Walter Graff

So much for Obama and transparency. He did use that term about 3000 times in the election didn't he? He also said that part of his new work towards transparency was to reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. He said that he "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." But the first bill Obama signed into law as president -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- got no such vetting. In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing with no review by the American populous. Sorry folks, Washington has new talk, but it's the same film in a different wrapper. Get ready for a very rough ride.

The list I posted also included the movie film waste - A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film. Thought I'd share the rest of the special interest "stimulus" waste

Any part of the stimulus bill os a waste so don't feel bad. Just more money that will do nothing for the economy. Politicians don't learn from history, just repeat it. Here is some of the additional waste: $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient. • $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program. • $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship). • $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. • $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. • $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. • $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's. • $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs. • $125 million for the Washington sewer system. • $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities. • $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion. • $75 million for "smoking cessation activities." • $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges. • $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. • $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction. • $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River. • $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. • $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings. • $500 million for state and local fire stations. • $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands. • $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs. • $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service. • $412 million for CDC buildings and property. • $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland. • $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service. • $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration. • $850 million for Amtrak. • $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint. • $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies. • $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems. • $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

In the other post you never told us about the camera move. What is it?

Dimmers don't change voltage, only cut the wave. Flouros and transformers can't be dimmed properly by cutting the wave and rather need changes in actual voltage.

If you have a variac you'll notice it goes up to 130% and offers some fine over wattage.

Yea, I should have said my post was regarding broadcast and not bluray. Unfortunately only a handful of monitors tested actually correctly convert 1080 even though the specs say they should.

Just saying that we actually had sort of a setback with the introduction of LCDs. CRT TVs were all interlace. HD CRTs were perfect for 1080i as they did not need to make any conversions. Interlace in/interlace out. But all LCDs must convert broadcast HD to progressive and there is where you have major discrepancies between different manufactures and even different sets from the same manufactures. All LCD HD sets are basically line doublers as each field of a 1080i signal must be converted to frames via line doubling. So with a 60i video signal 60 fields are deinterlaced to 60 frames. And some of you may know the term 'bob' and 'weave' which is used to describe what seems to happen to graphics for one, in such monitors, as they seem to bob up and down due to the deinterlacing. The line doubler regenerates the picture using lines above and below the new picture it creates. But anything diagonal is a problem because the interpolator cannot make something that does not exist above or below. To compensate for this loss, a second circuit weaves the signal to make it look okay to the eye, albeit, creating something that isn't there in the first place and depending on the quality of the electronics, and how many filters are used in what combinations, you have the resulting picture, good, better and best. Add motion to this and now you have to smooth it all out with an edge comb filter. comb filtering always throws away some information. So most all LCDs are truly 1080 lines but only when the image doesn't move and really only 540 lines with any motion due to the interpolation. To make up for the loss, your TV today is more computer than TV using sophisticated chips to sample groups of fields and determine what moves and what does not, then applying what is needed to make the picture appear sharp and complete. And sometimes all these gimmicks such as 120hz refresh help you least when you need them most. Bottom line, the specs on the TVs you buy are about as accurate as weathermen often are. That link I gave earlier to LCD monitor test results show that you simply cannot judge a TV by it's printed specs. And many times what folks tout as a HD 1080P set is really more like a 240line TV set once you turn it on. Thank God for contrast ratio. Read more about it all: http://www.s3graphics.com/en/technology/ch...def_support.jsp Or read the AVS boards and learn stuff by some of the smartest experts in the field. I don't mist a day without reading it: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=167

"Mona was literally cut out of the larger canvas and remounted." Too bad it was painted on a piece of poplar wood panel and not canvas. Your teachers need a lesson in art history.

Sad truth is that plasmas are better than LCDs. LCDs have come a long way in a few years but plasmas still offer better color rendition, viewing angle, and blacks. The only reason LCDs are so prevalent in consumer land is that it cost less to make so manufacturers switched a few years ago, basically eliminating plasmas from the market.

Create a hi con matte of the tree vs the sky in photoshop. Insert your background into black or white of the matte. Done. Make sense?

Create a hi con matte of the tree vs the sky in photoshop. Insert your background into black or white of the matte. Done. Make sense?

"Walter, what, if any, point are you trying to make, that HD and Blu-Ray are wastes of money? That we should go back to SD?" No Karl, just that the 'nirvana' folks expect with HD is more a tune to 525 TV just with twice as many lines. So while folks expect BluRay to bounce off the screen and give hand jobs, they are finding that 'better' isn't always better to look at. I too have watched some pretty damn good Blu Rays and some that have changed the organic feel of a film so much as to look like sharp 525 video. Not telling folks to trade in their TV, rather just reminding them that in fact they don't really have much more than they did when 525 TV gave you 280 lines. Take it anyway you choose. There is just so much fantasy and conjecture that sometimes I feel like reminding people of some facts. Sad part is these TV set manufatures all spout these rediculous specs that when looked at never achive anything that people pay a lot of money for. Sort of like selling cameras that supposedly make 4k. They don't and 99% of folks who use it don't gain anything with such a high number. Sorry much of my consulting work is loking at reality and tell folks how to imporove the bottom line and that thought process carries over to a lot of posts I make.

And the sad part is that even the best monitors may not be giving you what you expect. A recent look at 125 LCD TV/monitors using FPD Benchmark software via BluRay shows that motion on some HDTV models is reduced to a paultry 260 lines. Sorry to spoil the fun, but as I said in another post, you can start out with as much resolution as you can muster, and broadcast with HDCAM SR but between how stations broadcast these days, and more importantly how poorly the electronics in your TV is designed, you are never getting full HD, BlueRay or not. Here is the latest tests and the resulting vertical resolutions that were measured when motion is introduced to a picture on an LCD using FPD Benchmark software via BluRay. And notice even some of the static resulutions are sometimes well below what you think they are. Point is, HD is a great format on paper, but you at home do not get nearly the quality you tkink you are, regardless of how good your TVs specs are, how much it cost, and how "p" the signal is going into it. And even worse, if you are watching broadcast TV, you are never getting 1080 as the method your TV uses to deintelace a 1080i singal ALWAYS reduces resolution to anywhere from not bad, to horribly. Thankfully contrast is far more important than resolution in determining how you see sharpenss. http://www.film-and-video.com/2008-resolut...s-125-hdtvs.pdf

Actually they claim 30 watt equivalent. Like flashlights? That's what this light does in terms of light quality. Stick to what you have, it's the best for weddings.

"Sheesh Walter. Hence my use of the term (generally). Save your endless dissertations for the library of congress. " Too bad I was not talking to you personally (David). I was talking about cognitive function related to the myth that looking through one eye will give you a better picture of something over the other, based on the question: "I remember David Fincher saying once that a camera operator told him to check the composition of shots with your right eye, and to check the focus of shots with your left eye (it could be the other way around). He said it has something to do with the right and left side of the brain if I am remembering correctly. Is this true?" A good book folks might enjoy that explains a lot of the myths about the brain in detail is "The dual-brain myth. Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction." by M. C. Corballis, (2007) Oxford: Oxford University Press. This book spits in the face of what many believe to be true related to the left/right myth. It uses all the science known on the brain to dispel all the myths. Related to what you (David) posted earlier that said right brain controls left side of body, etc, I don't disagree about motor function of the body and the brain. The right motor cortex controls the left side of the body, and the left motor cortex controls the right side. The decussation of our nerve axoms is well documented. Often this fact is expanded to make it seem like everything right brain is left and everything left is right or that one side has special powers and abilities the other can not. Simply incorrect. My discussion was not concerning motor functions, but more the persistence that every left is about right brain and visa versa. This is false. In fact new research shows that if anything the right hemisphere might be in charge of the left but can not function properly without it. "Btw. You are WRONG in the Mac thread as Apple is offering a $200 rebate on MacPro purchases thru Apple and not your local dealer.... We look forward to your three page response to that!" Sorry that you appear to be such an angry person (David). But I'll give you a better deal, MacConnection is offering $300 off on the new Mac Pro Pro. Can't get that at the Apple store. And two other dealers are offering discounts too. Mac still controls prices but the economy is seeing dealers now compete. And occasionally Mac has "Mac store only deals". Nothing new. Still not going to find 'generally' better prices of Mac anywhere in particular. It all depends on the time of the year and what Mac is looking to move or eliminate.

Wow, this thread is again and again showing the topic should be changed to 'myths and how folks really beleive them, and will defened them too!' Sorry guys!!! It's not the case. It's wrong. MYTH! It's based on poorly interpreted science and conjecture that one side of the brain does one thing while the other does another. It's a myth just as it's a myth that you use only 10% of the brain. If that was the case then when we scan the brain we would not see the entire brain showing that it is processing, but only a small portion. Sounds great and everyone believes it but it is rubbish. Here is a fact, both sides of your brain pass off information to each other and as I said it's not simply the right and the left. There is some brain lateralization but it is limited at best. Your brain is more in an intricately co-dependent relationship in terms of 'sides'. The lobes of the brain all interact. Areas may specialize in tasks but need the other areas to complete those tasks. It's part of the redundancies of the brain. You may have an injury that damages one side and you lose language ability but that does not mean language is only on that side. In fact those who are injured often complain that they can still reason the words perfectly but just can not articulate them. But at the same time, someone with the same idential injury does not have that language problem. Science shows we have to damge both halves of the brain to really have someone looss an ability at speech, etc which proves that two halves both have ability and work together. Your eyes simply send information and all the parts of the brain go to work on it. Say you were eating something while reading this. The frontal lobes in your cerebral cortex are doing the reasoning of what you read. The occipital lobes (in the back base) are allowing you to see the words and form them into sentences. Thanks to your parietal lobes which are on top of the occipital lobes, you can taste the food you are eating and enjoy it. And the temporal lobes which is in the middle base of the brain let you get distracted by the dog barking outside while you read. So it is not as simple as right and left but rather region, area, and segment, but all together processing, like a city. One side of the city isn't only sleeping while the other side works, and all the garbage trucks are not only on one side of town picking up the trash. Another myth? That eye dominance has something to do with brain dominance. Remember what I told you about the eyes... they have a dominant. Problem is it all depends how you are looking. Looking forward it might be the right eye that is dominant. But looking left your left eye will take over as dominant. That is because the brain is not a simple distribution device with one cable only going one way, and one cable going the other. Rather it uses all sorts of comparisons to make a decision and that requires both halves. Once again think "intricately co-dependent". Like the eye and 'dominance', the brain does what it needs to do, so if it needs to switch dominant sides it does, but 'dominance ' i snot exclusive to one side or the other. So the notion that one eye sees focus better and the other composition is nonsense and there isn't a bit of scientific evidence to support it, but sure is a lot of folklore and myth surrounding it. Yes the left side of the brain is often in a very generalized way characterized as detail oriented, more into order and pattern perception, where you do math and science and is more practical, while the right side is generalized as where you 'see' spatial perception, more into abstracts and fantasy, etc. All great but without the two halves constantly hand shaking, you'd half missing pieces of the puzzle. It's not the left only does this and the right only does that. You don't see focus of a film plane on one side better, rather information is processed on both sides, front and back, top and bottom, to draw a conclusion, but all 'parts' need each other and it's not black and white as right does this exclusively and left does that. Do a search under "left brain right brain myth" and I'm sure you'll find a hundred articles with scientific notation that show most of it is all fantasy and about as accurate as the "world is flat".

Too bad the folks who own Macs are not into the PC lifestyle of having something cheap with a name on it. Apples success is partially due to the lifestyle it creates. The machines are engineered to look real nice, feel nice, and to operate seamlessly. As a former heavy duty PC guy who switched, I saw that it simply wasn't about a box with software as PCs are sold. These mac clones are nice but you'd be better off paying the right price for a real Mac so that you can use it to do what it needs to do and use the appropriate software hardware that separates Mac from the pack. http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/psystar-o...7-32978558.html

Well with the way things are going on the home movie front, bluray might never have legs to survive. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

One of the funniest takes on Ah Ha was Family Guy that had Chris fall into the music video, act out not knowing where he is (cause he was born after it) then fall back out only to say I don't know when his mom says Chris, where did you go. http://www.spike.com/video/family-guys-take-on/2676204

Already using blue ray burners on my macs. No issues.

I just used one of those non water urinals the other day. Strange. It was an old unit that they converted. They took out the drain pipe, flusher. Strange.

I like having them for certain safety situations. Other than that that I just know the edge of the screen is the edge of the chip. But I do understand the problem if you were used to the old CRT VFs.

Buy Apples card. Its the best youll find or need

Absolutely true. Buy the bare bones computer from Mac. Doesn't matter where you buy a Mac, they regulate prices so there is really no special place to buy one. In fact look at the online mac store in the refurbished department. I bought three macs this way. You can save upwards of $400-500. Refurb come with the same warranty. Always buy the apple care which gives you three year on site protection, new or refurbed. Then you can go to places like other world computing, etc for memory and more. Or any place you choose for disk drives, etc. Great thing is that memory and other things are so inexpensive. Y9ou can buy 16gigs of mem these days for $500. just a few years ago it would have cost twice that much.