Exactly, every time I go to a shop at least 1/3 of the portable computers sold are netbooks. With prices about half of the cheapest 14"+ laptops they are very good choice in a poor European country, and perhaps in many other parts of the world. And unlike spartphones, netbooks are real computers that can be actively used for many hours both for creating and consuming content.
True, both about the comic and the corresponding forum thread. When it comes to imaging (video/photo), most geeks fall in the "Equipment Measurbator" and "Online Expert" categories, as defined in The Seven Levels of Photographers.
And on the other side, shrinking the die size has limitations, in the same way like increasing the clock rate. You cannot do these things forever, Intel knows this very well when it comes to clock rates.
Yes, and add to this the battery that would be needed to power the dual-core processor... Such batteries exist and are used widely in video and photo cameras, they just are big and not suitable for the slim smartphones.
I wonder when will come the day when we wold discuss a super-giga-mega-powered phone and somebody will say "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these".
DocBook is being used for what HTML was originally intended - technical publications.
True, DocBook is used mainly for technical publications. Not true, HTML was intended for implementing the hypertext (that's why HT is part of the name) and not specifically for technical publications.
Why not just use HTML? It even supports pictures!
Because DocBook provides much more meaningful elements for technical publications than HTML. Because DocBook is intended mainly for documents published on paper, while HTML is intended for Web pages displayed in a browser. There is a reason why nobody uses HTML for technical publications.
The real question must be, why use DocBook when we already have DITA? While both formats are designed specifically for technical publications, DITA is superior.
Another example of such game is Maple Story. Combined total of over 100 million subscriber/user accounts in all of its versions, free to play. You can purchase with money haircuts and other stuff that makes you look better. You can purchase also purchase items that make playing a bit easier. None of the purchased items is a weapon or armor - these are only available in the game. Sounds fair.
Considering they have started in 2003 and are still in the game, it seems they are profitable. The only downside is that you cannot play offline.
Yes, we humans are social animals. What you describe - talking about football, making personal phone calls, gossiping, taking long lunches, or browsing the Internet - is normal.
On the other hand, if it takes hours of time every day, you are at the wrong place. Large companies have this tendency to become a place where such people gather and get their salaries for doing almost nothing. Stay there for a while - until you get a year spent in a large software and hardware company to have it on your resume - and then leave at first opportunity. You will surely find a place where people have more serious attitude to their job, and you will find it is better to work with them.
Back to the original discussion, here's what the OP stated:
you don't NEED a big studio full of gear to record a song anymore, you can do it in your garage with a PC, some software and some microphones to record with
That is correct. $500 for computer + $500 for audio hw/sw + $1000 for instruments should be enough for a decent recording. It is not much at all. Provided you have the skill to use it you can make a good recording. Good enough to be published in Internet or burned on CD. So the OP is right when it comes to production cost for music.
Let's try to do this with a film. The cheap way is to go digital. Few thousand for a camera. Few thousand for lenses. Few thousand for computer powerful enough to edit the movie. Or you want the real stuff and will shoot film. Cameras are more expensive, and you need to buy and develop film. Wait, what about the lightning - you need it both for film and digital? A few thousand more. Just production costs. Compare this to the sums needed for making a song in your garage and you will understand why making your own movie - at least one that looks good - is not for everyone.
And with more sensitive recording equipment, you need less light in an absolute sense, so you need less expensive lights too.
Digital is more sensitive than film since when? Just go to a theater, watch a movie shot with digital camera and than one shot on film, and see the difference. It is visible with naked eyes, and digital is not a winner (excluding animation).
But in the end it is not the equipment that makes the film interesting, that is only a diversion for us geeks with less then stellar soft skills. The acting and the script contribute a lot more then the equipment.
You are right, just offtopic. The parent post was all about (the price of) equipment needed to make a song a movie, and not about the skill to make them good.
With digital cameras (and DSLRs shooting video) the cost is coming down, that's true. And when it comes in quality, it's like apples and oranges. Film is just better - it is a technology developed more than 100 years. Compared to film, digital is a toy. You think guys in Hollywood don't know their job and prefer film to digital just because they are lazy?
And I don't even want to start about the lightning - you need it no matter of what camera you use. For shooting friends on a picnic in bright shiny day you may get OK results with digital handycam. To shoot a dark scene so that it looks like "in the movies" you need serious lightning, for serious money.
With the new world order eliminating the huge production costs (you don't NEED a big studio full of gear to record a song anymore, you can do it in your garage with a PC, some software and some microphones to record with) and distribution costs (you can distribute your songs either for free or for pay online very easily without a middleman), you dont need the big dinosaurs anymore and they are doing everything they can to stop it from happening.
If it is about the music, you are right. When it comes to movies, it is not that simple. Good film cameras, films, lenses, and lightning are expensive, and cannot be substituted with handheld digital cameras.
And the original meaning of piracy is also taking someone else's belongings, just using ships in the sea. That is, robbery. People like Drake and Morgan did this, among many other.
What today *AA call "piracy" is just copying. They know they would look stupid if they want money for copying, and that's why they call it "piracy". Welcome our newspeak overlords...
Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android?.
Completely agree. The trick is to win the developers, and Android is successfully doing this. The more developers work on Android applications, the more popular Linux will become. More power to Android developers!
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900's to scout the territory.
One telegraphed back: "Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes."
The other telegraphed: "Business opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes."
Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness.
OMG, WTF. The first one thinks with his head, he sees there is no need to wear shoes. The second one avoids thinking and decides to find a way to sell something that nobody needs. How smart, Miguel. The parent said it, you act as a terrible troll.
This smells like a fictional excuse: see, our customers want more online gaming, we will stop selling games on disks, everything will be online, everyone will be happy.
While game makers might like the idea, I don't. Give me just games which I can play whenever I want without needing Internet connection. And don't worry, in the rare cases when I want to play online I'll do it, just don't try killing the offline gaming.
What about moderation on such site and deleting content that the company doesn't want others to see? It has happened before.
The community is mature enough to create their own sites, and these sites are usually much better and useful then the sites provided by the companies creating and publishing games. Just look at Wikia gaming, Strategywiki, and so on.
Once a friend in the IT security mentioned that he'll install Skype only on a carefully firewalled virtual machine, with nothing else on it. Now there is one more reason to believe him. 'Skype' and 'securoty' just don't go well together.
Slashdot Mirror
That is still almost an order of magnitude more than any paid MMO I've heard of.
FTFY
Free-to-play MMOs can be bigger, MapleStory had a combined total of 39 million user accounts worldwide: Maple story
+1 for Potato Guy: http://www.kde.org/applications/games/ktuberling/
My 3-year old loves it, learned mostly on his own how to use the touchpad.
Exactly, every time I go to a shop at least 1/3 of the portable computers sold are netbooks. With prices about half of the cheapest 14"+ laptops they are very good choice in a poor European country, and perhaps in many other parts of the world. And unlike spartphones, netbooks are real computers that can be actively used for many hours both for creating and consuming content.
Compiling
True, both about the comic and the corresponding forum thread. When it comes to imaging (video/photo), most geeks fall in the "Equipment Measurbator" and "Online Expert" categories, as defined in The Seven Levels of Photographers.
And on the other side, shrinking the die size has limitations, in the same way like increasing the clock rate. You cannot do these things forever, Intel knows this very well when it comes to clock rates.
Yes, and add to this the battery that would be needed to power the dual-core processor ... Such batteries exist and are used widely in video and photo cameras, they just are big and not suitable for the slim smartphones.
I wonder when will come the day when we wold discuss a super-giga-mega-powered phone and somebody will say "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these".
DocBook is being used for what HTML was originally intended - technical publications.
True, DocBook is used mainly for technical publications. Not true, HTML was intended for implementing the hypertext (that's why HT is part of the name) and not specifically for technical publications.
Why not just use HTML? It even supports pictures!
Because DocBook provides much more meaningful elements for technical publications than HTML. Because DocBook is intended mainly for documents published on paper, while HTML is intended for Web pages displayed in a browser. There is a reason why nobody uses HTML for technical publications.
The real question must be, why use DocBook when we already have DITA? While both formats are designed specifically for technical publications, DITA is superior.
Considering they have started in 2003 and are still in the game, it seems they are profitable. The only downside is that you cannot play offline.
if you want something you can count on, pirate it
Life is like a game, it can be hard, but what graphics!
Add also Terry Prattchet to the list.
On the other hand, if it takes hours of time every day, you are at the wrong place. Large companies have this tendency to become a place where such people gather and get their salaries for doing almost nothing. Stay there for a while - until you get a year spent in a large software and hardware company to have it on your resume - and then leave at first opportunity. You will surely find a place where people have more serious attitude to their job, and you will find it is better to work with them.
Back to the original discussion, here's what the OP stated:
you don't NEED a big studio full of gear to record a song anymore, you can do it in your garage with a PC, some software and some microphones to record with
That is correct. $500 for computer + $500 for audio hw/sw + $1000 for instruments should be enough for a decent recording. It is not much at all. Provided you have the skill to use it you can make a good recording. Good enough to be published in Internet or burned on CD. So the OP is right when it comes to production cost for music.
Let's try to do this with a film. The cheap way is to go digital. Few thousand for a camera. Few thousand for lenses. Few thousand for computer powerful enough to edit the movie. Or you want the real stuff and will shoot film. Cameras are more expensive, and you need to buy and develop film. Wait, what about the lightning - you need it both for film and digital? A few thousand more. Just production costs. Compare this to the sums needed for making a song in your garage and you will understand why making your own movie - at least one that looks good - is not for everyone.
And with more sensitive recording equipment, you need less light in an absolute sense, so you need less expensive lights too.
Digital is more sensitive than film since when? Just go to a theater, watch a movie shot with digital camera and than one shot on film, and see the difference. It is visible with naked eyes, and digital is not a winner (excluding animation).
But in the end it is not the equipment that makes the film interesting, that is only a diversion for us geeks with less then stellar soft skills. The acting and the script contribute a lot more then the equipment.
You are right, just offtopic. The parent post was all about (the price of) equipment needed to make a song a movie, and not about the skill to make them good.
And I don't even want to start about the lightning - you need it no matter of what camera you use. For shooting friends on a picnic in bright shiny day you may get OK results with digital handycam. To shoot a dark scene so that it looks like "in the movies" you need serious lightning, for serious money.
With the new world order eliminating the huge production costs (you don't NEED a big studio full of gear to record a song anymore, you can do it in your garage with a PC, some software and some microphones to record with) and distribution costs (you can distribute your songs either for free or for pay online very easily without a middleman), you dont need the big dinosaurs anymore and they are doing everything they can to stop it from happening.
If it is about the music, you are right. When it comes to movies, it is not that simple. Good film cameras, films, lenses, and lightning are expensive, and cannot be substituted with handheld digital cameras.
What today *AA call "piracy" is just copying. They know they would look stupid if they want money for copying, and that's why they call it "piracy". Welcome our newspeak overlords ...
Secretary: 1 through Secretary: 5
Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android? .
Completely agree. The trick is to win the developers, and Android is successfully doing this. The more developers work on Android applications, the more popular Linux will become. More power to Android developers!
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900's to scout the territory.
One telegraphed back: "Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes."
The other telegraphed: "Business opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes."
Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness.
OMG, WTF. The first one thinks with his head, he sees there is no need to wear shoes. The second one avoids thinking and decides to find a way to sell something that nobody needs. How smart, Miguel. The parent said it, you act as a terrible troll.
While game makers might like the idea, I don't. Give me just games which I can play whenever I want without needing Internet connection. And don't worry, in the rare cases when I want to play online I'll do it, just don't try killing the offline gaming.
The official site is good for news and updates. It is the first place where one should go if he needs the news from the source.
On the other hand, for forums, guides, maps, trading, and other similar stuff the non-official community sites are just better.
The community is mature enough to create their own sites, and these sites are usually much better and useful then the sites provided by the companies creating and publishing games. Just look at Wikia gaming, Strategywiki, and so on.
Once a friend in the IT security mentioned that he'll install Skype only on a carefully firewalled virtual machine, with nothing else on it. Now there is one more reason to believe him. 'Skype' and 'securoty' just don't go well together.