Jim, if you look at the video, at around :46 seconds, you will see one next to an adult Yellow Tang. They are about 50% larger on average. I remember them being pretty shy. Not as shy as a the elusive Picassofish, but not as bold as the curious Squirrelfish...

http://www.schneblin.com/maui/08b.wmv

You can read about my trip here...

http://www.schneblin.com/maui/

Yes, the video is great for relative sizes.

The 08b video contains a very interesting stubby pink octopus (or maybe it's a pentapus) :)

"Awww, you made me ink..." ;)

That Squirrelfish was hilarious. I had a wide angle lense and he was almost on top of it thinking that I was the weirdest, one-eyed fish he had ever seen!!

I DO have a shot of an Octopus. I had to slow down the playback to 50% in order to see it because it was swimming fast to get away from a pestering fish. It took cover in a rock, inked, then camoulflaged itself...

http://www.schneblin.com/maui/08a.wmv

This is a hard shot to get because they are so shy and sit still for hours. And by law you cannot harass them--which is good.

I will look among my still images at the Maui Ocean Center to see if I can find some good images to post of the Achilles Tang.

Couldn't pick out the octopus there. The sounds are hilarious, though. Reminds me of the sound on the old submarine ride at Disneyland.

Yes, and the submarine ride is now gone... sniff. Hope they put the old track to good use. The sound you hear is me saying "Oh wow, that's awesome." at half speed through a snorkel tube via the onboard water mic. So basically... "Ooooohrooorh, aaaOhaaaOooooh."

Take a look at the video again. You will see it fairly well at the first 2-3 seconds. Watch the darker fish, its practically on top of it and follows it all the way to the rock. To swim fast, the octopus is fully extended. When he gets to the rock, you will see his ink and then become "part of the rock".

Oh, THAT'S the octopus. I was looking around the edges for something less conspicuous.

Questions directed towards Jim may be answered by myself and Jav400 if we are confident that we know the answer. If I were stifling interesting conversation or questions that Jim would like to address and explore, I'd want to be the first to know.

I am not aware of any special plans by Jim to customize the Aquarium for any particular OS. SereneScreen Marine Aquarium runs on Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP all with as little as 128MB of RAM and on graphics cards up to 8 years old.

Taking advantage of the latest technology seems to do well for the gaming/enthusiast industry, but it would be disastrous for Jim. Imagine how narrow his customer base would be if he limited the Aquarium to XP and Vista only, or very high end video cards? The vast majority of his customers are not computer experts nor do they have recent hardware.

I think most of these newcomer aquarium products require a much more powerful computer and more recent video card than Jim's aquarium.

If I may take a moment to comment, Vista is a joke. The system requirements and Digital Rights Management will make it an unbearable OS. You won't be able to copy anything. 1GB of RAM? What in the world are they doing that cannot be done in 128MB? Who can really afford to buy a $2,000 computer to do exactly the same things they're doing right now on their $500 PCs running XP? It's going to look prettier -- that's about it.

And it will block you from doing many things that people take for granted now. Everything is moving from restriction-based to permission-based. Imagine getting some photos developed at a Kodak kiosk at the photomat and your computer won't let you copy the CD without paying Kodak a duplicate fee? This is the kind of restriction lawyers are sitting around and dreaming up for Vista. Microsoft and other developers seem to think that it's their computer, not yours!


Your opinions and feedback are welcome and appreciated here, but you're not asking questions that only Jim has the answer to. Certainly some movement on the Aquarium would be nice -- We're on 3 years since a major update.

On the contrary, I prefer intelligent debate, fresh ideas and points of view.

In terms of VISTA, my point was in fact on VISTA’s 3d Graphics card powered desktop ability. If from what I’ve seen so far from tech demos, it is quite possible to turn SMA into a Desktop without much effort. Something of which haunts Jim’s waking second.

OK, your right in terms of PC spec requirements and the DRM is quite frankly its going to kill off any sales of VISTA as an upgrade to current high spec PC’s running XP Pro, but unfortunately, one day even if you don’t buy into VISTA the next M$ OS will also have DRM.

It will also have the same 3D graphics powered GUI. I thought I’d just point it out to Jim before it hits the streets 2006…or is it 2007 now?

My advice to Jim would be to get a high spec PC and get on the BETA list to see what the potential damage is in terms of running SMA as desktop. Something I think he will have to come to terms with in no uncertain terms.

I'm praying that the source code to Windows 2000 and maybe XP leaks to the public so people can continue to write security updates for it after Microsoft abandons them.

Great videos schneb! Thank you for sharing it.
I wish I had the time to travel to Maui and go snorkelling a bit...

Use the Source Luke!
 

I read somewhere that 50% of corporate america still runs Windows 2000, which many say is more stable and secure than windows XP. The coming of Office 12, which requires windows XP, is forcing a great many companies to seriously look to Linux and open source office solutions to avoid the huge costs of migrating both windows 2000 and office xxx.

In the case of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, the cost of a migration to office 12 is, by the state's own estimates, is about $50Million while a transition to solutions that are based on the open standard called OpenDocument will be only $5Million, a factor of 10 less!

Office solutions that support OpenDocument today run on all platforms, so they can keep their windows 2000 systems. And when windows 2000 unsupportable, Massachusetts can pick an alternative OS and upgrade their hardware as necessary, even while maintaining a compatible application suite. Because there are several open source office suites to choose from, the state is free to choose the one best suited for them.

And of course of they choose Linux and one of the free open source office suites (OpenOffice and KOffice are among them) then the whole solution is open source.

So why pray for an illegally maintained windows 2000 product and risk a lobby full of Microsoft's lawyers when you can go with open standards and open source at lower cost?

The commonwealth of Massachusetts is most wise! We can all learn from their example.

- john

I'm happy that the people who's been here for ages, take the time to answer questions that been asked over and over again. This gives Jim more time to actually improve the aquarium, instead of answering every question.

The MS question has been brought up quite some times before, and therefor many of the people here know how Jim feels about it, and why wasting Jim's time having him repeating himself?

Hi YK, good to see you again. :) It is my job after all.

Well that’s like calling the kettle black! You statement above does exactly what others have just said by reiterating what Tarkus, cjmaddy, Jav400 etc etc etc did above when I asked!

Some what of a "mor".....sorry "i"-ronic statement!

Unlike you and many others on here, I don’t spend every waking minute on these forums.....some of which discussions have been made in the Chat room privately of which I don't frequent at all.

:rolleyes:

Oh please! How childish!

I also don't spend every waking moment on here but I know Jim (to put it in the southern vernacular) ain't havin none of that.

Trust me it is. I would question any businesses switching from 2000 to XP unless they need the multimedia features.

Because 2000 is already so stable. It can run for months without a reboot, just like Linux. And if the folks in Massachusetts think that the transition from 2000 to Linux is easy, they're in for a rude awakening.
Maybe for office apps, but for multimedia and graphic design, Linux falls flat on its face. Photoshop? Premiere? 3D Studio Max? Adobe Illustrator? Macromedia Director? Non-existant on Linux and they don't run properly on WINE.

P.S. GIMP and other Photoshop clones are unacceptable.

It seems that people think that going to an open source solution is easy and inexpensive. Even if MS is charing too much for their product, there are some reasons. More and more patching seems to be occuring on the open source systems because they are just as vulnerable (more so if the people don't know what they are doing) as microsoft. People that write virus's target the largest audience, opensource will have have a rude awakening if they ever become part of that target.

"Seem to think?" Massachusetts calculated that upgrading W2K to XP to accommodate Office 12 and its MSXML file formats would cost $50Million vs $5Million for a non-MS solution across 50,000 PCs.

As for security, name ONE Linux or Mac OS virus or worm. No, I'm not talking about some theoretical vulnerability, show me a real contemporary worm for Linux or Mac OS X That has cost the US Billions of dollars in lost productivity. You can't.

Poor Windows 2000 is not even safe. From August we had a terrible worm:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/interne...computer.worm/

My oh MY but we are in the weeds here. Perhaps the forum administrator might move this tread to the Coffee Shoppe.

As an aside, I have cleared off ALL my desktop icons so I can view the beautiful Marine Aquarium screen saver without ugly icons covering them up. :TU: