Sometimes you can configure wireless internet. I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 centrino/Pentium-m laptop with the standard intel wireless. Moving between wireless access points is a right pain in the arse, and regularly requires a reboot. Nothing else seems to allow me to connect to a different access point, and after rebooting it connects to the access point immediately.
I've been using various unix operating systems for a long time now, and various Linux distributions for over 10, so I don't think it is me. Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I've had a pretty good look at the problem so far.
Linux is not a choice for a few things still. Audio is still really quite lacking - while tools such as Audacity, Ardour and RoseGarden (and related packages) offer a great deal of functionality, there is still nothing that can compete with any of the major Windows/Mac applications - eg Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, ProTools, Sibelius, Finale... There is no easy to use quality score writing package, or any thing that can handle midi sufficiently, or any way (or attempt) at integrating these things together in an easy to use way.
I'm sure these things will come in time, but they aren't here yet, and as such the Windows and Mac domination will continue. Usability is a key thing here - I would say the available audio applications (and even distributions such as Ubuntu) have a long way to go before they are at a suitable level for musicians. Most of them are technophobes who use computers purely because that is the only practical tool available to them. Many musicians are keen to try linux, but when shown the state of the art apps usually gets the response "but why would you want to use that?".
No, let's not. "God bless America" indeed - have you any idea how many people that offends ? Is it any wonder most of the world wants to blow the USA off the planet?
Since Vista Ultimate Edition is probably only for the uber-geek, most retail buyers will probably only need to choose from three versions: (1) Home Basic, (2) Home Premium, and (3) Business. For buyers of Windows PCs, that choice is similar today: XP Home, XP Media Center Edition, and XP Pro.
Vista Ultimate is for the w4r3z d00dz
Home Basic is for those that buy Windows (with a PC, or retail boxed)
Home Premium is for those that buy it cos the man in the shop said so
Business is, well, what businesses will run, and w4r3z d00dz.
I suspect Microsoft could save themselves a lot of costs there...
How about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Prime ? Admittedly his case is more complex, but a major part of his 38 years imprisonment sentence was for his Soviet related activities.
Where I work access to the USB ports on Windows machines is strictly locked down (and the only other desktop machines we have are Sun Blades - heaven forbid we should be allowed to run Linux on the desktop!). Anyway, basically nobody can use USB peripherals except a few who need it for things like a document scanner, or perhaps memory card readers (eg for official photographers etc). I'm surprised more companies don't do the same.
Kodak, Xerox and Fujitsu all produce scanners as you describe. A friend and I built a client management system for financial advisers, and we've used a Fujitsu duplex scanner (around 27 sheets per minute iirc) plus the duplex scanning facilities in photocopiers to keep all client records archived. We currently have something like 70,000 documents (between 30 and 100 A4 sides per document on average) on one deployment of system - all scanned in a short space of time.
On a smaller scale you can also buy software cheaply now which scans and produces "image on top of text" (or vice versa) PDF documents that are fully searchable (even Microsoft Office Imaging offers this with Office XP onwards). IIRC these packages mainly use the FineReader or ScanSoft engines - which are basically the best around at the moment (for western scripts at least). You can then use the Windows search functions to find the documents.
Not all keyboards have it, but all those made for Windows95 and later will do (except laptop keyboards that seem to often ommit it). You can always bind it to another key using the MS keyboard layout creator (if you know about the tool and where to download it!). Or just use a two button mouse.. personally I miss paste on the middle button though if I do that:-)
Windows users get a key that does the same as right clicking (the Context key, seen here on the right. If you want to use a single button mouse you can, but quite why the hell you would want to is beyond me!
You have to bear in mind that it is Nikon Japan that make these decisions and not Nikon USA. I suspect Nikon JP could give less than a rats arse about the open source community. Canon and Sony (and no doubt Fuji et al) do a similar thing with their RAW files.
Remember, unsolicited email that links to a website ready to take your credit card number is bullshit, mom.
If only this were true:( Take this email I recently received:
Hi MR FRY
Your Virgin Credit Card statement will be winging its way to you
any day now, but why wait for postie to pop it through your door?
You~Rve already enrolled in our Online Banking Service, so in 2
clicks you can view your account 24/7.
Just visit:
www.virginmoney.com/service
to see your most recent transactions, payment info and last six
months statement history. If you~Rre a shopaholic, we hope it~Rs
not too scary!
Naturally, I complained to my card supplier (Virgin UK) and received the following pathetic reply:
Dear Mr Fry,
Thank you for contacting Virgin Money.
Although some customers have, in the past, been targets of fraudulent
'phishing' emails, the email you are referring to was sent from our
colleagues at MBNA Europe Ltd. As you are probably aware, MBNA Europe Ltd
issue and manage the Virgin credit card. In this case, it is safe to click
on the link contained within the email - it will in fact redirect you to
the Virgin Money website.
I would still like to thank you for your vigilance and would ask that if
you receive any more suspicious emails, that you forward them on to us at
info@virginmoney.com. We always take matters of internet security very
seriously and will investigate any suspicious emails as soon as we can.
If you need any further help in the meantime, please don't hesitate to
email again to info@virginmoney.com, or give us a call on 0800 068 7768.
Kind regards
The best bit is that in early 2004 I had an email telling me this:
At the start of this week, a number of Virgin Credit Card Customers received an e-mail claiming to be from MBNA (issuers of your Virgin Credit Card) asking them to divulge personal information via hoax internet sites. On discovering this we acted immediately to close down the sites that Customers were being directed to....
Remember, MBNA and Virgin do not, and never will, send e-mails that ask for confidential information or your security details.
But how about the other areas of study? I used to take music theory and people would rant and rave about their Macs or one of various composing suites in Windows. I tried explaining that Linux has (certainly more affordable) solutions to offer in this department too but no one would even listen to me. It's not like they were mixing platinum selling records, they were just looking for software to write sheet music with.
Ironically, the only area that Linux can (could?) compete at the moment is in mixing platinum selling records, with software like Ardour.
For scorewriting there really is nothing that can compete with Sibelius on Windows or Mac - even Finale doesn't really come close when it comes to ease of use - and ultimately that is what is important for such applications. The software should be transparent to the user, and not require a degree in computer science to figure out (for example LilyPond).
Oh yeah, of course... So MS didn't copy anybody elses software along the way, or Apple? I wonder if Unix was open source before the commercial software scene ever existed?
True, this is basically a copy of proprietry software, and in some cases copying functionality is necessary - people *need* and office suite compatible with Microsoft (at the moment), they need something that works with their iPod, they need something that browses the web (although MS used open source code to build IE, so technically that one is the other way around). There are plenty of innovative apps in the open source world. The commercial world builds what generates money. The open source world tends to build apps that have useful functionality.
Quite frequently I miss articles the first time they are posted for a number of reasons - mainly because at work I don't have internet access to my desk and on the machines I do have internet access,/. is blocked by the wonderful WebSense software (as it's a forum and I might leak stuff).
I'm also often busy out of work too and dont get around to look at/. or read the archives, so I miss them the first time round.
This might explain why for years ASDA (Walmart) had a radio station transmitted on the Astra 1 satellites - presumably it was cheaper (and more convenient) to run a radio station for their stores than to pay the licence fees?
Maybe because an LZW TIFF file would be considerably larger in size than the RAW, and take up the same amount of memory when loaded into RAM for processing? What benefit has that got? It isn't like RAW conversion software is hard to find, even in "OMG ONLY FREE SOFTWARE PLZ!!!!!" land.
Of course you lose data. Applying white balance shifts at all - whether the camera does it automatically or you do it manually in raw conversion - implies a loss of data since the sensor has fixed colour filters on the sensor.
The only way to avoid that would be adjusting analogue gain from the sensor for each colour individually (unlikely as it would be an engineering nightmare to do that on a per pixel basis) - and even then you would end up increasing any sensor noise present.
The best way to adjust white balance is still with filters, just like it always was. It just isn't so convenient.
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I've been using various unix operating systems for a long time now, and various Linux distributions for over 10, so I don't think it is me. Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I've had a pretty good look at the problem so far.
Linux is not a choice for a few things still. Audio is still really quite lacking - while tools such as Audacity, Ardour and RoseGarden (and related packages) offer a great deal of functionality, there is still nothing that can compete with any of the major Windows/Mac applications - eg Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, ProTools, Sibelius, Finale... There is no easy to use quality score writing package, or any thing that can handle midi sufficiently, or any way (or attempt) at integrating these things together in an easy to use way.
I'm sure these things will come in time, but they aren't here yet, and as such the Windows and Mac domination will continue. Usability is a key thing here - I would say the available audio applications (and even distributions such as Ubuntu) have a long way to go before they are at a suitable level for musicians. Most of them are technophobes who use computers purely because that is the only practical tool available to them. Many musicians are keen to try linux, but when shown the state of the art apps usually gets the response "but why would you want to use that?".
No, let's not. "God bless America" indeed - have you any idea how many people that offends ? Is it any wonder most of the world wants to blow the USA off the planet?
Err no, it was CCTV cameras and not the speed cameras. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/445591 8.stm
Gaol?????! You do realise there are rednecks here?!?
The Catholic church is probably doing just as much damage in the world today (AIDS crisis in Africa?) as any militant Islamic fantaics.
Since Vista Ultimate Edition is probably only for the uber-geek, most retail buyers will probably only need to choose from three versions: (1) Home Basic, (2) Home Premium, and (3) Business. For buyers of Windows PCs, that choice is similar today: XP Home, XP Media Center Edition, and XP Pro.
Vista Ultimate is for the w4r3z d00dz Home Basic is for those that buy Windows (with a PC, or retail boxed) Home Premium is for those that buy it cos the man in the shop said so Business is, well, what businesses will run, and w4r3z d00dz. I suspect Microsoft could save themselves a lot of costs there...
How about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Prime ? Admittedly his case is more complex, but a major part of his 38 years imprisonment sentence was for his Soviet related activities.
Where I work access to the USB ports on Windows machines is strictly locked down (and the only other desktop machines we have are Sun Blades - heaven forbid we should be allowed to run Linux on the desktop!). Anyway, basically nobody can use USB peripherals except a few who need it for things like a document scanner, or perhaps memory card readers (eg for official photographers etc). I'm surprised more companies don't do the same.
Kodak, Xerox and Fujitsu all produce scanners as you describe. A friend and I built a client management system for financial advisers, and we've used a Fujitsu duplex scanner (around 27 sheets per minute iirc) plus the duplex scanning facilities in photocopiers to keep all client records archived. We currently have something like 70,000 documents (between 30 and 100 A4 sides per document on average) on one deployment of system - all scanned in a short space of time. On a smaller scale you can also buy software cheaply now which scans and produces "image on top of text" (or vice versa) PDF documents that are fully searchable (even Microsoft Office Imaging offers this with Office XP onwards). IIRC these packages mainly use the FineReader or ScanSoft engines - which are basically the best around at the moment (for western scripts at least). You can then use the Windows search functions to find the documents.
Not all keyboards have it, but all those made for Windows95 and later will do (except laptop keyboards that seem to often ommit it). You can always bind it to another key using the MS keyboard layout creator (if you know about the tool and where to download it!). Or just use a two button mouse.. personally I miss paste on the middle button though if I do that :-)
Windows users get a key that does the same as right clicking (the Context key, seen here on the right. If you want to use a single button mouse you can, but quite why the hell you would want to is beyond me!
You have to bear in mind that it is Nikon Japan that make these decisions and not Nikon USA. I suspect Nikon JP could give less than a rats arse about the open source community. Canon and Sony (and no doubt Fuji et al) do a similar thing with their RAW files.
If only this were true :( Take this email I recently received:
Naturally, I complained to my card supplier (Virgin UK) and received the following pathetic reply:
The best bit is that in early 2004 I had an email telling me this:
Sigh...
Ironically, the only area that Linux can (could?) compete at the moment is in mixing platinum selling records, with software like Ardour.
For scorewriting there really is nothing that can compete with Sibelius on Windows or Mac - even Finale doesn't really come close when it comes to ease of use - and ultimately that is what is important for such applications. The software should be transparent to the user, and not require a degree in computer science to figure out (for example LilyPond).
Hey, that looks like the text of a spam I recieved this morning!
Oh yeah, of course... So MS didn't copy anybody elses software along the way, or Apple? I wonder if Unix was open source before the commercial software scene ever existed? True, this is basically a copy of proprietry software, and in some cases copying functionality is necessary - people *need* and office suite compatible with Microsoft (at the moment), they need something that works with their iPod, they need something that browses the web (although MS used open source code to build IE, so technically that one is the other way around). There are plenty of innovative apps in the open source world. The commercial world builds what generates money. The open source world tends to build apps that have useful functionality.
I take it that they don't use GNU Classpath then?
You could always just diff the dupes!
OK, so this was a dupe of a dupe. Big deal.
/. is blocked by the wonderful WebSense software (as it's a forum and I might leak stuff).
/. or read the archives, so I miss them the first time round.
Quite frequently I miss articles the first time they are posted for a number of reasons - mainly because at work I don't have internet access to my desk and on the machines I do have internet access,
I'm also often busy out of work too and dont get around to look at
Since CDs are stored in digital form does this mean we will require DRM for these too (or can DRM be as weak as SCMS on commercial CDs) ?
This might explain why for years ASDA (Walmart) had a radio station transmitted on the Astra 1 satellites - presumably it was cheaper (and more convenient) to run a radio station for their stores than to pay the licence fees?
Have you been to a wedding or party recently? The number of dSLRs (mainly Canon 300D and 350D) is quite astounding!
Maybe because an LZW TIFF file would be considerably larger in size than the RAW, and take up the same amount of memory when loaded into RAM for processing? What benefit has that got? It isn't like RAW conversion software is hard to find, even in "OMG ONLY FREE SOFTWARE PLZ!!!!!" land.
Of course you lose data. Applying white balance shifts at all - whether the camera does it automatically or you do it manually in raw conversion - implies a loss of data since the sensor has fixed colour filters on the sensor.
The only way to avoid that would be adjusting analogue gain from the sensor for each colour individually (unlikely as it would be an engineering nightmare to do that on a per pixel basis) - and even then you would end up increasing any sensor noise present.
The best way to adjust white balance is still with filters, just like it always was. It just isn't so convenient.
Batteries tend not to work too well when it is cold.