Well, Intel can take a stale dog turd, slap a 20-pound heatsink and fan on it, and people will still beg for the chance to pay $2000 for it. because "intel inside" people are stupid.
I dunno, I had been using a P233 for most of my apps for the last 3 years, and suddenly, I just got a 600mhz PIII, and there's a 900-something MHz PIII that showed up in the lab, and there's really no difference in the two. The 600 is a HUGE difference from the 233 (I can launch netscape, and by the time it's up and running, I can remember why I launched it - that wasn't always the case with the 233).
IF the reliability issue is only based on FUD, (and that's my perception), then Intel will basically be doing what it's doing now - and still lose. The point is, AMD is cutting low enough on price that the reliability FUD that's coming out of Intel is being perceived as worth the price differential.
Perhaps Intel could lower their prices significantly? But that undoes this whole "market segmentation" strategy that they've built since the Pentium first came out. Incidentally, "market segmentation" is the opposite philosophy from what got them where they are in the first place. The original philosophy was, produce a decent chip at low enough prices, so people can afford a computer - period, as opposed to the Sun philosophy which was, charge a buttload, only the rich can afford computers, so we might as well get rich off of them. So of course Intel sold a butttload of chips, and gained market dominance, which really didn't bother Sun much because INtel wasn't after their market. Once Intel decided to go after SUn's market, they decided not to sacrifice the low end, and segment the market, "scamming" the high-end market into paying premium prices for essentially the same chip (hence, the Celeron overclocking craze).
I believe that if Intel had fully locked-down overclockers, they would probably be significantly lower in the marketplace than they are today.
They were hoping that there standard anticompetitive practices would slow AMD down. (AGP, Slot1, Slot2, Socket 37, etc. ad nauseum, 810 chipset and the whole Rambus fiasco. ..)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Re:Microsoft is a typical corporate developer
on
The Myth Of The Borg
·
· Score: 1
Numbers 2 and 3 can be said to be true about nearly any software company with more than 50 employees. The larger the company, the more true.
NOt only were some planes rigged not to be able to land, but there was a "cherry-bomb" type that was dropped from a heavy bomber, with a rocket engine, and a large explosive warhead; sort of a manned cruise missile. These were used only a few times during the very end of the war, to devestating effect. Apparently, they only used very inexperienced pilots for these flights, because they were running out of experienced ones.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Iron Giant actually WAS pretty cool. And I would have to cite this as an excellent example of a good way to blend CGI and hand-drawn animation.
I do believe that CGI has a place, and currently, it's being abused to give traditional hand-drawn animation a little more pizazz and flash. Personally, I think it's more appropriate to use CGI to substitute for visual effects in live-action, but in animation, you're establishing a visual style, and CGI almost invariably breaks it in an ugly, ugly, way. I don't think I can find one good example of the tasteful blending of CGI and hand-drawn animation, (except for MAYBE Akira, because it was used VERY minimally).
If it were used, say, as a shortcut to overcome the prohibitively expensive hand-calculation of proper visual perpective, I could see a use for that, give the artist a wire-frame to rotoscope off of. But you hadn't ought to use computer rendering in the final product.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Re:Newsflash: Crappy movies are crappy movies!
on
End Of Fox Animation
·
· Score: 1
That's what I don't understand about MI:2. Wasn't it directed by John Woo? His other movies have been great? But I'm having a hard time characterizing why that movie sucked so bad - but I was really squirming in my seat through that one. Some of the conflict-scenes (gunfights, chase scenes) were signature John Woo-beautiful, but gawd, the dialog, that plot, the continuity, were just fuggin awful! I don't want to blame the direction, but there definately are other culprits at work there. . .
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Re:Newsflash: Crappy movies are crappy movies!
on
End Of Fox Animation
·
· Score: 1
listen; they're not that stupid. They know that good entertainment sells, but they also know that bad entertainment sells enough, and with enough hype, it sells great, and even eclipses good entertainment, even the great.
So like the stock-trader who goes around looking for a $5 sure-bet stock to invest in, these guys go around looking for projects that are "good-enough" that they won't have to invest too terribly much into the production, and still get a decent return at the box office. It's not really all that complicated; but it's a game that's not really playable until you get a good chokehold on distribution (like the MPAA has), then you pretty much make sure that the consumers don't have a choice, and start churnin out the garbage. Do you decide to spend tons more to make truly great stuff to snuff out your competition? Hell no, that would eat your profit margin, and eventually put you into a position that makes you an inviting antitrust target.
"They shot Fritz! Those dirty stinkin commie fairy bastards!"
On the technical side, what you are talking about is "rotoscoping", and it's almost universally reviled in the animation world. It's just not well liked, even though the technique dates back to IIRC Disney's Snow White.
Other decent Ralph Bakshi movies; Heavy Traffic (semi-porn, like Fritz the Cat) and duh- Lord of the Rings.
I was disappointed, because this was supposed to be the movie where Don Bluth finally gives up on the cute talking animals. Unfortunately, all the aliens were rather unimaginative cute talking animals.
There were a couple of good lines tho- "Great move, noone will ever think of looking for us in the air-shaft!" and "who would have thought, an intelligent guard!"
My final comment is - planets blowing up have been done to death. If anyone out there is thinking of ever making a sci-fi movie at ANY point in your future, please consult a REAL astrophysicist on what a planet exploding would take, and what it would look like. PLEASE! Also, there was this guy named Newton. ..
Fear of the reprocussions of the Reginald Denny verdict (LA Riots) (irregardless of whether that verdict was right or wrong, I'm not getting into that here, I really wont) - is the reason OJ got off. If OJ went to jail for murder - or to the needle, you KNOW there would be trouble.
You know, that's probably what it is. He's probably already got a deal with a publisher to let him do this, the publisher's laughing because people are going to pay him for the first two parts, and then pay THEM for the dead-tree edition because they bought the first two parts, and couldn't get the third one, (because I am 100% certain that the conditions wont be met).
What he doesn't account for, is peer-peer sharing, like if someone put his novel up on Gnutella (hint!) then lots of people could get at it, not be counted as the % who don't pay.
Then there could be some nasty hacker out there who will just set up a perl-script to download the thing a million times, to throw off the stats. All it would take is one jerk-wad to blow it for all the honest folks out there.
Every other story on/. has been about how x technology spells the end for the dominant publishing/music/OS business, because that has been THE whole idea of the computer revolution. It's been sitting in the back of everyone's mind ever since we figured out: hey, you can digitize information, and if everyone had a computer, information ultimately cannot be protected, and will be literally free to make unlimited copies.
That's what went through my mind the day I read the article in Popular Science back in 197x, about Compact Disks. I thought to myself, well, if that information is digital, if these personal computers ever "take off", these guys are going to be in big trouble. I didn't see the MP3 coming until it was here, but I knew that the genie had finally arrived. And he's PISSED!
Give the man some credit. He's onto "us". As individuals, we may have honor, but you know as well as I do (and he does), that as a group, the logic here is pure Prisoner's Dilemma, and since most people read Stephen King (well, he's kind of passe now, isn't he?) and not Scientific American, he's just reproducing the experiment for the masses, taking "us" to task on this IP system.
He's basically saying, okay all you info-pirates out there. Put your money where your mouth is. I'm betting y'all just want your free beer.
Just don't tie those NT boxes into a burlap sack and toss them into a river. Be humane about it, see a vet and have them put down gently with an injection.
Well, I can't wait until not only will the product run on Linux, but they ship the Linux x86, PPC, Alpha, and Mac, and NT (why not?) versions in the same box. Hybrids rock.
Opera uses MDI, and MDI irritates me like no other flaw in Windows (other than the one where it will hide "shs" extensions from you, even if you check the "always show extensions" box).
MDI == poo. I wish it would go away. I attempt to avoid it wherever I can.
Isn't Bruce in some other show now? (coming from a long, long-time fan of Hercules and Xena, who just doesn't give a shit about the crappy replacement shows).
Slashdot Mirror
I remember stories about farmers complaining that their cows gave sour milk because of being exposed to the sonic booms -
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Well, Intel can take a stale dog turd, slap a 20-pound heatsink and fan on it, and people will still beg for the chance to pay $2000 for it. because "intel inside" people are stupid.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I dunno, I had been using a P233 for most of my apps for the last 3 years, and suddenly, I just got a 600mhz PIII, and there's a 900-something MHz PIII that showed up in the lab, and there's really no difference in the two. The 600 is a HUGE difference from the 233 (I can launch netscape, and by the time it's up and running, I can remember why I launched it - that wasn't always the case with the 233).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
IF the reliability issue is only based on FUD, (and that's my perception), then Intel will basically be doing what it's doing now - and still lose. The point is, AMD is cutting low enough on price that the reliability FUD that's coming out of Intel is being perceived as worth the price differential.
Perhaps Intel could lower their prices significantly? But that undoes this whole "market segmentation" strategy that they've built since the Pentium first came out.
Incidentally, "market segmentation" is the opposite philosophy from what got them where they are in the first place. The original philosophy was, produce a decent chip at low enough prices, so people can afford a computer - period, as opposed to the Sun philosophy which was, charge a buttload, only the rich can afford computers, so we might as well get rich off of them. So of course Intel sold a butttload of chips, and gained market dominance, which really didn't bother Sun much because INtel wasn't after their market. Once Intel decided to go after SUn's market, they decided not to sacrifice the low end, and segment the market, "scamming" the high-end market into paying premium prices for essentially the same chip (hence, the Celeron overclocking craze).
I believe that if Intel had fully locked-down overclockers, they would probably be significantly lower in the marketplace than they are today.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
They were hoping that there standard anticompetitive practices would slow AMD down. .)
(AGP, Slot1, Slot2, Socket 37, etc. ad nauseum, 810 chipset and the whole Rambus fiasco. .
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Numbers 2 and 3 can be said to be true about nearly any software company with more than 50 employees. The larger the company, the more true.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
NOt only were some planes rigged not to be able to land, but there was a "cherry-bomb" type that was dropped from a heavy bomber, with a rocket engine, and a large explosive warhead; sort of a manned cruise missile. These were used only a few times during the very end of the war, to devestating effect. Apparently, they only used very inexperienced pilots for these flights, because they were running out of experienced ones.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Oh yeah, I forgot. Iron Giant actually WAS pretty cool. And I would have to cite this as an excellent example of a good way to blend CGI and hand-drawn animation.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I do believe that CGI has a place, and currently, it's being abused to give traditional hand-drawn animation a little more pizazz and flash. Personally, I think it's more appropriate to use CGI to substitute for visual effects in live-action, but in animation, you're establishing a visual style, and CGI almost invariably breaks it in an ugly, ugly, way. I don't think I can find one good example of the tasteful blending of CGI and hand-drawn animation, (except for MAYBE Akira, because it was used VERY minimally).
If it were used, say, as a shortcut to overcome the prohibitively expensive hand-calculation of proper visual perpective, I could see a use for that, give the artist a wire-frame to rotoscope off of. But you hadn't ought to use computer rendering in the final product.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
That's what I don't understand about MI:2. Wasn't it directed by John Woo? His other movies have been great? But I'm having a hard time characterizing why that movie sucked so bad - but I was really squirming in my seat through that one. Some of the conflict-scenes (gunfights, chase scenes) were signature John Woo-beautiful, but gawd, the dialog, that plot, the continuity, were just fuggin awful! I don't want to blame the direction, but there definately are other culprits at work there. . .
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
listen; they're not that stupid. They know that good entertainment sells, but they also know that bad entertainment sells enough, and with enough hype, it sells great, and even eclipses good entertainment, even the great.
So like the stock-trader who goes around looking for a $5 sure-bet stock to invest in, these guys go around looking for projects that are "good-enough" that they won't have to invest too terribly much into the production, and still get a decent return at the box office. It's not really all that complicated; but it's a game that's not really playable until you get a good chokehold on distribution (like the MPAA has), then you pretty much make sure that the consumers don't have a choice, and start churnin out the garbage. Do you decide to spend tons more to make truly great stuff to snuff out your competition? Hell no, that would eat your profit margin, and eventually put you into a position that makes you an inviting antitrust target.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I think South Park stole from Wizards:
"They shot Fritz! Those dirty stinkin commie fairy bastards!"
On the technical side, what you are talking about is "rotoscoping", and it's almost universally reviled in the animation world. It's just not well liked, even though the technique dates back to IIRC Disney's Snow White.
Other decent Ralph Bakshi movies; Heavy Traffic (semi-porn, like Fritz the Cat) and duh- Lord of the Rings.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I was disappointed, because this was supposed to be the movie where Don Bluth finally gives up on the cute talking animals. Unfortunately, all the aliens were rather unimaginative cute talking animals.
.
There were a couple of good lines tho-
"Great move, noone will ever think of looking for us in the air-shaft!"
and
"who would have thought, an intelligent guard!"
My final comment is - planets blowing up have been done to death. If anyone out there is thinking of ever making a sci-fi movie at ANY point in your future, please consult a REAL astrophysicist on what a planet exploding would take, and what it would look like. PLEASE!
Also, there was this guy named Newton. .
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I have a teeny-tiny Frisket glued to the top of my monitor. Nobody knows who he is.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Fear of the reprocussions of the Reginald Denny verdict (LA Riots) (irregardless of whether that verdict was right or wrong, I'm not getting into that here, I really wont) - is the reason OJ got off. If OJ went to jail for murder - or to the needle, you KNOW there would be trouble.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
You know, that's probably what it is. He's probably already got a deal with a publisher to let him do this, the publisher's laughing because people are going to pay him for the first two parts, and then pay THEM for the dead-tree edition because they bought the first two parts, and couldn't get the third one, (because I am 100% certain that the conditions wont be met).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
What he doesn't account for, is peer-peer sharing, like if someone put his novel up on Gnutella (hint!) then lots of people could get at it, not be counted as the % who don't pay.
Then there could be some nasty hacker out there who will just set up a perl-script to download the thing a million times, to throw off the stats. All it would take is one jerk-wad to blow it for all the honest folks out there.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Every other story on /. has been about how x technology spells the end for the dominant publishing/music/OS business, because that has been THE whole idea of the computer revolution. It's been sitting in the back of everyone's mind ever since we figured out: hey, you can digitize information, and if everyone had a computer, information ultimately cannot be protected, and will be literally free to make unlimited copies.
That's what went through my mind the day I read the article in Popular Science back in 197x, about Compact Disks. I thought to myself, well, if that information is digital, if these personal computers ever "take off", these guys are going to be in big trouble. I didn't see the MP3 coming until it was here, but I knew that the genie had finally arrived. And he's PISSED!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I can't believe you people just don't "get" it! Have you ever read one of his books? He doesn't expect to get 75% either. He's teasing us on purpose.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Give the man some credit.
He's onto "us". As individuals, we may have honor, but you know as well as I do (and he does), that as a group, the logic here is pure Prisoner's Dilemma, and since most people read Stephen King (well, he's kind of passe now, isn't he?) and not Scientific American, he's just reproducing the experiment for the masses, taking "us" to task on this IP system.
He's basically saying, okay all you info-pirates out there. Put your money where your mouth is. I'm betting y'all just want your free beer.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Just don't tie those NT boxes into a burlap sack and toss them into a river. Be humane about it, see a vet and have them put down gently with an injection.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Well, I can't wait until not only will the product run on Linux, but they ship the Linux x86, PPC, Alpha, and Mac, and NT (why not?) versions in the same box. Hybrids rock.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Opera uses MDI, and MDI irritates me like no other flaw in Windows (other than the one where it will hide "shs" extensions from you, even if you check the "always show extensions" box).
MDI == poo. I wish it would go away. I attempt to avoid it wherever I can.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Isn't Bruce in some other show now?
(coming from a long, long-time fan of Hercules and Xena, who just doesn't give a shit about the crappy replacement shows).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
ah, but what about Macrovision. Dammit! I bought this Apex 600a peice of poo for something!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!