I call shenanigans. This may have been the case for a few years in the late 90s and early 00s but these days it seems to pretty much be back to mainly geeks (with a bunch of "I made a myspace profile and I roxx0rz at headshots d00d" gamers who think they're 1337 h4xx0rz because they're the person in their own social circle who is the least tech illiterate).
I've seen plenty of corruption when trying to use PSD files with other software, it's been getting better over the years but like most people who have ever wasted a lot of time due to trouble reading/writing PSD files I've ended up using file formats I know will work (while obviously keeping copies of all textures and maps in PSD format).
Around here they've actually stolen trailers just to haul copper away, so it's not like they're just stealing a hundred meters or so, they're stealing a lot of it (although those stealing trailers have apparently stolen entire rolls of copper wire rather than copper wire already in the ground).
From what I've seen most 3D artists use TIFF or targa for both input files (textures and maps) as well as output. Part of it is probably tradition but also the fact that occasionally 3D software screws up when dealing with PSD files (since the level of complexity is higher than with TIFF or targa) and it kind of sucks to realize after running a long render job that either your textures weren't loaded properly or the output data is corrupt to everything but the application that created it...
I was just going by the instructions given on EA's website as well as what their tech support people stated, which was that I had to forward more than half of all ports to the desktop machine running Tiberium Wars. Also, this was the OS X version of the game so Windows-only diagnostic tools wouldn't work anyway.
And besides, I see no reasonable excuse for them demanding that more than 50% of all ports be forwarded to the client, it just sounds like they did a really poor job when designing the multiplayer part of the game. You could easily build it so that the server requires a handful of connectable ports and the clients initiate all connections, or at least so that clients only need a couple of open ports, and the port ranges could easily be modifiable with servers announcing to the EA servers what ports they're running on and the clients announcing their open ports to the server...
Stennis is half an hour from Slidell, LA, which is a decent sized town on its own, and an exurb of New Orleans. Most people I know that work there live in Slidell, have a moderate commute to work, and a short trip into New Orleans when they want a bit of excitement. Hell you could actually live *in* New Orleans and have a not absolutely awful commute. I wouldn't want to do it, but a lot of people seem to consider a two hour commute acceptable (and New Orleans -> Stennis is only about 1.5, less in good traffic).
As someone living in northern Sweden (in a region with a population density of 3.3 persons per km^2) who has also lived in a major "world city" (Paris to be more exact) it always baffles me how people in the US can consider commuting for several hours per day to be acceptable.
The longest commute I've ever had, time-wise, was about 30 minutes on the metro and then 30 minutes back at the end of the day and it definitely annoyed me that I wasted a full hour every day to cover such a short distance (but walking would've been even slower due to traffic). In terms of distance I've had longer commutes that I've covered faster on a bicycle. Currently it takes me about 10 minutes to work on a bicycle and about 15-20 minutes home depending on the weather (downhill to work, uphill home) and I just can't understand how anyone could stand commuting for hours every day. How do people end up telling themselves that it's "normal" to spend 3-4 hours per day in a car just to get to and from work?
The problem is that that people will say the host "chooses one of the other doors at random and opens it before asking you if you want to switch". By doing so it's no longer the Monty Hall problem, the conditions have changed. This is probably the main problem a lot of people have with this problem. Hell, I've heard it presented like this several times by people trying to show that they're smarter than I am, they are not happy when I point out that in order for it to be the Monty Hall problem they need to explain the problem properly (although at this point I've noticed they tend to go into "admit it! you don't understand it and are just trying to weasel out of answering!"-mode).
Clearly I'm not using the software in that particular way because I want to trigger the bug, I simply use it that way because it fits into my workflow and the feature exists.
You actually got Tiberium Wars online play to work? I must say I'm amazed, after going through EA's online help database and contacting their tech support I found out that in order for me to run it as a client, NOT a server I would have to have roughly half of all available ports forwarded to my desktop.
Oh, and when that didn't work they told me that it was because I was using a "Linux router" (a FreeBSD box actually) and that I should connect my desktop directly to the internet and disconnect the rest of my network from the net while playing...
The iMac isn't particularly more powerful than a Mac mini, if at all. It just has the display attached, which is fine, but doesn't make it better.
If you max out a current-gen iMac you'll have a 27" IPS monitor with a native resolution of 2560x1440, Radeon 5750 graphics, 16 GiB of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 2.93 GHz Core i7 CPU, 256 GB SSD + 2 TB regular SATA hard drive.
In comparison a maxed out current-gen Mac Mini has Geforce 320M graphics, 8 GiB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and a 500 GB hard drive (although I suppose you could swap out the hard drives on both the iMac and Mac Mini).
That's a pretty big performance difference IMO and the cheapest IPS monitor I can find here in.se with a resolution of 2560x1440 goes for SEK 8490 ($1277) just for the monitor.
And my wants are nothing of a "pure" "hobbyist". I would like a better Mac than a Mac mini to attach to my workstation KVM switch for work but I can't justify the $2500 entry fee for a Mac Pro. I want a Mac Semi-Pro
I can definitely understand that, I'd love to have a stripped-down Mac Pro or similar model as well but I ended up settling on a 27" Core i7 iMac instead because I just couldn't justify the expense of a Mac Pro + IPS monitor.
I get the distinct impression that Apple doesn't care about desktop users at all anymore. Their focus is almost entirely mobile computing in a variety of packagings. The Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro just seem to be strung along because they own the intellectual property and can make cultural sales, but aren't interested in developing new options. Back in the days of the Mac Pro G3 and G4 there were models coming in around $1500 which had multiple drive bays and expansion slots, but when they hit the G5 model the base cost shot up to $2500.
I think they do still care, it's just that their product catalog has so much more in it, and the media hype is all about the mobile devices. From what I can tell Apple wants to have the entire "ecosystem" available, from servers to desktops, mobile devices and entertainment center solutions, buy even if they focused more on the computer side the media would still end up reporting on the latest iDevice since that's what the average reader cares about.
As for the G3 and G4 days I'd have to say that they have obviously changed their focus a bit since then, back then it felt like a lot more of their target customers were pros and the computing market in general was a lot less focused on pre-built packages, back then it wasn't really considered all that odd to build your own computer from parts, these days people have CS degrees and call themselves "hardware geeks" even though they've never even cracked a computer case open...
Well, from what I've read about this issue it only seems to occur when invoking Spaces using <shortcut key> + <number> combinations, something I use a lot.
How about a desktop computer between the mini and the pro?
That would be the iMac. Yes, I know it's got a monitor attached to it but that's what they're offering, and you can use it as just a monitor if you end up buying a faster machine and want to reuse the iMac's monitor.
Apple as a company seems to have little interest in a "pure" "hobbyist" machine, they sell systems...
Mac Mini - HTPC/SFF Desktop/Small server offering, plenty of punch of for its form factor, not much in terms of upgradeability.
iMac - Midrange to fairly powerful desktop, really only the RAM that can be easily upgraded (except for the usual external addons), hard drive can be replaced with a little effort (not that hard if you take a few minutes to read up on it beforehand).
Mac Pro - High end/upgradable system, this one is for those who need workstation performance/reliability and/or the ability to add and remove hardware.
XServe - The Mac server, that's about it. A pretty good offering if you're looking to buy servers for an almost all-Mac/*nix environment though.
You forgot "Please unbreak Spaces and Exposé", although I suppose that falls under "...don't screw it up" for Snow Leopard.
Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back. It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointer over a desktop and then hitting the shortcut again to go to that desktop, that's also been taken away in Snow Leopard for some reason...
As for Exposé, the new layout seems, IMHO, to fly in the face of what we know about efficient user interface design, previously windows were placed relative to their position on the screen and sizes were also relative (large windows being large and small ones being small). Now we've got some weird layout where windows fly all over the place for no reason which makes it a lot harder to find windows quickly.
The downside to these one-time cc numbers is that some american (I've yet to see a swedish company deny these numbers) companies tend to deny them. I had that problem with Blizzard when it came to WoW upgrades, I could pay for game time but for game upgrades my purchases were denied...
MySpace DOMINATED the social networking scene initially.
In the US perhaps, here in Sweden both Myspace and Facebook had a fairly slow initial uptake because we had websites like skunk.nu and lunarstorm.se which had been around since 1998 and 2000 respectively (Lunarstorm had 600k members in 2001 which is pretty decent in a country with a population of 9 million).
And no, feature-wise Myspace and Facebook really didn't offer any advantages over those websites a few years ago, it wasn't some tech innovation that made people move on to Facebook, they just moved on because of the hype. So IMO Zuckerberg was hardly The Genius(tm) who created some new and magical thing, he just lucked out when creating yet another community website.
Of course, but it still feels kind of silly to buy a system capable of running just about every game out there at 50+ FPS at 2560x1440 or some other high resolution with every setting maxed, and then you hook it up to some 6 BPP (relatively) low-res monitor you paid $250 for three years ago.
And those aren't the worst ones, I have one old friend who's got a pimped out "l33t" gaming rig hooked up to an old 19" CRT that barely does 1280x960@75Hz, and this isn't a good CRT either, it's some cheap thing that makes that annoying buzzing sound, is blurry and is extremely sensitive to anything nearby that's magnetic (plus it's got some apparently permanent damage due to him having speakers placed next to it). But when I suggested he buy a new monitor he nearly threw a fit and started ranting about how much better CRT monitors are when compared to LCD monitors. Cargo culture knowledge at its best...
Well, Steve Jobs himself has stated that they're not abandoning FCP and I suspect they have no intent on abandoning the Mac and OS X either. They want a complete ecosystem available (even if they're not forcing you to run Apple-everything to make things work).
I suspect it's Windows he's talking about. The common way to use Windows is to have all your windows maximized and most apps are written with this in mind. And most people using Windows have a nasty habit of having fairly low-res monitors (I know several "hardcore" gamers who have $2,500+ rigs hooked up to cheap-o monitors only capable of 1440x900 or so, but great response times though).
That sounds more like the kind of workplace where moving a garbage bin without sending a written request in triplicate and having it approved by three different managers will get you into serious trouble than it sounds like unimaginative engineers. Yes, I've worked for companies like that, they'd lock up all office supplies, all of them, and demand all requests to use scissors, get a new notepad or a few paperclips go be properly authorized by someone in management.
The difference here is that these areas aren't covered under the city's charter. They are simply providing a service to people who otherwise have *no* fire protection.
Speaking as someone living in the "socialist hell" of Sweden I have to say that this absolutely baffles me, I've always seen neo-liberals ranting about how the world would be perfect if we all had to pay private police and fire departments for "protection" as the crazy ramblings of people so obsessed with their pet ideology that they shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone sane, and now it seems this is actually the status quo in some parts of the US.
I'm sorry but that's just scary, around here the (horrible horrible tax-funded) fire department will at least make an effort, even if you live out in the middle of nowhere...
Well sure, I can wait for six months or so to buy the 480p version of something that's available for free over the air (with commercials) or downloadable for a small fee (without commercials) in the US now in 720p. Or I can just download it off the net a few hours after the US broadcast...
My freedom is in the form of pirated TV shows and movies, if you won't let me pay for and download them (I'm in Sweden and the choices for US TV shows are pretty much nill) legally then I'll just get them for free without commercials. I'm not waiting several months just for the privilege of commercials and subtitles made by some college student who doesn't understand what he or she is translating...
move "Some TV show S02E04.mkv" "E:\TV Shows\Some TV Show\Season2\"
Ever heard of tab completion? I know MS were kind of slow with getting it in the first place and still haven't figured out how to make it work sanely but it means you don't have to type the entire long filename you're oh so worried about.
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I call shenanigans. This may have been the case for a few years in the late 90s and early 00s but these days it seems to pretty much be back to mainly geeks (with a bunch of "I made a myspace profile and I roxx0rz at headshots d00d" gamers who think they're 1337 h4xx0rz because they're the person in their own social circle who is the least tech illiterate).
I've seen plenty of corruption when trying to use PSD files with other software, it's been getting better over the years but like most people who have ever wasted a lot of time due to trouble reading/writing PSD files I've ended up using file formats I know will work (while obviously keeping copies of all textures and maps in PSD format).
Around here they've actually stolen trailers just to haul copper away, so it's not like they're just stealing a hundred meters or so, they're stealing a lot of it (although those stealing trailers have apparently stolen entire rolls of copper wire rather than copper wire already in the ground).
From what I've seen most 3D artists use TIFF or targa for both input files (textures and maps) as well as output. Part of it is probably tradition but also the fact that occasionally 3D software screws up when dealing with PSD files (since the level of complexity is higher than with TIFF or targa) and it kind of sucks to realize after running a long render job that either your textures weren't loaded properly or the output data is corrupt to everything but the application that created it...
I was just going by the instructions given on EA's website as well as what their tech support people stated, which was that I had to forward more than half of all ports to the desktop machine running Tiberium Wars. Also, this was the OS X version of the game so Windows-only diagnostic tools wouldn't work anyway.
And besides, I see no reasonable excuse for them demanding that more than 50% of all ports be forwarded to the client, it just sounds like they did a really poor job when designing the multiplayer part of the game. You could easily build it so that the server requires a handful of connectable ports and the clients initiate all connections, or at least so that clients only need a couple of open ports, and the port ranges could easily be modifiable with servers announcing to the EA servers what ports they're running on and the clients announcing their open ports to the server...
Stennis is half an hour from Slidell, LA, which is a decent sized town on its own, and an exurb of New Orleans. Most people I know that work there live in Slidell, have a moderate commute to work, and a short trip into New Orleans when they want a bit of excitement. Hell you could actually live *in* New Orleans and have a not absolutely awful commute. I wouldn't want to do it, but a lot of people seem to consider a two hour commute acceptable (and New Orleans -> Stennis is only about 1.5, less in good traffic).
As someone living in northern Sweden (in a region with a population density of 3.3 persons per km^2) who has also lived in a major "world city" (Paris to be more exact) it always baffles me how people in the US can consider commuting for several hours per day to be acceptable.
The longest commute I've ever had, time-wise, was about 30 minutes on the metro and then 30 minutes back at the end of the day and it definitely annoyed me that I wasted a full hour every day to cover such a short distance (but walking would've been even slower due to traffic). In terms of distance I've had longer commutes that I've covered faster on a bicycle. Currently it takes me about 10 minutes to work on a bicycle and about 15-20 minutes home depending on the weather (downhill to work, uphill home) and I just can't understand how anyone could stand commuting for hours every day. How do people end up telling themselves that it's "normal" to spend 3-4 hours per day in a car just to get to and from work?
The problem is that that people will say the host "chooses one of the other doors at random and opens it before asking you if you want to switch". By doing so it's no longer the Monty Hall problem, the conditions have changed. This is probably the main problem a lot of people have with this problem. Hell, I've heard it presented like this several times by people trying to show that they're smarter than I am, they are not happy when I point out that in order for it to be the Monty Hall problem they need to explain the problem properly (although at this point I've noticed they tend to go into "admit it! you don't understand it and are just trying to weasel out of answering!"-mode).
When a game client requires 30k+ ports to be connectable from the outside to function there is something very wrong.
Hello there Mr Troll.
Clearly I'm not using the software in that particular way because I want to trigger the bug, I simply use it that way because it fits into my workflow and the feature exists.
You actually got Tiberium Wars online play to work? I must say I'm amazed, after going through EA's online help database and contacting their tech support I found out that in order for me to run it as a client, NOT a server I would have to have roughly half of all available ports forwarded to my desktop.
Oh, and when that didn't work they told me that it was because I was using a "Linux router" (a FreeBSD box actually) and that I should connect my desktop directly to the internet and disconnect the rest of my network from the net while playing...
The iMac isn't particularly more powerful than a Mac mini, if at all. It just has the display attached, which is fine, but doesn't make it better.
If you max out a current-gen iMac you'll have a 27" IPS monitor with a native resolution of 2560x1440, Radeon 5750 graphics, 16 GiB of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 2.93 GHz Core i7 CPU, 256 GB SSD + 2 TB regular SATA hard drive.
In comparison a maxed out current-gen Mac Mini has Geforce 320M graphics, 8 GiB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and a 500 GB hard drive (although I suppose you could swap out the hard drives on both the iMac and Mac Mini).
That's a pretty big performance difference IMO and the cheapest IPS monitor I can find here in .se with a resolution of 2560x1440 goes for SEK 8490 ($1277) just for the monitor.
And my wants are nothing of a "pure" "hobbyist". I would like a better Mac than a Mac mini to attach to my workstation KVM switch for work but I can't justify the $2500 entry fee for a Mac Pro. I want a Mac Semi-Pro
I can definitely understand that, I'd love to have a stripped-down Mac Pro or similar model as well but I ended up settling on a 27" Core i7 iMac instead because I just couldn't justify the expense of a Mac Pro + IPS monitor.
I get the distinct impression that Apple doesn't care about desktop users at all anymore. Their focus is almost entirely mobile computing in a variety of packagings. The Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro just seem to be strung along because they own the intellectual property and can make cultural sales, but aren't interested in developing new options. Back in the days of the Mac Pro G3 and G4 there were models coming in around $1500 which had multiple drive bays and expansion slots, but when they hit the G5 model the base cost shot up to $2500.
I think they do still care, it's just that their product catalog has so much more in it, and the media hype is all about the mobile devices. From what I can tell Apple wants to have the entire "ecosystem" available, from servers to desktops, mobile devices and entertainment center solutions, buy even if they focused more on the computer side the media would still end up reporting on the latest iDevice since that's what the average reader cares about.
As for the G3 and G4 days I'd have to say that they have obviously changed their focus a bit since then, back then it felt like a lot more of their target customers were pros and the computing market in general was a lot less focused on pre-built packages, back then it wasn't really considered all that odd to build your own computer from parts, these days people have CS degrees and call themselves "hardware geeks" even though they've never even cracked a computer case open...
Well, from what I've read about this issue it only seems to occur when invoking Spaces using <shortcut key> + <number> combinations, something I use a lot.
How about a desktop computer between the mini and the pro?
That would be the iMac. Yes, I know it's got a monitor attached to it but that's what they're offering, and you can use it as just a monitor if you end up buying a faster machine and want to reuse the iMac's monitor.
Apple as a company seems to have little interest in a "pure" "hobbyist" machine, they sell systems...
You forgot "Please unbreak Spaces and Exposé", although I suppose that falls under "...don't screw it up" for Snow Leopard.
Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back. It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointer over a desktop and then hitting the shortcut again to go to that desktop, that's also been taken away in Snow Leopard for some reason...
As for Exposé, the new layout seems, IMHO, to fly in the face of what we know about efficient user interface design, previously windows were placed relative to their position on the screen and sizes were also relative (large windows being large and small ones being small). Now we've got some weird layout where windows fly all over the place for no reason which makes it a lot harder to find windows quickly.
The downside to these one-time cc numbers is that some american (I've yet to see a swedish company deny these numbers) companies tend to deny them. I had that problem with Blizzard when it came to WoW upgrades, I could pay for game time but for game upgrades my purchases were denied...
MySpace DOMINATED the social networking scene initially.
In the US perhaps, here in Sweden both Myspace and Facebook had a fairly slow initial uptake because we had websites like skunk.nu and lunarstorm.se which had been around since 1998 and 2000 respectively (Lunarstorm had 600k members in 2001 which is pretty decent in a country with a population of 9 million).
And no, feature-wise Myspace and Facebook really didn't offer any advantages over those websites a few years ago, it wasn't some tech innovation that made people move on to Facebook, they just moved on because of the hype. So IMO Zuckerberg was hardly The Genius(tm) who created some new and magical thing, he just lucked out when creating yet another community website.
Of course, but it still feels kind of silly to buy a system capable of running just about every game out there at 50+ FPS at 2560x1440 or some other high resolution with every setting maxed, and then you hook it up to some 6 BPP (relatively) low-res monitor you paid $250 for three years ago.
And those aren't the worst ones, I have one old friend who's got a pimped out "l33t" gaming rig hooked up to an old 19" CRT that barely does 1280x960@75Hz, and this isn't a good CRT either, it's some cheap thing that makes that annoying buzzing sound, is blurry and is extremely sensitive to anything nearby that's magnetic (plus it's got some apparently permanent damage due to him having speakers placed next to it). But when I suggested he buy a new monitor he nearly threw a fit and started ranting about how much better CRT monitors are when compared to LCD monitors. Cargo culture knowledge at its best...
3D apps like Cinema 4D, Maya, and all the rest use PSD & Illustrator files as a base for compositions
Yet for some reason most 3D artists use targa or tiff for most things (with a few crazy holdouts insisting on using IFF).
Well, Steve Jobs himself has stated that they're not abandoning FCP and I suspect they have no intent on abandoning the Mac and OS X either. They want a complete ecosystem available (even if they're not forcing you to run Apple-everything to make things work).
I suspect it's Windows he's talking about. The common way to use Windows is to have all your windows maximized and most apps are written with this in mind. And most people using Windows have a nasty habit of having fairly low-res monitors (I know several "hardcore" gamers who have $2,500+ rigs hooked up to cheap-o monitors only capable of 1440x900 or so, but great response times though).
That sounds more like the kind of workplace where moving a garbage bin without sending a written request in triplicate and having it approved by three different managers will get you into serious trouble than it sounds like unimaginative engineers. Yes, I've worked for companies like that, they'd lock up all office supplies, all of them, and demand all requests to use scissors, get a new notepad or a few paperclips go be properly authorized by someone in management.
The difference here is that these areas aren't covered under the city's charter. They are simply providing a service to people who otherwise have *no* fire protection.
Speaking as someone living in the "socialist hell" of Sweden I have to say that this absolutely baffles me, I've always seen neo-liberals ranting about how the world would be perfect if we all had to pay private police and fire departments for "protection" as the crazy ramblings of people so obsessed with their pet ideology that they shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone sane, and now it seems this is actually the status quo in some parts of the US.
I'm sorry but that's just scary, around here the (horrible horrible tax-funded) fire department will at least make an effort, even if you live out in the middle of nowhere...
Well sure, I can wait for six months or so to buy the 480p version of something that's available for free over the air (with commercials) or downloadable for a small fee (without commercials) in the US now in 720p. Or I can just download it off the net a few hours after the US broadcast...
My freedom is in the form of pirated TV shows and movies, if you won't let me pay for and download them (I'm in Sweden and the choices for US TV shows are pretty much nill) legally then I'll just get them for free without commercials. I'm not waiting several months just for the privilege of commercials and subtitles made by some college student who doesn't understand what he or she is translating...
move "Some TV show S02E04.mkv" "E:\TV Shows\Some TV Show\Season2\"
Ever heard of tab completion? I know MS were kind of slow with getting it in the first place and still haven't figured out how to make it work sanely but it means you don't have to type the entire long filename you're oh so worried about.