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blendergalactica

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Everything posted by blendergalactica

  1. I have Mac Mail checking and downloading email, but I can't get it to find the outgoing mail server. I've tried mail.blendergalactica.com, mail.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, smtp.blendergalactica.com etc, but I get this error back:The SMTP server ?mail.blendergalactica.com? is not responding. Check your network connection and that you entered the correct information in the ?Outgoing Mail Server? field. If it still doesn?t respond, the server might be temporarily unavailable.If you continue, you may not be able to send any mail.
  2. I use handbrake on Mac. Does a really good job and is free and opensource. Google handbrake. I do a lot of VHS 2 DVD transfers using dedicated machines. In fact, this is how I capture video for editing from VHS. I Copy to DVD and then import using handbrake. Yes it takes longer, but no dropped frames or other problems using capture cards. Plus I have about 4 Mac's plus my powerbook, so I can always do something else while that is importing.
  3. I was saying the same thing, but the more I got to thinking and seeing how things were going in the industry, the more I got to thinking that electronic distribution is going to be the future. After all, you only have to produce 1 copy that can be distributed thousands of times with the only variable cost being bandwidth. (which compared to discs and shipping...)
  4. I've seen a superbowl, World Series, and now all we need is a Stanley Cup...But I'm glad we've won...just when nobody thought they would...they actually pull it off. Go Cards...and for La Russa, finally....after how many years of making the playoffs and coming up short?"Now the question is: "How many will be back?"
  5. Some are, some aren't. I have an Apple 23" Cinema HD display (it'a about 4 years old now) and it is HD compatiable. Others aren't, but have a damn good picture. I have a 32" Plasma HDTV with an HDMI input and by video card has an HDMI out option, so that gives me another HD option. I work with HD Video all the time, so I have to have the expensive monitor. I remember the Apple monitor was $2000 and the PowerMac was $2300 when I bought it...My Plasma is an off brand and only like $850. Amazing what 5 years does with technology.
  6. Cocaine energy drink...they invented that 110 years ago...It's called COKE-A-COLA...the Coke part comes from the fact the "secret" ingriedent was Cocaine!!! So screw the caffine...give me the real Coke Classic!
  7. I am in the video production industry and have been working with HDV (High Def Video) for a couple years now. Until this past month, when I bought a Blu-Ray burner, the only way to send that content to clients was via external harddrive. (Since I did mostly post production work, they wanted things in raw formats anyway).I have a couple clients that want work done in HDV for christmas even though most people don't have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player yet and there is going to be that nasty format war in the next year or two. I keep telling my clients, when they ask blu-ray or HD-DVD (as in what should they buy) neither because I believe that HD content is going to be delivered over broadband over services like iTunes. We're already seeing that with TV shows. I buy season passes to Battlestar Galactica, SG-1, and Atlantis since I don't get Sci-Fi at my apartment. Is it as clear and bright as watching over digital cable? No, but it looks good enough for my tastes on my 23" Apple Cinema HD display. Plus I can download it to my video iPod and watch when I want too. Like at the laudramat waiting for clothes to dry. I've heard rumors of a Mac Mini like device dubbed "iTV" being developed by Apple. Considering that's a Mac Mini with front row remote now and HDMI output adaptor....Anyway, that's my thoughts. And on the topic, I'm doing a fan based 3D animated "webisode" series for this next summer that is being designed specifically for the iPod video/itunes format. Good idea or comments, thoughts?
  8. I used 1stpage 2000 for several years until I switched to Mac. Now I use NVU. It's a bit buggy sometimes, but works very well for my needs. NVU is the opensource extention of the old Netscape Composer from way, way back, like a decade ago. But it has a bunch of features and works a lot of different platforms.
  9. Basically a dual core is two processors on a single die(chip). I have a Quadcore PowerMac G5, which is 2 dualcore chips) and I notice a lot of pick up when I'm running Final Cut Pro (Video Editing) Shake(Video Compostiting), and other applications at the same time. Granted I also have 8GB of ram in the machine too. So a combined 10Ghz and 8GB of Ram is extremely nice combo. Too bad I keep running out of HDD space and have to get external 1TB HDD's.
  10. The short answer is now, but there are some that can disable your software from reading or making changes to hardware. But mostl viruses are designed by script kiddies and do annoying things like email them selves 5000 times and clog mail servers.The worse part is when a virus zombies your computer and then allows folks to use it for a lot of bad things from piracy, to DDOS attacks, to a kiddie porn server. It really suck if someone did that to you and the authorities come blasting down your door.
  11. This is in response to China trying to blind a few of our spy satalites and is the next logic step as more countries enter into the crowded global orbaital space. Basic this policy says, if someone tries to do stuff to our sats in orbit, we reserve the right to respond...As far as the back to the moon thing...just a ploy. Because of the Moon Treaty, there is no incentive for the uS or private interests to do anything with the moon. Simple as that.
  12. Considering I charge between $6500 - $9000 for a HD project...Granted I might see about $2000 of that as money in my pocket. The rest goes into hardware and equipement. At least I got smart and started renting the cameras since I average 7 - 9 projects a year...no more spending $8000 every other year for new cameras...
  13. This is a typical libertarian rant here, but you have the right to be gay and I have the right not to agree with it and express that opinoin. So long as I'm not threating and expressing my opinion...
  14. I just bought Sony's internal Blu-Ray burner and installed into my Quadcore Mac. I do video editing and have been using HDC (High Def Camera) and Final Cut Pro 4.5HD for several years now. Finally I have a way to get that content onto a drive and to customers other than on an external HDD. I made two test videos and they both worked with DVD Studio Pro 4. Problem being right now those test run me about $20 each for the disc and I'm charging clients $50 per HD video output. The drive is also backwards compatiable so it burns standard DVD's and CD's as well. The price tag was $800 for the internal drive, which is high, but I'm the first HD video guy in the area and already have several $8000 projects lined up for the holidays. Again the killer is the cost of the media. The drive isn't that bad (my first cd burner was $1800), but $20 per disc gets up there quickly. So far no coasters, but the reason why I'm charging $50 per burn just incase. If everthing goes well, I make $30. If not and I have to do it over, then I only make $10.
  15. In the editing tab (the one that looks like a square with four dots) click Set smooth. That will get rid of those harsh angles and make everything look nice and smooth. Also, work on the lighting just a bit. Try using Ambient Occulsion in the World tab (looks like globe) and set the energy to .20 and try rendering it again. Other than that, nice work.
  16. The DPRK (NK) have been willing to sell other military hardware for cash in the past. Given their track record, it is possibly and even likely that they may sell nukes to other states and even non-state actors. It's hard to believe that anyone would be that stupid, but with Jim Jong Il.....As far as NK's asserstion that the US was going to strike first....that's just bloody crazy. Now the US might have attempted a shoot down of a DPRK MRBM (not sure if it really can be called an ICBM) with the Ageis cruiser system might have happened if the rocket hadn't exploded a few seconds after lift off. While there is a good chance the the ground based interceptors and kill vechciles designed to be placed in Alaska will never work, the Ageis system has proven sucessful in shooting down ICBM's over the Pacific. I think at last tally they were 5/6. Not sure how well that would work in teh real world, but rest assured any crusier would be firing a salvo of the SM-3 ABM varrients at any ballistic missile launched from NK. I wouldn't be shocked to see the US secretly rush the ABL 747 out into service either. Although not designed for testing until next year, I'm sure that the crew at Kirtland are now working around the clock to get something that could go sooner than that if called upon. Then you also have the new Patriot missiles that are based in Japan. While designed to shoot down cruise missiles and shorter ranged missiles, the Patriots should be able to provide some defense. Oh course, nukes are like horseshoes...you only have to get close to do a lot of damage. Although those that were hypercritical of the Bush ABM plan....that ABM defense shield idea is looking a tad bit wiser these days.
  17. Long term, I don't think it's going to matter because things are going to a digital download format anyway. People like Apple and iTunes are going to make optical disks go the way of the VHS tape. There is a rumored set top box called iTv in development and the newer Mac Mini's with the front row remote seem to be about one step away from the final product. And with Jobs now on the board of directors for Disney, one of if not the largest producer of direct to video content that a lot parents already buy, it seems that download on demand is going to be how things are transferred in the future. I work in video production and I've asked for years about HD content. Yes we have HD camera, yes we have FCP HD editing, but we have no way of getting that content to a screen other than broadcast or via a computer with an HDMI out connector. And I think this is going to happen real quick as cable and sat. companies have been quick to adopt DVR technology, I think that downloading videos is going to soon follow. As I said, Apple is already doing it with TV shows and some movies.
  18. From all my sites (8), I get about 220k impressions and 9k click thrus making about $1500 a month. Not bad since now it takes about 20 hours a week to maintian the sites, but it took months to set up the sites and a couple years to build a steady flow of consumers. On some of the sites, there are other advertising options for local vendors and that made about $9500 during the first three months until things with A.S. built up. As with any good site, it takes time to build them.
  19. I own several website, just not on Xisto, that are very specific and get like a total of 15k impressions a day and 200 click thrus with Google Ad-words plus Amazon.com book suggestions. (they are wedding planning and a beauty pagent sites) and then charge local clients for premo ad space. I make like $1200 a month from those sites with about 30 hours of work on them a month. Although it took several months of hard work to initially launch the sites and years to build them into steady money makers. Especially during the ad drought of the early 2000's before Adwords came a long.
  20. On our Macs that are dual boot (new Mactels) we use F-secure on the windows side and Norton on the Mac side. There really aren't a lot of viruses or scanners for mac. I'm waiting for the universal to come out for Norton as the version we have is still PPC. Seams to run okay in Rosseetta.
  21. This looks like an extremely useful tool. I do video work on a daily basis and seriously looking at this as I need to get a couple more external burners for DVD duplication work of videos I produce for clients.However, that is not an S-video connection. If you look closely, that is a propitary power cord connection.
  22. Now they've started threatening the rest of the world to actually shoot off nuclear tiped missiles. I'm not sure if they can do it with a long range missile, but short range....that could be a problem. This was always the threat, but China is going to have to do something about it. And they may just do something.
  23. I vote for the iPod just because of iTunes and the fact you can get music, TV, movies, and they are adding stuff all the time. This is true if you have the get the video version, but really iTunes is the deal maker.
  24. We knew that NK had enough material (Uranium) to produce about 5 nuclear weapons. However, to offically enter the club, you either have to sign the NPT or test one. They chose the ladder apparently. While the rictor scales show something happened, I haven't heard much from the offical crowd on exactly what the detections sats in orbit saw. There is some speculation that this test may not have been totally suspected as I took a look at the USGS charts from the Pakistan/India tests and today's "test" and there are some differences. The politics of this is interesting. NK has basically signed agreement after agreement and broken every one in the past 15 years with both Clinton and Bush. Again, people are going around Bush bashing asking why we are in Iraq and not dealing with NK because NK is a bigger threat. The answer to that is China. NK is China's pet and this test is as much a threat to them as anyone else. Yet, if the United States had intervened with a military strike and restarted the Korean War, what would people say then? NK has enough conventional arms and chemical weapons to kill a lot of people in the south and in Japan and would likely do so. Also, the Bush administration took the same approach with NK that most of the people blasting him for inaction wanted him to do with Saddam: wait and let diplomacy work. Well it didn't. It would not have worked with Saddam, and will not work with Iran either. I was living and working in Germany around some former members of the Bundestag in 2002 during the build up. The story I got from them and looking on the inside of German/EU politics was rather interesting. The long short of it was this: Saddam owed France, Germany, and Russia a lot of money. All three of which could have used the cash to help with their economies (all in various stages of stagnation). Basically, the back room diplomacy was this: "If sanctions don't work in the next couple years, we are going to move to lift them because all we're doing is hurting the people." Given the possible time frames, it was clear that the Bush Administration was rushing military action into Iraq. I supported the war then, and still do, on the basis that if the sanctions were lifted, every knew exactly what he'd do. I doubt there would be any major support to Bin Laden other than to hit the US (enemy of my enemy). Bin Laden and his group's idology was as much a threat to Saddam as anyone else in the region. Saddam was a secular dictator and I doubt he was stupid enough to let a such a radical group have an open door in his tightly controlled country. That being said, if they wanted to have meetings or needed some intel help with document forging, etc...I could see Saddam providing assistence in that way including Biochem weapon materials. From talking with people that was part of the task force that searched for WMD's, it was clear Saddam had everything he needed to restart the program within months of having sanctions lifted. Although, there was always always one X-factor: we had nukes and Saddam was apparently (or at least his inner circle) always kept that in the back of their minds. "Those crazy Americans just might actually do it." To this day the message delivered by James Bakker in 1990 was: "If you use Chemical or Biological weapons, we have the means and will to retalliate". That's saying, "We got nukes and might just use them" in diplo speak. At the end of the day, Saddam and his senior staff was unwilling to deploy such weapons. Kim Jong Il is by all accounts a loony. He has complete control of his people and likes it that way. He's shown a willingness to export other weapons and he seems to be the type willing to do business with anyone with the hard currency. This is a problem. However, once again the Bush bashers who ask why he didn't do anything about fail to ask the right question: Why didn't anyone else do anything about it? Just like Darfur. Why should it always be the US to step in. It's almost like "Hey rest of the world. Do you want us to be Global Cop or not? If so, quit your complaining. If not, shut up and do something yourselves." Again, the big factor here is China. As much as China may have no love for Japan, the last thing they want is a paranoid leader with nukes. A military Coup isn't out of the question, with China as the primary backer, in this situation to prevent Il from doing anything stupid. I'm not sure how more sanctions is going to do anything. NK is already the most sanctioned country on the face of the planet and that doesn't seemed to have worked. (And I'll argue that sanctions have failed in every instance; all they do is hurt the average people, not the governments that lead them.)Now they get the same lecture as everyone else: a nuke goes off in one of our cities, and we find out it's your plutoium, we're not going to ask who set it off, but we know where our missiles are going to land.
  25. I've seen at least ten different translation of different english spellings used on several different news outlets. More over though, I don't really care. I knew I was close and I'm not going to give them the bloody respect to bother to look it up.
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