Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ps

What is the difference between an I.S. and a J.H.S., and what does IS stand for?

nonmerci — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:22:47 -0800

This is a stupid question, but can someone please explain to me the difference between an I.S. school and a J.H.S. school in the New York public school system? It seems both schools cater to grades 6, 7 and 8 so I'm curious about the difference in naming and the history of this system of abbreviation. Also, what does I.S. stand for? I know this is a silly question, but I've spent a lot of time googling it and I can't find it, and my curiosity is killing me. I'm sure the answer is obvious, but if you can answer the history dimension that might make the question a little more interesting.*

*question arose after reading this article and wondering what a P.S./I.S. was, and failing repeatedly while trying to search for these terms

The XBox 360/PS3 war rages on.

spamguy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:29:00 -0800

Almost time to buy a current-gen console, but I'm morally split between XBox 360 and PS3. I love my PS2 to death. It's the first and thus far only console I've ever owned. (My parents always figured the family Mac was good enough for gaming.) I'm slowly exhausting my list of games I want/need to play, and I'm sick of having a widescreen TV that can't play widescreen games. It's nigh time for me to start living in 2009 and get a current-gen console.

It's an even battle between the XBox 360 and the PS3. I feel a complex web of emotions here. I loathe Microsoft, and will go to great lengths to avoid giving them money. (Hypocrite alert: my MacBook Pro uses a MS laser mouse.) This doesn't necessarily make me a Sony fanboy: they've botched PS3 management so badly that I don't feel they've earned that $X00 premium. On the other other hand, Microsoft's 'red ring of death' plague shows just as much laziness and incompetence. So yes, as I said, a complex web. Do you see it as rational to spend $X00 more on a PS3 simply on moral principle? Which of the three evils is the biggest?

This is not quite the same question as one that was asked more than a year ago. Still, as a secondary question, I'm curious to know how the battle has changed since then. Personally, I see 2008 as a big win for the XBox. LittleBigPlanet and PlayStation Home were duds, while XBox won a port to Final Fantasy XIII and (I'm putting money on it) Metal Gear Solid 4.

How can I display colorful directed graphs on the web?

christonabike — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:52:17 -0800

How do I take a graph that looks like this and display it in a web friendly format? Oh, and there's 300,000 of them. The graph linked is a screenshot of a postscript file generated by the "dot" portion of Graphviz. Essentially, I have a bunch of flat text files describing directed graphs (i.e. which nodes are linked to which and what color the links/nodes should be). I need to display these directed graphs on the internet. The nodes on the graph need to be clickable, as well.

Ideally, the processing to turn the text file into the graph would also be done on the client side, but this isn't necessary. The graphs don't need to be capable of being manipulated, but that would be cool as well. The best idea I've got so far is to use Flash/ActionScript and do something similar to this, but I've never actually used flash so I have no idea if it will scale well or can even actually do what I want it to.

Will a US Playstation 3 settle in the UK?

badlydubbedboy — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:12:57 -0800

Will a US-bought Playstation 3 work in the UK? A workmate is going out to the US, and could bring back a shiny new PS3 for me. The question is, will the following bits of a US PS3 package work over here?

1. The console (assuming I have an electrical voltage converter)
2. Will UK PS3 games work on a US console?
3. Will UK Blu-ray discs play on a US console?
4. Will I be able to log onto the European Playstation network?
5. Will my CRT TV do to see the hi-def quality or am I better off buying a cheap LCD HD-ready TV?

Computers are giving me extreme agita. Can you help me?

TonyRobots — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:14:35 -0800

I am about to have a nervous breakdown. Please, can you help me with my mysterious, probably power-related, computer nightmares? Ok. Where do I begin? Please be patient, this is quite a saga. Over the past few months, I started having a problem with my machine. Occasionally, I would power up but nothing would happen. That is, it would power up, but fail to post, and nothing would appear on the screen. My harddrives also started acting blinky, and "SMART" started complaining about them.

I replaced the power supply (it was a new, robust one, but I figured wth) with a nice Antec 550W. No change. Also swapped out with new RAM. Again, no change. Seeing as this machine was about 5 years old, I figured it might be time for a replacement. I bought a new mobo (ASUS A8N-VM CSM), processor (AMD Athlon 64 3800+), video card (PCI-E ATI X1950PRO) and case, and set it all up.

The only components I brought over from the old rig are:

- 2 matching sticks of RAM, 1GB each
- 2 harddrives, neither of which I'm running the system off
- DVD/CD drive
- PCI sound card

When I first set it up, I left out 1 of the old hard drives, eager just to see if it would run. It did. I added the other drive, and at first, I failed to get a video signal. Rebooted a few times to no avail. Tried the on-board video, still no love. Then I plugged in an old monitor using a VGA adapter (the current monitor is DVI), and lo and behold, I got picture. I think this was just coincidence though, as when I plugged things back into the original set-up, it worked.

Hoorah! It worked! It worked beautifully for about 24 hours, even, during which time I installed windows XP on a new SATA harddrive. I was playing some HL2, enjoying the new video card, when, during a loading sequence, it froze. Couldn't ctrl-alt-delete, nothing. Dead. So I hit "reset". Since then, I have not been able to get a video signal off the PCIe card. I couldn't get one off the integrated video either, but now that's subsided, and I can pretty consistently use the integrated video. (That's what I'm using now.)

Some potentially relevant facts:

- The motherboard calls for EATX power, meaning a 24 pin connector. I have an ATX PS, with a 20 pin connector. Everything I read online, and in the mobo manual itself, seems to indicate that this shouldn't be a problem, especially considering my powerful PS, but thought I should throw it out there.

- I'm in an old Brooklyn, NY building, with old electrical. The computer is plugged into a surge protector which is connected to a LONG industrial-type extension cord which plugs into the one grounded outlet in the apartment. I was failing to get video from even the IGP until I reshuffled things and plugged into another outlet.

So, here's my question:

Considering that these issues seem to have followed me between two machines, could this be a problem with my (from-the-wall) power? How can I test this? Will a UPS fix it?

Sub-question -- is my video card fried?

Please, please help me. I feel like smashing things and crying.

Make my Mac beep me when it's finished.

AmbroseChapel — Thu, 11 May 2006 03:59:27 -0800

Help me make my other Mac, in the other room, beep me when an app has finished what it's doing. I have two Macs. The one in the living room is for browsing. The other one, down the hall, is where I do things like burning DVDs. It's not online.

So, if burning a DVD takes 20 minutes or so, I forget about it. A couple of hours later I remember and start burning the next one. So about an hour's work can take all day. And I can't be forever walking down the hall to see how it's going.

So, there must be some way I can run a script which monitors ps or top or something, right?

Every minute it could check and if Disk Utility's CPU usage was at 0.00%, then it's finished. And the computer would start quietly beeping. There's still some BELL character you can print to make it beep, right? Am I going to have problems with false positives, readings of zero for a split second?

For all I know there's actually shiny-GUI software which will do this, but I've never heard of it and can't think how to search. And I don't need it. I'll happily start the app, then type

beepwhenfinished 'Disk Utility'

or something.

Why digital P&Ss suffer from shutter lag?

PenguinBukkake — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 11:21:16 -0800

Why do digital SLRs have no shutter lag and digital P&Ss (even expensive ones) have a bad case of it? What's the technical reason I mean (I am not an engineer)? In fact, most people who still don't like digital mention shutter lag as a major problem of digital photography. Thanks.

postscript basics

Grod — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:59:27 -0800

PostScript basics. I have two .ps files meant to be joined together in such a way that, if printed double-sided, fileA page1 would be on one side of a page whiel FileB page1 would be on the other. I have at my disposal both Acrobat and GhostScript though I've never used either to directly manipulate ps files like this. I'd like the output to be a single pdf document suitable for printing on a laser printer.

Chestnut Plain Font

vraxoin — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 09:52:35 -0800

Can anyone point me to a font called Chestnut Plain? I've looked all over and I cannot find the thing. I need it in Windows, either TrueType or PS. If not, where's a good place to find fonts?