Apr 29th, 07
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DVI vs. HDMI vs. Component Video — Which is Better?
First, to clear away one element that can be confusing: DVI and HDMI are exactly the same as one another, image-quality-wise. The principal differences are that HDMI carries audio as well as video, and uses a different type of connector, but both use the same encoding scheme, and that’s why a DVI source can be connected to an HDMI monitor, or vice versa, with a DVI/HDMI cable, with no intervening converter box.
DVI/HDMI and Component Video are all video standards which support a variety of resolutions, but which deliver the signal from the source to the display in very different ways. The principal important difference is that DVI/HDMI deliver the signal in a digital format, much the same way that a file is delivered from one computer to another along a network, while Component Video is an analog format, delivering the signal not as a bitstream, but as a set of continuously varying voltages representing (albeit indirectly, as we’ll get to in a moment) the red, green and blue components of the signal. Both DVI/HDMI and Component Video deliver signals as discrete red, green, and blue color components, together with sync information which allows the display to determine when a new line, or a new frame, begins. The DVI/HDMI standard delivers these along three data channels in a format called T.M.D.S., which stands for “Transmission Minimized Differential Signaling.” Big words aside, the T.M.D.S. format basically involves a blue channel to which horizontal and vertical sync are added, and separate green and red channels.
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Apr 25th, 07
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When you arrive in an overnight, it sure is nice to clean up and feel fresh. Here are the shower facilities as I know them and you can kind of glean things from Skytrax “Lounge reviews”:http://www.airlinequality.com/Product/Lounges.htm
United Red Carpet Clubs in Hong Kong, London Heathrow, Sydney and Tokyo Narita have showers. With first class, you normally get into the red carpet club, so you should be set the Narita showers are in the first class lounge upstairs. Also, ANA at Narita has showers as well in both business and first class lounge areas.
“United Arrival Suites”:https://www.ameniti.com/ameniti/control/RCCArrivalsPbc. If you are First International or full fare business then you can also use the United Arrival Suites. You have to really march to get there early. The San Francisco ones are between the International and United domestic. They are hard to spot, but underground. They are in London-Heathrow, Paris Charles De Gaulle, San Francisco.
As an aside, if you are lucky by 4Q07, United is upgrading their “First Class Suites”:http://www.tw.united.com/core/english/AU/companyinfo/pressroom/releases/2006/december/uk_1212.html which aren’t that competitive with the really high end ones. The new ones are three inches wider (yeah!) and most importantly are fully flat 6′ 6″ beds. The monitor goes from a tiny 4″ to a decent sized 15.4″ and they are finally going to have an video on demand. Most important is that they bag the strange connectors for power and go straight to 110V universal power and even have a USB port so you can charge your iPod. The sad news is that this won’t happen until 4Q07, but at least they are going to upgrade all 97 of ther international planes.
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Apr 19th, 07
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Maybe I have a “rootkit”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit and not a virus. Despite all my best efforts, I can’t seem to get rid of this thing that creates a six digit EXE in c:\windows\temp. Wikipedia actually says that if you have one, the best thing to do is to reinstall since a rootkit modifies so much stuff. Wow, this stuff is terrible. There is a free checker called “blacklight”:http://www.f-secure.com/exclude/blacklight/index.shtml, but the problem is that to really work, you need to boot from a CD and not run the operating system itself.
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Apr 19th, 07
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Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About
Reuters reports that an AT&T executive confirmed that the iPhone will be arriving “at the end of June”.
“Our expectations are good. Our testing has been good,” said AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson. “The iPhone is on target to launch in June.”
This is consistent with Apple’s previous statements regarding the iPhone’s progress. Apple announced that iPhone was on target on April 12th:
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned
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Apr 14th, 07
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“AirlineQuality.com”:http://www.airlinequality.com/. I haven’t used this site in a while because I’ve mainly been stuck on United. But just this month, I’ve been on Qantas, JAL and probably Cathay soon, so it bears some checking. Some quick reviews for me and also see “FlatSeats.com”:http://flatseats.com which only reviews the high end seats.
# ANA. Wow, this is a nice airline. For some reason, I had always thought that JAL was better, but their flight to Shanghai has lay flat seats, although they are inclined. The main thing is the business class lounge is very good. They have showers and their udon noodles are delicious. They fly a brand new 777 to Shanghai
# Qantas. Who knows how long this will be decent airline since they are about be bought out by a bunch of LBO firms. I can say that before that they run a two-class service from Shanghai to Sydney. The business class seats are lay flat, but they are inclined. They are really firm which is kind of nice.
# “JAL”:http://www.airlinequality.com/Airlines/JL.htm. I had always thought this was a great airline, but it has slipped. The seats on the short Shanghai to Sydney leg were so, so and only reclined about 10 degrees it felt like and the video entertainment system is at least on demand (unlike United!), but the screens are really old and pretty much unviewable in any sort of light. The lunch was just OK vs. ANA. The main thing though is that their Sakura lounge is really pretty bad. Compared to ANA, it doesn’t have hot food nor showers at least in the building 2 satellite. BTW, AirlineQuality.com agrees on the lounges but not on the inflight seats. OTOH, this was a really old 767-300 that I flew on.
Apr 14th, 07
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As I mentioned had a really bad case of spyware. No US program would get rid of it (including Yahoo’s version of Webroot, Spybot, Trend Micro, etc). Finally got rid of it with a set of Chinese programs. First is Rogue Cleaner (“Onlinedown.net”:http://www.onlinedown.net/soft/42382.htm) or ????????. There is also an online virus checker that we had to use. You have to boot into safe mode and then run the web-based detector at “Rising”:http://rising.com.cn. Good luck if you have one of these terrible things.
FWIW, the Chinese name is literally
?? liú máng rogue
?? ru?n jiàn software
?? q?ng l? cleaner
?? zhù sh?u helper
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Apr 12th, 07
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I really don’t know why it is so complicated, but if you want to be able to have someone send a message on behalf of you and look at your email, there is a complicated process to get Outlook and Exchange to do it. This method from “Microsoft”:http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011367671033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 seems to sort of work.
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Apr 11th, 07
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!>http://images.camcorderinfo.com/images/upload/Image/Canon/Canon%20HV20/Product%20Pictures/Canon_HV20vsSony_HDR-HC7_Right.jpg! What a difference just a month makes. Since the last HD Camcorders, Sony, Canon and Panasonic have all introduced new models, this changes the decisions quite a bit. Using Camcorderinfo, here are the latest tradeoffs and selection:
# “Canon HV-20″:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-HV20-Camcorder-Review.htm. $1100 MSRP. Canon announced a bigger camera called the HV-20. Unlike the HV-20, this one isn’t a skinny one, but more like a small box. The big deal is that it has much better low light performance and retains the very high quality high light. Also, it has a true 24P (24 frame progressive) at 1080i which has much truer colors. At $1100, it is $100 more expensive than the HV10 and bigger, but it has a much higher picture quality. The main drawback remains that it is not a hard disk camcorder, so you still have those pesky tapes to deal with. Again, if you can hang on, I just feel that there is a hard disk HD camcorder coming in say by Christmas 2007. It btw beats the new Sony HDR-HC7 because of better picture quality and it is $200 less.
# Canon XH A1 ($4000 MSRP). Ok, this is if you really are a professional and semipro. It is larger and gigantic and is also tape based, but it has amazing low light performance. It has three 1/3″ CCDs and it also doesn’t have that really saturated look, but is more film like professional in quality.
# “Panasonic HDC-SD3″:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-HDC-SD1-HDC-DX1-HDC-SD3-and-HDC-DX3-AVCHD-Camcorders-Compared.htm This is a SD or SDHC card based camcorder, so it doesn’t have a hard drive, but is 1920×1080i with three CCDs. cost is $1275. The older HDC-SD1 is the only one available outside of Japan but I wouldn’t recommend it, it is not true 1920×1080i, but is actually 1440×1080i. The biggest issue is that it uses the new AVCHD codec (like the new Sony’s) which is pretty immature. It is noisier than the older HDV format used in the HV-10. It has more in-camera sharpening than the HV-20 and about the same as the more consumer-grade image of the HDR-HC7. The bright light noise is quite high at the same levels as Sony’s offering (DVD-based HDR-UX1 and hard-drive-based HDR-SR1). The second is that it has lots of motion artifacting (this is really because the new H.264 codec hardware used in AVCHD is still maturing) is really noticable in the Panasonic compared with the Sony HDR-UX1 for instance. BTW, this also means low-light performance is pretty bad as well.
# “JVC Everio HD7″:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-GZ-HD7-First-Impressions-Review.htm. $1800. This is the dark horse that we just have to wait for.This is a hard disk camcorder that is about to come to the US. It records in MPEG-2 at 30Mbps onto a 60GB hard drive, so it has a higher bit rate than HDV MPEG-2 (limited to 25Mbps) and isn’t as efficient as the AVCHD (15Mbps maximum, so it is about twice as efficient to go H.264 vs. MPEG-2). Also it has a broadcast quality Fujinon lense and has 3 CCDs. BTW, it is using a variable bit rate MPEG-2 up to 30Mbps which is nice since MPEG-2 works with DVDs, Blu-ray and most video editing systems.
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Apr 10th, 07
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OK, this probably should go into a work blog, but this is the one I have open. We are looking at a company where FASB FIN 46 makes a difference. It is about the consolidation of interest from special purpose vehicles. Its designed to prevent the Enron-like off-balance sheet financing which killed it. Here is:
* “FASB Fin 46R”:http://www.fasb.org/fin46r.pdf. The actual PDF of Revision 5 of FIN 46
* “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIN_46. The Wikipedia explanation for dummies
* “Equipment Leasing”:http://executivecaliber.ws/sys-tmpl/fin46/. Jeff Taylor goes over what this means for equipment leases
* “Vinod Kothari”:http://www.vinodkothari.com/fin46.htm. His interpretation.the high levels
* “CFO Magazine”:http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/3126336?f=related. A good piece on it at
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Apr 10th, 07
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“MP3Tag”:http://www.mp3tag.de/ is a nice freeware program that lets you take MP3 tags and change the filename. I like to do this so that all my music is really nicely laid out.
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