I do not get it, is Ctrl+K that much more difficult to type than Ctrl+L? Seeing as how how you would be doing the latter anyway, that costs the same number of keystrokes to search as it does to type in a URL. For searching it is even less than your method, which requires Ctrl-L to focus the URL entry line and then skipping your right hand all the way over to the arrow keys and then the enter key. Very inefficient.
And this is your only reason for not switching? Well, I hope you like using 1.4 -- forever -- because the 1.5 roadmap for Mozilla includes switching to Firebird/Thunderbird.
No, not at all! I'll take installing Gentoo over playing games any day! And installing Gentoo is just one big happy love fest of downloading programs and compiling them. I'll sometimes format the drive and re-install just for the hell of it. Why not?
I love GreenCine. I really hope this patent issue does not force them to go under. They have an unparallel non-mainstream selection, and they seem to care for the community, both their users and the furthering of film as an art. They make donations from the money they make to help young directors and such. Plus, they are comitted to getting very hard to get movies, even if that means sacrificing quantity. For instance, they have a Lynch collection that is expensive, and can only be procured through David Lynch himself. Good luck finding that at Blockbuster.
So yes, if anyone has an interest in non-mainstream -- definitely check these guys out. Good online community too.
IF they don't raise prices, in order to keep out competition, then they have done nothing to undermine capitalism-- they are just the most efficient, and the consumer wins.
Except that "the consumer" is not an isolated entity. Your proposed model is far too simplistic. You are forgeting the benefits of local economy. In this particular example, Wal*Mart has utterly decimated the local economy where ever they go, and replaced it with a single source that offers bland goods, poor wages for the community, and even worse employee treatment. This effects everything in the area. It is not just some fictional group of people who have no interconnections with the world around them.
And the competition goes and does something more lucurative.
Actually, Wal*Mart's "competition" is usually local commerce. "Mom and Pop" stores, if you will. When an establishment that is barely in business already gets run out of business, there is typically not enough capital to just go do something more lucrative. Meanwhile, all of the diversity in local trade drops to near nothing as the only place to shop for general goods becomes a company that decides what stock you will see from thousands of miles away. This has happened countless times all over the nation. So much so, Wal*Mart has become known for it, and you will often find people demanding they not be allowed to move in, at town councils. The fact that you seem ignorant of this is surprising. I am just relating common knowledge here.
There is nothing evil to walmart-- except in the eyes of communists who hate to see poor people able to buy what they need and have a decent standard of living.
Do you even know what a communist is? Your assertion makes no sense. And decent standard of living? Do you know many people who make their living working at Wal*Mart? You seriously need to read up on this company, they are a classic example of how capitalism fails in the long term, even if a monopoly state is never reached.
Not to be pedantic, but even 24bpp has fewer colours than the eye can see. A practical example of this is setting up Photoshop in the Lab colourspace, and then drawing a gradient from black to a primary the width of the screen and noting the "banding" that appears. If you work with digital media all of the time, you can notice the limitations in more complex images as well.
Actually, in some cases the software can handle more colour depth than you can view on any digital output devices. It requires a lot of care, since you cannot see what you are doing, but when you output to devices that can handle it, you get better results that do not look "digital."
Price has been a factor in the choice as well. Microdrives have been consistently cheaper than Flash alternatives. It makes a good choice for studio shooting with a high MP camera. You don't have to worry about bumping it around too much, and you can get at around 100 shots on a gigabyte drive.
But on fragility, they are not as bad as people would think. Sure, they aren't the oops-I-ran-the-flash-through-the-laundry indestructible, but if you read the actual specs on how much shock it can take before causing data loss or how much more it takes to actually destroy the unit, you'll quickly realize that the camera surrounding the microdrive would be completely trashed before the drive would get damaged. Due to their large capacity, swapping is less frequent. Most of these things lives are inside a camera or in a camera bag.
If you are walking around with a $1,600 - $2,500 camera, you tend to be so careful with the thing, the drive inside is downright spoiled.
Seriously though, the solution is not to train the public. The advertisment industry is too intelligent at what it does. There are very well researched reasons for why people buy the things they see advertised. Resisting advertisment is an Active task in today's world. The problem is not the people, they will always be what they are, the problem is the advertisment agencies.
I do agree that some of the fine amount should go towards something beneficial beyond the overhead of list maintenence. ContraAdvertisments are not the answer though.
It will cost money for the companies to stay up to date on the no call list. While a smaller fine will keep the smaller businesses in line, the larger businesses would soon discover that it is cheaper to spend a little less time keeping up with the list and make the occasional mistake. With a much larger fine like this, it would discourage slacking off in even the larger marketing companies and departments.
Yes, I can see how it would get incrementally more difficult with some types of music, for instance -- orchestral? Obviously, in those cases it wouldn't really work. For me, I pretty much just listen to music that has been written, produced, and performed by one or two people. Generally I just buy the CD, because most of those guys operate off of small labels and I feel they should be supported too. If I do that, I like to buy it straight from the label, even if it costs more.
If you really want to support the artist, download the music for free and send them a check personally (as a gift, do not specify it is for the record, they might not legally be able to accept it, then.)
This what the industry is actually afraid of. Not "piracy." They fear a direct artist to consumer model, which is perfectly viable already in many different forms of media. The artists and consumers just need to wake up, some already are.
Spider (The best analysis of schizophrenia I have seen.)
The Man on the Train
Talk to Her
Rabbit-proof Fence
Chicago (Yes, it was originally theatre, but adaptation is more than one would think, and they did it right, here.)
The Quiet American
Igby Goes Down
Love Liza
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
Adaptation (Very cunning, much better than Being John Malkovich.)
Phone Booth (an interesting concept well done.)
Sweet Sixteen (It is better than it sounds.)
I am sure there are more, but these are just some that I have seen recently that displayed a fresh way to tell a story, and in some cases, fresh stories as well. You have just have to look beyond your bland massive CinemaPlex a little bit. It is like only shopping for clothes at the Gap. There is a lot more of interest out there; look for it and stop whining about the one outlet that only markets bland product.
I have a 15" 1600x1200 UXGA display in my laptop. Now, I got it loaded, but you could get it for as cheap as around $1,800, and it makes a wonderful eBook reader. Even with ClearType turned off, the DPI is so high that you don't get fatigued from hard to parse glyphs after a few hours. For brightness, I just dim the monitor down so that it is just a shade brighter than the ambient lighting in the room. I could read for hours under those conditions. The only problem is the bulk of the laptop itself. I also do a lot of mobile reading, or just laying on the couch reading, with a 320x320 resolution Palm pilot. While not as convincing as the laptop screen, it does all right.
Before these technologies came about though, I always avoided reading on a screen. Mostly because my primary computer was an iBook, which in tandem with OS X's rather aggressive anti-aliasing makes characters extremely tiring to read.
Replace the word 'automobile' with 'grenade.' Yeah, the parent post has an opinion I do not agree with, but switching out words from entirely different classes of objects as an attempt at argument is pointless.
With the right ICC profiles in Photoshop, you can get nearly perfect reproduction from the Frontier every time. Just bring your high resolution TIFF files in on a CD-ROM and an hour later walk away with prints that 99% of the world wouldn't recognize as being digitally sourced from shutter to paper.
An as far as affordable goes -- same prices as any other print work..20-40 cents for 4x6s, and that is for archival quality (40-60 year) prints on Fuji Crystal paper.
That is cheaper than ink jet, and certainly way cheaper than getting rolls and rolls of expensive film processed.
Primarily because it is still a bit buggy and bleeding edge. CCD is a proven technology, with a lot of time put in to its development. That is why Nikon has stuck with CCD chips. Canon has been using Bayer CMOS chips in some of their prosumer cameras, but the top of the line 1Ds still uses a CCD chip.
X3 still displays some odd behaviors under certain conditions, and until these problems are resolved, the "big guys" aren't going to want to put it into a high end camera -- especially when their customers have grown to expect a certain level of all-around quality and attention to detail from them.
Yes, and don't forget the other end of the spectrum too, that these cameras can take wonderful long exposures as well. The D60 in particular can sit on Bulb for minute after minute without any major noise or pixel errors. Taking ten minute bulb exposures seems fairly "low-light situation" to me. I've had comparable results with the D100 has well. I also regularly take 10 to 15 second exposures with it, and never once have I had to contend with excess noise, boomy shadows, or any other difficulties.
Me thinks these people are playing with their friend's Kodak DC3400 or something.
Actually, with systems like the Fuji Frontier, you can output digital files onto real archive quality photographic paper that gets wet developed just like any other prints you drop off at the lab. The substantial difference is that unlike film, you can do an emmense amount of "dark room" work to the image before you take it to the lab. I can get dark room quality prints at Ritz. Yes, the Frontier is not a consumer level output device, but dropping off pictures and returning an hour later to pick up the prints for twenty cents a 4x6 is good enough for most. And if you want an art print, the model 390 can output a 15 x 19 sized print.
Secondly, the Canon D30, D60, and Nikon D100 are well below the price range you stated. They can be had for around $2,000. That is still far beyond what the average consumer is willing to spend on a camera, but it does appeal to the serious amateurs and pros.
I have the D100, myself, and it has effectively replaced my 35mm SLR. Mainly because I now have better control over the results, and because it takes cleaner pictures than even 100 ISO 35mm film. Not to mention all of the other benefits of digital, such as flawless transfer to computer (so many hours wasted knocking dust out of high resolution film scans gone,) instant feedback; the ability to take 500 shots of a subject and not feel guilty about the film expense; and so on.
I have used waterproof books before, and they come in awfully handy in some situations. Try surveying a twenty acre plot of property in the rain with a regular notebook! They are useful for anyone who works in a high moisture area that needs to take exhaustive notes. For recreation they have plenty of uses as well: Bird watching, hunting, and mountain climbing to name a few. They also make more heavy duty notebooks and special pens for writing underwater, a priceless ability when scuba diving for fun or work -- anyone who has fumbled around with a grease pen and a plastic tablet knows that. Then you've got people like me who are ardent journalists, but also like walking in the rain. Nothing is more annoying than being 30 minutes from any sort of shelter with several paragraphs of thought you'd like to get down. There are also some field guides that are published as waterproof. It is kind of annoying when your survival guide gets drenched and ripped apart in the bottom of a backpack after a spill.
The problem is that the process is typically much more expensive than making regular paper. Also, I haven't used this new stuff, but the old techniques produce very thick stock. The kind I use is actually made from tightly weaved textiles and laminates. This makes it okay for a 40 page technical notebook, but somewhat unweildy for larger volumes. You won't see anyone making "flood-proof" books on a large scale any time soon. They would be awfully heavy, bulky, and expensive. It would honestly just be cheaper to buy a second copy after the first one is destroyed.
Re:What about bitter/loner Sims?
on
Virtual Simerica
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ah, another thing I didn't care for was the emphasis on consumerism. Too much of the game was spent Getting a Better Job so that you could Buy More Neat Stuff. I suppose an inclination towards that is indicative of the current state of affairs, but it woefully neglects the types who just don't get off on that.
There should have been more of a role-playing element in on the production end of things, both with hobbies and with your job. It would have been so much more fun for me to choose a career that meant something to my character, and then directly influence the Sim World with the accomplishments made there. How neat would it be to walk into another person's home on the block and see that they had your books on a shelf; or were listening to one of your songs on their stereo; sitting in a futuristic chair you had research over and designed; or visited a child that you had saved via heart transplant at the hospital.
Yeah, the game starts getting really complex, but it would have had so much more appeal than the endless cycle of promotions and better furniture. These sorts of things would have helped to flesh out the non-social characters more.
Re:What about bitter/loner Sims?
on
Virtual Simerica
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
That is what annoyed me most about the original and its add-ons. It didn't consider the fact that not everyone is extremely outgoing, and neglected the types of people that would prefer to stay home working on their projects. As it was, there were projects to be had, but they were all somewhat dull. Each painting looked the same (it would have been vastly better if you could "upload" your own art into the engine so that what the character paints is what you've created, or even the reverse -- upload all of your artwork and then use a simple pattern code to "create" new paintings that you can "download" in 640x480 format or something, trade online, ect. At least hang it on the wall in your Sim home and increase the "Fun" level of the room.) Instead, the game just got really dull unless you were running around all of the time with eighteen friends.
Another flaw is their overall outgoing meter, which when cranked to the bottom allowed your character to at least go a few days before "needing contact." The only problem is that it regenerated just as slowly. As any true introvert knows -- when you finally do need a little contact you can usually refresh that extremely quickly. You don't need to constantly socialize for three days to feel good about yourself again. In truly extreme cases, you get all of the social contact you need while at work, and your private life can remain just that -- private -- with no long term degeneration in the quality of life. Additionally, a little computer time reading emails, BBS, and perhaps IM chat would serve as well, but this option did not exist. The fact that full loners need to be alone to function properly is something that extraverts will never fully fathom, just as an introvert cannot fathom always needing somebody around to feel good about themselves.
So, while the option existed to make a loner, the game didn't handle it well at all, and really only worked with a narrow scope of individual. It looks like the online version is gonig to be even worse.
Yeah, I don't use GNOME or KDE either, but when I have dabbled, I don't use their supplied terminal apps -- nor do you have to, with both you can configure them to use whatever terminal app you want instead of theirs. They are too bloated for my taste, and I'm not a tab style person. I like lots of virtual screens and laying everything out side by side. Then you can see everything with a scan of the eye and a few quick key strokes if necessary. The thing with either GNOME and KDE is that you can still easily run rxvts or whatever you wish to run instead. With X, there are a scarce few alternatives to their own emulator, but they have the same design flaw due to the nature of how the OS handles application instances. The only true way around it is to fire up X11 and run rxvts. Which is a really silly alternative, because there goes a lot of memory just to run a terminal emulator. As for memory consumption -- with Apple computers that really shouldn't be an issue anyway. If you are running X you are probably on something with at least 256, more than plenty. Rxvt takes up what, 1.5MB a pop depending on compile options?
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Actually, it is just two keystrokes. Same as focusing the URL bar: Ctrl+K.
And this is your only reason for not switching? Well, I hope you like using 1.4 -- forever -- because the 1.5 roadmap for Mozilla includes switching to Firebird/Thunderbird.
No, not at all! I'll take installing Gentoo over playing games any day! And installing Gentoo is just one big happy love fest of downloading programs and compiling them. I'll sometimes format the drive and re-install just for the hell of it. Why not?
So yes, if anyone has an interest in non-mainstream -- definitely check these guys out. Good online community too.
Except that "the consumer" is not an isolated entity. Your proposed model is far too simplistic. You are forgeting the benefits of local economy. In this particular example, Wal*Mart has utterly decimated the local economy where ever they go, and replaced it with a single source that offers bland goods, poor wages for the community, and even worse employee treatment. This effects everything in the area. It is not just some fictional group of people who have no interconnections with the world around them.
And the competition goes and does something more lucurative.
Actually, Wal*Mart's "competition" is usually local commerce. "Mom and Pop" stores, if you will. When an establishment that is barely in business already gets run out of business, there is typically not enough capital to just go do something more lucrative. Meanwhile, all of the diversity in local trade drops to near nothing as the only place to shop for general goods becomes a company that decides what stock you will see from thousands of miles away. This has happened countless times all over the nation. So much so, Wal*Mart has become known for it, and you will often find people demanding they not be allowed to move in, at town councils. The fact that you seem ignorant of this is surprising. I am just relating common knowledge here.
There is nothing evil to walmart-- except in the eyes of communists who hate to see poor people able to buy what they need and have a decent standard of living.
Do you even know what a communist is? Your assertion makes no sense. And decent standard of living? Do you know many people who make their living working at Wal*Mart? You seriously need to read up on this company, they are a classic example of how capitalism fails in the long term, even if a monopoly state is never reached.
(See also: Palm OS 5.0)
Actually, in some cases the software can handle more colour depth than you can view on any digital output devices. It requires a lot of care, since you cannot see what you are doing, but when you output to devices that can handle it, you get better results that do not look "digital."
But on fragility, they are not as bad as people would think. Sure, they aren't the oops-I-ran-the-flash-through-the-laundry indestructible, but if you read the actual specs on how much shock it can take before causing data loss or how much more it takes to actually destroy the unit, you'll quickly realize that the camera surrounding the microdrive would be completely trashed before the drive would get damaged. Due to their large capacity, swapping is less frequent. Most of these things lives are inside a camera or in a camera bag.
If you are walking around with a $1,600 - $2,500 camera, you tend to be so careful with the thing, the drive inside is downright spoiled.
Seriously though, the solution is not to train the public. The advertisment industry is too intelligent at what it does. There are very well researched reasons for why people buy the things they see advertised. Resisting advertisment is an Active task in today's world. The problem is not the people, they will always be what they are, the problem is the advertisment agencies.
I do agree that some of the fine amount should go towards something beneficial beyond the overhead of list maintenence. ContraAdvertisments are not the answer though.
It will cost money for the companies to stay up to date on the no call list. While a smaller fine will keep the smaller businesses in line, the larger businesses would soon discover that it is cheaper to spend a little less time keeping up with the list and make the occasional mistake. With a much larger fine like this, it would discourage slacking off in even the larger marketing companies and departments.
Yes, I can see how it would get incrementally more difficult with some types of music, for instance -- orchestral? Obviously, in those cases it wouldn't really work. For me, I pretty much just listen to music that has been written, produced, and performed by one or two people. Generally I just buy the CD, because most of those guys operate off of small labels and I feel they should be supported too. If I do that, I like to buy it straight from the label, even if it costs more.
This what the industry is actually afraid of. Not "piracy." They fear a direct artist to consumer model, which is perfectly viable already in many different forms of media. The artists and consumers just need to wake up, some already are.
I am sure there are more, but these are just some that I have seen recently that displayed a fresh way to tell a story, and in some cases, fresh stories as well. You have just have to look beyond your bland massive CinemaPlex a little bit. It is like only shopping for clothes at the Gap. There is a lot more of interest out there; look for it and stop whining about the one outlet that only markets bland product.
I have a 15" 1600x1200 UXGA display in my laptop. Now, I got it loaded, but you could get it for as cheap as around $1,800, and it makes a wonderful eBook reader. Even with ClearType turned off, the DPI is so high that you don't get fatigued from hard to parse glyphs after a few hours. For brightness, I just dim the monitor down so that it is just a shade brighter than the ambient lighting in the room. I could read for hours under those conditions. The only problem is the bulk of the laptop itself. I also do a lot of mobile reading, or just laying on the couch reading, with a 320x320 resolution Palm pilot. While not as convincing as the laptop screen, it does all right.
Before these technologies came about though, I always avoided reading on a screen. Mostly because my primary computer was an iBook, which in tandem with OS X's rather aggressive anti-aliasing makes characters extremely tiring to read.
Replace the word 'automobile' with 'grenade.' Yeah, the parent post has an opinion I do not agree with, but switching out words from entirely different classes of objects as an attempt at argument is pointless.
Ah, thank you. For some reason I had it in my head that Canon stuck with CCD for the 1Ds, I must have just been muddling the 1D in my head.
With the right ICC profiles in Photoshop, you can get nearly perfect reproduction from the Frontier every time. Just bring your high resolution TIFF files in on a CD-ROM and an hour later walk away with prints that 99% of the world wouldn't recognize as being digitally sourced from shutter to paper.
.20-40 cents for 4x6s, and that is for archival quality (40-60 year) prints on Fuji Crystal paper.
An as far as affordable goes -- same prices as any other print work.
That is cheaper than ink jet, and certainly way cheaper than getting rolls and rolls of expensive film processed.
Primarily because it is still a bit buggy and bleeding edge. CCD is a proven technology, with a lot of time put in to its development. That is why Nikon has stuck with CCD chips. Canon has been using Bayer CMOS chips in some of their prosumer cameras, but the top of the line 1Ds still uses a CCD chip.
X3 still displays some odd behaviors under certain conditions, and until these problems are resolved, the "big guys" aren't going to want to put it into a high end camera -- especially when their customers have grown to expect a certain level of all-around quality and attention to detail from them.
Ha!
Yes, and don't forget the other end of the spectrum too, that these cameras can take wonderful long exposures as well. The D60 in particular can sit on Bulb for minute after minute without any major noise or pixel errors. Taking ten minute bulb exposures seems fairly "low-light situation" to me. I've had comparable results with the D100 has well. I also regularly take 10 to 15 second exposures with it, and never once have I had to contend with excess noise, boomy shadows, or any other difficulties.
Me thinks these people are playing with their friend's Kodak DC3400 or something.
Actually, with systems like the Fuji Frontier, you can output digital files onto real archive quality photographic paper that gets wet developed just like any other prints you drop off at the lab. The substantial difference is that unlike film, you can do an emmense amount of "dark room" work to the image before you take it to the lab. I can get dark room quality prints at Ritz. Yes, the Frontier is not a consumer level output device, but dropping off pictures and returning an hour later to pick up the prints for twenty cents a 4x6 is good enough for most. And if you want an art print, the model 390 can output a 15 x 19 sized print.
Secondly, the Canon D30, D60, and Nikon D100 are well below the price range you stated. They can be had for around $2,000. That is still far beyond what the average consumer is willing to spend on a camera, but it does appeal to the serious amateurs and pros.
I have the D100, myself, and it has effectively replaced my 35mm SLR. Mainly because I now have better control over the results, and because it takes cleaner pictures than even 100 ISO 35mm film. Not to mention all of the other benefits of digital, such as flawless transfer to computer (so many hours wasted knocking dust out of high resolution film scans gone,) instant feedback; the ability to take 500 shots of a subject and not feel guilty about the film expense; and so on.
The problem is that the process is typically much more expensive than making regular paper. Also, I haven't used this new stuff, but the old techniques produce very thick stock. The kind I use is actually made from tightly weaved textiles and laminates. This makes it okay for a 40 page technical notebook, but somewhat unweildy for larger volumes. You won't see anyone making "flood-proof" books on a large scale any time soon. They would be awfully heavy, bulky, and expensive. It would honestly just be cheaper to buy a second copy after the first one is destroyed.
Can we say NeXT? Good.
Yeah, the game starts getting really complex, but it would have had so much more appeal than the endless cycle of promotions and better furniture. These sorts of things would have helped to flesh out the non-social characters more.
Another flaw is their overall outgoing meter, which when cranked to the bottom allowed your character to at least go a few days before "needing contact." The only problem is that it regenerated just as slowly. As any true introvert knows -- when you finally do need a little contact you can usually refresh that extremely quickly. You don't need to constantly socialize for three days to feel good about yourself again. In truly extreme cases, you get all of the social contact you need while at work, and your private life can remain just that -- private -- with no long term degeneration in the quality of life. Additionally, a little computer time reading emails, BBS, and perhaps IM chat would serve as well, but this option did not exist. The fact that full loners need to be alone to function properly is something that extraverts will never fully fathom, just as an introvert cannot fathom always needing somebody around to feel good about themselves.
So, while the option existed to make a loner, the game didn't handle it well at all, and really only worked with a narrow scope of individual. It looks like the online version is gonig to be even worse.
Yeah, I don't use GNOME or KDE either, but when I have dabbled, I don't use their supplied terminal apps -- nor do you have to, with both you can configure them to use whatever terminal app you want instead of theirs. They are too bloated for my taste, and I'm not a tab style person. I like lots of virtual screens and laying everything out side by side. Then you can see everything with a scan of the eye and a few quick key strokes if necessary. The thing with either GNOME and KDE is that you can still easily run rxvts or whatever you wish to run instead. With X, there are a scarce few alternatives to their own emulator, but they have the same design flaw due to the nature of how the OS handles application instances. The only true way around it is to fire up X11 and run rxvts. Which is a really silly alternative, because there goes a lot of memory just to run a terminal emulator. As for memory consumption -- with Apple computers that really shouldn't be an issue anyway. If you are running X you are probably on something with at least 256, more than plenty. Rxvt takes up what, 1.5MB a pop depending on compile options?