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User: BenBop

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  1. Re:Merged? on Oracle Beware — Google Tests Cloud-Based Database · · Score: 0

    Thats rather already the case. Jobs = Apple + Disney where (Disney = Pixar [Lasseter+Docter+Jobs]). Jobs basically owns Disney as its largest single shareholder (7% or so)....

  2. Re:700 pounds -- goodbye safety standards! on Open Source Car — 20 Year Lease, Free Fuel For Life · · Score: 0

    A car that will never sell anywhere in the US due to total inability to pass crash safety test.

    I'm not sure I agree. While I am not a materials or composite engineer, I'm pretty confident (based on my experience with bicycles) that composites are frequently much stronger and safer (more crash-resistant) than steel. I raced steel frames on bikes for a long time. A light, built bike was considered one that hit the 20lbs mark. That fell to 18lbs with Titanium, but these frames were more brittle in a crash. I wrecked plenty of both. Today, I can get a carbon bike down to under 14lbs depending on component build. I still crash, but the frames have a much higher survival rate even though they are significantly lighter. So I see no reason a properly designed composite car frame would not equal or improve crash safety standards.

  3. This is not about WINE at all.... on Banned From WoW For WINE & Programmable Keyboard · · Score: 0

    WINE is irrelevant to the issue, I believe. WoW EULA explicitly prohibits the operation of any application that interacts with WoW while you are connected. This is more or less how they define bots. Its why, for example, they outlaw mods that let you control iTunes from within the game, but let you log off and report your gathering data to Thottbot. The programmable keyboard with its macro environment creates exactly the sort of executables that the EULA prohibits. Which is something of a pity, because I love playing WoW but I absolutely hate farming. On the other hand, I certainly get pissed when I see some automated toon farming my herbs out from under me like clockwork...

  4. The chip does not apply on Will You Stick with Apple, After the Switch? · · Score: 0

    Our business runs on Macintosh. Mostly, this is because the creative applications we use are coded for mac and we don't like the windows alternatives so much, but there is a big sysadmin component to this too. As a personal mac user, I'm not nuts about the trusted computing nonsense. I feel I am buying a box, not a license code. I don't want my machine constantly providing feedback on content to the manufacturer or any other provider relating to the machine. But as a business owner, this does not affect me. Yet.

  5. Missin'... on GTA Sex Game Leads to ESRB Fracas · · Score: 0

    Once again, Slashdotters are missing the point of this article. How, exactly, do you unlock a copy of GTA to make the game happen?

  6. Fingerworks is RIP on New Keyboard Technology · · Score: 0

    Sadly, it would seem that fingerwors, maker of the touchstream line of integrated keyboard/trackpad/gesture-macro-runner keyboards has gone the way of the dodo and closed shop. I'm bummed, because I was thinking about buying one of these. But I'm glad I didn't, cause now I don't have to worry about whether someone is gonna keep the patches fresh and up to date :) Anyway, its too bad. They were a great idea for an interface device.

  7. Kodak BW paper sucks anyway on Kodak To Stop Making Black and White Paper · · Score: 0

    Kodag BW paper has been a dog for a long time. Ilford makes much better paper across the board.

    If you need a fiber paper, there are several other manufacturers that make better BW paper than Kodak: Ilford, Agfa, Bergerrer, Forte...

    I've worked in professional imaging for something like 12 years now. Nobody uses the kodak products for output. Even the color papers are not as good or as stable as compared to the Fujicolor options. The only thing they still do well are the professional films.

  8. I have the same problem: here are some solutions. on Are CRTs History? · · Score: 0

    I run a really high end imaging company in New York, and spend a fair amount of time reviewing displays for my retouchers. We do big ticket jobs for fashion and cosmetic companies, and I'd say we do the initial retouching/prepress on most of the better magazines from Conde Nast and Hearst that hit the newstands these days. We all spend all day long looking at color, on and off screen, and I think with the exception of certain medical and scientific applications, we've collectively got as discriminating eyeballs as are on the planet. We've spent years following LCD development, and we are just beginning to see flat panel displays that can handle the sort of color that we do. Eizo makes one, the CG220, and I think it lists at $6500. I have one sitting in the shop right now, on review from the manufacturer, and I can't make anyone use it. Everyone agrees that the monitor is sharper and the color better, and matches our contract proofer better than any crt. Its the only good flat panel we've ever seen except an IBM t210 (which does not have as good a color, and even greater resolution issues). At issue are the resolution and response time. The resolution is so high (1900 something) that we can't see the images at 1:1 without enlarging well past 100 and 200% (and then images begin to fall apart). And the response time is abysimal. Retouching corrections appear seconds after they've been made, and the eyeballs have moved on to the next thing to be fixed. Barco made a good flat panel a year ago, but they've pulled it from the market. Too difficult to manufacture to color critical tolerances, I heard. Barco still makes its reference calibrator lines of CRTs...they're expensive (around 5K a unit) but very consistent color for the life of the monitor. They're also one of the only monitors that has its own, internal LUT so that you can calibrate multiple displays in multiple locations off a multi head video card and get them to line up. I know windows and linux folks can buy multi LUT video cards and get around this to some extent, but the cards are pricy, calibration requires external software, and there are some other issues. NEC just released a new version of their CRT displays, and I have always found them quite good. I think they run around $800/unit. I'd check them out. We've used the NEC displays for some years, and they've been quite good and reasonably priced.

  9. Ummmm....we're talking about Europe here....... on IBM Europe Workers Strike · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Which is possibly one of the worst places in the world to have a business or employees. I don't care if you're a restaurant in Lyon or a multi-billion multinational. European employees are by far the most expensive and least productive in the world. This has nothing to do with where these folks fall in global efficiency contexts--this is about what it costs a business to have an employee in tax, benefits, and what those costs are compared to productivity. Europe as a continent is famous for what various nations tax its workers and pay out in benefits: what is less well known is what the cost of doing business there is. I can hire cheaper, more motivated employees who are equally well educated and experienced almost anywhere else in the world. Nobody--but nobody--in their right mind would open a european business today. For one, your employees are practically fireproof, whether they perform their paid jobs or not (and many do not). Two, they spend half their time on paid holiday (great for the worker, bad for business). Three, the company pays a fortune in benenfits for the workers, which would be fine except the cost of those benefits very nearly approaches the profit from their productivity...rendering a profit nearly impossible. The only thing remarkable to me about this posting is that IBM didn't do this in the 70's, and fire those same workers again in the 80's. It probably would have taken them 10 years to downsize then too. Europe sucks for business, except to eat, and even then make sure you stay the hell away in August. They swarm like locusts over the coast.

  10. You've already done it on Simple, Bare-Bones Motherboards? · · Score: 1

    The time you've spent writing this post probably cost you the difference between a stripped down MB and an all in one.

  11. Ummm....day late, a couple of billion short on Microsoft to Introduce PDF competitor 'Metro' · · Score: 1

    So an entire industry that functions on two basic file types--PDF and TIFF, is going to ditch workflows that start at $40K, and insist that manufacturers rejigger their direct digital proofers ($150k a pop and up) so that microsoft can play in the sandbox. Lets not mention that the vendors with the greatest growth in prepress workflows (Dalim) and prepress asset manangement (Britech) release in Linux and Linux and OSX.

    Yep.

    I'm assuming this is less about trying to compete in prepress and publishing, and more about trying to win the race for middleware in the creation and processing of electronic forms? It better be that, or else I'm not really sure what the point would be. Oh wait--thats it--its pointless.

  12. It Just Can't Be Done on Professional Photographers Using Linux? · · Score: 2, Informative

    I run a high end post production house in NYC. I wish--in so many different ways--that there were solutions for high end imaging on Linux. But there just aren't. I've got thirty Macs in my shop. Have you any idea of the $$$ the business would save if we were not dependant on the apple platform? I have one linux box in house. Its a RIP from a company called Dalim that cost us damn near $40K. Its the single most stable piece of software I have ever even heard about. It has not gone down once in two years of 24/7 usage. My macs, on the other hand, have all crapped out at one point or another, for one reason or another. Not that we don't love macs! But I'd rather save the cash. Linux needs two things to be adopted in my industry: 1) an image processor that is either a photoshop port or MIMICS the user environment and fuctionality absolutely. 2) a graphically pleasing and elegant desktop environment. Retouchers are best thought of as creative types. If the work environment is ugly, they will bitch. Oh--windows is not an option for a variety of reasons. Mostly cost of maintenance. We tried. we also found the fastest windows box could not perform certain photoshop processes as fast as the fasted Macs. Plus we've had a couple of virus disasters with windows--even with some extensive network security. Windows seems to be the domain of home users who have a PC and want to get into photoshop without buying a new box.