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Comment Re:Just a DSLR (Score 4, Informative) 85

>like the free Deep Sky Stacker to align them into a final image with total exposure time equal to all the shots combines

This is excellent advice on getting a much improved image quality but do note that stacking images will not give you the same results as a single image using the combined stack times.

In other words, if each image in the stack is 20 seconds then 10 stacked images will not give you an equivalent of a 200 second exposure.

Stacking 10 images simply improves the image quality by removing hot pixels. The result, however, is still a 20 second exposure.

The single 200 second exposure image will contain fainter objects (and more noise) when compared to the stacked 20 second image.

Input Devices

Equatorial Mounts For Budget Astrophotography? 85

Timoris writes "With the Perseids approaching rapidly, I am looking for a good beginner's motorized equatorial mount for astrophotography. I have seen a few for $150 to $200, but apparently the motor vibrations make for poor photographs. Orion makes good mounts, but are out of my price range ($350) and the motor is sold separately, adding to the price half over again. Does anyone have any good experience with any low- or mid-priced mounts?"

Comment 80 Hours (Score 1) 547

I generally do 80 hours coding/debugging documentation (over 6 days) across three projects and two programming languages (five if you count HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby and Delphi as separate languages).

I do find that by day six I am mentally exhausted and need a day off, which means no PC time at all.

A day off used to mean playing with a side project... but that got too exhausting.

Comment HSBC and OS/2 (Score 1) 432

I was at my local HSBC Bank branch in the UK a few years ago and spied OS/2 in use by their staff as part of their load/mortgage assessment "wizard".

It was either OS/2 or Windows 3.1....

This was around 2005/2006?

Comment Will Sun's OS Projects be affected (Score 2, Interesting) 154

I don't know if its me (I'm getting jaded and cynical in my old age) but I do keep wondering how Oracle's takeover will affect Sun's OS efforts.

The only reason I mention this is that there has been a noticeable (at least IMHO) change in VirtualBox development. Since the Oracle takeover, VirtualBox development seems to have changed direction or slowed down... I can't really put my finger on it but something noticeable has happened. I don't if the core devs have been affected/left or what.... but certain VirtualBox issues, issues you might think would be simple to fix, have remained unfixed for the last couple of months.

Again, I'm not too sure if Netbeans (I haven't used Netbeans for 6+ months) is affected.

Has anyone else noticed any shifts in Sun's OS offerings?

Comment Microsoft Killed PC Gaming (Score 2, Interesting) 375

I know this might come across as flame bait... but please bear with me.

I firmly believe that Microsoft has had a big hand in killing off PC gaming, despite having a big hand in standardising 3D APIs; hands up here who remembers the first 3DFX and Rendition Verite cards... each had their own APIs. It was a mess until DirectX came along...

Then Microsoft goes and kills it all with shenanigans such as making Halo 2 DX10 (and Vista) only when there was no technical reason for to do so. One has to simply fire up Halo2 on XP via WoWLoader to see that Halo2 works fine under DX9 (and runs 30% faster when compared to Vista).

That one experience convinced me that this was the day PC gaming truly died.

Since then a couple of gems have come along (Torchlight.... Borderlands) but the majority have been Console ports or just rehashed iterations of the same FPS games.

Shame since console gaming (yes I have one) these days mostly concentrates on FPS titles... which is shocking considering how utterly SHIT console controllers are at FPS games (good luck with that head shot) when compared to PC mouse based controls. Titles such as Fable 2 and Sacred, which I can multiplay locally with my wife (we are both Diablo addicts) are very far and few between.

PC Gaming -> RIP

Comment The West Aiding in Censorship (Score 1) 289

I am just wondering if these oppressive regimes wouldn't have such a hard time subjugating their populace if the West wasn't supplying them with the means to exert their power.

Is the Iranian government technically able to censor/throttle the Interwebs? No. Most likely some US or European publicly owned company is supplying the technical capability to do this.

Does anybody know who this is as I for one would like to know and boycott their products.

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