PMA pre-show report......online

Posted from Hello
Next Canon EOS leak....8.5MP, 8.5fps & some lenses too.

New Folder Bid

Oooh! New folder in immaculate condition - how could I pass that bid up? Of course if it was a "cross-platform" folder, I would be willing to bid higher. Even if it had been used, oh, say, once or twice...

Posted from Hello
New Folder for Windows XP
Hi, You are bidding on a genuine "New Folder" (See Photo Below) which I created on 24 January 2004, 00:04:24 GMT, however I no longer require the folder. The folder is empty and has been never used, and is therefore in immaculate condition. This item is compatible with ALL versions of Windows, so good luck!

Dell Fixes Smoking PowerEdge Servers

The motherboards of all PowerEdge 1650 servers sold worldwide between January and early May last year could be defective and should be replaced. link

At the colo: "Would you like a smoking or non-smoking rack?"

Posted from Hello

Apparently this is the information that the Photoshop Banknote detection plugin is using [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf]On the US $20, the pattern appears using the zeros from the repeated background "20"s

Posted from Hello

We always knew that the private sector moves faster than the government.

Whoops -- 4GB Microdrive?

Check this thread over at dpreview for some interesting info about portable mp3 devices with off-the-shelf 4GB Hitachi (aka IBM) Microdrives.

The 4GB Microdrive currently sells for about $500 at B&H photo.

Better yet, the iPod mini apparently contains one of these drives too (per CNET). So if you wanted to rip one open you might have a chance at a 4GB Microdrive for $250 plus some cool Apple plastic.

Posted from Hello
And now everyone gets around it....

Posted from Hello
Well, there's the answer to the question of scanning a $20 bill...

And a little more about the people who brought this new feature to us (thanks tara!):

Photoshop CS = Big Brother Inside.

So, poking around the 'net inspired me to perform this experiment:

Attempt to scan a new $20.

Lo and behold:

So I showed this to Mike and Lorna saying:
jonah: I wonder who at adobe took that meeting with the feds
jonah: "We need you to add some..."
jonah: I'd be seething and sweating bullets at the same time.

I then tried it with a previous model $20 and got a perfectly good scan:


At Lorna's suggestion, decided to find the largest fraction of the bill that would not be detected as currency.

And that was about it - the full height of the bill (excluding the borders). Importing any larger (by even ~1/4" on the sides) of a piece resulted in the above mentioned Big Brother Dialog box.

Crazy stuff - this blanket restriction prevents even allowed uses:

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided: From treas.gov

1. the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
   
2. the illustration is one-sided; and
   
3. all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.
   

Sorry folks, I knew I didn't like Photoshop 8 for a reason. I think I'll go back to my trusty PS 5. ;)

Low-power desktop/server CPUs

Also on the quest for low-power components, I was researching CPU power usage. You could probably guess this, but Intel isn't paying any attention to low-power anymore (after the brief 6 months where people thought Transmeta might be a threat). So if you want a new desktop CPU through any Intel IHV, you are pushing 70W+ through the chip.

6 months ago, you could buy a Tualatin chip, mostly marketed for servers (P3 core on the .13 micron process, with 512KB of L2 cache) that would use 30W at 1.4GHz and rather nicely outperform a current midrange P4 (well for everything but memory throughput).

Intel's doing a great job with Mobile chips (Centrino is amazing all around), but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with a machine I leave on all day.

Electric Bill Rules of Thumb

I've been thinking about energy usage recently. Turns out that if you take wattage and pretend it's dollars, that's approximately your annual cost for leaving a device on 24/7. So a 50W LCD panel costs $50/year. I have two servers, a PC, some really big powered speakers, so I'm rather curious how I might use less electricity. This is assuming 12c/kWh of electricity.

Also, after some websurfing I bought a Kill a Watt device from smarthome.com. Haven't tried it yet.

“Because the world needs another blog…”

…like it needs a hole in the head.