250 for add another 2 sticks of RAM to the system (taking it up to 3GB). That would give me a much larger disk cache and is a cheap upgrade for this unit. Plus going from 1GB to 3GB gives me more headroom for other software. Moving to 10k rpm SATAs might be an option as well, but a more expensive fix.
You can have my Ford Focus when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. Mostly because I bought a custom model (rather then settle for what was on the lot) and it's a ZX3 hatchback (eminently practical, while still looking a little sporty). It's held up well for being one of the last ones off the line in the 2001 model year. (Sometimes I wish I had waited until 2002 and got the 6-cyl.)
Assuming they still make them when the warranty runs out on my current one, I'll probably go back and buy another one. The size is perfect for a getting around town car. The hatchback means I can flip the seats down and put decent sized cargo in. Much nicer then a sedan with limited trunk space.
And at the time... only VW and Ford were making 3-door hatchbacks. Honda had sat out that year (no 3-door hatchbacks in 2001). Amusingly enough, the VW 3-door Rabbit hatchback is almost identically sized as the Focus (in outer dimensions, including height), but the Focus simply looks and feels bigger.
I have seen a few other 3-door hatchbacks from other car makers in the past few years. There's also a 5-door hatchback Focus that has caught my eye a few times. It still looks like the 3-door focus instead of looking like a stationwagon.
Mid-80s american cars generally lasted to around 80k-100k miles before you ran into serious issues. I bought a Ford Crown Vic at 103k miles and ran it up until around 180k miles. It was severely limping by the end (c2001). I generally spent around $200/mo on repairs for the last few years. If I had relied on a dealer, it would've been double that (local 1-man shop is who I took it to).
OTOH, I drove a '76 Volvo stationwagon up into the 280k mile range. Never had trouble except that the body rusted out from underneath after about 15 years. I probably spent $100-$150/mo on that, but with all the miles I was driving, the mechanic (1-man shop, Volvo-only) saw the car every 3-4 weeks for an oil change.
How times change though... my 2001 Focus only has 12,800 miles on it. (No that's not a typo. I telecommute full-time and rarely do more with it then run errands around town during the week.) Real pity that it's parked on the street instead of being kept in a garage.
But yes, you've hit the nail on the head. Find a good mechanic, take it in to them regularly (even for oil changes), and you'll probably never have a lick of trouble. Small 1-man and 2-man shops are to be preferred over going to the local dealer or multi-bay garage. The 1-man and 2-man shops are not as convenient (no rental, no car service, no fancy waiting room), but they're almost always interested in keeping you as a long-time customer if you're decent with them. They'll generally reserve their ire for folks who only show up when something breaks and then lambast the mechanic for not having it fixed yesterday.
Another example would be the $0.99 burger at Wendy's. In raw part it would cost you only $0.25
Do you want to lug around a fridge, fresh lettuce, a package of buns, a grill, ground beef, and cheese whenever you feel like eating a burger for lunch?
Personally, I'd rather go to the local independent diner rather then a chain like Wendy's. There I can get anything from a burger to a BLT to a sub to an omlette. The cost is about the same, but I get waited on and don't have to fight for a table.
Hell, if I go often enough, the waitress will often bring me my coffee when she brings me the menu. IOW, I get much better service then I would get at a Wendy's. Even if I ate at that Wendy's every day of my life (and it would be a short one), you'd still be just another face.
I'd say Wendy's is more like Dell in your example. Cheap, commoditized, and you'll pay for it too. But when I'm in the mood for greek lasagna, there's no place like Stonybrook.
If they will sell me one downloaded movie for 5 bucks, I might buy one, now and again. Maybe once a month. But if they sell them to me for 3 bucks each, I'll probably buy two a month. They just made an extra dollar by charging me less per film.
Maybe. You're assuming that there isn't a base cost of $3 to deliver that $5 movie to you. So if they price at $3, they make zero profit. But if they price at $5, they make $2 profit for that period.
Base costs can include non-elastic things like bandwidth price, per-screening royalties, electricity, administration. Odds are there's not going to be much elastic costs (such as percentage-based royalties) that fluctuate based on the price charged.
For a DVD quality movie, that I could watch on my 23" widescreen anytime in the next 7 days, including multiple showings, pausing, rewinding... that's worth about $5-$8 to me. But if it can only be watched once, I can't stop the showing, and other barriers to ease of use are put into place, I'll either not watch or cruise the bargain bins and second hand market for second tier films that are "watch once".
I can't decide whether the poster was trying to coin a new word ("thinkerer") along the lines of being a smarter tinkerer, or if it was a simple spelling error.
I switched back to Mozilla solely because Mozilla uses a single text input field for both URLs and search (eg. Google).
Indeed. It's something that I don't even think about until I go and use Firefox on one of my other machines. Then I remember why I'm still using Mozilla for mail/news/web rather then using the split Thunderbird/Firefox.
But then a bitmap smoke puff clips through a wall and the game still looks like ass.
(chuckles) Sounds like someone has been playing Call of Duty: United Offensive. Which, IIRC, is based on Quake3.
When we first saw the smoke grenades in CoD:UO, we were very impressed. They fulfilled their mission of obscuring vision and providing a temporary screen. Then we went and played on the close-in maps and watched the smoke puff through walls.
Actually, that's not the only issue in CoD:UO with regards to graphics. You can also see muzzle flashes through thin walls, which isn't very realistic either. By thin walls, I'm talking about walls of houses, which would traditionally be made out of wood / brick / plaster and that most people would consider to be opaque.
Still, bitmap smoke effects are better then nothing and they work to great advantage if used.
A) Purchase a CD from a store. Find out that either I can't rip it to my hard drive / MP3 player or find out that it's installed something nasty and annoying on my system.
(On the upside, I sleep well at night because I "do the right thing">)
B) Skip option A and go directly to pulling the already ripped, no DRM nonsense MP3s off of a file sharing service. Which I can then easily play on my computer / MP3 players.
(I'll sleep even more soundly because I'm not worried about an audio CD breaking my system. But I'll probably toss and turn once or twice because I wish the artists could've gotten $0.10.)
Remind me again why I want to use option A? Especially since, with the advent of DRM-protected CDs, I'll have to use option B in order to get my tracks onto my MP3 players?
I'd like to see your math. At $0.095/kWh, it's very difficult to justify electronics purchases solely on power efficiency.
Figure that 250W supply was running at full tilt, and you drop the power consumption by 20%, saving 50W. Let's assume you run that 365x24 for an entire year.
You've saved 438000Wh or 438kWh, about $42/year. Not bad, but that's only if you use it 365x24. If you scale back to 252 working days @ 9 hrs/day, it's only $11/year.
Still, it's useful to know that there are higher efficiency power supplies out there. If, for no other reason then more efficiency means less heat generated that has to be removed from the case.
That sounds about right. Except that you should probably compare the cost of a 22" CRT (probably at 1600x1200) with a 20" LCD also running at 1600x1200. Remember that LCD sizes are not equal to CRT sizes (CRT size measurement includes glass hidden by the bezel).
19" CRTs are around $200-$300 (for a decent one). Figure that will last about the same amount of time as an LCD. Power costs for 19" CRTs range between 100W and 140W. (My older 19" ADI is around 145W, newer 19" seem to be more in the 100-120W range.) 19" LCDs w/ 1280x1024 resolutions are down around $300, but the 1600x1200 20" displays are more like $500-$600. Wattage on a 19" Viewsonic is 36W, but the 20" LCD 1600x1200 eats up 70W.
For the 1280x1024 market, LCDs are only $100-$150 more then a CRT now with a power savings of around 70W. Around these parts, we're paying more like $0.095/kWh. (10 hr workdays, 252 days per year, 176kWh per year.) That's $16.76/year or a payback of 5-7 years.
You can also include things like:
- Cost of cooling the heat emitted by those CRT tubes (LCDs generate some heat, but nowhere near as much).
- Some users are happier reading text on an LCD screen, and other intangibles like more deskspace.
- Energy prices may go up drastically in the future (how pessimistic are you?)
For the 1280x1024 and below market. LCDs are price competitive. I think they hit that point about 12 months ago (maybe even 18 months). Now we're just waiting for the same to happen in the 21"+ market.
Replacing for the sake of replacing is silly (unless the old monitors are being repurposed elsewhere), but there's not much reason not to order a new system with LCDs.
1. A good reference book is not just a regurgitation of the technical docs. Technical docs are generally best for answering the "how" question, but horrid at answering the "why" / "what" / "where" questions. Tech docs show you all the pieces, but rarely show you a really good overview of how it all fits together. (And even with printed material, one of my biggest gripes with authors is when they focus too closely on the "how" rather then answering some of the "why" questions.)
2. I can jot notes in a book. I can leave little sticky-note bookmarks behind. I can highlight stuff that is important or critical to know. I can flip from section to section, while holding my original place with other fingers. I put the book down and instantly pick it up later and begin again where I left off last time.
3. I can lean back in my chair, put my feet up and comfortably absorb the information in a book rather then read while scrunched over a keyboard. No refresh rates, no fuzzy text, it's a bit of vacation for my eyes after staring at the screen for too long.
4. Nothing says "too many irons in the fire" to your boss like a stack of 6-12 technical books on your desk. Especially if most of them are half-open, with scribbled notes, and lots of sticky-note bookmarks. Don't forget to have at least 12" of paper printout of HOWTOs, white papers, and other documentation that you've marked-up, highlighted, and jotted even more notes on.
5. Not all books are strictly "hands-on". Even books with lots of examples, you may find it better to read the chapter as a whole in one go, then go back and work through examples.
6. Not all technical topics are discussed well online or in electronic format. In addition, you run into formatting issues, where each one is laid out differently (a printed book tends to follow conventions). Non-specific topics like system administration, database design concepts, architecture are generally not well-covered by online formats.
I've got 4 books on my desktop at the moment. With another stack of 6 or so down at my feet. Not to mention the full bookcase behind me for books that I pull about once a year when something obscure crops up. After 20 years, there's nothing better then having a good book on-hand that you can pull off the shelf for a quick answer.
(Gods, can't believe I've been doing this for 20 years.)
My goal over time has been to obtain and read about a book each month. What usually ends up happening is that I hit a thorny issue, plow through 3-5 books all at once (in addition to doing massive amounts of online searches), and then take a few months to slowly plod through the next one. And about a quarter of the books on my shelves were on topics that I was merely idly curious about.
I bought a 23" Samsung LCD for a similar reason recently. Only paid around $900 and got a decent sized unit that is easily portable. The Samsung prices are very competitive in the sub-24" market. I may even purchase a 2nd unit next spring for my bedroom.
There are some things with the Samsung that could stand to be improved, but it's not that bad of a unit for a small living room or small office. (I sit about 5-6' away from it.) Better then the small 13" CRT TV that I was using.
My biggest complaint about the Samgsung 23" LCD TV is that the headphone jack is on the *back* of the unit. Which is a rather silly place to put it. I ended up piping my audio out to a set of speakers that had a headphone jack cutout. That lets me plug/unplug a headphone jack for times when I don't want to wake the neighbors with the sounds of orcs screaming.
The second issue is that there are no side connectors at all, so hooking up a camcorder requires going behind the unit. I also wish there was a 2nd HDMI input connection.
Aye, the C3 is something like a 10W to 15W CPU, if I remember my specs correctly. Disk drives (3.5" 7200rpm) are typically 10-12W when spinning/seeking/active (and 5-6W when idle). Startup wattage can be about double the normal active wattage (some makers say 28W for startup).
Not sure if the smaller 2.5" SCSI drives end up at the same power draw due to the increased RPM.
And I somewhat miss the luggable lunchbox units that came out c1990.
They had a miniature detachable keyboard (similar to today's laptop keyboard layouts). The ones that I remember (made by Compaq in the i386 days) were rather comfortable keyboards to use. They were smaller then the previous decades luggables (which were breadbox sized as opposed to lunchbox sized).
The best part about them was that they typically came with (2) ISA expansion slots that used regular ISA cards. A useful thing to have in a semi-portable workstation, back when motherboard chipsets didn't include the kitchen sink.
The downsides / characteristics of the units were:
- The depth (thickness) of the unit would require special laptop bags today. Although you could probably use a carrying case for an overhead LCD projector. It's also more difficult to pack a thick, boxy shape then a thin wafer shape.
- The old Compaq luggables had to be plugged in, no built-in battery at all. OTOH, they came with a monochrome plasma screen which was very easy on the eyes. (Or was it greyscale? I just remember the orange glow.)
First, I like my screen high resolution for exactly that purpose: it's supposed to replace a dual monitor setup. So I run a 15.4" widescreen in 1920x1200
What screen is this? If it's on a laptop, who makes it?
(I'm moderately happy with my Toshiba Tecra's 1400x1050 15", but that's only a 4:3 aspect at roughly 125ppi. The 1280x768 screens that are frequently seen would be a step down for me so I'm always on the lookout for high-res laptop screens.)
Anyways, my prediction is that the Chinese will be quicker than the West to adopt Nuclear power if oil scarcity begins to crimp their growth.
BusinessWeek had an article on that a few weeks ago. China is already planning on building quite a few nuclear reactors to generate electricity. I don't exactly recall how many sites were planned (15? 18? 24?), but it was more then a handful. IIRC, these sites were already out for bidding and might have even started construction by now.
Prices on the CF bulbs have gotten a lot better over the years, most of them are down around $6-$7 for a single bulb compared to $10-$20 a few years back. The fact that you don't have to replace them as often is a big bonus.
Yeah, it's already started. I'd say about 2 years ago.
The first wave of it was folks starting to harp about the amount of noise that most PCs make. While the Mini-ITX folks were already using fanless systems to reduce noise in specialized application, I think the fanless iMac gave momentum to the movement. At least, that little acryllic cube was cool enough to generate lots of press about being nearly silent.
Then there were the folks that started buying laptops instead of desktops due to the noise / form-factor / lifestyle choices. Laptops are easier to hide away, can be setup anywhere in the house on a whim, and laptops used to be pretty quiet.
Hard drive manufacturers switched over to fluid bearing drives a few years ago. At first, it was a marketing thing that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the pack. Now, I don't think you can find too many drive makers who are still making noisy ball bearing drives.
Energy costs have also gone up in the past few years. My electricty bill has gone from ~$40/mo up to ~$120/mo and I'm starting to consider whether I really want 4 servers, 3 desktops and a laptop running all the time. (And whether I can pack more storage into fewer watts.) Plus the heat issues that all of those systems cause.
PCs are also continuing to move further and further out of the office. As you moving into the living room / kitchen, folks start paying closer attention to noise / power / heat issues. And PCs have gotten powerful enough over the years, that they are "fast enough" for a lot of tasks. They're starting to compete against things like VCRs / DVD players / DVR & PVR (devices which are typically dead-quiet, low-power, and low-heat).
Dell even started selling "quiet" PCs a few years ago (most quiet PCs are also lower energy and lower temperature). Those are nice in an office setting for lowering the ambient noise level (which leads to a less-stressful environment).
What type of car you have and drive is a big ego booster here in the US. This has been happening so long and has become such a normal part of life here that people do not even think about the actual purpose and real utility of a specific vehicle. People try to rationalize such vehicle purposes and honestly believe they can justify it to themselves.
/chuckle
I know the type.
My compromise was to get a hatchback (Ford Focus ZX3 or the like). You get a small car, but since it's a hatchback you can fit in some quite decent large-scale items that wouldn't be possible in a sedan.
The only bad part about a hatchback is that you often don't get the luxury of a trunk (for storing things like first aid kits, emergency roadside kit, jumper cables, etc.).
Basically, things that would normally be printed on paper in a portable, small-book format are good candidates for installation on a PDA. Along with things that you would normally keep track of using small pieces of paper or small notebooks. You need to be using it at least half a dozen times per day before you're going to see real value out of it.
That was the real "win" of the original Palm (Palm III era). They kept things very simple and focused on the above (my Palm III would run for 2-4 weeks on a single set of batteries) and stayed away from toy features like MP3 player and playing movies. (I eventually switched to a PalmOS-based cell phone, the Kyocera QCP6035 SmartPhone.)
Telecommuting was also a factor along with more laptops being sold. For a lot of folks, having a laptop pretty much does away with the need for a full fledged PDA.
When I worked 9-5 and had a commute every day (and no laptop), the PDA made a lot of sense. It replaced my paper day planner and gave me a lot more functionality. It's small enough to slip in a pocket (unlike the paper day planner).
Now, I telecommute full-time and own a laptop that I always have with me when I make the occasional business trip. I still own my PDA (built into a cell-phone), but I do a lot more of my planning / scheduling / job tracking on my laptop instead.
(OTOH, I'm a lot less organized then I was back when I used my PDA once-an-hour.)
Which is why I still have my PalmOS cell phone (Kyocera QCP6035-SmartPhone).
Not the most svelte thing (some of the newer models are a bit more sleek), but a logical choice because I got tired of carrying around both a cell phone and a PDA.
When I see someone with a PDA I have to wonder what kind of reason they would have to HAVE to use that tiny device for business.... Does that PDA simplify their life or does it introduce far too much complexity and expecatations or superiors?
I guess you've never worked in a business environment where you have 6+ projects going on with lots of small deliverables dates. Or where you need to keep track of meetings (if this is 9am Tuesday, I need to be down talking to the geeks in room 101). Or maybe you simply have too many things to keep track of where it's easier to let a device be your medium-term memory.
Some of the things that I used a PDA for back when I worked a 9-5 job that had a daily commute. (I don't use my PDA anywhere near as much now that I telecommute full-time.)
- addresses / phone numbers (didn't own a cell phone at the time)
- to-do lists, task prioritization
- 101 random fragments of information that would normally end up on post-it notes
- exercise / diet tracking (for those concerned with fitness or health)
- expense tracking, record your purchase at the time of sale rather then spending an hour each week typing stuff into Quicken
- dictionaries, reference works
- news articles to review while on the train
- any other information that I'd want at a moment's notice (shopping lists, gift ideas, parts lists for a project)
Basically, a good PDA serves as an auxillary memory. Write it down, then stop worrying about trying to remember it (or remembering to get it done before a particular due date). The more you integrate it into your daily life (expense tracking and diet tracking are two killer applications) the more benefit you'll get out of it.
But if all you use it for is as a portable address book... get a cell phone with an address book feature and be done with it. Personally, I needed something to replace my bulky paper day planner.
The primary issue for us in using MS-Access is that we work on a few hundred projects per year. Each project only runs for a few weeks (sometimes longer) and each data set is pretty much unique to a particular project. During data collection, we use a database server, but the project gets tested using MSAccess databases and then archived for posterity in an MSAccess database file. (The MDBs are kept with the rest of the project documentation in a versioned source control system.)
I'll be keeping an eye on OOoBase, from browsing the forums and without looking at the project, some of the things I think will cause issues are:
- Can't go straight from a table/query to a CSV file (yes/no?)
- I would imagine that the.odb files be used as an ODBC data source in Windows?
- Sounded like the form/report designer needs more work.
- Conversion pain combined with the "network effect" (all of our clients use MSOffice and we frequently exchange files)
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Capture a TV show, edit out the commercials, and burn it to DVD... If you're fairly fast at the editing, you'll find waiting for the hard drive to catch-up to be a big annoyance, and a big waste of your time. 9GBs of RAM isn't exactly a practical alternative.
That's basically what I do on my one box. Capture straight to MPEG2, then cut the commercials in TMPGEnc DVD Author prior to putting it on a DVD. My source material is around 11.5GB for 3.5 hours (I record 7:45pm to 11:15pm every day, then chop to what I keep).
Right now, that box has 7200rpm drives and 1GB of RAM. Cutting is laggy, until system caches enough of the file into RAM. Moving from point to point on a fresh file takes a second or three for it to read the file and thumbnail, then it gets pretty snappy.
Even with re-encoding the video to AC3, I'm still disk-bound. Even when my source MPEG files are on one 7200rpm drive and my target drive for the DVD build is on a 2nd 7200rpm drive. The dual-Opteron 246 CPU utilization is typically ~10-20% and it takes me about 16 minutes to create the DVD with a pair of 43 minute episodes.
I'm debating the $250 for add another 2 sticks of RAM to the system (taking it up to 3GB). That would give me a much larger disk cache and is a cheap upgrade for this unit. Plus going from 1GB to 3GB gives me more headroom for other software. Moving to 10k rpm SATAs might be an option as well, but a more expensive fix.
You can have my Ford Focus when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. Mostly because I bought a custom model (rather then settle for what was on the lot) and it's a ZX3 hatchback (eminently practical, while still looking a little sporty). It's held up well for being one of the last ones off the line in the 2001 model year. (Sometimes I wish I had waited until 2002 and got the 6-cyl.)
Assuming they still make them when the warranty runs out on my current one, I'll probably go back and buy another one. The size is perfect for a getting around town car. The hatchback means I can flip the seats down and put decent sized cargo in. Much nicer then a sedan with limited trunk space.
And at the time... only VW and Ford were making 3-door hatchbacks. Honda had sat out that year (no 3-door hatchbacks in 2001). Amusingly enough, the VW 3-door Rabbit hatchback is almost identically sized as the Focus (in outer dimensions, including height), but the Focus simply looks and feels bigger.
I have seen a few other 3-door hatchbacks from other car makers in the past few years. There's also a 5-door hatchback Focus that has caught my eye a few times. It still looks like the 3-door focus instead of looking like a stationwagon.
Mid-80s american cars generally lasted to around 80k-100k miles before you ran into serious issues. I bought a Ford Crown Vic at 103k miles and ran it up until around 180k miles. It was severely limping by the end (c2001). I generally spent around $200/mo on repairs for the last few years. If I had relied on a dealer, it would've been double that (local 1-man shop is who I took it to).
OTOH, I drove a '76 Volvo stationwagon up into the 280k mile range. Never had trouble except that the body rusted out from underneath after about 15 years. I probably spent $100-$150/mo on that, but with all the miles I was driving, the mechanic (1-man shop, Volvo-only) saw the car every 3-4 weeks for an oil change.
How times change though... my 2001 Focus only has 12,800 miles on it. (No that's not a typo. I telecommute full-time and rarely do more with it then run errands around town during the week.) Real pity that it's parked on the street instead of being kept in a garage.
But yes, you've hit the nail on the head. Find a good mechanic, take it in to them regularly (even for oil changes), and you'll probably never have a lick of trouble. Small 1-man and 2-man shops are to be preferred over going to the local dealer or multi-bay garage. The 1-man and 2-man shops are not as convenient (no rental, no car service, no fancy waiting room), but they're almost always interested in keeping you as a long-time customer if you're decent with them. They'll generally reserve their ire for folks who only show up when something breaks and then lambast the mechanic for not having it fixed yesterday.
Another example would be the $0.99 burger at Wendy's. In raw part it would cost you only $0.25 Do you want to lug around a fridge, fresh lettuce, a package of buns, a grill, ground beef, and cheese whenever you feel like eating a burger for lunch?
Personally, I'd rather go to the local independent diner rather then a chain like Wendy's. There I can get anything from a burger to a BLT to a sub to an omlette. The cost is about the same, but I get waited on and don't have to fight for a table.
Hell, if I go often enough, the waitress will often bring me my coffee when she brings me the menu. IOW, I get much better service then I would get at a Wendy's. Even if I ate at that Wendy's every day of my life (and it would be a short one), you'd still be just another face.
I'd say Wendy's is more like Dell in your example. Cheap, commoditized, and you'll pay for it too. But when I'm in the mood for greek lasagna, there's no place like Stonybrook.
If they will sell me one downloaded movie for 5 bucks, I might buy one, now and again. Maybe once a month. But if they sell them to me for 3 bucks each, I'll probably buy two a month. They just made an extra dollar by charging me less per film.
Maybe. You're assuming that there isn't a base cost of $3 to deliver that $5 movie to you. So if they price at $3, they make zero profit. But if they price at $5, they make $2 profit for that period.
Base costs can include non-elastic things like bandwidth price, per-screening royalties, electricity, administration. Odds are there's not going to be much elastic costs (such as percentage-based royalties) that fluctuate based on the price charged.
For a DVD quality movie, that I could watch on my 23" widescreen anytime in the next 7 days, including multiple showings, pausing, rewinding... that's worth about $5-$8 to me. But if it can only be watched once, I can't stop the showing, and other barriers to ease of use are put into place, I'll either not watch or cruise the bargain bins and second hand market for second tier films that are "watch once".
I can't decide whether the poster was trying to coin a new word ("thinkerer") along the lines of being a smarter tinkerer, or if it was a simple spelling error.
Huh... Google turns up hits for "thinkerer".
I switched back to Mozilla solely because Mozilla uses a single text input field for both URLs and search (eg. Google).
Indeed. It's something that I don't even think about until I go and use Firefox on one of my other machines. Then I remember why I'm still using Mozilla for mail/news/web rather then using the split Thunderbird/Firefox.
But then a bitmap smoke puff clips through a wall and the game still looks like ass.
(chuckles) Sounds like someone has been playing Call of Duty: United Offensive. Which, IIRC, is based on Quake3.
When we first saw the smoke grenades in CoD:UO, we were very impressed. They fulfilled their mission of obscuring vision and providing a temporary screen. Then we went and played on the close-in maps and watched the smoke puff through walls.
Actually, that's not the only issue in CoD:UO with regards to graphics. You can also see muzzle flashes through thin walls, which isn't very realistic either. By thin walls, I'm talking about walls of houses, which would traditionally be made out of wood / brick / plaster and that most people would consider to be opaque.
Still, bitmap smoke effects are better then nothing and they work to great advantage if used.
That's pretty much what went through my mind.
A) Purchase a CD from a store. Find out that either I can't rip it to my hard drive / MP3 player or find out that it's installed something nasty and annoying on my system.
(On the upside, I sleep well at night because I "do the right thing">)
B) Skip option A and go directly to pulling the already ripped, no DRM nonsense MP3s off of a file sharing service. Which I can then easily play on my computer / MP3 players.
(I'll sleep even more soundly because I'm not worried about an audio CD breaking my system. But I'll probably toss and turn once or twice because I wish the artists could've gotten $0.10.)
Remind me again why I want to use option A? Especially since, with the advent of DRM-protected CDs, I'll have to use option B in order to get my tracks onto my MP3 players?
I'd like to see your math. At $0.095/kWh, it's very difficult to justify electronics purchases solely on power efficiency.
Figure that 250W supply was running at full tilt, and you drop the power consumption by 20%, saving 50W. Let's assume you run that 365x24 for an entire year.
You've saved 438000Wh or 438kWh, about $42/year. Not bad, but that's only if you use it 365x24. If you scale back to 252 working days @ 9 hrs/day, it's only $11/year.
Still, it's useful to know that there are higher efficiency power supplies out there. If, for no other reason then more efficiency means less heat generated that has to be removed from the case.
That sounds about right. Except that you should probably compare the cost of a 22" CRT (probably at 1600x1200) with a 20" LCD also running at 1600x1200. Remember that LCD sizes are not equal to CRT sizes (CRT size measurement includes glass hidden by the bezel).
19" CRTs are around $200-$300 (for a decent one). Figure that will last about the same amount of time as an LCD. Power costs for 19" CRTs range between 100W and 140W. (My older 19" ADI is around 145W, newer 19" seem to be more in the 100-120W range.) 19" LCDs w/ 1280x1024 resolutions are down around $300, but the 1600x1200 20" displays are more like $500-$600. Wattage on a 19" Viewsonic is 36W, but the 20" LCD 1600x1200 eats up 70W.
For the 1280x1024 market, LCDs are only $100-$150 more then a CRT now with a power savings of around 70W. Around these parts, we're paying more like $0.095/kWh. (10 hr workdays, 252 days per year, 176kWh per year.) That's $16.76/year or a payback of 5-7 years.
You can also include things like:
- Cost of cooling the heat emitted by those CRT tubes (LCDs generate some heat, but nowhere near as much).
- Some users are happier reading text on an LCD screen, and other intangibles like more deskspace.
- Energy prices may go up drastically in the future (how pessimistic are you?)
For the 1280x1024 and below market. LCDs are price competitive. I think they hit that point about 12 months ago (maybe even 18 months). Now we're just waiting for the same to happen in the 21"+ market.
Replacing for the sake of replacing is silly (unless the old monitors are being repurposed elsewhere), but there's not much reason not to order a new system with LCDs.
1. A good reference book is not just a regurgitation of the technical docs. Technical docs are generally best for answering the "how" question, but horrid at answering the "why" / "what" / "where" questions. Tech docs show you all the pieces, but rarely show you a really good overview of how it all fits together. (And even with printed material, one of my biggest gripes with authors is when they focus too closely on the "how" rather then answering some of the "why" questions.)
2. I can jot notes in a book. I can leave little sticky-note bookmarks behind. I can highlight stuff that is important or critical to know. I can flip from section to section, while holding my original place with other fingers. I put the book down and instantly pick it up later and begin again where I left off last time.
3. I can lean back in my chair, put my feet up and comfortably absorb the information in a book rather then read while scrunched over a keyboard. No refresh rates, no fuzzy text, it's a bit of vacation for my eyes after staring at the screen for too long.
4. Nothing says "too many irons in the fire" to your boss like a stack of 6-12 technical books on your desk. Especially if most of them are half-open, with scribbled notes, and lots of sticky-note bookmarks. Don't forget to have at least 12" of paper printout of HOWTOs, white papers, and other documentation that you've marked-up, highlighted, and jotted even more notes on.
5. Not all books are strictly "hands-on". Even books with lots of examples, you may find it better to read the chapter as a whole in one go, then go back and work through examples.
6. Not all technical topics are discussed well online or in electronic format. In addition, you run into formatting issues, where each one is laid out differently (a printed book tends to follow conventions). Non-specific topics like system administration, database design concepts, architecture are generally not well-covered by online formats.
I've got 4 books on my desktop at the moment. With another stack of 6 or so down at my feet. Not to mention the full bookcase behind me for books that I pull about once a year when something obscure crops up. After 20 years, there's nothing better then having a good book on-hand that you can pull off the shelf for a quick answer.
(Gods, can't believe I've been doing this for 20 years.)
My goal over time has been to obtain and read about a book each month. What usually ends up happening is that I hit a thorny issue, plow through 3-5 books all at once (in addition to doing massive amounts of online searches), and then take a few months to slowly plod through the next one. And about a quarter of the books on my shelves were on topics that I was merely idly curious about.
I bought a 23" Samsung LCD for a similar reason recently. Only paid around $900 and got a decent sized unit that is easily portable. The Samsung prices are very competitive in the sub-24" market. I may even purchase a 2nd unit next spring for my bedroom.
There are some things with the Samsung that could stand to be improved, but it's not that bad of a unit for a small living room or small office. (I sit about 5-6' away from it.) Better then the small 13" CRT TV that I was using.
My biggest complaint about the Samgsung 23" LCD TV is that the headphone jack is on the *back* of the unit. Which is a rather silly place to put it. I ended up piping my audio out to a set of speakers that had a headphone jack cutout. That lets me plug/unplug a headphone jack for times when I don't want to wake the neighbors with the sounds of orcs screaming.
The second issue is that there are no side connectors at all, so hooking up a camcorder requires going behind the unit. I also wish there was a 2nd HDMI input connection.
Aye, the C3 is something like a 10W to 15W CPU, if I remember my specs correctly. Disk drives (3.5" 7200rpm) are typically 10-12W when spinning/seeking/active (and 5-6W when idle). Startup wattage can be about double the normal active wattage (some makers say 28W for startup).
Not sure if the smaller 2.5" SCSI drives end up at the same power draw due to the increased RPM.
And I somewhat miss the luggable lunchbox units that came out c1990.
They had a miniature detachable keyboard (similar to today's laptop keyboard layouts). The ones that I remember (made by Compaq in the i386 days) were rather comfortable keyboards to use. They were smaller then the previous decades luggables (which were breadbox sized as opposed to lunchbox sized).
The best part about them was that they typically came with (2) ISA expansion slots that used regular ISA cards. A useful thing to have in a semi-portable workstation, back when motherboard chipsets didn't include the kitchen sink.
The downsides / characteristics of the units were:
- The depth (thickness) of the unit would require special laptop bags today. Although you could probably use a carrying case for an overhead LCD projector. It's also more difficult to pack a thick, boxy shape then a thin wafer shape.
- The old Compaq luggables had to be plugged in, no built-in battery at all. OTOH, they came with a monochrome plasma screen which was very easy on the eyes. (Or was it greyscale? I just remember the orange glow.)
First, I like my screen high resolution for exactly that purpose: it's supposed to replace a dual monitor setup. So I run a 15.4" widescreen in 1920x1200
What screen is this? If it's on a laptop, who makes it?
(I'm moderately happy with my Toshiba Tecra's 1400x1050 15", but that's only a 4:3 aspect at roughly 125ppi. The 1280x768 screens that are frequently seen would be a step down for me so I'm always on the lookout for high-res laptop screens.)
Anyways, my prediction is that the Chinese will be quicker than the West to adopt Nuclear power if oil scarcity begins to crimp their growth.
BusinessWeek had an article on that a few weeks ago. China is already planning on building quite a few nuclear reactors to generate electricity. I don't exactly recall how many sites were planned (15? 18? 24?), but it was more then a handful. IIRC, these sites were already out for bidding and might have even started construction by now.
Since I was just at the store this week, a selection of compact fluorescents:
Panasonic GenIV, 14W 800 lumens (57.1)
- Very small bulb that can fit into any place that a regular bulb would fit (although it's not round)
Generic 26W, 1600 lumens, 10k hours (61.5 lumens/watt)
Generic 9W, 540 lumens, 10k hours (60 lumens/watt)
Prices on the CF bulbs have gotten a lot better over the years, most of them are down around $6-$7 for a single bulb compared to $10-$20 a few years back. The fact that you don't have to replace them as often is a big bonus.
Yeah, it's already started. I'd say about 2 years ago.
The first wave of it was folks starting to harp about the amount of noise that most PCs make. While the Mini-ITX folks were already using fanless systems to reduce noise in specialized application, I think the fanless iMac gave momentum to the movement. At least, that little acryllic cube was cool enough to generate lots of press about being nearly silent.
Then there were the folks that started buying laptops instead of desktops due to the noise / form-factor / lifestyle choices. Laptops are easier to hide away, can be setup anywhere in the house on a whim, and laptops used to be pretty quiet.
Hard drive manufacturers switched over to fluid bearing drives a few years ago. At first, it was a marketing thing that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the pack. Now, I don't think you can find too many drive makers who are still making noisy ball bearing drives.
Energy costs have also gone up in the past few years. My electricty bill has gone from ~$40/mo up to ~$120/mo and I'm starting to consider whether I really want 4 servers, 3 desktops and a laptop running all the time. (And whether I can pack more storage into fewer watts.) Plus the heat issues that all of those systems cause.
PCs are also continuing to move further and further out of the office. As you moving into the living room / kitchen, folks start paying closer attention to noise / power / heat issues. And PCs have gotten powerful enough over the years, that they are "fast enough" for a lot of tasks. They're starting to compete against things like VCRs / DVD players / DVR & PVR (devices which are typically dead-quiet, low-power, and low-heat).
Dell even started selling "quiet" PCs a few years ago (most quiet PCs are also lower energy and lower temperature). Those are nice in an office setting for lowering the ambient noise level (which leads to a less-stressful environment).
What type of car you have and drive is a big ego booster here in the US. This has been happening so long and has become such a normal part of life here that people do not even think about the actual purpose and real utility of a specific vehicle. People try to rationalize such vehicle purposes and honestly believe they can justify it to themselves.
/chuckle
I know the type.
My compromise was to get a hatchback (Ford Focus ZX3 or the like). You get a small car, but since it's a hatchback you can fit in some quite decent large-scale items that wouldn't be possible in a sedan.
The only bad part about a hatchback is that you often don't get the luxury of a trunk (for storing things like first aid kits, emergency roadside kit, jumper cables, etc.).
Things that a traditional PDA excels at:
- Phone / Address / Contact tracking
- Task tracking
- Calendar functions
- Portable alarm clock (great for trips)
- Purchase tracking (front-end to Quicken, etc.)
- Replacing post-it notes (gift lists, clothing sizes, parts lists for a side-project, shopping lists)
- Reference information (dictionary, thesaurus, translation software)
- Lifestyle tracking (diet, exercise logs)
- Portable newspaper (downloading news articles)
Basically, things that would normally be printed on paper in a portable, small-book format are good candidates for installation on a PDA. Along with things that you would normally keep track of using small pieces of paper or small notebooks. You need to be using it at least half a dozen times per day before you're going to see real value out of it.
That was the real "win" of the original Palm (Palm III era). They kept things very simple and focused on the above (my Palm III would run for 2-4 weeks on a single set of batteries) and stayed away from toy features like MP3 player and playing movies. (I eventually switched to a PalmOS-based cell phone, the Kyocera QCP6035 SmartPhone.)
Telecommuting was also a factor along with more laptops being sold. For a lot of folks, having a laptop pretty much does away with the need for a full fledged PDA.
When I worked 9-5 and had a commute every day (and no laptop), the PDA made a lot of sense. It replaced my paper day planner and gave me a lot more functionality. It's small enough to slip in a pocket (unlike the paper day planner).
Now, I telecommute full-time and own a laptop that I always have with me when I make the occasional business trip. I still own my PDA (built into a cell-phone), but I do a lot more of my planning / scheduling / job tracking on my laptop instead.
(OTOH, I'm a lot less organized then I was back when I used my PDA once-an-hour.)
Which is why I still have my PalmOS cell phone (Kyocera QCP6035-SmartPhone).
Not the most svelte thing (some of the newer models are a bit more sleek), but a logical choice because I got tired of carrying around both a cell phone and a PDA.
When I see someone with a PDA I have to wonder what kind of reason they would have to HAVE to use that tiny device for business.... Does that PDA simplify their life or does it introduce far too much complexity and expecatations or superiors?
I guess you've never worked in a business environment where you have 6+ projects going on with lots of small deliverables dates. Or where you need to keep track of meetings (if this is 9am Tuesday, I need to be down talking to the geeks in room 101). Or maybe you simply have too many things to keep track of where it's easier to let a device be your medium-term memory.
Some of the things that I used a PDA for back when I worked a 9-5 job that had a daily commute. (I don't use my PDA anywhere near as much now that I telecommute full-time.)
- addresses / phone numbers (didn't own a cell phone at the time)
- to-do lists, task prioritization
- 101 random fragments of information that would normally end up on post-it notes
- exercise / diet tracking (for those concerned with fitness or health)
- expense tracking, record your purchase at the time of sale rather then spending an hour each week typing stuff into Quicken
- dictionaries, reference works
- news articles to review while on the train
- any other information that I'd want at a moment's notice (shopping lists, gift ideas, parts lists for a project)
Basically, a good PDA serves as an auxillary memory. Write it down, then stop worrying about trying to remember it (or remembering to get it done before a particular due date). The more you integrate it into your daily life (expense tracking and diet tracking are two killer applications) the more benefit you'll get out of it.
But if all you use it for is as a portable address book... get a cell phone with an address book feature and be done with it. Personally, I needed something to replace my bulky paper day planner.
OOoBase?
.odb files be used as an ODBC data source in Windows?
Sounds interesting.
The primary issue for us in using MS-Access is that we work on a few hundred projects per year. Each project only runs for a few weeks (sometimes longer) and each data set is pretty much unique to a particular project. During data collection, we use a database server, but the project gets tested using MSAccess databases and then archived for posterity in an MSAccess database file. (The MDBs are kept with the rest of the project documentation in a versioned source control system.)
I'll be keeping an eye on OOoBase, from browsing the forums and without looking at the project, some of the things I think will cause issues are:
- Can't go straight from a table/query to a CSV file (yes/no?)
- I would imagine that the
- Sounded like the form/report designer needs more work.
- Conversion pain combined with the "network effect" (all of our clients use MSOffice and we frequently exchange files)