Unless you have extra CCD pixels (Chances are that unless you have a super-high-end camera you don't, most consumer DV camcorders are interpolating up to 720x480 from a lower res), your "anamorphic" widescreen is just ignoring part of the CCD and stretching the rest, reducing your effective resolution. FYI, I have a GR-DVL120U from the same manufacturer, same features. It's only the $2000+ cameras that offer true anamorphic recording where CCD resolution is equal to or greater than DV resolution in anamorphic mode.
And anyway - Progressive scan is a must for high-quality video, and that instantly puts you into the $900-1000+ price range.
Editing: Last time I played with Kino it wasn't too hot, but it was quite an active project. It has likely come a long way.
Broadcast2000/Cinellera has always been a bloated nightmare to install. The author of that package is Just Plain Nuts.
Currently I edit DV under Windows using Windows Movie Maker. After that reboot, compress to MPEG2 using transcode, and then author a DVD using dvdauthor. After that I use a patched version of cdrecord to burn to DVD.
Otherwise it would be wholly unsuitable for video editing.
As anyone who has seen the obscene size of DV files can attest, the compression is minimal. There is no visible quality loss in DV video. (Otherwise, why would it be the de facto standard in video production and editing for anything up to the highest-end Hollywood productions?)
HDTV camcorders are a different story - They do use MPEG-2 compression. But DV is sufficient for DVDs. (720x480 resolution, same as DVDs. Getting a DV cam capable of anamorphic widescreen will set you back a lot more than $500 though - Expect $2000-3000 in that case.)
"Any technical reason why USB support needs an OS overhaul?? Even DOS can support USB."
Because it requires massive architectural changes at rather low levels.
Find me a USB mass storage device that works under Windows 95 and I'll change my tune. Yes, it may be possible, but not for Joe Sixpack. And your previous question was, "What can Joe Sixpack do with XP that he can't do with 95".
"Again, why should an interface/protocol requir OS change??" As stated above, USB is a complex interface that requires the whole Plug-And-Play and device detection architecture to be changed to accomodate it.
"There's no technical reason why movie editing can't be done with 95. Adobe has many products in this segment."
Have you bothered to check the prices of any of those products?
Sad to say it, but for the home user, WMM2 is one of the best solutions out there. Premiere is massive overkill and even the academic versions cost more than the full non-upgrade version of XP. Even ignoring cost, Premiere is not for Joe Sixpack. Ulead VideoStudio sucks. Vegas Video is just as expensive as Premiere and I have never been able to find academic pricing on it either. Yes, for the power user and professsional, Premiere and Vegas are well worth the money, but for Joe Sixpack who wants to edit movies of his baby boy, Premiere and Vegas are way too expensive and way too complex.
Also, since Firewire requires the same PnP overhauls that USB does (i.e. Firewire doesn't work under Win95 and never will), there is no way to do DV editing under Win95 without performing capture under another OS.
"Exactly what can Joe ServicPack achieve with XP, that cannot be done with '95??" While I'm not a fan of MS in any way, and I think WinXP utterly sucks, I can list a few things:
Much greater reliability. (Significantly worse than Win2k, but at least XP is from the NT tree, making it better than any of the 9xs.)
USB support - If you were comparing to '98, this would be different. But 95 is nearly completely lacking in USB support. 98 has USB support, but is missing many common drivers. (For example, USB storage devices don't work out-of-the-box in 98, and do in Me,2k, and XP)
1394 support - Like USB, it's not in '95. Don't know how well 98 supports it. 2k supports it very well, minus Ethernet over 1394, which only Me and XP have.
Windows Movie Maker - Honestly, for basic home-movie editing, WMM 2 is simple and easy to use. It's no Premiere, but for basic work it's quite suitable.
If you asked what XP gave you beyond Win2000 - I would say not much. Only advantages are Ethernet over 1394 and Windows Movie Maker, nothing else really. XP has been in my experience less reliable (With the exception of Firewire support, installing XP solved crashes involving saving captures from my HDTV tuner card to a 1394 HD), and some of the stuff that XP integrated in (WLAN support, Intel SpeedStep support) is utter shit compared to the vendor-implemented control methods for most WLAN cards and SpeedStep. While it is possible to still use vendor WLAN control apps like the Orinoco control app with some major headaches, NO ONE has been able to disable XP's horrendous SpeedStep support and run the old Intel control app. This is why I stick with 2000 on my laptop myself.)
In nearly all places I've been, all three GSM provides suck. (This is even in heavily populated areas like New Jersey - Neither T-Mobile, Cingular, or AT&T can cover 100% of the landmass of the most densely populated state in the nation. Verizon is the only one who can.)
Yes, Verizon is expensive. But you get what you pay for. I constantly hear people with GSM phones bitching about how much their service sucks. I'm paying quite a bit more from Verizon, but I have excellent service quality and their customer service is EXCELLENT.
In a previous/. article on the 007 exploit, it was stated that an Xbox memory card could be made from a standard USB memory key somehow. But there were no links to any information on that, nor can I find any references on any of the Xbox hardware hacking sites.
Is that indeed possible? And if so, how?
I know the Xbox controllers and other peripherals are USB (albeit using an oddball connector, but electrically it's USB). Are Xbox memory cards simply USB Mass Storage compliant devices?
The 6035 does a better job as a phone than the Treos, has a removable battery, all of Kyocera's phones use the same data cable (Didn't need to buy a travel sync cable for my 6035, just used my old 2035 cable), and has a standard 2.5mm headset jack.
The 7135 adds MP3 and a color display, plus SDIO expansion capability.
Kyocera (Formerly Qualcomm's handset division) has been in the smartphone business longer than anyone. Yes, the first attempts (pdQ) sucked and flopped, but Kyocera released their second generation smartphone before most other manufacturers released their first combo device, and they are on their third generation product now. (Note: I am NOT talking about 2G vs. 3G wireless. The 6035 is a 2G device, and the 7135 supports the "2.5G" portion of the CDMA2000 standard.)
It's EXCELLENT. It's a little bit taller than my old Palm III, slighly narrower, and a bit thicker.
Yes, it's freakin' huge for a phone. But the original poster suggested putting a phone into a PDA - OF COURSE it's going to be big for a phone.
But if you are already carrying around a PDA AND a phone at all times, who cares if it's a huge phone? Yes, it may be a huge phone, but it's a lot smaller than carrying a seperate phone and PDA.
Personally, I hate the trend towards tiny phones. Yeah, it's nice when carrying it around, but they're hell to hold during a conversation and a pain to dial with. My Kyocera fits naturally in my hand when it's in a relaxed position and is easy to dial, as opposed to having to grasp a tiny little thing and push miniscule buttons.
A 166 MHz Cyrix Pentium-alike did just fine for my school's computer club serving Q1 and Q2, and it was also the school's web server/mail server. Remember, dedicated servers don't need to have all that video rendering horsepower.
A 500 MHz-ish machine should be more than enough for Q3. UT2K3 might start needing more CPU, if anything the more recent games need lots of HD space for the server, not CPU.
I am not adamant that it's bug free or complete. I'm saying that NO ONE should judge a game (esp. an MMOG) based on its beta. Almost every MMOG has had serious problems at the time of release. Which is why I said, unless you want to get a headstart at the expense of bugs, wait a while before buying any MMOG. Even though I absolutely love EVE, I would still reccommend to anyone that they give CCP another month or so, unless you want to work on getting a headstart now.
FYI, EVE = RUSHED too. Yes, CCP did break the mold with their game design, but SSI (their publisher) forced them to release early. There were some SERIOUS problems in the weeks immediately after release, but things are shaping up quite well. Yes, I played beta and the game was nearly unplayable due to bugs, even up to a week or so before release. At release, at least it was playable, even though there were still nasty bugs. At this point, the worst of the bugs are gone and it's a matter of balancing.
And I agree - EVE is light on the content at the moment. But now that CCP is approaching completion of the "balancing" stage, the content is going to start flowing. Rumors abound that there's going to be some interesting stuff happening in Amarr space within the next week or two... (They've been building up backstory for that nearly since release, and SOMETHING is going to happen really soon...)
I should have specifically stated cdmaOne and CDMA2000 in Verizon's case.
UMTS would up standardizing on CDMA for its modulation scheme, but the people involved are incompetents regarding CDMA implementation. UMTS is having all of the problems that the CDMA experts solved years ago.
And the EU government DID mandate use of GSM. They also mandated the use of UMTS and the requirement to upgrade to it. i.e. "Buy these ridiculously priced spectrum licenses or else."
Whereas in the only recent case the FCC has mandated a change to a new technology (moving TV from NTSC analog to ATSC digital), the FCC essentially gave broadcasters who already had an analog license an additional channel for free to make upgrading easier. i.e. "You need to move to this new technology. We'll give you the spectrum you need to do so, but you'll have to eventually give up the old spectrum"
My high school's first web/email server was a 166 MHz Cyrix 6x86 (or whatever they called the Cyrix Pentium-alike)
We ran mailing lists, email for the teachers, Apache, and always 1-2 Quake servers and it barely broke a sweat.
Had 64M RAM (maybe only 32?) and a 2G HD. The only thing that it really could've used more of was HD space.
Buy one of those Walmart Lindows boxes, install a more suitable Linux distro on it. (RedHat for the lazy, but you might squeeze more out of it with something like Gentoo. I'm lazy and so I use RedHat even though it's not the most space-efficient.) Those boxes come with 128M RAM, a 10G HD, and 3-4 times as much processor power as the box my HS used. Also, I didn't have a small high school - When I graduated we had about 1800 students (Although at that time only teachers had email addresses, with the exception of the student sysadmins.)
Don't judge a game by what the beta testers say. ESPECIALLY an MMOG.
In general, unless you're looking to get a headstart on everyone else and don't care about bugs (Most people value a headstart over bug-free gaming), don't buy any MMOG until at least 2-3 months after release.
Everything said by these beta testers was also said about EVE Online beta testers - In the last two weeks before release, a LOT of the problems in EVE were fixed. Yes, there are still a lot of problems, and CCP is still rebalancing the game, but all of the real nasties have been fixed. EVE has come a long way in the past month and a half since release, and the future looks bright. (CCP is planning to "kick off" the storyline of the game within the coming weeks now that most players have settled and become comfortable in the universe.)
FYI, I didn't play SWG beta, but the complaints of all the beta players look identical to the compaints of EVE beta testers in the one/. story that covered EVE.
And look at what the EU government mandates have done to the European carriers.
UMTS has proven to be a nightmare for every carrier that has implemented it. NTT DoCoMo tried to roll out UMTS and their name is now mud in Japan because of people getting their hands burned by handsets that consumed too much power. GSM isn't too hot either. oops...
Meanwhile, in the USA, the best technology (CDMA) won over GSM. Every GSM provider in the nation is struggling. Meanwhile Verizon, a CDMA provider, is managing to charge 1.5 times as much per minute or more than the others because of the fact that they have superior coverage and call quality.
Yes, I'm a Verizon customer. Yes, I'm paying much more per minute than I would on Cingular or AT&T. Yes, I'm glad I am when I can use my phone and a Cingular or AT&T customer wouldn't get coverage for miles.
In NY State, the state sales tax is apparently 4%.
But pretty much *every single county* has an additional 4% - So everywhere in NYS, sales tax is 8% if you buy in a store. The only time you see 4% is if you order from a store in another county mailorder, and even then many will simply charge 8%. (Cornell's Campus Store was one of the exceptions, but it could have had to to with Cornell's academic/nonprofit status.)
In nearly all states, displaying prices that include sales tax is illegal.
Some states have exceptions for various items. Grocery stores in NJ have lots of fun with inventory because basic groceries are tax-exempt, but not everything sold in a grocery store falls in that category. So some things within the store are taxed and some are not. Add to that bottle deposits for recycling depending on the state.
New Jersey also has no sales tax on clothing. Which is why New York City often abolishes sales tax on holiday shopping weekends, because for major shopping trips, the savings on clothing sales tax offsets the tolls to cross the bridge over the New Jersey, and so NYC would lose all the major holiday shoppers to New Jersey businesses.
A few people emailed me indicating that they were having problems getting the Matlab/Octave code to run.
Most of those lines require Matlab's Signal Processing Toolbox or the Octave equivalent. Octave-Forge (http://octave.sf.net/) implements most SPT functionality. (Still no psd() function...)
The ausave() function is Octave-specific and probably needs to be replaced if running the code under Matlab.
Some forms of noise are more pleasing to the human ear than others, and monotonous noises (like fans) can actually be soothing. I actually CAN'T sleep without some background noise such as a fan (or my PC's whitenoise generator) running.
CPU fans are the exception, as these emit rather high-frequency narrowband noise. I'm talking about larger fans of the 2-foot+ variety. Hard drives are also too high pitched, plus the heads make all sorts of nice clicking sounds.
The output of that program is broadband noise at low frequencies that sounds rather similar to a waterfall. It's a soothing sound, but more importantly, it masks out spurious background noises (birds chirping, cars passing by, etc.) all of which tend to keep you awake/wake you up. The code I put in to add the small amount of higher frequency noise makes the output LESS comfortable to hear, but helps because it assists in masking out some noises in the 2.2-4.4 kHz spectrum.
Use of white noise to mask other noises is an established procedure in many office environments to mask out the sounds of things such as keys clicking. (In these cases the amplitude is VERY low so as to be not consciously noticeable.)
Someone emailed me about some other aspects of noise, so I might be able to improve the program tonight.:)
Back when I was a kid, my fishtank had a nasty algae problem.
So my parents bought a pleco. Tiny little thing, maybe 1-2 inches long. We called it "Lucky" due to the abundance of food in the tank.
Lucky lived for 12 years, far longer than any other fish we've ever had. And man do those things GROW. By the time it died it was nearly a foot long and thicker than its original length. It probably would've been twice the size if we'd had a larger tank.
I've found that most computer noises (even HD/CPU fan whine) don't make good whitenoise for sleeping.
The exception is if you use a large ventilation fan to blow into an open case. (been there done that.)
I DO use my computer as a whitenoise generator at night though. I've seen people charge $100-200 for whitenoise generators, when a simple program on a PC can do the trick. Under Linux, do a search for "whitenoise". Nice small program.
Under Windows, so far the best solution I have come up with is to use Octave to generate a white noise (actually, "pink" noise, i.e. white noise that has been lowpass filtered) waveform, save it to.wav, and set Winamp to play it in an infinite loop.
This creates white noise at a high level up to abour 2.2 kHz, and then additional noise at a much lower volume up to 4.4 kHz or so. You can adjust the cutoff frequencies (Second arguments to both fir1() functions and the ratios of volumes to your preference.
Note that I generate a noise array and then dupe it three times before filtering it and then truncating it again. This prevents discontinuities in the final waveform that would present audible clicks/pops after every loop. (Similar theory to some of the tricks used to make seamless tiles in The GIMP.)
Lead-acid batteries are generally not too finicky about charging. The worst thing for lead-acid batteries, as others mentioned, is deep cycling. A 50AH battery will last for MANY more charge/recharge cycles than a 7 AH battery if the outage frequency/length remains the same, as the battery will be discharged to a much smaller portion of its capacity.
If anything, with almost any battery chemistry, charging a battery with a charger designed for a lower-capacity version of the battery at the same voltage will rarely be a problem. It will, of course, take MUCH longer to charge.
Typical lead-acid charging schema: Constant current with a max of 14.5 volts or so. The charger will somehow detect end-of-charge and switch to "float" mode, which is typically 13.8 volts constant voltage for a 12V battery. Constant voltage at 13.8 with a current limit is perfectly safe. Note that if the charger is REALLY dumb and doesn't have a current limiting circuit (almost all do, even if it's as simple as a resistor), a 50AH battery could overload it.
NiCd and NiMH batteries require the most sophisticated end-of-charge detection. This entails reading the battery voltage during brief pauses in charging - NiCds and NiMHs will actually start DROPPING in voltage if charged past their max capacity. No end-of-charge detection is needed if you charge them slowly though. (C/16 or slower. i.e. if it's a 1600 mAh battery, if you charge it at 100 mA, you can leave it on for hours past full charge, but you want to take it off eventually.)
Li-Ion: These aren't really that hard to charge. Constant-voltage at 4.1 or 4.2V/cell with a current limit is all you need. I know people who charge Li-Ions with benchtop lab power supplies (current/voltage limits adjustable). The real trick with Li-Ion is that pack protection circuitry is an absolute must. Short-circuit = BOOM. Overdischarge = Dead and useless pack. Charging beyond 4.1 or 4.2v/cell = Dead and useless pack.
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Not quite...
Unless you have extra CCD pixels (Chances are that unless you have a super-high-end camera you don't, most consumer DV camcorders are interpolating up to 720x480 from a lower res), your "anamorphic" widescreen is just ignoring part of the CCD and stretching the rest, reducing your effective resolution. FYI, I have a GR-DVL120U from the same manufacturer, same features. It's only the $2000+ cameras that offer true anamorphic recording where CCD resolution is equal to or greater than DV resolution in anamorphic mode.
And anyway - Progressive scan is a must for high-quality video, and that instantly puts you into the $900-1000+ price range.
Editing: Last time I played with Kino it wasn't too hot, but it was quite an active project. It has likely come a long way.
Broadcast2000/Cinellera has always been a bloated nightmare to install. The author of that package is Just Plain Nuts.
Currently I edit DV under Windows using Windows Movie Maker. After that reboot, compress to MPEG2 using transcode, and then author a DVD using dvdauthor. After that I use a patched version of cdrecord to burn to DVD.
It is frame-based compression.
Otherwise it would be wholly unsuitable for video editing.
As anyone who has seen the obscene size of DV files can attest, the compression is minimal. There is no visible quality loss in DV video. (Otherwise, why would it be the de facto standard in video production and editing for anything up to the highest-end Hollywood productions?)
HDTV camcorders are a different story - They do use MPEG-2 compression. But DV is sufficient for DVDs. (720x480 resolution, same as DVDs. Getting a DV cam capable of anamorphic widescreen will set you back a lot more than $500 though - Expect $2000-3000 in that case.)
"Any technical reason why USB support needs an OS overhaul?? Even DOS can support USB."
Because it requires massive architectural changes at rather low levels.
Find me a USB mass storage device that works under Windows 95 and I'll change my tune. Yes, it may be possible, but not for Joe Sixpack. And your previous question was, "What can Joe Sixpack do with XP that he can't do with 95".
"Again, why should an interface/protocol requir OS change??"
As stated above, USB is a complex interface that requires the whole Plug-And-Play and device detection architecture to be changed to accomodate it.
"There's no technical reason why movie editing can't be done with 95. Adobe has many products in this segment."
Have you bothered to check the prices of any of those products?
Sad to say it, but for the home user, WMM2 is one of the best solutions out there. Premiere is massive overkill and even the academic versions cost more than the full non-upgrade version of XP. Even ignoring cost, Premiere is not for Joe Sixpack. Ulead VideoStudio sucks. Vegas Video is just as expensive as Premiere and I have never been able to find academic pricing on it either. Yes, for the power user and professsional, Premiere and Vegas are well worth the money, but for Joe Sixpack who wants to edit movies of his baby boy, Premiere and Vegas are way too expensive and way too complex.
Also, since Firewire requires the same PnP overhauls that USB does (i.e. Firewire doesn't work under Win95 and never will), there is no way to do DV editing under Win95 without performing capture under another OS.
"Exactly what can Joe ServicPack achieve with XP, that cannot be done with '95??"
While I'm not a fan of MS in any way, and I think WinXP utterly sucks, I can list a few things:
Much greater reliability. (Significantly worse than Win2k, but at least XP is from the NT tree, making it better than any of the 9xs.)
USB support - If you were comparing to '98, this would be different. But 95 is nearly completely lacking in USB support. 98 has USB support, but is missing many common drivers. (For example, USB storage devices don't work out-of-the-box in 98, and do in Me,2k, and XP)
1394 support - Like USB, it's not in '95. Don't know how well 98 supports it. 2k supports it very well, minus Ethernet over 1394, which only Me and XP have.
Windows Movie Maker - Honestly, for basic home-movie editing, WMM 2 is simple and easy to use. It's no Premiere, but for basic work it's quite suitable.
If you asked what XP gave you beyond Win2000 - I would say not much. Only advantages are Ethernet over 1394 and Windows Movie Maker, nothing else really. XP has been in my experience less reliable (With the exception of Firewire support, installing XP solved crashes involving saving captures from my HDTV tuner card to a 1394 HD), and some of the stuff that XP integrated in (WLAN support, Intel SpeedStep support) is utter shit compared to the vendor-implemented control methods for most WLAN cards and SpeedStep. While it is possible to still use vendor WLAN control apps like the Orinoco control app with some major headaches, NO ONE has been able to disable XP's horrendous SpeedStep support and run the old Intel control app. This is why I stick with 2000 on my laptop myself.)
Heh.
In nearly all places I've been, all three GSM provides suck. (This is even in heavily populated areas like New Jersey - Neither T-Mobile, Cingular, or AT&T can cover 100% of the landmass of the most densely populated state in the nation. Verizon is the only one who can.)
Yes, Verizon is expensive. But you get what you pay for. I constantly hear people with GSM phones bitching about how much their service sucks. I'm paying quite a bit more from Verizon, but I have excellent service quality and their customer service is EXCELLENT.
In a previous /. article on the 007 exploit, it was stated that an Xbox memory card could be made from a standard USB memory key somehow. But there were no links to any information on that, nor can I find any references on any of the Xbox hardware hacking sites.
Is that indeed possible? And if so, how?
I know the Xbox controllers and other peripherals are USB (albeit using an oddball connector, but electrically it's USB). Are Xbox memory cards simply USB Mass Storage compliant devices?
It has an SDIO port. So add what you want.
The 6035 does a better job as a phone than the Treos, has a removable battery, all of Kyocera's phones use the same data cable (Didn't need to buy a travel sync cable for my 6035, just used my old 2035 cable), and has a standard 2.5mm headset jack.
The 7135 adds MP3 and a color display, plus SDIO expansion capability.
Kyocera (Formerly Qualcomm's handset division) has been in the smartphone business longer than anyone. Yes, the first attempts (pdQ) sucked and flopped, but Kyocera released their second generation smartphone before most other manufacturers released their first combo device, and they are on their third generation product now. (Note: I am NOT talking about 2G vs. 3G wireless. The 6035 is a 2G device, and the 7135 supports the "2.5G" portion of the CDMA2000 standard.)
I have a Kyocera 6035.
It's EXCELLENT. It's a little bit taller than my old Palm III, slighly narrower, and a bit thicker.
Yes, it's freakin' huge for a phone. But the original poster suggested putting a phone into a PDA - OF COURSE it's going to be big for a phone.
But if you are already carrying around a PDA AND a phone at all times, who cares if it's a huge phone? Yes, it may be a huge phone, but it's a lot smaller than carrying a seperate phone and PDA.
Personally, I hate the trend towards tiny phones. Yeah, it's nice when carrying it around, but they're hell to hold during a conversation and a pain to dial with. My Kyocera fits naturally in my hand when it's in a relaxed position and is easy to dial, as opposed to having to grasp a tiny little thing and push miniscule buttons.
It's all fun and games until your software destroys some hardware. :)
A 166 MHz Cyrix Pentium-alike did just fine for my school's computer club serving Q1 and Q2, and it was also the school's web server/mail server. Remember, dedicated servers don't need to have all that video rendering horsepower.
A 500 MHz-ish machine should be more than enough for Q3. UT2K3 might start needing more CPU, if anything the more recent games need lots of HD space for the server, not CPU.
I am not adamant that it's bug free or complete. I'm saying that NO ONE should judge a game (esp. an MMOG) based on its beta. Almost every MMOG has had serious problems at the time of release. Which is why I said, unless you want to get a headstart at the expense of bugs, wait a while before buying any MMOG. Even though I absolutely love EVE, I would still reccommend to anyone that they give CCP another month or so, unless you want to work on getting a headstart now.
FYI, EVE = RUSHED too. Yes, CCP did break the mold with their game design, but SSI (their publisher) forced them to release early. There were some SERIOUS problems in the weeks immediately after release, but things are shaping up quite well. Yes, I played beta and the game was nearly unplayable due to bugs, even up to a week or so before release. At release, at least it was playable, even though there were still nasty bugs. At this point, the worst of the bugs are gone and it's a matter of balancing.
And I agree - EVE is light on the content at the moment. But now that CCP is approaching completion of the "balancing" stage, the content is going to start flowing. Rumors abound that there's going to be some interesting stuff happening in Amarr space within the next week or two... (They've been building up backstory for that nearly since release, and SOMETHING is going to happen really soon...)
Correct.
I should have specifically stated cdmaOne and CDMA2000 in Verizon's case.
UMTS would up standardizing on CDMA for its modulation scheme, but the people involved are incompetents regarding CDMA implementation. UMTS is having all of the problems that the CDMA experts solved years ago.
And the EU government DID mandate use of GSM. They also mandated the use of UMTS and the requirement to upgrade to it. i.e. "Buy these ridiculously priced spectrum licenses or else."
Whereas in the only recent case the FCC has mandated a change to a new technology (moving TV from NTSC analog to ATSC digital), the FCC essentially gave broadcasters who already had an analog license an additional channel for free to make upgrading easier. i.e. "You need to move to this new technology. We'll give you the spectrum you need to do so, but you'll have to eventually give up the old spectrum"
My high school's first web/email server was a 166 MHz Cyrix 6x86 (or whatever they called the Cyrix Pentium-alike)
We ran mailing lists, email for the teachers, Apache, and always 1-2 Quake servers and it barely broke a sweat.
Had 64M RAM (maybe only 32?) and a 2G HD. The only thing that it really could've used more of was HD space.
Buy one of those Walmart Lindows boxes, install a more suitable Linux distro on it. (RedHat for the lazy, but you might squeeze more out of it with something like Gentoo. I'm lazy and so I use RedHat even though it's not the most space-efficient.) Those boxes come with 128M RAM, a 10G HD, and 3-4 times as much processor power as the box my HS used. Also, I didn't have a small high school - When I graduated we had about 1800 students (Although at that time only teachers had email addresses, with the exception of the student sysadmins.)
Don't judge a game by what the beta testers say. ESPECIALLY an MMOG.
/. story that covered EVE.
In general, unless you're looking to get a headstart on everyone else and don't care about bugs (Most people value a headstart over bug-free gaming), don't buy any MMOG until at least 2-3 months after release.
Everything said by these beta testers was also said about EVE Online beta testers - In the last two weeks before release, a LOT of the problems in EVE were fixed. Yes, there are still a lot of problems, and CCP is still rebalancing the game, but all of the real nasties have been fixed. EVE has come a long way in the past month and a half since release, and the future looks bright. (CCP is planning to "kick off" the storyline of the game within the coming weeks now that most players have settled and become comfortable in the universe.)
FYI, I didn't play SWG beta, but the complaints of all the beta players look identical to the compaints of EVE beta testers in the one
And look at what the EU government mandates have done to the European carriers.
UMTS has proven to be a nightmare for every carrier that has implemented it. NTT DoCoMo tried to roll out UMTS and their name is now mud in Japan because of people getting their hands burned by handsets that consumed too much power. GSM isn't too hot either. oops...
Meanwhile, in the USA, the best technology (CDMA) won over GSM. Every GSM provider in the nation is struggling. Meanwhile Verizon, a CDMA provider, is managing to charge 1.5 times as much per minute or more than the others because of the fact that they have superior coverage and call quality.
Yes, I'm a Verizon customer. Yes, I'm paying much more per minute than I would on Cingular or AT&T. Yes, I'm glad I am when I can use my phone and a Cingular or AT&T customer wouldn't get coverage for miles.
In NY State, the state sales tax is apparently 4%.
But pretty much *every single county* has an additional 4% - So everywhere in NYS, sales tax is 8% if you buy in a store. The only time you see 4% is if you order from a store in another county mailorder, and even then many will simply charge 8%. (Cornell's Campus Store was one of the exceptions, but it could have had to to with Cornell's academic/nonprofit status.)
In nearly all states, displaying prices that include sales tax is illegal.
Some states have exceptions for various items. Grocery stores in NJ have lots of fun with inventory because basic groceries are tax-exempt, but not everything sold in a grocery store falls in that category. So some things within the store are taxed and some are not. Add to that bottle deposits for recycling depending on the state.
New Jersey also has no sales tax on clothing. Which is why New York City often abolishes sales tax on holiday shopping weekends, because for major shopping trips, the savings on clothing sales tax offsets the tolls to cross the bridge over the New Jersey, and so NYC would lose all the major holiday shoppers to New Jersey businesses.
He's not going to post every single mail he gets publically.
He's just going to post the stuff that really stands out.
A few people emailed me indicating that they were having problems getting the Matlab/Octave code to run.
Most of those lines require Matlab's Signal Processing Toolbox or the Octave equivalent. Octave-Forge (http://octave.sf.net/) implements most SPT functionality. (Still no psd() function...)
The ausave() function is Octave-specific and probably needs to be replaced if running the code under Matlab.
Some forms of noise are more pleasing to the human ear than others, and monotonous noises (like fans) can actually be soothing. I actually CAN'T sleep without some background noise such as a fan (or my PC's whitenoise generator) running.
:)
CPU fans are the exception, as these emit rather high-frequency narrowband noise. I'm talking about larger fans of the 2-foot+ variety. Hard drives are also too high pitched, plus the heads make all sorts of nice clicking sounds.
The output of that program is broadband noise at low frequencies that sounds rather similar to a waterfall. It's a soothing sound, but more importantly, it masks out spurious background noises (birds chirping, cars passing by, etc.) all of which tend to keep you awake/wake you up. The code I put in to add the small amount of higher frequency noise makes the output LESS comfortable to hear, but helps because it assists in masking out some noises in the 2.2-4.4 kHz spectrum.
Use of white noise to mask other noises is an established procedure in many office environments to mask out the sounds of things such as keys clicking. (In these cases the amplitude is VERY low so as to be not consciously noticeable.)
Someone emailed me about some other aspects of noise, so I might be able to improve the program tonight.
Back when I was a kid, my fishtank had a nasty algae problem.
So my parents bought a pleco. Tiny little thing, maybe 1-2 inches long. We called it "Lucky" due to the abundance of food in the tank.
Lucky lived for 12 years, far longer than any other fish we've ever had. And man do those things GROW. By the time it died it was nearly a foot long and thicker than its original length. It probably would've been twice the size if we'd had a larger tank.
The exception is if you use a large ventilation fan to blow into an open case. (been there done that.)
I DO use my computer as a whitenoise generator at night though. I've seen people charge $100-200 for whitenoise generators, when a simple program on a PC can do the trick. Under Linux, do a search for "whitenoise". Nice small program.
Under Windows, so far the best solution I have come up with is to use Octave to generate a white noise (actually, "pink" noise, i.e. white noise that has been lowpass filtered) waveform, save it to .wav, and set Winamp to play it in an infinite loop.
Octave code to do this:
This creates white noise at a high level up to abour 2.2 kHz, and then additional noise at a much lower volume up to 4.4 kHz or so. You can adjust the cutoff frequencies (Second arguments to both fir1() functions and the ratios of volumes to your preference.Note that I generate a noise array and then dupe it three times before filtering it and then truncating it again. This prevents discontinuities in the final waveform that would present audible clicks/pops after every loop. (Similar theory to some of the tricks used to make seamless tiles in The GIMP.)
Lead-acid batteries are generally not too finicky about charging. The worst thing for lead-acid batteries, as others mentioned, is deep cycling. A 50AH battery will last for MANY more charge/recharge cycles than a 7 AH battery if the outage frequency/length remains the same, as the battery will be discharged to a much smaller portion of its capacity.
If anything, with almost any battery chemistry, charging a battery with a charger designed for a lower-capacity version of the battery at the same voltage will rarely be a problem. It will, of course, take MUCH longer to charge.
Typical lead-acid charging schema: Constant current with a max of 14.5 volts or so. The charger will somehow detect end-of-charge and switch to "float" mode, which is typically 13.8 volts constant voltage for a 12V battery. Constant voltage at 13.8 with a current limit is perfectly safe. Note that if the charger is REALLY dumb and doesn't have a current limiting circuit (almost all do, even if it's as simple as a resistor), a 50AH battery could overload it.
NiCd and NiMH batteries require the most sophisticated end-of-charge detection. This entails reading the battery voltage during brief pauses in charging - NiCds and NiMHs will actually start DROPPING in voltage if charged past their max capacity. No end-of-charge detection is needed if you charge them slowly though. (C/16 or slower. i.e. if it's a 1600 mAh battery, if you charge it at 100 mA, you can leave it on for hours past full charge, but you want to take it off eventually.)
Li-Ion: These aren't really that hard to charge. Constant-voltage at 4.1 or 4.2V/cell with a current limit is all you need. I know people who charge Li-Ions with benchtop lab power supplies (current/voltage limits adjustable). The real trick with Li-Ion is that pack protection circuitry is an absolute must. Short-circuit = BOOM. Overdischarge = Dead and useless pack. Charging beyond 4.1 or 4.2v/cell = Dead and useless pack.
That first sentence made very little sense.
:)
I need to get more sleep.