"Anybody who has held a soldering iron and done something digital with single transistors please raise your hand ?"
The transistor is an analogue device. It is possible to create logic circuits using multiple transistors, but essentially transistors actuate levels, not states. It shows how little you understand about the fundamental principles of electronics.
The transistor is the mainstay of virtually all todays technology, and should not be dismissed as some 60's fad. The are now embedded in their millions into integrated circuits and microprocessors, and without them we would still be torch-wielding peasants.
Oh get a life, all you leftie liberals! Like how,many times do you call emergency services? And more to the point how many times do you HAVE to? ie: Little Johnny's got a life-threating sniffle: CALL AN AMBULANCE!
Like the man said, what did we do before mobiles? More to the point, what did we do before home phones? I remember running a mile down the road to the payphone to call for a doctor 40 years ago. There are plenty of quick and easy ways of calling emergency if required. It's more a point that cellphone users are selfish. (ooh, a new word - cellfish)
People act like you have just cut off their leg if they lose their mobile. Well get over it, you can live without it, and so can we, along with your infernal prattling and antisocial behaviour, (not to mention dangerous drivers without hands-free). As far as I am concerned, the occasional zap to shut some dipshit up is well worth the risk of being caught with what is essentially a harmless box of tricks.
"oh, by the way honey, I'm no the train, I'll be home in ten, love ya, yeah, you too, mwah, nwah, bye, bye, mwah,"... etc..etc.. *wipes dribble from mouthpiece and stares longingly....*
What's the point of that? You would end up paying for MS whether you used it or not, as the Windows price will be added to the price of the box. Ubuntu is FREE. Also, it is general practice by Dell not to sell virgin (unloaded) machines, so if you want to load it yourself with Windows, you can now.
Anybody comparing a basic amateur app against the big four (MAX, Maya, Lightwave and Softimage) obviously has no idea how they work. I am a pro designer using 3D apps on a regular basis (mainly 3DSMAX) - If they were to go against smaller apps like Cinema 4D, Carrara, Rhino etc, that might be a worthwhile exercise. The big four have considerable power in modelling, animating and rendering, and also have major support for 3rd party plugins and render engines. Blender is a toy, and should be viewed as such. The price tag basically defines what you are getting, and the difference between paying hundreds instead of thousands.
The term "Syndrome" is often used where doctors recognise certain symptoms, but don't know the cause. Quite often it can be one of a number of different causes, or a combination. Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a common example, where there are thought to be a wide range of causes, that all come under the umbrella description of a syndrome.
In the case of AIDS, only one primary factor was discovered, that of the HIV retrovirus. There are many other causes for immunosuppression including genetic defects and certain cancers; However, in this case, AIDS was named after the symptoms.
It may also be noted, that the original term for the disease was GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), but this was later changed when it was discovered that many heterosexuals were also contracting it.
AIDS is defined when an HIV+ person CD4 count drops below 200. Even if it rises above this later, they are still defined as having AIDS.
It is merely a line drawn in the sand to indicate your immunodepression has sunk to a critical level.
Frankly, I am not willing to pay out substantial charges to print houses for what often is substandard print quality. Often professional printers ignore colour definitions and profiles. For the work I offer, I provide stunning glossy prints at 5760 x 1440 dpi, and I totally refute your claim you can "still see the dots".
The reason dye-sub does not show pixelation is due to the technology, essentially that the colours are mixed and/or remixed on the page, and they are generally only a four colour process, whereas an inkjets produce a defined array of points with inks being overlaid using many more inks to achieve a more saturated and accurate rendition. The resolution on professional printers is such that you need a magnifying glass to see them.
My particular printer uses eight inks including gloss and matte blacks as well as a a gloss optimiser to give an overall "varnish". When used with a quality paper, I can produce outstanding panoramics 33cm high by up to 3 metres wide that have as good a quality as any photographic process, (not to mention the fact that any film based system introduces grain, lens abberation, distortion, dust and general grot.)
Quality is partially based on the original resolution, as well as the printer, and a printer is only as good as the material it is given. Too many photographers and artists work at too low a resolution. I often use a 22 megapixel Hasselblad, and when printed and compared to a film equivalent are indistinguishable.
I guess if you are buying coffee shop prints, you get what you pay for, but I endeavour to achieve a high quality without having to resort to expensive commercial printers using Iris etc. If you print low res images off a stock website, you deserve all you get. Don't blame the printer, blame the source.
You've never seen a counterfeit?? The Chinese are reknowned for copying ANYTHING. The UK is awash from everything from counterfeit cigarettes, to clothing to car parts. A low cost/high retail value item like an HP or Epson printer cartridge would be an ideal product to fake.
Hewlett Packard "chips a number of their cartridges. I know one major ink-refill franchise that has a device to override the electronics. Basically, it just fries the chip, and the printer doesn't recognise it has been refilled.
I am a graphic designer that uses a high end inkjet printer to produce prints for sale. Not all of us want laser printers. Lasers are cheap office tools, not designed for print quality. My printer uses eight cartridges, original Epson price: $25, Epson Compatible price $5. You do the math. The inkjet cartridge market always was a scam, and like any other market, the supply will fit the demand, so refills and compatibles move in. Apart from people fraudulently pirating lookalike OEM cartridges, I see no reason why quality inks cannot be sold by other companies. It ensures that the likes of HP and Epson keep their prices down.
Well I live in UK, and there is a wide rangle of options now available either via phone or cable. As you say, competition is good, and I can see that the US fights for telephone lines in the 1960's will occur again as the battle for Internet comms hots up.
My personal bandwidth has increased from 1mbps to 10mbps in 18 months, and I foresee it won't be long before this doubles up again, so the concept of realisticly downloading streaming HD video is not as far off as one might imagine. The corporates will sniff at P2P, and I doubt that is the way it will go, but I see no reason why you won't be able to download unrestricted, non-DRM content just like iTunes eventually. The VHS tape is dead, and DVD's days are numbered. Blu-Ray burners will become the norm.
As for Blockbuster, they may well have corporate problems, but it was recently quoted that 40% of video rental shops in UK have closed in the last 2 years. The expansion of the Internet and broadband comms have had far more repercussions for all commerce, not just entertainment, than anyone could have percieved, and far exceed the Moore's law rules on hardware technology.
I think the next five years are going to prove to be a watershed in the way people work, live and relax.
I am already using a LAN based DVD player, http://www.neodigits.com/ so I can play DVDs as well as Divx etc downloads to my PC via P2P services, which it then upscales to my 1080p HD TV. The device is essentially a Linux-based dedicated PC, using a custom HTML/XML browser as a GUI. There are already quite a few products using this concept. I cannot see why the technology won't be available very soon to connect directly to a pay site. Admiteddly, one will need a pretty fast internet connection, but with a decent sized buffer, you should be able to stream HD movies directly.
It has already been pointed out that cinemas are on the decline, as we are forced to sit in pokey little multiplexes with peoples phones going off, talking through the movie and the cinema charging you a fortune not only to get in, but you need a credit card to buy a bar of chocolate. The video/DVD rental shops are also waning as the increase in P2P downloads and postal DVD rental diminishes the small shops. Even the likes of Blockbuster are starting to crumble.
What was once considered a pipe-dream to have a complete home entertainment and communications centre is rapidly appearing over the horizon.
What sort of scientist are you? One that sticks his head in a hole?
As an Englishman that used to have 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound, I could see the logic of a decimal monetary system. The fact that measurements may be individually useful (ie: a foot is the length of someones foot) is not very useful when measuring interplanetary distances. Time is one of the few constants we cannot metricate, due to the laws of the universe, but I seemno reason why everyone else cannot sing from the same hymn sheet, as they integrate with one another and all work on Base 10. Incidentally, we still have pints of milk and pints of beer, for trasitional reasons, but all other fluids are measured in Litres.
I think your methodology is foolish and flawed. Becasue Metric and Imperial measurements dont't directly convert, there is always a level of rounding up or down. If you convert, then reconvert, you will find your dimensions may be out of your tolerances. Stick with one or the other, but don't mix them.
If you do covers of songs, you generally pay the publishers a cut of the profits. Thats why the songwriters in a band generally earn a whole bundle more than the rest of the band. Get your research right before making sweeping statements.
"So, they've stopped arresting their customers and started in on their own talent."
By "talent" you mean some idiot with no musical ability whatsoever that shouts bad poetry over someone elses sampled work?
Sorry, these guys deserve all they get. If they want to get fame and notarity, try creating something ORIGINAL instead of stealing someone elses thunder. At the end of the day, if I was a musician, I wouldnt care if he gave me exposure, the point is, he didnt ask, and set out to profit from other peoples efforts. I dislike the RIAA for a lot of their methods, but in this case I wholly support them. It's dickheads like this "DJ" that end up turning what little new original material there is around into commercial blancmange.
You ARE missing something. Try milling objects with overhangs, internal voids, complex organic shapes etc.
3D prototyping has been around for some time, this is nothing new. I have seen people scanned using medical imaging devices, and bones prototyped using such technology. That way a prosthesis can be made that will exactly fit the patient without any invasive surgery. However, the process is stunningly expensive, the models are generally of small dimensions and it can take days to create the prototype.
I think John Cleese said it best from his 1980's UK ad campaign for Sony: We like to think we give people what they want, because it comes from those awfully nice Sony people."
"Somehow they, Autodesk, missed the point that we live and think in a 3D world."
So this wouldnt be the same Autodesk that also created 3D Studio/3DSMAX and bought Maya from Alias?
AutoCad was always seen as a primarily 2D application with 3D ambitions. My architect freind uses Microstation, partially due to it's rendering/visualisation capabilites, which is why AutoDesk released the devil-spawn of their two leading products and called it 3DSVIZ.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an entire Wiki here with lists:
http://namingschemes.com/
"Anybody who has held a soldering iron and done something digital with single transistors please raise your hand ?"
The transistor is an analogue device. It is possible to create logic circuits using multiple transistors, but essentially transistors actuate levels, not states. It shows how little you understand about the fundamental principles of electronics.
The transistor is the mainstay of virtually all todays technology, and should not be dismissed as some 60's fad. The are now embedded in their millions into integrated circuits and microprocessors, and without them we would still be torch-wielding peasants.
Oh get a life, all you leftie liberals! Like how ,many times do you call emergency services? And more to the point how many times do you HAVE to? ie: Little Johnny's got a life-threating sniffle: CALL AN AMBULANCE!
Like the man said, what did we do before mobiles? More to the point, what did we do before home phones? I remember running a mile down the road to the payphone to call for a doctor 40 years ago. There are plenty of quick and easy ways of calling emergency if required. It's more a point that cellphone users are selfish. (ooh, a new word - cellfish)
People act like you have just cut off their leg if they lose their mobile. Well get over it, you can live without it, and so can we, along with your infernal prattling and antisocial behaviour, (not to mention dangerous drivers without hands-free). As far as I am concerned, the occasional zap to shut some dipshit up is well worth the risk of being caught with what is essentially a harmless box of tricks.
"oh, by the way honey, I'm no the train, I'll be home in ten, love ya, yeah, you too, mwah, nwah, bye, bye, mwah,"... etc..etc.. *wipes dribble from mouthpiece and stares longingly....*
What's the point of that? You would end up paying for MS whether you used it or not, as the Windows price will be added to the price of the box. Ubuntu is FREE. Also, it is general practice by Dell not to sell virgin (unloaded) machines, so if you want to load it yourself with Windows, you can now.
Anybody comparing a basic amateur app against the big four (MAX, Maya, Lightwave and Softimage) obviously has no idea how they work. I am a pro designer using 3D apps on a regular basis (mainly 3DSMAX) - If they were to go against smaller apps like Cinema 4D, Carrara, Rhino etc, that might be a worthwhile exercise. The big four have considerable power in modelling, animating and rendering, and also have major support for 3rd party plugins and render engines. Blender is a toy, and should be viewed as such. The price tag basically defines what you are getting, and the difference between paying hundreds instead of thousands.
Ice Cream. (Average 2000% markup), and they don't have to invest billions researching the next cookie dough.
I thought they bought the sole rights. Greed(TM)is good.
The term "Syndrome" is often used where doctors recognise certain symptoms, but don't know the cause. Quite often it can be one of a number of different causes, or a combination. Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a common example, where there are thought to be a wide range of causes, that all come under the umbrella description of a syndrome.
In the case of AIDS, only one primary factor was discovered, that of the HIV retrovirus. There are many other causes for immunosuppression including genetic defects and certain cancers; However, in this case, AIDS was named after the symptoms. It may also be noted, that the original term for the disease was GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), but this was later changed when it was discovered that many heterosexuals were also contracting it.
AIDS is defined when an HIV+ person CD4 count drops below 200. Even if it rises above this later, they are still defined as having AIDS. It is merely a line drawn in the sand to indicate your immunodepression has sunk to a critical level.
Frankly, I am not willing to pay out substantial charges to print houses for what often is substandard print quality. Often professional printers ignore colour definitions and profiles. For the work I offer, I provide stunning glossy prints at 5760 x 1440 dpi, and I totally refute your claim you can "still see the dots".
The reason dye-sub does not show pixelation is due to the technology, essentially that the colours are mixed and/or remixed on the page, and they are generally only a four colour process, whereas an inkjets produce a defined array of points with inks being overlaid using many more inks to achieve a more saturated and accurate rendition. The resolution on professional printers is such that you need a magnifying glass to see them.
My particular printer uses eight inks including gloss and matte blacks as well as a a gloss optimiser to give an overall "varnish". When used with a quality paper, I can produce outstanding panoramics 33cm high by up to 3 metres wide that have as good a quality as any photographic process, (not to mention the fact that any film based system introduces grain, lens abberation, distortion, dust and general grot.)
Quality is partially based on the original resolution, as well as the printer, and a printer is only as good as the material it is given. Too many photographers and artists work at too low a resolution. I often use a 22 megapixel Hasselblad, and when printed and compared to a film equivalent are indistinguishable.
I guess if you are buying coffee shop prints, you get what you pay for, but I endeavour to achieve a high quality without having to resort to expensive commercial printers using Iris etc. If you print low res images off a stock website, you deserve all you get. Don't blame the printer, blame the source.
You've never seen a counterfeit?? The Chinese are reknowned for copying ANYTHING. The UK is awash from everything from counterfeit cigarettes, to clothing to car parts. A low cost/high retail value item like an HP or Epson printer cartridge would be an ideal product to fake.
Hewlett Packard "chips a number of their cartridges. I know one major ink-refill franchise that has a device to override the electronics. Basically, it just fries the chip, and the printer doesn't recognise it has been refilled.
I am a graphic designer that uses a high end inkjet printer to produce prints for sale. Not all of us want laser printers. Lasers are cheap office tools, not designed for print quality. My printer uses eight cartridges, original Epson price: $25, Epson Compatible price $5. You do the math. The inkjet cartridge market always was a scam, and like any other market, the supply will fit the demand, so refills and compatibles move in. Apart from people fraudulently pirating lookalike OEM cartridges, I see no reason why quality inks cannot be sold by other companies. It ensures that the likes of HP and Epson keep their prices down.
Well I live in UK, and there is a wide rangle of options now available either via phone or cable. As you say, competition is good, and I can see that the US fights for telephone lines in the 1960's will occur again as the battle for Internet comms hots up.
My personal bandwidth has increased from 1mbps to 10mbps in 18 months, and I foresee it won't be long before this doubles up again, so the concept of realisticly downloading streaming HD video is not as far off as one might imagine. The corporates will sniff at P2P, and I doubt that is the way it will go, but I see no reason why you won't be able to download unrestricted, non-DRM content just like iTunes eventually. The VHS tape is dead, and DVD's days are numbered. Blu-Ray burners will become the norm.
As for Blockbuster, they may well have corporate problems, but it was recently quoted that 40% of video rental shops in UK have closed in the last 2 years. The expansion of the Internet and broadband comms have had far more repercussions for all commerce, not just entertainment, than anyone could have percieved, and far exceed the Moore's law rules on hardware technology.
I think the next five years are going to prove to be a watershed in the way people work, live and relax.
I am already using a LAN based DVD player, http://www.neodigits.com/ so I can play DVDs as well as Divx etc downloads to my PC via P2P services, which it then upscales to my 1080p HD TV. The device is essentially a Linux-based dedicated PC, using a custom HTML/XML browser as a GUI. There are already quite a few products using this concept. I cannot see why the technology won't be available very soon to connect directly to a pay site. Admiteddly, one will need a pretty fast internet connection, but with a decent sized buffer, you should be able to stream HD movies directly.
It has already been pointed out that cinemas are on the decline, as we are forced to sit in pokey little multiplexes with peoples phones going off, talking through the movie and the cinema charging you a fortune not only to get in, but you need a credit card to buy a bar of chocolate. The video/DVD rental shops are also waning as the increase in P2P downloads and postal DVD rental diminishes the small shops. Even the likes of Blockbuster are starting to crumble.
What was once considered a pipe-dream to have a complete home entertainment and communications centre is rapidly appearing over the horizon.
Cards? CARDS!!!?? You were lucky, lad. When I did programming all we had was a roll of paper tape.
Kids today don't know they're born.
What sort of scientist are you? One that sticks his head in a hole?
As an Englishman that used to have 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound, I could see the logic of a decimal monetary system. The fact that measurements may be individually useful (ie: a foot is the length of someones foot) is not very useful when measuring interplanetary distances. Time is one of the few constants we cannot metricate, due to the laws of the universe, but I seemno reason why everyone else cannot sing from the same hymn sheet, as they integrate with one another and all work on Base 10. Incidentally, we still have pints of milk and pints of beer, for trasitional reasons, but all other fluids are measured in Litres.
I think your methodology is foolish and flawed. Becasue Metric and Imperial measurements dont't directly convert, there is always a level of rounding up or down. If you convert, then reconvert, you will find your dimensions may be out of your tolerances. Stick with one or the other, but don't mix them.
One might also take note that Skype is an Estonian invention. Big enough for eBay to buy them out.
It's scary viewing to see why one of the most powerful countries in the world also appears to be one of the most stupid: http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/clever-ame ricans-p1.php
If you do covers of songs, you generally pay the publishers a cut of the profits. Thats why the songwriters in a band generally earn a whole bundle more than the rest of the band. Get your research right before making sweeping statements.
"So, they've stopped arresting their customers and started in on their own talent." By "talent" you mean some idiot with no musical ability whatsoever that shouts bad poetry over someone elses sampled work? Sorry, these guys deserve all they get. If they want to get fame and notarity, try creating something ORIGINAL instead of stealing someone elses thunder. At the end of the day, if I was a musician, I wouldnt care if he gave me exposure, the point is, he didnt ask, and set out to profit from other peoples efforts. I dislike the RIAA for a lot of their methods, but in this case I wholly support them. It's dickheads like this "DJ" that end up turning what little new original material there is around into commercial blancmange.
You ARE missing something. Try milling objects with overhangs, internal voids, complex organic shapes etc. 3D prototyping has been around for some time, this is nothing new. I have seen people scanned using medical imaging devices, and bones prototyped using such technology. That way a prosthesis can be made that will exactly fit the patient without any invasive surgery. However, the process is stunningly expensive, the models are generally of small dimensions and it can take days to create the prototype.
I think John Cleese said it best from his 1980's UK ad campaign for Sony:
We like to think we give people what they want, because it comes from those awfully nice Sony people."
"Somehow they, Autodesk, missed the point that we live and think in a 3D world."
So this wouldnt be the same Autodesk that also created 3D Studio/3DSMAX and bought Maya from Alias? AutoCad was always seen as a primarily 2D application with 3D ambitions. My architect freind uses Microstation, partially due to it's rendering/visualisation capabilites, which is why AutoDesk released the devil-spawn of their two leading products and called it 3DSVIZ.