That was from a quote by "D.L. Graham" from San Diego who went on to say that Lucas' decision to release Episode 3 on a work day was proof that Lucas hates George Bush and Republicans.
Not only is this an urban legend as already noted for the fact that floating particles of graphite would be bad, but also that NASA nor the US government had anything to do with the development of the pen. It was developed entirely in-house by Fisher. A few samples were sent to NASA for suitability testing. The only thing NASA had to do with the pen was buy it and issue it. The entire story is on Fisher's website.
the reason most items (even high dollars) aren't strapped is it saves the shipper money (most of the time). I've worked as a sound engineer for touring broadway shows and now in a local sound shop and i see this all the time.
federal trucking law (U.S.) requires any object by itself be strapped in or held in by loadbars. multiple objects must be held by straps or loadbars every eight feet of linear (front to back) truck space.
often this is ignored because the company (stupidly) believes that:
a: their drivers are careful and won't drive like mario andrete on the turns b: a heavy object will not move when the driver turns or stops suddenly. c: who knows.
i've seen many times where a company will save money by only equiping a 53foot trailer with only 6 loadbars (the average compliment is around 28) and only a few straps. for the companies this works well probably 80percent of the time but i'd imagine that the money they save is more than taken in the other 20percent of the incidents.
my favorite stupid shipper was the one that didn't attempt to restrain 4 crates of 1/2ton rated chain motors (these crates are on wheels). each crate contains two motors and it's associated chains and such. on average each crate will weigh in at a hefty 600lbs. when a truck accelerates briskly, and the crates aren't restrained the have a tendancy to move to the back of the truck. these particular crates had 18feet of runaway and ended up crashing through the truck's cargo doors and rolling several hundered feet down the highway. no injuries to the crates or motors but several hundred to the truck, lots of fines and several motorists scared shitless!! 8^)
insist the company restrain your items!!! watch them if you have to. restraining gear is very simple, if it doesn't look right to a layman, chances are it isn't.
cheers, eric
--- eric maultsby sound engineer / designer inconceivable productions
they've found they like mega and giga and it'll stay that way. oddly, those prefixes are SI yet the unwashed masses of the US won't adopt the metric system because they don't want to learn/use SI. odd.
Re:I like my LED flashlight...
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yes, in the theatre i've mostly given up on maglights (i still carry one for emergencies, though). my main lights are two photon ii microlights (red and blue) and a princeton tec matrix headlamp. the matrix is awesome, uses three white leds but the module can be switched with an (included) incandescent module for long range vision.
i'm just waiting for cheaper leds so i can replace the lights in my house. $20USD/photon ii and $50USD/matrix is mighty expensive.
perhaps jane.something@sampleisp.com can't argue invasion of privacy as a law in the us (assuming you are correct about that). she could however argue on an illegal search and siezure(sp?) as they have searched the entire network and potentially seized information from her without probable cause (since they were, of course, looking for 'jondoe' and not 'jane.something'). protection against illegal searches and siezures *is* guarranteed in the us constitution. of course you'd have to have an excellent lawyer to argue that as courts seem to have something against information and computers currently.
of course i am not a lawyer, but this is how it would seem to me.
doktor eric
Re:Movie theaters will stay.
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i agree. there are several reasons that cinemas will remain
1. big, BIG screen. you can fork up the cash for a 40" monitor, but in the end it's still never as big as the silver screen.
2. big, BIG sound. again, you can spend the money on a very nice home system. even rivaling a cinema (especially since you can custom tailor the system for your tastes). but even with extremely good sound and earth shaking bass, the lack of a huge cinema screen causes the impressivness of the sound to diminish.
3. people. even if you're not a people person (i'm certainly not), it's still better to see movies with a large (more than will fit in comfortably in your living room). you have a group that will share the emotions that the production (hopefully) induces. that is of course if people will turn off their cell phones. and besides, if the movie sucks, there is always someone either in your group or someone else's who can give a nice mst3k of the movie. you can't beat that. 8^)
-- rev. eric maultsby (twice ordained!) doktor of the forbidden sciences
it seems that you are a little ill-informed and unknowledgeable about the subject on which you speak. that and your assumptions are quite exquisitly preposterous at the least. please allow me to rebute your case.
1. these 'children' that metallica is bloodthirsty in persuing are innocent.
i'm not quite sure where you get this idea.
first. who said that these were children?
second. (this is my opinion and is probably just as off base as your suggestion) i believe that several (not all, not the majority) of these children are also the same script-kiddies that think they are l33t d00dz and try and pull their DOS shit. the same d00dz that you scream for their blood when the safety of a 'open source hurray for our savior linux' website may be at the end of one of these attacks.
my thought is that you know nothing of these people whom are fingered by metallica's lawyers and as such have no right to decide whom or what they may do or be.
third. the safety of the free world is threatend by a monitoring of napsters users. who ever believed that the internet was totally anonymous? the internet was designed so that a person knew (or with little effort, could find out) exactly where something or someone came from, what they/it did, and where they/it were going. the internet is not now nor ever was anonymous. anyone who thinks that it is is simply fooling themselves into false security.
fourth. you claim this is not about copyrights and money.
this has everything to do with copyrights and money. if someone posted your book freely on the web and you didn't see a penny of it. you and your publisher would go ape-shit trying to stop the proliferation of free copies of your book.
allow me to give an itemized example of an albums costs:
an band like metallica will spend 15 days (on average) in the studio.
studio fees: $2700USD/day * 15days = $40500USD
post production of an album can in many cases be double that. but for our purposes we will say that it is equal to the studio time.
post production fees: $40500USD
an initial cd run is usuall 10000 units. average cd price is $0.02USD when in such a large bulk. printing and packaging is another $0.08USD/cd. price for initial run of 10000 units:
$0.02USD + $0.08USD = $0.10USD * 10000 = $1000USD
for our purposes we will not include advertising, touring, emotional drain on musicians (quite high i can tell you), etc.
just for the production of a standard studio album the total comes to:
as an audio engineer, i didn't pull these figures out of my ass. these are reasonably accurate figures.
mr katz, i ask you to put up $82000 of your money and not defend your rights to recoup your loses as well as make profit on it. i know very few people who would willingly part with $82000 without expecting a return.
yes, i realize that they bring in much more money than they put out, but, that is the nature of the society in which we live. if you promote a capitalistic society, people will be capitalistic. don't persecute them for doing what is encouraged. why not take your fire and brimstone speaches to the pirates who cause this lawsuit in the first place. no, i'm not talking about napster. i'm talking about the pirates who use it.
i used to (occationally) enjoy reading your articles. at first they seemed to have facts and be written intelligently. now... now they are as sensationalist as all the other so-called 'news' that i will not lower myself to read. i must truely say that this is the lowest you've ever written. a piece that condems so many with so little facts. i must honestly say that this is the last story of yours that i shall read.
eric maultsby: audio engineer
(no, i do not work for the recording industry. i am a freelance theatrical audio engineer)
i remember a couple months back that you had stated a desire to create a real life hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. the first step in that goal of course seems to be h2g2.com. i know that h2g2 is currently experimenting with the wireless application protocol (wap) to serve it's content to 'wap' capable cell phones,etc. the original reports, however, talked of a PDA type device with the ability to interface with a wireless network to obtain information (a sub-etha-net?) as well as 'don't panic' on the cover in big friendly letters. is the idea of a real and portable hitchhiker's guide still in the works or has it been shelved in favor of h2g2's wap service?
funny. three years ago weekly world news reported that hackers had developed an email virus that would cause your monitor to explode. in terms of bodily damage, i think the current virus has lost quite a bit of luster as compared to older virii. due to the position of my devices, i would be much more likely to be killed or harmed by a monitor explosion than a cpu explosion (unless of course they are taking the luser stand of calling an entire machine (case) a 'cpu'). but even then i think my desk would offer protection. i dunno, maybe i'll try blowing my case up someday. 8^)
humans are sociable...
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i wonder why this continues to escape the grasp of the so-called 'experts'. we like our catalogues and our books because they give us something tangable; something that connects us to the outside world. i'm sure many of you have been on the internet as long as i have (~8 years (some longer i'm sure)). those who have been on that long have come to the realisation that the internet as a whole is a waste of time. it used to be about browsing for inordinate amounts of time, now it's to go on get what we need and get off. the 'trend experts' continue to only see the newbies for whom the novelty of fingertip, ask if you want it information has not worn off.
jonkatz says that we continue to go to the movies. but, he says this as if it were a divine revelation. of course we go to the movies, we are a sociable spieces. it's always more fun to see a movie with others than by ones self. this is the reason i choose to stay in the theatre industry. i go to the theatre to be moved, to be entertained. there is something to be said for having the actors only a few meters away (as well as sitting with an audience). it is an experience you can't get at your computer and i enjoy bringing that experience to others as a theatrical sound designer. it is continued to be said that print media will go the way of the dinosaur, but that's also what they said about theatre over the last hundered years. things that involve the human experience don't disappear, they evolve.
people understand the convience of the internet but have a deep desire to remain with people. check out the personals if you don't believe me. it just seems obvious to me that we would wish to have something to tie us to a society that otherwise is intangable through ones and zeros. dvds maybe cool but the imax experience is better. mp3s sound nice but nothing beats attending a live concert. it's about time people opened their eyes and discovered that technology isn't here to replace the human experience, just to enhance it.
northwest may have a court injunction to copy the hdds of employees, but, say one of the employees was using *nix/*bsd machine where obtaining files without password access can be near impossible. does the court order force disclosure of passwords and logins as well? just something i wonder about.
i think that linux certification is a Good Thing (tm), but i also must reserve judgement until we find out what these tests encompass. if they require actual knowledge of linux, that's great. if they are geared toward basic installations, deleting files, etc. then this will appear as a joke to the naysayers which will negate much of the recognition that has been worked so hard to earn. i hope this works, and i look forward to earning my penguin stripes. i just don't want to jump to conclusions.
yes ladies and gentlemen, act now and you can have micro$oft invade your home or office in yet more ways! our mcp action figures are ready to sit around, twirling a pen between their tiny, endangered brazilian rainforest poly-extruded rubber fingers, and ask if you've run the on-line help sourcer's janitor program and would you like to upgrade your help support for the low price of $50.00. act now supplies are limited!
coming soon!
micro$oft hostile takeover and FUD decimation action figures. yes you get the whole set: bill gates, the micro$oft public relations team, the micro$oft sales team, and (for a limited time only! (act now!)) the micro$oft anti-trust trial legal team!
yup, the est just rolled over not too long ago and the power still works. good for me. i'm pulling double duty at the hotel i work in here in orlando, fl. both as an audio/visual technician (keeping our drunk partier's as informed drunk partier's) and as the hotel mis guy making sure we don't lose all of our accounting records. yea! the joys of being a nerd never end! i don't mean to be a party pooper, but sitting here at work, reading slashdot and watching the computer clock roll over. the only difference i saw was the main slashdot page reload and ask if i had meta-moderated today. yes i had but apparently not. the power works (good thing in my professions) i'm still at work, and there are still drunk people in the ballroom chearing about the new millenium (remind me to take off for the new millenium next year, i don't want to waste it here 8^) . i've decided that celebrating the new year is as pointless as celebrating the litter under the no dumping sign down the road from my house. bah-humbug.
have a day, year, millenia, whatever, everybody (i'm not saying have a good one as i don't want you to feel pressured into it).
as an audio/visual technician i get to see a lot of the cool sound and projection equipment long before j. random end-user. as of right now, the majority/. argument is correct, resolution from a digital projector is crap (i use them a lot to project full motion video in my line of work (as well as projecting/. onto the exterior walls of my hotel (i promise to post pictures soon))). they can handle the needed frame rates that i saw one or two posts worry about, however, the image is pixelisious. the other problem with these projectors is that they have a tendancy to 'wash' the image which means that every time a new movie is run, the settings must be re-calibrated to each particular screen (a very tedious process).
on the bright side of things: as i am also an theatrical sound designer/tech and audio engineering student i was able to get into 'ldi' this year. it's an annual trade show on professional lighting and sound equipment. anyone on/. who was able to attend that here in orlando, fl. knows that digital movie projection is just over the horizon. i don't like to endorse items early, but at the moment, based on a demonstration of new projection technology by electrohome they are pretty close to getting what the public will expect: a crisp, clean, bright image.
i quit working for a company called datamini computers in orlando, fl after they asked me to overclock machines so that they could sell them as faster cpus (as well as other bad business practices). it's not (to my knowledge) a common occurance to overclock and sell as faster machines among the larger manufacturers (ex. ibm, dell, gw2k, compaq) but it is relatively common amongst small (1-2) computer stores.
my advise is to build your own machine or buy from someone whom you trust so that you can avoid getting burned.
as i am currently a sound technician at my college as well as the sound technician for two hotels and several production companies, i have found that nothing beats a minidisk when it comes to 'show audio' demands. they are more rugged than cds and the tracks can be rewritten/moved/deleted on a whim. the tracks can also be named which is a tremendous help when trying to run through a set of cues during a large audio sequence. i have also used my linux system to run a show with.mp3s. it looks neat to observers, but then you have to baby the equipment. it is a Bad Thing to get into a sound test and have your hdd crash. mostly, i've found that the best way to do a show is to use my laptop to keep track of my cues/levels/counts/etc as well as timing between cues and then to use the minidisk for the sound itself. long live the minidisk!
as douglas adams wrote in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: the people who seek to lead are the least capable of leading(paraphrased). the world isn't lacking intelligent minds in fields other than computing/internet. it's just that these people are simply not interested in leading. they are interested in changing things, just not from the leadership aspect. perhaps one day that will change, but then again, if one of these people chooses to lead, will s/he be a less than capable leader?
i agree. breaking up microsoft won't do much, it will only provide a loophole for someone else to exploit and do the same thing. while i don't believe that people have paid enough attention to the trial, they have heard enough to know that there is a world beyond microsoft/intel. too bad i can't say that about the majority and aol, but alas! i digress. i have talked to numerous people who once thought that intel was the only chip maker and they now ask me about the athalon chips from amd. other people who thought only m$ made operating systems now ask me about linux and how they can get a copy of it. these people may not yet grasp that they don't need the newest and fastest as soon as it hits the market, but they do now know that there are alternatives. maybe switching to linux from microsoft is not the answer for some (the gods know that i have told several people (and in two cases companies) that they should stay with windows. it simply wasn't in their best interests to move. but they did have the knowledge to see if the other options were good for them. it seems that we can probably allow m$ to continue as a whole company. i certainly wouldn't want someone to say that my house was to big as one unit and that i have to cut it into 4 parts and connect it with sidewalks. the people now have the knowledge (it remains to be seen if they are intelligent enough to know what to do with it) to make their own decisions. microsoft just needs to be watched/closely/.
isn't this what the patriot missle is supposed (albiet not very well) to do? i understand that they were not perfectly suited for missle to missle combat when they first rolled off the assembly line but that was (mostly unsuccessfully) remedied in the next few revisions of the weapon. why do we need these new missles? the patriot system just needs a more accurate tracking system. that is a whole lot less expensive than developing an entire new missle system that will do the same thing (and probably just as well as) the old system that works reasonably well anyway.
not that this little bit of ranting will change anything, but i just had to say it.
so if the hitchhiker's guide is real does that mean that the vogon's are real? perhaps they should also be working on the electronic thumb, i want off this planet. 'cause if the vogons are real then goodbye earth and hello bybass!
on a related note: i wonder if i could program it to find out the question for '42'. and if so, would the universe be instantly obliviated to reconstitute into something even more bizarre?
so, they want documentation in portuguese. we all would like documentation in our native language (luckily mine is english). unfortunately, it is so hard to find people who want to document, and even more unfortunate is that the oss community at large has this tendancy to invite people in and then make the people who do not code feel inferior. i understand that code is what make the world go 'round and that is why i code. but, some people either cannot or do not want to code, but they *do* want to document. how many portuguese/english bilingual people do you think may have wanted to document but were driven off because they do not code. i am willing to bet quite a few. i hate to make this a soapbox on our treatment of people, but you have the reason right there, sometimes the truth hurts, but, there it is... on the subject of needing a gui install. it is difficult to program a gui and the textbased installs work just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, except that it wasn't said by Roger Ebert.
That was from a quote by "D.L. Graham" from San Diego who went on to say that Lucas' decision to release Episode 3 on a work day was proof that Lucas hates George Bush and Republicans.
Not only is this an urban legend as already noted for the fact that floating particles of graphite would be bad, but also that NASA nor the US government had anything to do with the development of the pen. It was developed entirely in-house by Fisher. A few samples were sent to NASA for suitability testing. The only thing NASA had to do with the pen was buy it and issue it. The entire story is on Fisher's website.
the reason most items (even high dollars) aren't strapped is it saves the shipper money (most of the time). I've worked as a sound engineer for touring broadway shows and now in a local sound shop and i see this all the time.
federal trucking law (U.S.) requires any object by itself be strapped in or held in by loadbars. multiple objects must be held by straps or loadbars every eight feet of linear (front to back) truck space.
often this is ignored because the company (stupidly) believes that:
a: their drivers are careful and won't drive like mario andrete on the turns
b: a heavy object will not move when the driver turns or stops suddenly.
c: who knows.
i've seen many times where a company will save money by only equiping a 53foot trailer with only 6 loadbars (the average compliment is around 28) and only a few straps. for the companies this works well probably 80percent of the time but i'd imagine that the money they save is more than taken in the other 20percent of the incidents.
my favorite stupid shipper was the one that didn't attempt to restrain 4 crates of 1/2ton rated chain motors (these crates are on wheels). each crate contains two motors and it's associated chains and such. on average each crate will weigh in at a hefty 600lbs. when a truck accelerates briskly, and the crates aren't restrained the have a tendancy to move to the back of the truck. these particular crates had 18feet of runaway and ended up crashing through the truck's cargo doors and rolling several hundered feet down the highway. no injuries to the crates or motors but several hundred to the truck, lots of fines and several motorists scared shitless!! 8^)
insist the company restrain your items!!! watch them if you have to. restraining gear is very simple, if it doesn't look right to a layman, chances are it isn't.
cheers,
eric
---
eric maultsby
sound engineer / designer
inconceivable productions
they've found they like mega and giga and it'll stay that way. oddly, those prefixes are SI yet the unwashed masses of the US won't adopt the metric system because they don't want to learn/use SI. odd.
yes, in the theatre i've mostly given up on maglights (i still carry one for emergencies, though). my main lights are two photon ii microlights (red and blue) and a princeton tec matrix headlamp. the matrix is awesome, uses three white leds but the module can be switched with an (included) incandescent module for long range vision.
i'm just waiting for cheaper leds so i can replace the lights in my house. $20USD/photon ii and $50USD/matrix is mighty expensive.
perhaps jane.something@sampleisp.com can't argue invasion of privacy as a law in the us (assuming you are correct about that). she could however argue on an illegal search and siezure(sp?) as they have searched the entire network and potentially seized information from her without probable cause (since they were, of course, looking for 'jondoe' and not 'jane.something'). protection against illegal searches and siezures *is* guarranteed in the us constitution. of course you'd have to have an excellent lawyer to argue that as courts seem to have something against information and computers currently.
of course i am not a lawyer, but this is how it would seem to me.
doktor eric
i agree. there are several reasons that cinemas will remain
1. big, BIG screen.
you can fork up the cash for a 40" monitor, but in the end it's still never as big as the silver screen.
2. big, BIG sound.
again, you can spend the money on a very nice home system. even rivaling a cinema (especially since you can custom tailor the system for your tastes). but even with extremely good sound and earth shaking bass, the lack of a huge cinema screen causes the impressivness of the sound to diminish.
3. people.
even if you're not a people person (i'm certainly not), it's still better to see movies with a large (more than will fit in comfortably in your living room). you have a group that will share the emotions that the production (hopefully) induces. that is of course if people will turn off their cell phones. and besides, if the movie sucks, there is always someone either in your group or someone else's who can give a nice mst3k of the movie. you can't beat that. 8^)
-- rev. eric maultsby (twice ordained!)
doktor of the forbidden sciences
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it's the week isn't it?
mr katz,
it seems that you are a little ill-informed and unknowledgeable about the subject on which you speak. that and your assumptions are quite exquisitly preposterous at the least. please allow me to rebute your case.
1. these 'children' that metallica is bloodthirsty in persuing are innocent.
i'm not quite sure where you get this idea.
first. who said that these were children?
second. (this is my opinion and is probably just as off base as your suggestion) i believe that several (not all, not the majority) of these children are also the same script-kiddies that think they are l33t d00dz and try and pull their DOS shit. the same d00dz that you scream for their blood when the safety of a 'open source hurray for our savior linux' website may be at the end of one of these attacks.
my thought is that you know nothing of these people whom are fingered by metallica's lawyers and as such have no right to decide whom or what they may do or be.
third. the safety of the free world is threatend by a monitoring of napsters users. who ever believed that the internet was totally anonymous? the internet was designed so that a person knew (or with little effort, could find out) exactly where something or someone came from, what they/it did, and where they/it were going. the internet is not now nor ever was anonymous. anyone who thinks that it is is simply fooling themselves into false security.
fourth. you claim this is not about copyrights and money.
this has everything to do with copyrights and money. if someone posted your book freely on the web and you didn't see a penny of it. you and your publisher would go ape-shit trying to stop the proliferation of free copies of your book.
allow me to give an itemized example of an albums costs:
an band like metallica will spend 15 days (on average) in the studio.
studio fees: $2700USD/day * 15days = $40500USD
post production of an album can in many cases be double that. but for our purposes we will say that it is equal to the studio time.
post production fees: $40500USD
an initial cd run is usuall 10000 units. average cd price is $0.02USD when in such a large bulk. printing and packaging is another $0.08USD/cd.
price for initial run of 10000 units:
$0.02USD + $0.08USD = $0.10USD * 10000 = $1000USD
for our purposes we will not include advertising, touring, emotional drain on musicians (quite high i can tell you), etc.
just for the production of a standard studio album the total comes to:
$40500USD (studio time) + $40500USD (post production) + $1000 (initial production run) = $82000.
as an audio engineer, i didn't pull these figures out of my ass. these are reasonably accurate figures.
mr katz, i ask you to put up $82000 of your money and not defend your rights to recoup your loses as well as make profit on it. i know very few people who would willingly part with $82000 without expecting a return.
yes, i realize that they bring in much more money than they put out, but, that is the nature of the society in which we live. if you promote a capitalistic society, people will be capitalistic. don't persecute them for doing what is encouraged. why not take your fire and brimstone speaches to the pirates who cause this lawsuit in the first place. no, i'm not talking about napster. i'm talking about the pirates who use it.
i used to (occationally) enjoy reading your articles. at first they seemed to have facts and be written intelligently. now... now they are as sensationalist as all the other so-called 'news' that i will not lower myself to read. i must truely say that this is the lowest you've ever written. a piece that condems so many with so little facts. i must honestly say that this is the last story of yours that i shall read.
eric maultsby: audio engineer
(no, i do not work for the recording industry. i am a freelance theatrical audio engineer)
i remember a couple months back that you had stated a desire to create a real life hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. the first step in that goal of course seems to be h2g2.com. i know that h2g2 is currently experimenting with the wireless application protocol (wap) to serve it's content to 'wap' capable cell phones,etc. the original reports, however, talked of a PDA type device with the ability to interface with a wireless network to obtain information (a sub-etha-net?) as well as 'don't panic' on the cover in big friendly letters. is the idea of a real and portable hitchhiker's guide still in the works or has it been shelved in favor of h2g2's wap service?
funny. three years ago weekly world news reported that hackers had developed an email virus that would cause your monitor to explode. in terms of bodily damage, i think the current virus has lost quite a bit of luster as compared to older virii. due to the position of my devices, i would be much more likely to be killed or harmed by a monitor explosion than a cpu explosion (unless of course they are taking the luser stand of calling an entire machine (case) a 'cpu'). but even then i think my desk would offer protection. i dunno, maybe i'll try blowing my case up someday. 8^)
i wonder why this continues to escape the grasp of the so-called 'experts'. we like our catalogues and our books because they give us something tangable; something that connects us to the outside world. i'm sure many of you have been on the internet as long as i have (~8 years (some longer i'm sure)). those who have been on that long have come to the realisation that the internet as a whole is a waste of time. it used to be about browsing for inordinate amounts of time, now it's to go on get what we need and get off. the 'trend experts' continue to only see the newbies for whom the novelty of fingertip, ask if you want it information has not worn off.
jonkatz says that we continue to go to the movies. but, he says this as if it were a divine revelation. of course we go to the movies, we are a sociable spieces. it's always more fun to see a movie with others than by ones self. this is the reason i choose to stay in the theatre industry. i go to the theatre to be moved, to be entertained. there is something to be said for having the actors only a few meters away (as well as sitting with an audience). it is an experience you can't get at your computer and i enjoy bringing that experience to others as a theatrical sound designer. it is continued to be said that print media will go the way of the dinosaur, but that's also what they said about theatre over the last hundered years. things that involve the human experience don't disappear, they evolve.
people understand the convience of the internet but have a deep desire to remain with people. check out the personals if you don't believe me. it just seems obvious to me that we would wish to have something to tie us to a society that otherwise is intangable through ones and zeros. dvds maybe cool but the imax experience is better. mp3s sound nice but nothing beats attending a live concert. it's about time people opened their eyes and discovered that technology isn't here to replace the human experience, just to enhance it.
rev. eric
northwest may have a court injunction to copy the hdds of employees, but, say one of the employees was using *nix/*bsd machine where obtaining files without password access can be near impossible. does the court order force disclosure of passwords and logins as well? just something i wonder about.
i think that linux certification is a Good Thing (tm), but i also must reserve judgement until we find out what these tests encompass. if they require actual knowledge of linux, that's great. if they are geared toward basic installations, deleting files, etc. then this will appear as a joke to the naysayers which will negate much of the recognition that has been worked so hard to earn. i hope this works, and i look forward to earning my penguin stripes. i just don't want to jump to conclusions.
retal,
rev. eric
yes ladies and gentlemen, act now and you can have micro$oft invade your home or office in yet more ways! our mcp action figures are ready to sit around, twirling a pen between their tiny, endangered brazilian rainforest poly-extruded rubber fingers, and ask if you've run the on-line help sourcer's janitor program and would you like to upgrade your help support for the low price of $50.00.
act now supplies are limited!
coming soon!
micro$oft hostile takeover and FUD decimation action figures. yes you get the whole set: bill gates, the micro$oft public relations team, the micro$oft sales team, and (for a limited time only! (act now!)) the micro$oft anti-trust trial legal team!
the traffic lights down the road from my hotel are flashing! sweet linus! its the y2k bug!
oh, wait, they always flash at midnight on small less busy roads... nevermind.
retal,
rev. eric maultsby
yup, the est just rolled over not too long ago and the power still works. good for me. i'm pulling double duty at the hotel i work in here in orlando, fl. both as an audio/visual technician (keeping our drunk partier's as informed drunk partier's) and as the hotel mis guy making sure we don't lose all of our accounting records. yea! the joys of being a nerd never end! i don't mean to be a party pooper, but sitting here at work, reading slashdot and watching the computer clock roll over. the only difference i saw was the main slashdot page reload and ask if i had meta-moderated today. yes i had but apparently not. the power works (good thing in my professions) i'm still at work, and there are still drunk people in the ballroom chearing about the new millenium (remind me to take off for the new millenium next year, i don't want to waste it here 8^) . i've decided that celebrating the new year is as pointless as celebrating the litter under the no dumping sign down the road from my house. bah-humbug.
have a day, year, millenia, whatever, everybody (i'm not saying have a good one as i don't want you to feel pressured into it).
retal,
rev. eric maultsby
as an audio/visual technician i get to see a lot of the cool sound and projection equipment long before j. random end-user. as of right now, the majority /. argument is correct, resolution from a digital projector is crap (i use them a lot to project full motion video in my line of work (as well as projecting /. onto the exterior walls of my hotel (i promise to post pictures soon))). they can handle the needed frame rates that i saw one or two posts worry about, however, the image is pixelisious. the other problem with these projectors is that they have a tendancy to 'wash' the image which means that every time a new movie is run, the settings must be re-calibrated to each particular screen (a very tedious process).
/. who was able to attend that here in orlando, fl. knows that digital movie projection is just over the horizon. i don't like to endorse items early, but at the moment, based on a demonstration of new projection technology by electrohome they are pretty close to getting what the public will expect: a crisp, clean, bright image.
on the bright side of things:
as i am also an theatrical sound designer/tech and audio engineering student i was able to get into 'ldi' this year. it's an annual trade show on professional lighting and sound equipment. anyone on
i quit working for a company called datamini computers in orlando, fl after they asked me to overclock machines so that they could sell them as faster cpus (as well as other bad business practices). it's not (to my knowledge) a common occurance to overclock and sell as faster machines among the larger manufacturers (ex. ibm, dell, gw2k, compaq) but it is relatively common amongst small (1-2) computer stores.
my advise is to build your own machine or buy from someone whom you trust so that you can avoid getting burned.
as i am currently a sound technician at my college as well as the sound technician for two hotels and several production companies, i have found that nothing beats a minidisk when it comes to 'show audio' demands. they are more rugged than cds and the tracks can be rewritten/moved/deleted on a whim. the tracks can also be named which is a tremendous help when trying to run through a set of cues during a large audio sequence. i have also used my linux system to run a show with .mp3s. it looks neat to observers, but then you have to baby the equipment. it is a Bad Thing to get into a sound test and have your hdd crash.
mostly, i've found that the best way to do a show is to use my laptop to keep track of my cues/levels/counts/etc as well as timing between cues and then to use the minidisk for the sound itself.
long live the minidisk!
as douglas adams wrote in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: the people who seek to lead are the least capable of leading(paraphrased). the world isn't lacking intelligent minds in fields other than computing/internet. it's just that these people are simply not interested in leading. they are interested in changing things, just not from the leadership aspect. perhaps one day that will change, but then again, if one of these people chooses to lead, will s/he be a less than capable leader?
i agree. breaking up microsoft won't do much, it will only provide a loophole for someone else to exploit and do the same thing. while i don't believe that people have paid enough attention to the trial, they have heard enough to know that there is a world beyond microsoft/intel. too bad i can't say that about the majority and aol, but alas! i digress. i have talked to numerous people who once thought that intel was the only chip maker and they now ask me about the athalon chips from amd. other people who thought only m$ made operating systems now ask me about linux and how they can get a copy of it. these people may not yet grasp that they don't need the newest and fastest as soon as it hits the market, but they do now know that there are alternatives. /closely/.
maybe switching to linux from microsoft is not the answer for some (the gods know that i have told several people (and in two cases companies) that they should stay with windows. it simply wasn't in their best interests to move. but they did have the knowledge to see if the other options were good for them.
it seems that we can probably allow m$ to continue as a whole company. i certainly wouldn't want someone to say that my house was to big as one unit and that i have to cut it into 4 parts and connect it with sidewalks. the people now have the knowledge (it remains to be seen if they are intelligent enough to know what to do with it) to make their own decisions. microsoft just needs to be watched
isn't this what the patriot missle is supposed (albiet not very well) to do? i understand that they were not perfectly suited for missle to missle combat when they first rolled off the assembly line but that was (mostly unsuccessfully) remedied in the next few revisions of the weapon. why do we need these new missles? the patriot system just needs a more accurate tracking system. that is a whole lot less expensive than developing an entire new missle system that will do the same thing (and probably just as well as) the old system that works reasonably well anyway.
not that this little bit of ranting will change anything, but i just had to say it.
so if the hitchhiker's guide is real does that mean that the vogon's are real? perhaps they should also be working on the electronic thumb, i want off this planet. 'cause if the vogons are real then goodbye earth and hello bybass!
on a related note: i wonder if i could program it to find out the question for '42'. and if so, would the universe be instantly obliviated to reconstitute into something even more bizarre?
so, they want documentation in portuguese. we all would like documentation in our native language (luckily mine is english). unfortunately, it is so hard to find people who want to document, and even more unfortunate is that the oss community at large has this tendancy to invite people in and then make the people who do not code feel inferior. i understand that code is what make the world go 'round and that is why i code. but, some people either cannot or do not want to code, but they *do* want to document. how many portuguese/english bilingual people do you think may have wanted to document but were driven off because they do not code. i am willing to bet quite a few. i hate to make this a soapbox on our treatment of people, but you have the reason right there, sometimes the truth hurts, but, there it is...
on the subject of needing a gui install. it is difficult to program a gui and the textbased installs work just fine.