unimatrix

We use Apple Logic Pro for our sound works, but then again we've switched now to everything using Final Cut Pro Sudio apps phasing out all the adobe products but Photoshop and Illistrator.

Actually the video card has nothing to do with rendering, only with the program running. The more video ram, the faster things will select on screen and move around and the larger number of ploy's that can be display. Some packages will offer a sample render function that uses the vid card for a quick and dirty rendering without all the features. (I havn't touched Max since 2.5) However, rendering frames of actually has to do with CPU and RAM. Most of the newer rendering engines are tuned for Intel chips, with exception to Mental Ray, which is tuned to Linux and AMD 64. Your better off with a lesser video card and more raw Ghz and you really will not see large performance boost from a 64-bit processor until the code has been optimized for 64-bit and you double the ram on your system. If you were using 2GB on a 32-bit system, you'd better have 4GB to see a good increase in the rendering times. Vid card helps run the program & display windows, CPU & RAM effect render times. ==================================== I am not sold on AMD 64 for most users. Unless you have performance tuned apps for a 64-bit platform, or playing lots of games, all your regular 32-bit apps on the Amd 64 system are going to be noticably slower. We had the same problem with Sun Workstations. We had all 32-Bit workstations to run applications and 64-bit servers to crunch numbers. AMD is enjoying sucess because they are not intel and the Pro-Linux and "elite" crowd have something against who ever the leader of pack might be, whether it's microsoft, Intel, Dell, whomever. If Firefox was the number one browser, these people would be looking for something else to support and switch too like Opera. Personally I've had many more problems with heat and compatiablity issues with AMD systems over the years. I have been around 64-bit systems for a lot of years now, and there are areas where 64-bit shines, but for most users, even gamers, I'm not really sure how much the 64-bit really buys you.

If you are going to use a copyrighted song performed by your self or a friend, then you need a usage license from the copyright holder's agent. Normally ASCAP in the US for most works.If the track is from a CD, you can use up to 10% or 30 seconds of a track (which ever is less) for non-profit, "educational" situations, say if it was for a short film for a video production course. If you need more than that, then you require both a Usage License from the copyright holder and a Master Use license from the performer. I work in the video production business and we go throught this all the time paying royalities and getting clearences for songs in a TV commerical. Sometimes, if it is for a student/non-commerical project, companies and usage agents will allow you to use the track free or for very little. But it does take time to find the right agents, write a letter, and get an offical mailed response. Allow a couple months if your really wanting to use a track.

Technical term for this is broadband over Powerlines or (BPL). Generally many think this is a bad idea because the frequancy used would effectively jam amatur radio opeators and several police/emergancy bands (in the United States). In an emergancy, this could cause problems because Ham radio operators in the past have proven to be the only reliable communications out of disaster areas such as after earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and even hurriacanes.

raises eyebrow to the Mac OS 10.4.1 Home Dual 1.25Ghz G4 PowerMac 4GB Ram 128MB ATi video Card (Radeon of somekind) 4x160GB HDD Superdrive Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Card 23" Apple HD Cinema Display 17" Apple LCD display OS 10.3 1Ghz G4 Powermac (Xgrid Admin/controller) 1GB Ram 80GB HDD Combo Drive OS 10.4 Server (unlimited client) 20 x 1.25 Ghz Mac Mini's 512MB Ram each Combo Drives OS 10.4 Configured as Xgrid Agents. Yes I do run a supercomputer in my basement...(25Ghz, 12.5GB Ram total grid power) Work: Mactel Developer's Machine Ram 2GB Processor: P4 (3Ghz) Nvida video card OS 10.4.x (Intel) all I can say under the developer's NDA. Dual 2Ghz G5 Power Mac 8GB Ram 2x250GB HDD Ati Video Card (128MB Ram) Fiber Card connected to 1.2TB Xserve G5 RAID Gigabit Ethernet Extra Gigabit Ethernet Card 23" Apple HD Cinema display 20" Apple Cinema Display Final Cut Studio 5 Lightwave 8.3 OS X.4 Server (unlimited Client) 20 Xserve G5 Cluster Nodes I work a video production studio, so yes we really do use that much power, but at $75,000 - $350,000 per commerical, we can actually afford it...

What you need to do is enable port forwarding on your router.Your WAN (DSL/Cable/ISDN connection) was directly connected to your machine. Now your server/machine is connected to a LAN. The Lan(router) is now the device directly linked to the outside world.typically, you can set up your router to forward request. SO that requested for your WAN ip port 80 is sent to the correct box on the network. let's say your wan IP(cable/dsl ip assigned to you by your ISP) is 123.123.123.12. Your LAN IP(ip given by the router) is now 192.168.1.1, you could tell the router that all requests for 123.123.123.12:80 is to be forwarded to 192.168.1.1:80 on the network. That should allow people to view your webpages on your server.Exactly how to do this varies depending on the Router. Consult the instructions on port forwarding and it may require the set up and config of a DMZ if the router also includes a built in firewall. I've probably confused you a bit as well, but read up on any DMZ and portforwarding notes in the manual.

To me, PC systems are getting expensive to upgrade and maintain for gaming. Personally I went to a Mac for home computing and a PS2 mini for playing games. Systems today are running into performance problems due to heat. The people I know that have purchased or built machines in the last two years have all been having similar problems. Between the processors, GPU's, Ram, and other cards in smaller and smaller cases, heat is the greatest problem. One of my friends that actually does work for a game studio say's they are buying Falcon northwest machines for high end testing. However, the down side is that they are rather expensive.

GIMPgimp.org/

I think Spaceballs summed it up with, "Spaceballs 2: the Quest for more money".That pretty well sums up all sequels in any media. Typically in sequels you'll see additions and features that were often stripped from the orginial along with more tweaked and refined systems. Take the first Rainbow 6 game, then Rogue Spear, the RB6-3 on the PC (not the arcadish console versions). Rainbow 6 got the basics right, Rogue Spear expanded and refined graphics, AI, character movements, and the same with RB6-3. Now Halo vs. Halo 2. Let's just say I don't own an xbox to begin with, by one of my co-workers and I will swap Xbox for PS2 for a couple weeks every once in a while. Halo 2 felt like Halo 1 with better graphics and dual weilding. With the weapon changes and in MP, I still like Halo 1 better. Finallly KOTOR 1 was an excellent game. KOTOR 2 felt like it was released about 3 months too early, weak story, buggy as hell. KOTOR 2 defineately had the "Get it out by Christmas" feel.

EMP weapons to kill people by heart attacks...if the people have a pace maker, then yeah, EMP weapons will do serious harm to those individuals. As far as stopping people's hearts...you need an actual electrical current for that. Even then Volts hurt, Amps kill. That's why people that get hit by lightining, 100k+ volts, live while getting shocked by an electric chair with 25,000k volts and a hundred Amps kills. (really need to double check the exact figures, I think it only takes like 10 milliamps to kill a person) The most effective weapon against eletrical grids ever developed: tin foil. That's right, you can disable electrical substations with renyolds wrap! How much did the military spend developing this destructive weapon: $0. They discovered this when a navy fighter on manouvers dropped chaff (basically aluminium foil) and some fragments were blown by the wind on to some powerlines and caused a short. In fact, manytimes the first warheads launched in Tomahawk cruise missiles over enemy targets have tin foil warheads, not explosives. Spread over a power station, they can cause havoc shutting down the grid for days.

I've worked around 64-bit Chips from DEC, Sun, and IBM for about 8 years off and on. There is a lot of hype, especially from AMD, about 64-bit and what it can do. Here is something I learned along time ago using SUN systems.All the engineering workstations were running 32-bit chips. Why? Almost every application ran much faster than their 64-bit counter parts. Now when they needed to run simulations and crunch large numbers, they would send the datasets to 64-bit chips on the Sun servers. By the nature of how 64-Bit systems work, most applications you use in 64-bit are going to run slower than their 32-bit counterparts. Sounds odd, but its true. Partly because of optimization, partly because of the nature of the beast. Now, if your doing a lot of CPU number crunching, let's say like rendering 3D animation, you'll see a difference if the rendering engine is tweaked for the 64-bit platform. People have often wondered why Apple continues to release 32-Bit OS's on their 64-bit G5 flatform allowing programs that can use the 64-bit horse power via extentions (say PS, Final Cut Pro, etc). Well same thing, you write a 64-bit OS and non-64-bit programs, say like Mail, Safari, MS Office, etc. performance suffers greatly. Something else that I haven't heard mentioned very often, but is an old saying for those of us that's been around 64-bit processors: double the bits, double the RAM. One engineer told me that basically, you need twice the ram because the system is handling twice as many 1's and 0's at once over a 32-bit system. Makes sense and we did notice large performance differences on our DEC boxes with 2GB's over 1GB of RAM. How much that holds true still today....can't really tell you. Even in gaming, I'm not sure how much more power the 64-bits actually buys you. Some people swear buy it, but I have XP pro installed alongside OS X.4 Intel on the developers box we have and we ran a weekend test with BF 2 with a 3Ghz P4 vs. 2.8 Ghz Althon64 (can't remember...3000+, 3400+, something like that). We didn't benchmark with software galore, but if we didn't tell you what box the display was plugged into, you couldn't tell a difference. Personally I think its more a pride issue amoungst gamers than performance. Amd64 is just "cooler" and makes one more "elite" and crap like that. At home I still have all 32-Bit G3 or G4 Machines with a PS2 mini for games. Some how, 64-bits seems a waste of money for downloading music from iTunes, converting friend's VHS home movies to DVD's and checking email for me. As far as games...I'll stick with my trusty PS2 mini until I can't find games for it.

Bothers me some, not much. I remember when 3D Studio under Kentix (yeah I butchered that spelling) released a version for Macintosh as well as Windows. Autodesk killed the Mac version. However, there are still several other programs on the market. We use Lightwave in our shop (video production mainly) for titles and 3D animation. Lightwave is still one of the most cost effective pro CGI applications whose internal rendering engine (while beginning to show its age) is still capable of rendering broadcast quality images. Most folks I know using Maya use a 3rd Party Rendering Engine. Mental Ray is the current favourite. Then you also have Softimage with XSI that is winning a lot of praise from the CG community. Don't count out Blender either. They've made up a lot of ground very quickly. Will probably be a couple steps behind the industry leaders, but can't beat the price or portablity. Something I question is whether we'll see a new Mac version of 3D studio with the move to Intel chips...

Glad I work as a consultant...I have a feeling I'll get a little work from small businesses trying to figure this out. My first reaction was: "great, now they are really going to confuse people" to "wait confused people = more money for me".Let me be the first to say, "Thank you Micro$oft!"

I'm glad I graduated when I did in 2003. Although I'm going back next year into Law School. (hopefully, LSAT's next weekend pray for me having to go through 4 hours of mental rape). The number one method of cheating in those days were still from the Greeks taking previous papers on similar topics and copying similar ideas, then having a brother/sister english major check over to make sure things weren't too similar. Then there were the super English/Writing gods that could pound out an easy A on most subjects for $20 - $50 in small unmarked bills. That kinda cheating isn't going to stop and dare I say is part of college culture. Has been for generations as well.

iTunes 5 for X86 is not a port from the PPC version but rather from the existing x86 version for some other unmentioned OS. Hence why there isn't a universal binary, they already had a binary for the x86 platform. And have had one for quite a long time from my understanding. For iLife and other more specific applications, they may release two versions, one for x86 and another for PPC optimized for before mentioned platform. Other Apple, mainly the Pro Apps series, Apps will have universial binaries. That is because FCP et. al will have to support both PPC and x86 for a few years (and releases) to come and that is their bread and butter software business. It is cheaper in that case to release universials because then you can package one $1500 set of tools for both platforms. Although, Lightwave comes with both Mac and PC versions on the installation DVD, you just have to have the correct dongle to install the full software for either platform. The reason is that both versions are packaged are: A more than enough space on a DVD and B if your production studio is mixed, you can install ScreamerNet II on upto 999 Macs or Pc's from one disc. Kinda cool eh?

Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, EEb Contra Alto ClarinetOkay, yeah, yeah, I know they are the same thing only bigger with a deeper sound, but I made All-state and a college scholarship back in the day on the Contra Alto Clarinet. 1500 a semester to play in 2 college concert bands wasn't a bad gig. Beat having to work. Although I havn't picked up my clarinet in nearly 5 years and my bass clarinet in over 3. I never owned the Contra Alto, better the school owned the $7,000 intrument. I really should think about joining a community band or something just to get back into practice.

Dual 1.25 Ghz G4 Power Mac4GB Ram23" Apple HD Cinema Display17" Apple LCD DisplaySuperdriveCreative 5.1 Suround Sound speakers128 ATi video CardLightwave 8.3Final Cut Pro Studio 5Blender 3DOS X.4 Server (10-Client) (configured as Xgrid Admin & Screamernet II admin)10 1.25 Ghz G4 Mac Mini's512MB Ram eachCombo DriveApple Remote DesktopConfigured as Xgrid Agents (clustered system) & Screamernet II (lightwave rendering)I've started a small side business on the weekends rendering Lightwave and FCP projects for small video production (mainly wedding video) companies that are behind. Give them a couple firewire 250GB external HDD's, they load their project files and then I render the projects to a master DVD for them at about $50 per project. When they finish editing, they can move onto the next project and in an afternoon I can render 2 - 3 of their back logged projects. Then I have two freelance Lightwave artists that lease so many hours per month to render their medium projects. Same thing, send me the files and let me render so they can move onto the next project. Gives me money to support my RC Airplane and Hockey habbits.

I suspect that Limewire and some of the Bit Torrent Clients will be next on the list. In the decentralized post-Napster eras, it is hard to go after say the Gnutella or Bit Torrent Networks themselves, but you can go after those providing clients and websites that offer access to said networks. Basically that was what was decided in the Grokster case.

We've reached a point in computing where heat all around is becoming the greatest problem in systems today. Between the CPU's, high performance GPU's, and high performance RAM systems today put out more heat than ever before. Before only higher end servers generated the same amounts of heat. Also, case form factors are getting smaller which only compound the problem. I started having heat issues with the 1.2 Ghz AMD Althon thunderbird series of chips. I had a standard Mid-tower ATX case and added two PCI slot fans to suck out enough air to keep the system reasonable stable. Drilling holes in the side of the case and adding and machining out additional 80mm case fan on one side panel also helped a buch too with air flow. People wanting to build their own high performance machines and that aren't going to be moving them much and have the room, I recommend starting with a full tower case with as many fans as you can get. I'm pretty much out of touch with the PC side of things (work around Macs all the time now) so not sure how many manufactures are making said cases these days. Some useful tips:Use a good heat sink with good thermo paste, not the cheap stuff. Get as much air flow in your case as you can. Unless you spent a bunch of money on your case, a cordless drill and a sheet metal bit can do wonders in creating passive cooling.Take the side off and get a box fan and have it pointed at the open side. I've known a few people that's done this. Box fans are cheap, a little noisy, but move a lot of air onto the opened case. (box fans as in the box fans you box for your house)One move Intel is making I'm taking keen interest in and that's increasing performance per watt. Less power is great in laptops, but the more power, the more heat too, so one should see an increase in performance with such an increase in heat generated.

I plan to stick with my PS 2 until next christmas time at least, maybe longer. Why? First off, there are plenty of PS 2 titles still coming out. Second off, these first generation Xbox 360's will lack the next generation DVD drive. Lastly, the next generation DVD format hasn't been decided yet. Personally I want to see if Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is going to win, as well as for a decent game catalog for each system, before I plop down USD 500 for my next system.I have the mini PS2. I'll swap with my friends to get an X-box now and then to play games like Halo and KOTOR, but generally I've liked the graphics on many games on the PS 2 better, most notabley the Ghost Recon 1 series. Ghost Recon 2 and Rainbow 6 games using the Spliter Cell engine are way too arcadish for me on the consoles. I can't wait for Battlefield to come to the PS2.

Went and saw the movie yesterday with a couple people from work. We took off at 3:30 to see it at the rush hour showing on the local 3-Story tall movie screen. I was very pleased. The movie isn't going to win an Oscar, but I felt I got my $8.00 worth in entertainment. Actually $8.00 is frankly still a little steep for 2 hours, but hey its the first movie I've seen since Episode III back in May.If there were a few more well written and different movies out there, like Serenity, I might actually goto the theater more.I never watched Firefly during its first airing, in fact I didn't even know it existed other than someone complaining about it on Slashdot from time to time. Saw the Episodes on Sci-Fi the past few weeks before Sci-Fi Friday, the only night of the week I actually watch TV, and found the show and characters to be well thought out and developed. Movie answered many of the questions about River, but still left the Sheperd's past very much a mystery. Although that isn't all bad. Only spoiler I'll give is that two of the show's main characters are killed off. If your looking for an entertaining movie to catch, Senerity is defintately worth a look.

Again, you fail to understand the Apple market base. Apple users could usually care less about the latest and greatest video card. So long as what they got will run the latest version of the Pro Apps, they don't really care. Conversely, so long as the consumer's machine can connect to the internet, check email, download music from itunes, maybe do some lite editing in iMovie of home movies, they really don't care about the latest video cards or other equipment. Usually when the video card won't handle the latest release of OS X or FCP, it is seriously time to start thinking about a new machine. The video cards are made by ATi and Nvidia and are the same ones you'll find in PC's (only in ATi's case you'll get better drivers for the Mac)

People really bite into windows because they are the big dog on the street. Not to say that all of Microsoft's past dealing have been legal not to even mention fair is one reason. I still run Windows 2000 pro. Now Windows 9x had some stablity issues and problems with many technologies not working as advertises, like plug and pray. I won't even mention the bastard child known as Windows ME. However, the Windows NT line in business has always been pretty darned stable. I never had any problems with Windows NT 4 or NT 4 Server and then with 2000 Pro on the desktops. Personally I think XP, once turned to the "classic" interface, is okay, but is a bit of a resource and memory hog especially on older systems. With Norton Internet Security/Antivirus and keeping it up to date, I've not had any problems with with viruses on our 2 Windows machines in the office. (We're a Mac Shop). A lot of people blast Apple for not having a 64-bit OS for a 64-bit Chip (G5). Here is the main reason why: they still have a lot of 32-Bit chip machines in the market and very few applications will gain anything from 64-bit code. Those that can, do take advantage of the 64-Bit processess via extentions. Most applications will run faster on a 32-bit system than 64-bit. This is something I discovered long ago working with the Sun Solaris system. Most Engineers used 32-bit workstations to run their apps and then processed large simulations/renderings/lots of numbers on 64-bit servers. I started using 64-bit systems in 1996 with the DEC Alpha platorm. How much we gained from the 64-bit vs. the 500Mhz processing speeds was always debated amoungst the engineers. (Running NT4 for ALpha and Lightwave 4). Our PC terminals were Dual Pentium Pro 150's (maybe 200's I can't remember now) and a whopping 256MB of ram. Most of our Alpha boxes were dual 500 Alphas with 2GB of Ram. Today, I really have to give Apple credit for designing an effective, easy to use Unix based OS for the masses. I still have the same issues about developing for Linux I did over six years ago, (Although at the time there were new distros almost weekly and no clear winners yet)that is there are not really any definitive standards for a Linux desktop platform. Even within distros, people use different desktops, library packages, some tweak boxes more than other, and finally the different distros don't keep their dependancies in the same place, even from version to version. Then if you develop an application, let's say for Red Hat/Fedora, other distro users will grip and flood your tech support with "Why won't this work with XYZ Linux?". Takes a lot of time and money to pay people to reply: "Sorry we don't support you," and fosters ill will towards your product.

Office XP and Office 2003 are one in the same. Technically Office XP/2003. Still I stick with Office 2000 on the PC. XP would constantly access the HDD unless the application was running. Annoyed me to her the HDD click a few times ever couple seconds constantly. Did this with both the Beta and Release versions under machines running Win 98 or 2000 pro. On Mac, different story. Although I still have Office V.X for my machine. Haven't had any compelling reasons to upgrade yet.

Small technical correction: Linux is not Unix. It is "Unix-Like". Linux looks like Unix, but there are some rather glaring technical differences between the two especially in theory of layout of the file structure (mainly that most Linux people that develop distros can't figure out what /var is used for or means). As far as that token goes, OSX isn't Unix either. It is a Unix (freeBSD) file structure with a Mach (nextstep) kernal. For switching to Linux: try a live distro version first that can be booted from CD-rom and see how well a basic Linux install will function on your machine. Sometimes laptops have speciallized hardware and drivers that might not be supported in Linux. That problem isn't so bad as it once was, but still can happen epsecially with laptops. If you want to try real Unix, DL and burn a FreeBSD or NetBSD disc. NetBSD tends to be a little behind the development curve, but also will work on more systems including toasters. (and I'm not joking, someone made a toaster run NetBSD or rather NetBSD run on a toaster as the running joke about NetBSD is that it will run on anything except a toaster)