It won't help selling PCs with linux at bestbuy, but it's still slowing down adoption.
The first couple of times I looked at linux, I had to find out about all the main distros, to then learn there were several desktops (KDE, GNOME, etc) - and I didn't even know what any of them looked or felt like, then next thing was the whole rpm/apt-get/source/etc issue, and the bundled software also varies. It takes a LOT of reading to find what you're looking for, and everybody is tempted to ask "what's best?", but you just can't. Plus you don't know any of the available apps to do any work. So the first couple of times (a while back) I got discouraged and just kept on using windows instead.
One thing that's helping is LiveCDs. I'm lending them, showing them, copying them for friends. The next Knoppix 4 Live DVD is going to be very nice for that. This helps people see what linux is, how it works, all the desktop environments, all the common apps (OOo, Firefox, XMMS, etc). I think it's really going to help linux become better known. I can't wait to get my hands on the final V4!
With linux you still gotta pick things like ext2, swap partitions and other even weirder stuff.
With windows (driver wise), most of them can go to logitech.com or hp.com and download drivers in a snap, run setup.exe and click next 12 times and all their stuff works.
With linux I don't have a clue how to get some of my hardware working. The only solution seems to go beg some l33t linux geeks, that will laugh at me, tell me to RTFM and all, whereas it would be so easy using windows...
As for that NTFS/FAT selection screen, it doesn't even go into it by default (the partition manager) - just hit enter without reading the screen and you'll be just fine. None of the screens require any thinking. The 2 most complex ones are: -the one where you gotta retype CD-Key without making typos and -the one where you gotta type the user names. Unless you run some kind of funky "mass storage device" that isn't supported directly, in which case you have the most complex setup option ever - insert the manufacturer provided floppy and press a key. Big deal.
If you think linux has gotten easier to install than windows, perhaps it's because you've intalled linux a few too many times lately (or haven't seen windows in a long time) or whatever, because it's just not the case.
You make a good point. Lots of the stuff they removed does take a while to code and get right, but it does indeed look like they got their priorities set in a strange way (not in a way to benefit us).
Strip out all the new nice features, and keep DRM/TCPA style junk (and backport the 2 new features to XP anyways?). Every time we hear longhorn it seems to be getting less and less appealing.
It seems like they're going to be the biggest factor pushing away their customers towards other platforms. They're alienating their userbase. I'm starting to get quite unhappy about all their latest moves and lack of fixes for long-standing issues...
I have to agree. I've read a bit about those as it seemed like you could save lots of money.
But that was counting you could easily get all the parts for cheap (those 50% rebates on LCDs in big names stores I've never seen - or broken ones on ebay that sell for cheap - which never seems to happen either).
Plus, most places selling plans for them also try to sell you some of the parts (lenses, reflectors, etc), and not for cheap either.
When you add the REAL prices of all the parts, the plans, the wood (some people seem to do their build an enclosure, then redo it right the 2nd time) and lots of miscellaneous [not always cheap] hardware.
That's not counting your time either, that's also taking for granted nothing bad will happen (break the LCD, electrocution risks for some, lamp temperatures can almost be a fire hazard or melt the LCD...).
So you get a big and ugly project-box looking projector in your living room (no thanks), and for not much cheaper than a retail projector (if at all). The increased resolution of the monitor (if you bought a more expensive one) isn't probably making that much of a difference, unless you got really good optics too, and a very good design, and most don't have either (heck, isn't the whole point of this DIY to save money? Won't see any multicoated carl zeiss glass here!).
I've seen projectors on special at big retail chains (like staples) for like 800$ CDN - and they were easy to find and in stock. It looks nice and profesionnal, it's small, portable, runs cool-ish, has keystone correction, has a remote control, accepts all kinds of input types, it is brighter, has deinterlacing (faroudja DCDi!), and the lamp life isn't bad (would last me a couple years at least).
Why would someone want to spend time and as much money to make their own inferior product? I don't know.
Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about. The player (DVD/DVR/whatever) has to "talk" to your TV, so your TV can be "authenticated" before any encrypted signal is sent to it.
A "DRM-stripping" cable wouldn't let your TV be authenticated, so nothing would be sent to it, and even if it did manage to strip some of the infos (what a fancy cable!), then your TV would have some encrypted datastream it couldn't make sense of.
Or perhaps it's just a magic cable?
There are some illegal devices that do this (400$+), but no dinky cable will do this, even if it's some overpriced cable.
That was my first thoughts on this too. Either offshoring it, or making it open source - or perhaps both...
Offshoring it may not be enough. I've seen countless "offshored" forums "go down" like that because the admins weren't offshore as well.
I can't see him move to a non-DMCA subjected part of the world just so he can publish some app either.
So with offshoring, the best way I can imagine to make himself safe from law, is by somehow "anonymizing" it. Open source it so no single programmer can be said responsible for "offending" parts of the code. Perhaps if it can somehow hide the country of origin of contributors...
Sure, it wouldn't be just his own app anymore, but between that and letting it die because of the greed of media conglomerates taking a little more of our fait use rights away everyday...
I doubt any of this will happen (offshored and/or open sourced) unfortunately. It's sad to see another great app like that disappear under those kind of circumstances.
Thanks again Lightning UK! for all the hard work and dedication (and the late nite IRC chats/forum discussions).
-They don't have a FIXED and lower resolution (and anything running at not-native res looks FUGLY, even with like ClearType and what not) -CRTs have a LOT more contrast -CRTs don't have/get dead/stuck pixels -CRTs have a good angle of view -CRTs don't have slow response delays (and LCD manufacturers that claim super low delays are using tricks to be able to claim those numbers) -CRTs aren't limited to 18 (eek) or 24bit color, tend to have better color accuracy, wider gamut... -Good CRTs have a long lifespan, not sure about LCDs
Dtiching my perfectly find 21" CRTs for 21" LCDs would cost me an arm and a leg, would also require me to buy a newer and more expensive spectrometer too.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a lot of money wasted to get inferior technology.
Oh, and for those people that only talk about electricity savings, well, why not get rid of your SUV and buy a scooter instead? You'll save a LOT of gas and money (a lot more than swtiching monitors could ever make you save)! Oh, what's that you say? It's not quite the same? Exactly. LCD isn't nearly as good as CRT either.
Unless you think your (reclaimed) desk space is worth 1000$/sq ft, or that you think LCD is better in a interior-designer standpoint, in which case I'll grant you it's a better buy for you.
Wheter pages are served on IIS or Apache only matters so much indeed - especially when serving dynamic content.
I can't wait to see how ASP.Net 2.0 will be able to withstand/.'ings with the new built-in caching -both on the data (SQL server) side and on the output (client) side. It should help a lot. Web-Farm session states are sure going to help for clustering, too.
They claim it vastly outperforms J2EE as well - I quote: "28x faster (that's 2700%), and supported 7.6x as many concurrent users as J2EE, with only 1/6th as much processor utilization". I doubt their benchmarks (on the Pet Shop Store) is 100% true (one wonders who paid for them), although several people did similar tests and seem to have had similar results (VeriTest, GotDotNet,...) - and they even encourage you to download the apps and test it by yourself.
I didn't care too much for ASP.Net, but v2.0 seems very interesting (More infos on ASP.Net 2.0) I was thinking of moving to J2EE primarily, but this has changed my mind, especially if it can be hosted on Mono as well(?).
Also, I've seen a lot of "code less!", "get more done quicker!" claims and such, and never really found it faster to develop into, but ASP.Net 2.0 seems to deliver. I'll be giving it a try very soon.
Agreed. I've personally been using logitech trackballs for a long time - well before the marble series (only the "thumb" versions). They're just much better than mice overall. I had originally switched because of frustration over mice: always running at the end of the mouse pad, then lifting the mouse only to put it down again on it's wire, repeatedly ended up falling on the floor,... Now I also appreciate the lesser desk space it uses, faster speed/productivity and higher precision for most tasks (everything but graphic work, for which I use an Intuos instead).
I don't get RSI symptoms with it at all (it was hard on the thumb at first, but you eventually adapt). Going back to a mouse (using someone else's computer) usually makes RSI problems appear pretty quickly. I've noticed that cordless mice are nicer (no more "stepping" on the cord), but I've seen some wireless optical ones eat through batteries in little more than a week, and have communication problems, especially if you have more than one (I wonder if they don't operate on the 900MHz band).
The key to getting rid of RSI problems isn't just using a trackball (which doesn't work for everybody it seems), but changing/alternating pointing devices. I've tried a fellowes trackpad lately and it wasn't half as bad as I had expected it to be - and it was easy on the wrist. Using keyboard shortcuts also helps, by cutting in mouse use, and also benefiting by increased productivity. Posture is also very important but quite often overlooked.
My biggest problem with pointing devices isn't so much RSI nowadays, but the way mouse are configured in windows. You can swap your mouse buttons (for left/right handers), but not on a per-device basis. So if a PC has 2 users (a left and a right hander), they each have to keep changing the mouse button swap option all the time, as both change at the same time. The only way to solve the problem is to physically hardwire the buttons backwards on 1 mouse. I don't know if linux would let me configure that for each mouse... I bet longhorn won't fix this issue, as this would be innovative and helpful - can't have that!
-Good sound (perhaps a flip, so you can hear something and people hear you talking as well? it's like most cell makers believe your mouth is an inch away from your ears) -Decently sized (not too small nor too big) -Useable keyboard (for people with big fingers, or those with hand numbness/tingling) -A screen you can read in most lighting conditions -Conservative look -Decently priced
If anything more I'd wish for a vibrating ringer as an option (for during meetings and such).
Not some convergence-of-gadgets toy that crashes, takes forever to boot, sounds like crap, drops calls and eats thru batteries. I suppose 12 year olds don't have anything better to do than search through thousands of ringtones, play games on their phones and such, but I really don't care about such features.
If you mean for desktop/home users to manage it themselves, I guess that could be useful (not that I think using IE is a good idea at all)
In a corp environment, we don't want users to be able to touch those things, and we (at least I) use vbscript/WMI to change things like that. (MicrosoftIE_Security under \root\cimv2\Applications\MicrosoftIE is where it's at). Other stuff can be accessed in the registry. Making scripts to manipulate those lists isn't hard.
Haven't used IE in so long I've almost forgot what it looks like;)
Reviews are nice, but so far, all of the search apps I've tried had serious limitations, and they never seem to be mentionned in any of those reviews. They only seem to scratch the surface.
What they index: some make use of the installed 3rd party IFilters, some just don't-like GDS (although they have their own extensions now). It's pointless if it only indexes a small portion of your files.
What you can search: PUNCTUATION or SYMBOLS!!! That's by FAR the biggest limitation of those apps. Ever tried to search for a chunk of code/script/css or something like it? Most just strip everything else than the letters (sort of like searching on google). That alone makes the whole thing mostly worthless to me. I've tried them all (MS Desktop Search, GDS, Coppernic, X1,...) and none of them could do that (even tried some document indexing/storage systems). And very few would actually index "code" files.
Some can't (or not easily) index mapped drives (over network). Some only seem to work for a single user. Lots of issues like that...
It's nice to have something that can index my email, word documents or EXIF/IPTC info, but quite honestly, I don't use those features at all (and I already have other apps that do it anyways that I don't use either). That's the stuff those reviews seem to cover mostly, and all seem to do a half-decent job at it.
These apps will hopefully mature and get more useful features. Like perhaps central/shared indexes? I have several gigs worth of stuff on a server which is mapped on several workstations. Even if the app can search it (or be forced/tricked into doing it), do you still want several PCs indexing many many gigs of stuff across your LAN? My workstations * size of documents makes about 200GB of data to index over the network (and it's really redundant). If you format (or dual boot) then you'll have to reindex everything again (no ways to back the indexes up AFAIK). That's why I'm using a homemade solution using the old MS Indexing Service (and it also searches some SQL tables on the same page). One index kept on the server, only need to index the data once.
I'd like other functions like indexing/searching SQL servers, FTPs, shares, LANs, intranets,... but I know that's asking a bit much.
If GDS could make use 3rd party IFilters and search code (text with symbols and punctuation) then it would be a invaluable tool. Until then I have no use for it and will stick to my (better imho) homemade solution:(
You could use a hardware watchdog timer card that would reset the PC (or let it reboot on BSODs) and automatically log-on and start the app (using limited user account - secure enough for a display unit IMHO).
Otherwise, I'd rather toggle a line on the parallel port ever so often to reset a 555 timer driving a darlington transistor which would in turn drive a relay (or use an optocoupler or whatever you fancy) to either change video like you did - or just drive the reset button header on the motherboard...
IMHO it's easier in "outp" a value every so often then having to generate a tone, and it's easier to deal with the simple timer than having to deal with a tone in hardware (although both are quite simple).
Like you said, the idea is not new at all. I remember seeing this years ago, the whole thing was submerged in a clear plexiglass container (much like an aquarium, but lower profile and trays over it for drives).
And generally speaking mineral oil isn't really a good coolant (not very effective at heat transfer), and it's very messy (imagine taking out parts... no thanks!). And you'd think there would be some decent cooling for the oil... I'd like to see the oil temp grahps given a decent load, it just might eventually fry;)
HD size having increased alone means very little. A 300GB drive with nothing to put on it wouldn't justify a need for bigger backup devices.
What really creates that need is the contents we're dealing with nowadays. Gone are the days where you only had a couple dozen wordperfect documents to backup on your HD (or whatever). Floppies were enough to backup your files.
Now, the average consumer has much higher needs. I've got CF cards over 2GB for my DSLR that I fill repeatedly, miniDV/DVB-S/DVD/analog video sources that I capture and/or PVR, I've got a music collection and a music video collection on separate HDs, lots of documents/code/databases/email/ebooks/etc accumulated over the years (many gigs of stuff)... Even if you have a small'ish HD, you may still be dealing with a LOT of data to backup (that need to burn stuff is actually higher if you HD is smaller - you must make free space). And we're not talking about all the pr0n, P2P downloads and such that a lot of people have endless GBs of... I doubt any backup device could keep up with it. Even if we had affordable 200GB Blu-Ray discs, I'd still be buying lots, and soon enough it wouldn't cut it anymore.
Bigger backup devices are a desperate need right now for all of this stuff, but size is only one concern. Reliability is the other big factor. My photos are now all digital, if the media dies, I loose everything. No more archived film... We need something that will last, I've already had to re-burn so many things already, it's scary.
Right now, it looks like the best backup device is a HD, size wise (fits lots per unit-no excessive swapping), more reliable than most other [optical] storage means, and half-decent value for the money ($/GB) [for stuff that matters at least, like digital photos]. Both new format address the size issue, but not really the reliability. It doesn't seem like there is much hope for a solution that adresses both points to come out anytime soon.
While I haven't completely switched to apache, I have to agree. The reason why I also run apache now isn't speed at all. That might matter to very high traffic sites, but for most people it's not the real factor.
They're 2 entirely different products, with each their strenghts and unique features. In a corporate setup with a lot of ASP/ASP.Net pages, windows-trained admins and webmasters, the choice will most likely be IIS. For someone making php/mysql pages to be on the internet on a cheap hosting plan (usually linux hosting), they are more likely to pick apache. It's easier to use apache on both servers, and IIS in non-server OS'es (like XP Pro) is pretty crippled (only 1 virtual site, very limited connections...) Small startups would probably pick apache as well (lower TCO* due to lower licensing costs/lower maintenance/less maintenance or consulting, portability,...)
Features, personnal preferences, experience with a specific webserver, what you're hosting, stability, portability, overall costs and such things matter a LOT more than speed in most cases.
* You opinion may be different on that one, I'm not gonna get in an argument over it.
While it may look better to you, a lot of companies won't even be able to open it (most wouldn't even know what it is).
Sadly, the actual format it's submitted in does matter, and not so much for the look. The format they use is the format one should submit into so it doesn't go thru multiple conversions or even OCR. If you use another format, it may come out looking VERY crappy after conversion (all formatting and basic layout may be lost, words split across columns,...) Best thing to do is to ask what format they prefer.
Besides, unless you're applying as a graphics designer job or something like that, experience, knowledge and interview skills will matter a lot more than some fancy looking resume. I doubt it'll really help landing a job. I've used the word format most of the time as I was told to, and I never had much problem finding employment (haven't been unemployed over the last 10 years).
I already have like a couple dozen sites bookmarked, and I've tried 5 of them so far. Haven't had any problems with any of them. Selection (exclusive stuff), shipping time and prices changes from one to another, that's why I suscribe to one for a few months, then move on to another.
As for blockbuster, it's an hour long trip for me, their rates are the worst of any video store I've *ever* seen, late fees, they've held one of the kids' DVDs "hostage" until I bring theirs back (put the wrong one in the case), poor selection, they only got like 1 copy of good classics so it's always rented out... I've given up on them well before I started renting online. It just doesn't get worse than this.
Anyways, here's a few, I'm sure you could find lots more if you searched. Every time I do, I always find several new ones... (too lazy to make links, sorry)
My pre-paid phone is 33 CDN cents/minute (in canada), but as it's only useful to me when I'm on a trip, I only end up using it for long distance which is 66 CDN cents/minute (twice the rate). The time expires after a month too, and the smallest cards are 20$ IIRC. And that was the best deal when I got my phone; and it's locked too. AFAIK, There are still no better plans (with decent coverage).
It's not like I'm expecting my 1.9 cents/min VoIP rates, but this is just brutal (nearly 3500% more expensive!). I only use it for short calls (calling cab/lawyer/hotel at destination or such), or emergencies... Payphones, VoIP, collect call - everything else is much cheaper, and by a good margin.
That's not to mention the refilling system is a TOTAL nightmare. I've often had to fight over with the automated system for over an hour to add time to my phone.
What I want? Not a mp3 player/camera/game console/PDA/whatever else hybrid gadget - just a normal GSM phone and DECENT RATES without having to sign for a 30$+ monthly bill for something I use twice a year. I may feel like using it a bit more then, but that's never gonna happen.
RAW images, even if not signed, are pretty hard to manipulate. I know people who take pictures that are sued as evidence (or in investigations), and they use the RAW format because of that.
Signing would be even better, but at least it's not like you're handing JPEGs that could be photoshopped. Things are only so much "proof". Even film can be copied, manipulated, and even printed to.
You're lucky if you can sell all your gear and just buy canon intead (I'm guessing you bought a D70 kit not long ago and don't have much more gear). Most of us have far too much gear to even consider it. By selling on ebay (or to a camera store) you can easily loose 50% of their value (not of price paid). For pro's, that might be possible to do. It's a big expense, but if you work a bit more, you could pay for the extra, but for amateurs who spent like 5000$+ to get good lenses, selling it all and buying canon instead just isn't so easy. That's why I got a Fuji DSLR instead (Kodak makes some nikon mount cameras too).
If you can, by all means DO sell all your nikon gear while you still can.
Not because you only see canon (at canon sponsored) sporting events or such. Who cares what someone else uses anyways? As long as it works for me I'm happy - and Nikon is doing that less and less well...
Because: -Nikon's latest DSLRs aren't so great. Their high end (like the D2x) cameras may be fast, but picture quality isn't as good as you'd wish for. Nikon DSLRs usually not as good as their Fuji counterparts (PQ wise, not speed). Even Kodak makes some nice ones (just not the K14 that didn't deliver) Before the D70, there wasn't a real good camera for "prosumers". The issues here are complex and would take more than a simple paragraph to address. I'm not gonna argue with anyone who completely disgrees.
-Lenses: Nikon only has a few VR lenses compared to Canon (a year ago the only one there was is the 80-400 IIRC; now we also have a 24-120 and a 70-200). Focusing tends to be slower than Canons (or so I hear), and the AF-S lenses are expensive and heavy, and usually more expensive than the Canon ones. Nikon has some good lenses, but I like Canon's lens system much better. Nikon has also pretty much locked itself with the crop factor. Their new DX stuff ONLY work with it. If they ever went back to full frame (or anything in between), your brand new expensive 12-24mm DX lens is useless. I'm sure as hell not spending a penny on their DX lenses (which is lately forcing me to look at Tokina/Sigma/Tamron lenses instead...)
-Canon gear seems to be evolving more rapidly overall. Nikon hasn't made anything really outstanding in quite a while. Nikon is also a weird japanese company that doesn't seem to listen or care much about their users or the north american (and european?) market overall. There seems to be more used Canon gear for sale at any time too.
-The flash system. This used to be one of the few Nikon advantages, but they've made it a mess. In a short period of time they changed their whole flash system like 3 times: "real" TTL and variants (matrix, 3d matrix, color 3d matrix...),to dTTL, to iTTL, forcing people to go from a 500$ SB-28 to a SB-80DX to a SB-800. There's not even yet a macro ring flash that works in their newer mode yet AFAIK, and it would cost a lot. That's a lot of money wasted of flashes. Plus, the way it works with studio strobes isn't optimal either... The Fuji DSLR I bought works 100% "real" TTL. he old SB-28 (and *ALL* older flashes) work as good as always, including my old macro ring flash and alien bee strobes. This feels like Nikon just wanted to make an extra 1000$ by forcing you to buy 2 more flashes (I know it's not that simple, but it still feels like it). That was a big factor in me buying a Fuji over a Nikon body.
Support isn't exactly great either. I had lots of problems with their slide scanners. Getting upgrades to software you own is a pain too.
There were other factors who got me buying a Fuji over a Nikon (better white balance, great at IR shots,... lots of things), but I still wish I hadn't bouight this very first Nikon body, so I wouldn't be "locked in" with all this Nikon gear. I so wish I had listened a bit more to a friend who had a Canon...
This encryption of white balance info seems like a big deal to a lot of people, but there are FAR more issues that I'm much more concerned with,
We *definitely* need better text search. I've tried the indexing service, all the desktop search apps, and a few more specialized solutions, and so far none of them were useable for more than a plain text search.
For anyone who codes or does web stuff (lots of ebooks and code), we need to be able to search punctuation and symbols (I'd even ask for a Regular Expression search if possible, or at least wildcards).
Right now if you try to search for something as simple as "a {" (w/o dbl quotes) you'd get lots of matches for just the letter a, or lots of words with a in them - but nothing like you'd have hoped for (or there might be, but like somewhere on page 500 or so). As you make more complex queries, the stuff that's returned seems to gets more and more irrelevant.
GDS should support 3rd party IFilters, it would add a lot of formats without anyone having to code anything complex. As for them supporting punctuation/symbols, I doubt we'll see it as google.com isn't very good at it either... The "index everything" plugin is nice to index all extensions we want as text, but the GDS just isn't good at searching for this type of index contents.
So far, our text solutions are only really useful for searching "just text" stuff. For me that means a bunch of office documents, which are all nicely sorted and categorized (no need to search at all). Search email? Nope, it won't do much for my webmail (my old/main account is still with yahoo). IM? No thanks, don't use that. So it's really useless for me.
To find code, the only thing that has worked so far is a grep-style search, which is VERY slow, and won't search pdf ebooks... With the current search tools, it's faster NOT to search. I thought these apps would do something useful to try to solve our searching issues, but they're rather useless (unless you got tons of text to index).
That's what I do when I'm away (although it's not a sub-notebook, just a normal laptop). Dump the cards on it, at night when you're at the hotel (or whatever), you got a nice and big screen to preview, sort, and anything you want. It also burns CDs (in case your laptop gets stolen, or it falls and the HD dies or whatever).
Last I checked, these were almost as much as a used laptop, their battery life was hardly better, and most didn't even come with an AC adapter in case the batteries were dead (which was bound to happen well before their drive filled)... They usually lack some features some people would want like incremental backup of cards (just the new pics on it). The only nice thing about them was that they're smaller/lighter than a laptop, which might be useful to some (I wouldn't take a laptop hiking).
My camera will also shoot tethered to my laptop by firewire on location. It can also come in handy for other things like playing music on a trip, checking maps (with GPS tracking), running card recovery apps if one of yours ever gets corrupted (happens more often than dead cards), and a lot of other things...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes and no.
It won't help selling PCs with linux at bestbuy, but it's still slowing down adoption.
The first couple of times I looked at linux, I had to find out about all the main distros, to then learn there were several desktops (KDE, GNOME, etc) - and I didn't even know what any of them looked or felt like, then next thing was the whole rpm/apt-get/source/etc issue, and the bundled software also varies. It takes a LOT of reading to find what you're looking for, and everybody is tempted to ask "what's best?", but you just can't. Plus you don't know any of the available apps to do any work. So the first couple of times (a while back) I got discouraged and just kept on using windows instead.
One thing that's helping is LiveCDs. I'm lending them, showing them, copying them for friends. The next Knoppix 4 Live DVD is going to be very nice for that. This helps people see what linux is, how it works, all the desktop environments, all the common apps (OOo, Firefox, XMMS, etc). I think it's really going to help linux become better known. I can't wait to get my hands on the final V4!
You must be on crack...
With linux you still gotta pick things like ext2, swap partitions and other even weirder stuff.
With windows (driver wise), most of them can go to logitech.com or hp.com and download drivers in a snap, run setup.exe and click next 12 times and all their stuff works.
With linux I don't have a clue how to get some of my hardware working. The only solution seems to go beg some l33t linux geeks, that will laugh at me, tell me to RTFM and all, whereas it would be so easy using windows...
As for that NTFS/FAT selection screen, it doesn't even go into it by default (the partition manager) - just hit enter without reading the screen and you'll be just fine. None of the screens require any thinking. The 2 most complex ones are:
-the one where you gotta retype CD-Key without making typos
and
-the one where you gotta type the user names.
Unless you run some kind of funky "mass storage device" that isn't supported directly, in which case you have the most complex setup option ever - insert the manufacturer provided floppy and press a key. Big deal.
If you think linux has gotten easier to install than windows, perhaps it's because you've intalled linux a few too many times lately (or haven't seen windows in a long time) or whatever, because it's just not the case.
I don't like forwarding/opening too many ports, it leads to too many potential vulnerabilities even if you're all patched up.
I only forward the required for public use (http/ftp), then everything else (lots of it) is only accessed over a VPN connection.
It's not as secure as being unplugged, but it's better than being wide open. It's a reasonably secure setup imho.
You make a good point. Lots of the stuff they removed does take a while to code and get right, but it does indeed look like they got their priorities set in a strange way (not in a way to benefit us).
Strip out all the new nice features, and keep DRM/TCPA style junk (and backport the 2 new features to XP anyways?). Every time we hear longhorn it seems to be getting less and less appealing.
It seems like they're going to be the biggest factor pushing away their customers towards other platforms. They're alienating their userbase. I'm starting to get quite unhappy about all their latest moves and lack of fixes for long-standing issues...
I have to agree. I've read a bit about those as it seemed like you could save lots of money.
But that was counting you could easily get all the parts for cheap (those 50% rebates on LCDs in big names stores I've never seen - or broken ones on ebay that sell for cheap - which never seems to happen either).
Plus, most places selling plans for them also try to sell you some of the parts (lenses, reflectors, etc), and not for cheap either.
When you add the REAL prices of all the parts, the plans, the wood (some people seem to do their build an enclosure, then redo it right the 2nd time) and lots of miscellaneous [not always cheap] hardware.
That's not counting your time either, that's also taking for granted nothing bad will happen (break the LCD, electrocution risks for some, lamp temperatures can almost be a fire hazard or melt the LCD...).
So you get a big and ugly project-box looking projector in your living room (no thanks), and for not much cheaper than a retail projector (if at all). The increased resolution of the monitor (if you bought a more expensive one) isn't probably making that much of a difference, unless you got really good optics too, and a very good design, and most don't have either (heck, isn't the whole point of this DIY to save money? Won't see any multicoated carl zeiss glass here!).
I've seen projectors on special at big retail chains (like staples) for like 800$ CDN - and they were easy to find and in stock. It looks nice and profesionnal, it's small, portable, runs cool-ish, has keystone correction, has a remote control, accepts all kinds of input types, it is brighter, has deinterlacing (faroudja DCDi!), and the lamp life isn't bad (would last me a couple years at least).
Why would someone want to spend time and as much money to make their own inferior product? I don't know.
Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about. The player (DVD/DVR/whatever) has to "talk" to your TV, so your TV can be "authenticated" before any encrypted signal is sent to it.
A "DRM-stripping" cable wouldn't let your TV be authenticated, so nothing would be sent to it, and even if it did manage to strip some of the infos (what a fancy cable!), then your TV would have some encrypted datastream it couldn't make sense of.
Or perhaps it's just a magic cable?
There are some illegal devices that do this (400$+), but no dinky cable will do this, even if it's some overpriced cable.
That was my first thoughts on this too. Either offshoring it, or making it open source - or perhaps both...
Offshoring it may not be enough. I've seen countless "offshored" forums "go down" like that because the admins weren't offshore as well.
I can't see him move to a non-DMCA subjected part of the world just so he can publish some app either.
So with offshoring, the best way I can imagine to make himself safe from law, is by somehow "anonymizing" it. Open source it so no single programmer can be said responsible for "offending" parts of the code. Perhaps if it can somehow hide the country of origin of contributors...
Sure, it wouldn't be just his own app anymore, but between that and letting it die because of the greed of media conglomerates taking a little more of our fait use rights away everyday...
I doubt any of this will happen (offshored and/or open sourced) unfortunately. It's sad to see another great app like that disappear under those kind of circumstances.
Thanks again Lightning UK! for all the hard work and dedication (and the late nite IRC chats/forum discussions).
It's not just that they have higher resolution...
-They don't have a FIXED and lower resolution (and anything running at not-native res looks FUGLY, even with like ClearType and what not)
-CRTs have a LOT more contrast
-CRTs don't have/get dead/stuck pixels
-CRTs have a good angle of view
-CRTs don't have slow response delays (and LCD manufacturers that claim super low delays are using tricks to be able to claim those numbers)
-CRTs aren't limited to 18 (eek) or 24bit color, tend to have better color accuracy, wider gamut...
-Good CRTs have a long lifespan, not sure about LCDs
Dtiching my perfectly find 21" CRTs for 21" LCDs would cost me an arm and a leg, would also require me to buy a newer and more expensive spectrometer too.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a lot of money wasted to get inferior technology.
Oh, and for those people that only talk about electricity savings, well, why not get rid of your SUV and buy a scooter instead? You'll save a LOT of gas and money (a lot more than swtiching monitors could ever make you save)! Oh, what's that you say? It's not quite the same? Exactly. LCD isn't nearly as good as CRT either.
Unless you think your (reclaimed) desk space is worth 1000$/sq ft, or that you think LCD is better in a interior-designer standpoint, in which case I'll grant you it's a better buy for you.
Wheter pages are served on IIS or Apache only matters so much indeed - especially when serving dynamic content.
/.'ings with the new built-in caching -both on the data (SQL server) side and on the output (client) side. It should help a lot. Web-Farm session states are sure going to help for clustering, too.
...) - and they even encourage you to download the apps and test it by yourself.
I can't wait to see how ASP.Net 2.0 will be able to withstand
They claim it vastly outperforms J2EE as well - I quote: "28x faster (that's 2700%), and supported 7.6x as many concurrent users as J2EE, with only 1/6th as much processor utilization". I doubt their benchmarks (on the Pet Shop Store) is 100% true (one wonders who paid for them), although several people did similar tests and seem to have had similar results (VeriTest, GotDotNet,
I didn't care too much for ASP.Net, but v2.0 seems very interesting (More infos on ASP.Net 2.0) I was thinking of moving to J2EE primarily, but this has changed my mind, especially if it can be hosted on Mono as well(?).
Also, I've seen a lot of "code less!", "get more done quicker!" claims and such, and never really found it faster to develop into, but ASP.Net 2.0 seems to deliver. I'll be giving it a try very soon.
Agreed. I've personally been using logitech trackballs for a long time - well before the marble series (only the "thumb" versions). They're just much better than mice overall. I had originally switched because of frustration over mice: always running at the end of the mouse pad, then lifting the mouse only to put it down again on it's wire, repeatedly ended up falling on the floor, ... Now I also appreciate the lesser desk space it uses, faster speed/productivity and higher precision for most tasks (everything but graphic work, for which I use an Intuos instead).
I don't get RSI symptoms with it at all (it was hard on the thumb at first, but you eventually adapt). Going back to a mouse (using someone else's computer) usually makes RSI problems appear pretty quickly. I've noticed that cordless mice are nicer (no more "stepping" on the cord), but I've seen some wireless optical ones eat through batteries in little more than a week, and have communication problems, especially if you have more than one (I wonder if they don't operate on the 900MHz band).
The key to getting rid of RSI problems isn't just using a trackball (which doesn't work for everybody it seems), but changing/alternating pointing devices. I've tried a fellowes trackpad lately and it wasn't half as bad as I had expected it to be - and it was easy on the wrist. Using keyboard shortcuts also helps, by cutting in mouse use, and also benefiting by increased productivity. Posture is also very important but quite often overlooked.
My biggest problem with pointing devices isn't so much RSI nowadays, but the way mouse are configured in windows. You can swap your mouse buttons (for left/right handers), but not on a per-device basis. So if a PC has 2 users (a left and a right hander), they each have to keep changing the mouse button swap option all the time, as both change at the same time. The only way to solve the problem is to physically hardwire the buttons backwards on 1 mouse. I don't know if linux would let me configure that for each mouse... I bet longhorn won't fix this issue, as this would be innovative and helpful - can't have that!
-Good sound (perhaps a flip, so you can hear something and people hear you talking as well? it's like most cell makers believe your mouth is an inch away from your ears)
-Decently sized (not too small nor too big)
-Useable keyboard (for people with big fingers, or those with hand numbness/tingling)
-A screen you can read in most lighting conditions
-Conservative look
-Decently priced
If anything more I'd wish for a vibrating ringer as an option (for during meetings and such).
Not some convergence-of-gadgets toy that crashes, takes forever to boot, sounds like crap, drops calls and eats thru batteries. I suppose 12 year olds don't have anything better to do than search through thousands of ringtones, play games on their phones and such, but I really don't care about such features.
If you mean for desktop/home users to manage it themselves, I guess that could be useful (not that I think using IE is a good idea at all)
;)
In a corp environment, we don't want users to be able to touch those things, and we (at least I) use vbscript/WMI to change things like that. (MicrosoftIE_Security under \root\cimv2\Applications\MicrosoftIE is where it's at). Other stuff can be accessed in the registry. Making scripts to manipulate those lists isn't hard.
Haven't used IE in so long I've almost forgot what it looks like
Reviews are nice, but so far, all of the search apps I've tried had serious limitations, and they never seem to be mentionned in any of those reviews. They only seem to scratch the surface.
...) and none of them could do that (even tried some document indexing/storage systems). And very few would actually index "code" files.
... but I know that's asking a bit much.
:(
What they index: some make use of the installed 3rd party IFilters, some just don't-like GDS (although they have their own extensions now). It's pointless if it only indexes a small portion of your files.
What you can search: PUNCTUATION or SYMBOLS!!! That's by FAR the biggest limitation of those apps. Ever tried to search for a chunk of code/script/css or something like it? Most just strip everything else than the letters (sort of like searching on google). That alone makes the whole thing mostly worthless to me. I've tried them all (MS Desktop Search, GDS, Coppernic, X1,
Some can't (or not easily) index mapped drives (over network). Some only seem to work for a single user. Lots of issues like that...
It's nice to have something that can index my email, word documents or EXIF/IPTC info, but quite honestly, I don't use those features at all (and I already have other apps that do it anyways that I don't use either). That's the stuff those reviews seem to cover mostly, and all seem to do a half-decent job at it.
These apps will hopefully mature and get more useful features. Like perhaps central/shared indexes? I have several gigs worth of stuff on a server which is mapped on several workstations. Even if the app can search it (or be forced/tricked into doing it), do you still want several PCs indexing many many gigs of stuff across your LAN? My workstations * size of documents makes about 200GB of data to index over the network (and it's really redundant). If you format (or dual boot) then you'll have to reindex everything again (no ways to back the indexes up AFAIK). That's why I'm using a homemade solution using the old MS Indexing Service (and it also searches some SQL tables on the same page). One index kept on the server, only need to index the data once.
I'd like other functions like indexing/searching SQL servers, FTPs, shares, LANs, intranets,
If GDS could make use 3rd party IFilters and search code (text with symbols and punctuation) then it would be a invaluable tool. Until then I have no use for it and will stick to my (better imho) homemade solution
You could use a hardware watchdog timer card that would reset the PC (or let it reboot on BSODs) and automatically log-on and start the app (using limited user account - secure enough for a display unit IMHO).
:)
Otherwise, I'd rather toggle a line on the parallel port ever so often to reset a 555 timer driving a darlington transistor which would in turn drive a relay (or use an optocoupler or whatever you fancy) to either change video like you did - or just drive the reset button header on the motherboard...
IMHO it's easier in "outp" a value every so often then having to generate a tone, and it's easier to deal with the simple timer than having to deal with a tone in hardware (although both are quite simple).
So many options
For all of those who didn't know, it's a J2EE server.
Apache Geronimo Homepage
I knew of [apache jakarta] tomcat, but not geronimo. Sorry, I guess I've been living under a comfy rock for too long.
Like you said, the idea is not new at all. I remember seeing this years ago, the whole thing was submerged in a clear plexiglass container (much like an aquarium, but lower profile and trays over it for drives).
;)
And generally speaking mineral oil isn't really a good coolant (not very effective at heat transfer), and it's very messy (imagine taking out parts... no thanks!). And you'd think there would be some decent cooling for the oil... I'd like to see the oil temp grahps given a decent load, it just might eventually fry
HD size having increased alone means very little. A 300GB drive with nothing to put on it wouldn't justify a need for bigger backup devices.
What really creates that need is the contents we're dealing with nowadays. Gone are the days where you only had a couple dozen wordperfect documents to backup on your HD (or whatever). Floppies were enough to backup your files.
Now, the average consumer has much higher needs. I've got CF cards over 2GB for my DSLR that I fill repeatedly, miniDV/DVB-S/DVD/analog video sources that I capture and/or PVR, I've got a music collection and a music video collection on separate HDs, lots of documents/code/databases/email/ebooks/etc accumulated over the years (many gigs of stuff)... Even if you have a small'ish HD, you may still be dealing with a LOT of data to backup (that need to burn stuff is actually higher if you HD is smaller - you must make free space). And we're not talking about all the pr0n, P2P downloads and such that a lot of people have endless GBs of... I doubt any backup device could keep up with it. Even if we had affordable 200GB Blu-Ray discs, I'd still be buying lots, and soon enough it wouldn't cut it anymore.
Bigger backup devices are a desperate need right now for all of this stuff, but size is only one concern. Reliability is the other big factor. My photos are now all digital, if the media dies, I loose everything. No more archived film... We need something that will last, I've already had to re-burn so many things already, it's scary.
Right now, it looks like the best backup device is a HD, size wise (fits lots per unit-no excessive swapping), more reliable than most other [optical] storage means, and half-decent value for the money ($/GB) [for stuff that matters at least, like digital photos]. Both new format address the size issue, but not really the reliability. It doesn't seem like there is much hope for a solution that adresses both points to come out anytime soon.
While I haven't completely switched to apache, I have to agree. The reason why I also run apache now isn't speed at all. That might matter to very high traffic sites, but for most people it's not the real factor.
...)
They're 2 entirely different products, with each their strenghts and unique features. In a corporate setup with a lot of ASP/ASP.Net pages, windows-trained admins and webmasters, the choice will most likely be IIS. For someone making php/mysql pages to be on the internet on a cheap hosting plan (usually linux hosting), they are more likely to pick apache. It's easier to use apache on both servers, and IIS in non-server OS'es (like XP Pro) is pretty crippled (only 1 virtual site, very limited connections...) Small startups would probably pick apache as well (lower TCO* due to lower licensing costs/lower maintenance/less maintenance or consulting, portability,
Features, personnal preferences, experience with a specific webserver, what you're hosting, stability, portability, overall costs and such things matter a LOT more than speed in most cases.
* You opinion may be different on that one, I'm not gonna get in an argument over it.
While it may look better to you, a lot of companies won't even be able to open it (most wouldn't even know what it is).
...) Best thing to do is to ask what format they prefer.
Sadly, the actual format it's submitted in does matter, and not so much for the look. The format they use is the format one should submit into so it doesn't go thru multiple conversions or even OCR. If you use another format, it may come out looking VERY crappy after conversion (all formatting and basic layout may be lost, words split across columns,
Besides, unless you're applying as a graphics designer job or something like that, experience, knowledge and interview skills will matter a lot more than some fancy looking resume. I doubt it'll really help landing a job. I've used the word format most of the time as I was told to, and I never had much problem finding employment (haven't been unemployed over the last 10 years).
I already have like a couple dozen sites bookmarked, and I've tried 5 of them so far. Haven't had any problems with any of them. Selection (exclusive stuff), shipping time and prices changes from one to another, that's why I suscribe to one for a few months, then move on to another.
m
v hqonline.caa l.ca .ca
As for blockbuster, it's an hour long trip for me, their rates are the worst of any video store I've *ever* seen, late fees, they've held one of the kids' DVDs "hostage" until I bring theirs back (put the wrong one in the case), poor selection, they only got like 1 copy of good classics so it's always rented out... I've given up on them well before I started renting online. It just doesn't get worse than this.
Anyways, here's a few, I'm sure you could find lots more if you searched. Every time I do, I always find several new ones... (too lazy to make links, sorry)
zip.ca
dvdhype.com
hollywebdvd.com
davada.co
moviesforme.ca
jurassicdvd.com
starflix.com
cinemail.ca
cinedvdmax.ca
dvd-rent
rentadvd.ca
dvdflix.ca
dvdstoyourdoor.com
relayrentals.com /
dvdzap.ca (in french)
I think futureshop has something too...
A couple adult rental sites I just came across...
avica.ca
dirtyrental.ca
My pre-paid phone is 33 CDN cents/minute (in canada), but as it's only useful to me when I'm on a trip, I only end up using it for long distance which is 66 CDN cents/minute (twice the rate). The time expires after a month too, and the smallest cards are 20$ IIRC. And that was the best deal when I got my phone; and it's locked too. AFAIK, There are still no better plans (with decent coverage).
It's not like I'm expecting my 1.9 cents/min VoIP rates, but this is just brutal (nearly 3500% more expensive!). I only use it for short calls (calling cab/lawyer/hotel at destination or such), or emergencies... Payphones, VoIP, collect call - everything else is much cheaper, and by a good margin.
That's not to mention the refilling system is a TOTAL nightmare. I've often had to fight over with the automated system for over an hour to add time to my phone.
What I want? Not a mp3 player/camera/game console/PDA/whatever else hybrid gadget - just a normal GSM phone and DECENT RATES without having to sign for a 30$+ monthly bill for something I use twice a year. I may feel like using it a bit more then, but that's never gonna happen.
RAW images, even if not signed, are pretty hard to manipulate. I know people who take pictures that are sued as evidence (or in investigations), and they use the RAW format because of that.
Signing would be even better, but at least it's not like you're handing JPEGs that could be photoshopped. Things are only so much "proof". Even film can be copied, manipulated, and even printed to.
You're lucky if you can sell all your gear and just buy canon intead (I'm guessing you bought a D70 kit not long ago and don't have much more gear). Most of us have far too much gear to even consider it. By selling on ebay (or to a camera store) you can easily loose 50% of their value (not of price paid). For pro's, that might be possible to do. It's a big expense, but if you work a bit more, you could pay for the extra, but for amateurs who spent like 5000$+ to get good lenses, selling it all and buying canon instead just isn't so easy. That's why I got a Fuji DSLR instead (Kodak makes some nikon mount cameras too).
,to dTTL, to iTTL, forcing people to go from a 500$ SB-28 to a SB-80DX to a SB-800. There's not even yet a macro ring flash that works in their newer mode yet AFAIK, and it would cost a lot. That's a lot of money wasted of flashes. Plus, the way it works with studio strobes isn't optimal either... The Fuji DSLR I bought works 100% "real" TTL. he old SB-28 (and *ALL* older flashes) work as good as always, including my old macro ring flash and alien bee strobes. This feels like Nikon just wanted to make an extra 1000$ by forcing you to buy 2 more flashes (I know it's not that simple, but it still feels like it). That was a big factor in me buying a Fuji over a Nikon body.
... lots of things), but I still wish I hadn't bouight this very first Nikon body, so I wouldn't be "locked in" with all this Nikon gear. I so wish I had listened a bit more to a friend who had a Canon...
If you can, by all means DO sell all your nikon gear while you still can.
Not because you only see canon (at canon sponsored) sporting events or such. Who cares what someone else uses anyways? As long as it works for me I'm happy - and Nikon is doing that less and less well...
Because:
-Nikon's latest DSLRs aren't so great. Their high end (like the D2x) cameras may be fast, but picture quality isn't as good as you'd wish for. Nikon DSLRs usually not as good as their Fuji counterparts (PQ wise, not speed). Even Kodak makes some nice ones (just not the K14 that didn't deliver) Before the D70, there wasn't a real good camera for "prosumers". The issues here are complex and would take more than a simple paragraph to address. I'm not gonna argue with anyone who completely disgrees.
-Lenses: Nikon only has a few VR lenses compared to Canon (a year ago the only one there was is the 80-400 IIRC; now we also have a 24-120 and a 70-200). Focusing tends to be slower than Canons (or so I hear), and the AF-S lenses are expensive and heavy, and usually more expensive than the Canon ones. Nikon has some good lenses, but I like Canon's lens system much better. Nikon has also pretty much locked itself with the crop factor. Their new DX stuff ONLY work with it. If they ever went back to full frame (or anything in between), your brand new expensive 12-24mm DX lens is useless. I'm sure as hell not spending a penny on their DX lenses (which is lately forcing me to look at Tokina/Sigma/Tamron lenses instead...)
-Canon gear seems to be evolving more rapidly overall. Nikon hasn't made anything really outstanding in quite a while. Nikon is also a weird japanese company that doesn't seem to listen or care much about their users or the north american (and european?) market overall. There seems to be more used Canon gear for sale at any time too.
-The flash system. This used to be one of the few Nikon advantages, but they've made it a mess. In a short period of time they changed their whole flash system like 3 times: "real" TTL and variants (matrix, 3d matrix, color 3d matrix...)
Support isn't exactly great either. I had lots of problems with their slide scanners. Getting upgrades to software you own is a pain too.
There were other factors who got me buying a Fuji over a Nikon (better white balance, great at IR shots,
This encryption of white balance info seems like a big deal to a lot of people, but there are FAR more issues that I'm much more concerned with,
We *definitely* need better text search. I've tried the indexing service, all the desktop search apps, and a few more specialized solutions, and so far none of them were useable for more than a plain text search.
For anyone who codes or does web stuff (lots of ebooks and code), we need to be able to search punctuation and symbols (I'd even ask for a Regular Expression search if possible, or at least wildcards).
Right now if you try to search for something as simple as "a {" (w/o dbl quotes) you'd get lots of matches for just the letter a, or lots of words with a in them - but nothing like you'd have hoped for (or there might be, but like somewhere on page 500 or so). As you make more complex queries, the stuff that's returned seems to gets more and more irrelevant.
GDS should support 3rd party IFilters, it would add a lot of formats without anyone having to code anything complex. As for them supporting punctuation/symbols, I doubt we'll see it as google.com isn't very good at it either... The "index everything" plugin is nice to index all extensions we want as text, but the GDS just isn't good at searching for this type of index contents.
So far, our text solutions are only really useful for searching "just text" stuff. For me that means a bunch of office documents, which are all nicely sorted and categorized (no need to search at all). Search email? Nope, it won't do much for my webmail (my old/main account is still with yahoo). IM? No thanks, don't use that. So it's really useless for me.
To find code, the only thing that has worked so far is a grep-style search, which is VERY slow, and won't search pdf ebooks... With the current search tools, it's faster NOT to search. I thought these apps would do something useful to try to solve our searching issues, but they're rather useless (unless you got tons of text to index).
That's what I do when I'm away (although it's not a sub-notebook, just a normal laptop). Dump the cards on it, at night when you're at the hotel (or whatever), you got a nice and big screen to preview, sort, and anything you want. It also burns CDs (in case your laptop gets stolen, or it falls and the HD dies or whatever).
Last I checked, these were almost as much as a used laptop, their battery life was hardly better, and most didn't even come with an AC adapter in case the batteries were dead (which was bound to happen well before their drive filled)... They usually lack some features some people would want like incremental backup of cards (just the new pics on it). The only nice thing about them was that they're smaller/lighter than a laptop, which might be useful to some (I wouldn't take a laptop hiking).
My camera will also shoot tethered to my laptop by firewire on location. It can also come in handy for other things like playing music on a trip, checking maps (with GPS tracking), running card recovery apps if one of yours ever gets corrupted (happens more often than dead cards), and a lot of other things...