HEY... the MOD-DOWN into oblivion was a bit harsh - all I was doing was correcting the parent who included a link to the N-U contest. I agree that N-U is off-topic for the article subject, but the comment I made (with URL to slashdot itself) was was an on-topic correction to the off-topic comment!;-)
He does a real nice job describing his experience with it in an article titled "A Postcard from VisitorVille" which includes some nifty pictures - highly recommended viewing.
You may have a second chance around Christmas Time - I'm thinking of implementing the same concept/idea for my webcam/webcontrolled Christmas lights - see item #3 in what's planned/new for Christmas 2004... which if successfully implemented, will make for a additional factor to consider in my Slashdot Effect Analysis
HEY... when you are done playing games (i.e. leave at night... if you don't stay up all night playing!;-)... can you turn that cluster of 20 AMD XP 1800s to do some processing for a "do-gooder" cause such as Folding@HOME - my Google Compute team would love to get a boost from that type of horsepower!;-)
Seriousely, the NX stuff is a "good" thing to add to slow down malicious code - the only thing better would be a HULK Instruction which would SMASH Puny Human malicious code...;-)
I think everyone can agree that backdoor passwords are a BAD idea - makes one wonder what the internal policies are at these companies - and what happens when they do a source code audit after these are found and track down the programmers who put 'em in.
Your concerns about the tiny CCD's are well-founded - note that I said above "in non-noisy situations"... one of the first things I do with digicams is turn OFF the auto-ISO and force to the lowest settings, insuring the least amount of noise. Every digicam (versus DSLR) I've looked at is pretty noise at ISO 400 and a joke at ISO 800. On the other hand, the DSLR's (with the larger pixels) can be pushed a bit, which is really nice to do in low light situations.
BTW, I did some testing of a Canon G3 (4MP) and Canon G5 (5MP) and quite frankly, I preferred the G3... my guess is that all that Canon did was just drop a bigger sensor in there, so the whole camera was slower and the G5 was definately noisier if you looked closely (doing the ol' view actual pixels in Photoshop). I agree that if there wasn't a megapixel race (and that is all that consumers looked at), a really SWEET digicam would be about 4MP that is lightening fact (640X480X30fps video too!).
Having said the above, I have done 10X15" blowups of slightly cropped Sony F828 8MP pictures taken outside under good light and they are gorgeous... so that my two cents!;-)
I know you said DSLR, but the Sony F828 is probably the "most crossover" of the digicam's. I've tried most of the five 8MP digicams currently on the market (not the A2 yet which HAS some interesting aspect... one in particular is their super-high-res viewfinder), and (despite being the biggest), the Sony F828 is my favorite. Manual zoom ring on the lens feels just like an SLR (plus you can use it while shooting 640X480 movies), and 28-200mm effective should cover most photo-ops. I could go on about pros and cons (it has a few of the later), but you can read any of the photo review sites... or better yet, go to a store and play around with it.
Again, you said you were in the market for a DSLR, so the size shouldn't matter that much... and if you are just starting out, something to consider. BTW, both the Canon Rebel and Nikon D70 are *the* entry-level DSLR's and will shoot GREAT pictures... and hopefully by now, it is obvious that big pixels are better, so the 6MP on those camera's are better than the 8MP on the Sony... although in non-noisy situations, I think you'd be hard pressed to tell much of a difference in prints.
Hey, if you are feeling rich, grab the Canon Mark II which among other things can shoot 8 frames/second with a 40 frame buffer - WAY cool to just mash the shutter button on that baby!;-)
Thanx for the click-thru - yea, they are kinda confused, but I guess it's the best they could do - at one time, they were showing ads for the Mitsubishi Eclipe car... so they got it wrong that way too!;-)
I run Adsense on my personal web site... and am generally pleased with it - pays the hosting bills... but I'm not retiring early, since on my good days, I can "Super-Size" it at McDonalds!;-)
I don't pay too much attention to the ads since it kinda runs by itself, and my experience is that Google does a pretty darn good job targetting 'em... but I sometimes get a bit of a chuckle out of what shows up - for instance, I have some Lunar Eclipse Pictures and one of the Adsense ads was some place selling real estate on the moon!;-)
When my Christmas Lights got Slashdotted in 2002, a 40-amp circuit breaker actually popped at the ISP... which makes a great story, but realistically it was almost certainly co-incidental. More "fun" was watching my neighbor's reaction in 2003 when the Christmas Lights starting going on and off at the throttled maximum rate of once/5 seconds.
I'd suggest that many (perhaps most) pro's have converted to Digital and the trend is increasing. Digicam's (eespecially pro ones) can generate a LOT of data VERY fast - I "had" to go over to a friend who had a Canon Mark II - this is a $4,000 8MP digicam that will shoot 8 frames/second... with a frame burst of 40 frames... in RAW mode. Lets just say it was REALLY cool to hold that shutter button down!
Having said all that, that is one heck of a price-premium for this 12 GByte card, so I'd take it as just a bleading edge product, but you'll continue to see larger/faster (BTW, faster is REALLY important to the pro's because you want to be able to drain the digicam memory buffer) cards coming down the pipe for cheaper... and they will be used!;-)
I haven't played first person shooter games in years (getting married and having kids will do that to you!;-), but I still remember when DOOM first came out and it was SOOOO cool to be able to play other people - definately contributed to a drop in the overall business productivity of America!;-)
Back in the 1995, the Usenet group boulder.general had some bozo who kept asking who the "Administrator" of this Usenet Group was (for those that don't know, there is none!)... so a couple of us kept speaking up and jacking him around by saying we were... but then (in typical Uselessnet fashion), there was a a big discussion about how come WE were the administrators, and how it should be decided... it was all light-hearted.
This is GREAT - someone with a good sense of humor - hats off to 'em.
I had something similar happen with my christmas lights display when a friendly neighbor vandelized my snowman... but I don't think he was aware I had a webcam on it and caught him in the act!;-)
My all-time favorite (and semi-unique) was whupping my brother in a game of Rock Paper Scissors ( RoShamBo ) after he Slashdotted my Christmas Webcam.
The false positive problem also affects log analysis programs... although argueably, it's more a matter of how you use and tune it. I.e. most people expect to install Swatch (or other log scraper) and have it just "work outa the box"... but in reality, you have to understand what is "normal" in your network and then tune out the false positives accordingly. Same things with network IDS tools such as Snort (MartyR is one smart dude BTW)... although I "cheated" in that comparision because log scrapers are argueably host-based IDS's!;-)
If you are interested, read more about how Swatch and syslog are used in a large production environment.
While SETI is the granddaddy of the distributed computing projects, there are now a number of others one out there, and I'd suggest folks interested consider Folding@home run outa Stanford University where they are using the idle CPU cycles for protein folding research on cures for diseases.
While most/.'ers will probably run the FAH client, even Google supports Folding@home - read more at their Google Compute FAQ which allows you to run it as part of the Google Toolbar - heck, I even have my mother helping out this way since it is so super-easy to install.
And if you do decide to support Folding@home, consider joining a team - if you don't have one, you are welcome to sign up for my Google Compute team;-)
I HATE Email spammers... here's a couple of links on my home page (Mod down if you think over-the-top links, but I thought some folks might appreciate the humor) that basically sum up my thoughts:
Slashdot Mirror
HEY ... the MOD-DOWN into oblivion was a bit harsh - all I was doing was correcting the parent who included a link to the N-U contest. I agree that N-U is off-topic for the article subject, but the comment I made (with URL to slashdot itself) was was an on-topic correction to the off-topic comment! ;-)
FYI FWIW: If you want to link to the Slashdot Nigritude Ultramarine artcile you need to link to the archived URL as done here.
Hulk still thinks Slashdot shoulda thrown their hat in the ring, but they declined, saying it wouldn't be proper ...
Yea, I know he came in second - I botched up the comment - thanx for the comment - dang!
He does a real nice job describing his experience with it in an article titled "A Postcard from VisitorVille" which includes some nifty pictures - highly recommended viewing.
You may have a second chance around Christmas Time - I'm thinking of implementing the same concept/idea for my webcam/webcontrolled Christmas lights - see item #3 in what's planned/new for Christmas 2004 ... which if successfully implemented, will make for a additional factor to consider in my Slashdot Effect Analysis
HEY ... better to meet people on the web that say, on the road - how would you like to meet this guy who got caught Nose Picken' on Photo Radar ;-)
HEY ... when you are done playing games (i.e. leave at night ... if you don't stay up all night playing! ;-) ... can you turn that cluster of 20 AMD XP 1800s to do some processing for a "do-gooder" cause such as Folding@HOME - my Google Compute team would love to get a boost from that type of horsepower! ;-)
Seriousely, the NX stuff is a "good" thing to add to slow down malicious code - the only thing better would be a HULK Instruction which would SMASH Puny Human malicious code ... ;-)
Read more about RoShamBo here
I think everyone can agree that backdoor passwords are a BAD idea - makes one wonder what the internal policies are at these companies - and what happens when they do a source code audit after these are found and track down the programmers who put 'em in.
BTW, I did some testing of a Canon G3 (4MP) and Canon G5 (5MP) and quite frankly, I preferred the G3 ... my guess is that all that Canon did was just drop a bigger sensor in there, so the whole camera was slower and the G5 was definately noisier if you looked closely (doing the ol' view actual pixels in Photoshop). I agree that if there wasn't a megapixel race (and that is all that consumers looked at), a really SWEET digicam would be about 4MP that is lightening fact (640X480X30fps video too!).
Having said the above, I have done 10X15" blowups of slightly cropped Sony F828 8MP pictures taken outside under good light and they are gorgeous ... so that my two cents! ;-)
Again, you said you were in the market for a DSLR, so the size shouldn't matter that much ... and if you are just starting out, something to consider. BTW, both the Canon Rebel and Nikon D70 are *the* entry-level DSLR's and will shoot GREAT pictures ... and hopefully by now, it is obvious that big pixels are better, so the 6MP on those camera's are better than the 8MP on the Sony ... although in non-noisy situations, I think you'd be hard pressed to tell much of a difference in prints.
Hey, if you are feeling rich, grab the Canon Mark II which among other things can shoot 8 frames/second with a 40 frame buffer - WAY cool to just mash the shutter button on that baby! ;-)
Thanx for the click-thru - yea, they are kinda confused, but I guess it's the best they could do - at one time, they were showing ads for the Mitsubishi Eclipe car ... so they got it wrong that way too! ;-)
I don't pay too much attention to the ads since it kinda runs by itself, and my experience is that Google does a pretty darn good job targetting 'em ... but I sometimes get a bit of a chuckle out of what shows up - for instance, I have some Lunar Eclipse Pictures and one of the Adsense ads was some place selling real estate on the moon! ;-)
You can read more at my Slashdot Effect on Christmas Lights page.
HEY ... if you are going to make the first post, at least include a picture of a weapons of mass destruction ;-)
Check out this interesting article on Sports Illustrated digital workflow to see how the pros do it and how much data was generated ... with the last generation of digicams!
Having said all that, that is one heck of a price-premium for this 12 GByte card, so I'd take it as just a bleading edge product, but you'll continue to see larger/faster (BTW, faster is REALLY important to the pro's because you want to be able to drain the digicam memory buffer) cards coming down the pipe for cheaper ... and they will be used! ;-)
Back in the 1995, the Usenet group boulder.general had some bozo who kept asking who the "Administrator" of this Usenet Group was (for those that don't know, there is none!) ... so a couple of us kept speaking up and jacking him around by saying we were ... but then (in typical Uselessnet fashion), there was a a big discussion about how come WE were the administrators, and how it should be decided ... it was all light-hearted.
We talked about settling with Rock Paper Scissors (aka RoShamBo) ... but we decided the best way was a DOOM deathmatch ... and thanx to Google, I actually found a web page that documents the DOOM Deathmatch to determine who is the Administrator of boulder.general ;-)
I also found a Usenet thread courtesy of Google Groups Note that we played on Pentium 90 MHz machine - was pretty state-of-the-art back then! ;-)
I figure as a UW fan, you'd appreciate the pictures of CopperTone Girl at Husky Stadium and McMahon Hall Handstands ... 7 stories up! ;-)
I had something similar happen with my christmas lights display when a friendly neighbor vandelized my snowman ... but I don't think he was aware I had a webcam on it and caught him in the act! ;-)
My all-time favorite (and semi-unique) was whupping my brother in a game of Rock Paper Scissors ( RoShamBo ) after he Slashdotted my Christmas Webcam.
If you are interested, read more about how Swatch and syslog are used in a large production environment.
While most /.'ers will probably run the FAH client, even Google supports Folding@home - read more at their Google Compute FAQ which allows you to run it as part of the Google Toolbar - heck, I even have my mother helping out this way since it is so super-easy to install.
And if you do decide to support Folding@home, consider joining a team - if you don't have one, you are welcome to sign up for my Google Compute team ;-)
Lets just say those of you who are NRA members will appreciate it ... ;-)
First, lets use an M-1 Carbine to hunt 'em like rats!
After that, have the Three Shotgun Dudes shoot 'em up!
If the spammer is still kick'in, fire an RPG at 'em!
And finally, to finish 'em off, use these weapons of mass destruction!
Put whatever is left of the spammer on my back yard, and I'll have The Incredible Hulk drop off my roof and SMASH 'em!