The annoying thing is that if you wait for a product to be *ready*, someone beats you to it and you get shafted by the competition. The way the tech industry works now, it's "hit the market early with a basically-functional product, clean it up later once you've captured first-mover advantage". Those who wait around miss out.
How many companies do you think are kicking themselves they didn't beat the iPad to market? If you get there first, you win - it doesn't matter whether you're better, just that you're first. Microsoft know this, and yes we suffer a bit with rubbish releases, but we wouldn't have Windows 7 if we hadn't had Vista, so yeah.... it sucks, but it's life.
(Admittedly a mail client is far from "entering the market early", so you are still mostly right - I expect either it's a late-inclusion, or they're going for heavy web integration, or both).
I wondered a similar thing (sort of - he indirectly answered that with "no cameras in their bedrooms") - I would far rather have seen "relationships/reproduction" questions answered than what was there. (I'm actually glad about the no cameras in the bedrooms thing, too - I think these astronauts need *some* privacy).
Would they be able to have kids? Would we sterilse everyone before they left? What are the implications for "long term" stay - somewhere or other, someone there is going to want a relationship, and while a lot harder for a lot of reasons (including the reality TV aspect), would it still happen? Would we let it happen, or would there be an "all male" rule (like some militaries), or similar? (I doubt it).
I would be keen to know what they think about couples, relationships and babies. Raising kids on Mars is a whole different scenario (I have kids).
I'm kinda surprised that there are a lot of "this is a scam", "this won't ever work" comments on here. Whatever happened to geeks getting excited about a cool use of science (that might - just possibly - actually work)? I'm an engineering student, and while I can see millions of things that could go wrong and wonder about their business model, I think it's brilliant - and think it could work. Let's get into space. I don't really care how, let's just do it, while we can (we are at a rare point between technological development and resource depletion where we actually have the ability to attempt this - wait too long and we'll likely miss it and, as a species, never get the chance again).
So what if it fails? So what if only 4 people make it and they die alone? At least we tried, and it might just inspire people to keep trying.
Also, wouldn't you rather have people excited about spaceships again, rather than sappy vampire teen romance?;-) I certainly would.
Space travel! What could possibly be cooler than finally colonising another planet?
It appears you haven't actually looked at their website. Some of those longer-term techs are still in progress, but if you have a read, everything else they need *already exists*. It was one of the core things they were looking for - tech that isn't fiction, but which they can actually go and buy now. Go have a look: www.mars-one.com.
...(and arguing about how trustworthy the stats are).
Has anyone else considered that this now means that no one browser rules any more. This is a good thing! Someone above posted the Wikipedia browser share link (this), and basically Chrome/IE/Firefox/Safari are all roughly equal (my guess on Safari is probably more Apple's portable iOS devices than OS X). This means that there are three web engines competing healthily (with webkit in the lead), and it's forcing all of them to be standards compliant.
(Also, yay for Firefox rising from Netscape's ashes just in time to stop the one-browser-rules-all scenario we nearly had with IE, and making it possible for other browers to exist...)
So, what you're saying is you'd like to see a movie that is well written, well acted, with great characters... and looks like trash? No, you want to see all of those. I know Peter Jackson's stuff well enough to know that the story, characters, acting will all be great, and that it will look gorgeous as well. I like that with the higher frame rate, there will be one less thing to distract me from the story.
Citation? Is it really those with "superior visual acuity", or just different?
But, I don't disagree that some can't watch it without headaches for the reason you've stated - my wife dislikes 3D movies because they give her headaches. I don't get headaches, but (perhaps thanks to the old "Magic Eye" steriograms back in the day) I can force my eyes to do what I want (converge and focus independently), which to me suggests greater visual control, not lesser (though it doesn't feel especially natural).
Knowing friends who get motion sickness from flickering sources, I think 48fps is a great idea and may reduce the number of "3D headaches" (possibly?)
You can train your brain to pick up more than you realise. I used to work in a TV station. I see even a small speck on a single frame.
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm gives quite a good description of how eyes work, and the framerates involved. Depending on what you are looking at (light on dark vs. dark on light), you might well notice a 120fps flash, though most people won't, and in most normal cases, you wouldn't be getting that specific a setup. I note you added "with proper motion blur", (which he wasn't saying) - of course you wouldn't be able to see 120fps with motion blur, but that's not what he's talking about... and neither is he talking about 120fps; he said 24fps.
Yes, 120fps with blur would be overkill. 48fps most certainly is not.
I think the grandparent's comment about MP3 artifacts is a good one - if you train yourself to see or hear artifacts, you can pick them up a lot. 24fps annoys me no end, so I hope 48fps stays (especially in many modern action movies - Transformers is a prime (sic) example).
I guess I can understand people liking the "art", but for me, anything flickering at less than about 75Hz annoys the heck out of me (believe it or not, even the flicker on my CCFL-backlit LCD screen is slightly distracting). I used to work in a TV station, and part of that in the transmission room checking programs for broadcast, so I see every single artifact on every single frame. To me, things like that aren't art, they're annoying and ruin the sense of disbelief. I once had some friends do a short film where they added a "film" effect that including dropping it to the lower frame rate - apparently it was more "filmic", but to me it looked stilted and disgusting compared to the original.
I for one am very much looking forward to seeing something that finally has enough of a frame rate that I don't have to spend the ads and previews getting my brain adjusted to actually put up with it enough to see what's going on, be constantly annoyed by the jittery display, and then feeling disoriented when I walk out of the theatre while I re-adjust to non-flicker.
Yes it sucks a bit for the small theatres, but how else do they differentiate themselves from the home theatre with a blu-ray player?
And yes, upconversions to a higher frame rate probably do look like rubbish, but that's another reason why The Hobbit is probably going to be amazing - it's made as artwork specifically for a beautiful frame rate on a beautiful camera at a stunning resolution. I am looking forward to finally seeing a movie that doesn't annoy me visually. I hope 48fps stays - I've long thought that I'd rather have moderate resolution and high framerate, than high resolution and low framerate (i.e. don't bother with more than 1080 until you get at least twice the temporal resolution - though, Hobbit is doing both).
Actually, I would complain if our TV didn't have user-serviceable parts... We have an LCD TV with built-in DVD drive, and I recently had to fix the DVD drive. On a student income, replacing the unit outright isn't an option.
Also, they have sacrificed features for space - ethernet port, optical drive. The latter particularly is something Jo Average will likely miss (of course, it will also funnel traffic to the iTunes store instead as they won't be buying physical disks...)
But yes, an engineering student with 10 years tech support experience (including laptop servicing, which even among techs is a bit more specialised) is not Apple's target market.:-)
Ok, so hang on, record brain impulses in the hope that someone can reconstruct them as thoughts? That's like saying "I'm going to record the hard drive and fan noises on my computer in the hope that someone can reconstruct the game I'm playing". Riiiight. That sounds like trying to get small pieces of a complex whole and expecting someone to be able to make use of it. And I thought Sagan was supposed to have been a respected scientist?
Umm, have you ever used the *nix command line? I'm guessing not, or you wouldn't be comparing it to MS-DOS commands. I've used both command lines and basically, I am glad that things like Cygwin exist, because the Windows command line is borderline useless in comparison.
And the issue in question is about re-arranging UI for no reason - yes, the command lines in both haven't changed, but if you're falling back to the command line, it may be a sign that your UI changes were a fail, and I would rather use a *nix command line than a Windows one (despite the fact that I have spent a lot more time on the Windows one). Also, it's nice when you can actually *find* the command line. The unnecessary re-arranging is one of the reasons I hate Vista (and Office 2007 moreso).
And, here's an experiment to try: put a user familiar with MS Office up to 2003 or so in front of (a) MS Office 2007 and (b) OpenOffice 3. Ask them to find simple operations (like Print).
What I meant to say really was that often people don't have time to learn - yes, there should be minimum proficiency exams before using a computer, but often that's not practical in the real world. I know quite a few people to whom the computer is only a tool and they just need it to work because they're busy.
I guess it's that most/.ers are like building professionals who like the best tools and learn to use them well and to whom construction is a artform, but most other people just need to bash in the occasional nail and so don't feel the need to develop the skills to use them properly.
I agree with what you say about IIS - the first time I had to set up a Windows server, I was worried about the fact that the help file was written like every other Windows help file - for novice users who know nothing. It frightened me - that sort of person shouldn't even be told allowed in the same room as the server, let alone be setting it up...
But, in a lot of other cases (OSes, office software and web browsers for example), the people using it often don't have the time to learn lots of new things - they just need it to work.
It may be interesting to note though that I have had times where I replaced both the M$ and Apple browsers with Firefox because they were broken and I couldn't fix them. It's why I hate Mac OS actually - sure, it's pretty and shiny and has lots of nicely configured defaults and is easy to use, but the moment you want to do anything even *remotely* technical, it is impossible (or you do what I usually did when I had to support Mac OS X and go to the command line because at least I know that will work...)
I like Firefox for the same (opposite) reason - it is nicely configured by default, it does what one expects and is easy to use by a novice... and I can extend it to do virtually whatever I want, however I want (I use tabbed session browsing and mouse gestures and adblock especially).
I think this is something that more FOSS projects need to catch on to (Ubuntu have the right idea, too, though has more work to do) - make it really easy and shiny to start with, but still let the power user/techie do what they need./ramble:-)
Perhaps, but how many of the manufacturers actually built pre-N devices that were completely and properly compliant with the draft spec? If past experiences are anything to go by, there'll likely be a few that get broken anyway, despite Alliance promises...
But a good point nonetheless:-)
There is one thing that annoys me more than anything with software and has caused me more headaches - more than interface (which also can ellicit rants from me), more than stability, more than all of that - and it's this: licensing.
I like open source software because I can go to a new computer somewhere, jump online, download, install and carry on working happily (or set someone else up to work).
I have spent far too many hours (I used to work as an IT admin) bashing my head against walls with proprietary-licenced software. Oh, you can't find your licence code? Oh, you're having trouble with Windows activation? Well, we could set that up on his machine, but we'd have to pay [arm, leg, firstborn], even though he will only use it once a week. What do you mean you didn't keep the original install disks? The list goes on.
As for the other reasons software sucks, it goes both ways (proprietary and FOSS) - broken upgrades? Bad interface? Ignoring users? Lack of support? (Have you ever actually read the average help file?) I've seen rubbish and gold in both free and proprietary.
But knowing I can install and not be stealing is really helpful.
And this is not mentioning things you can do with software that doesn't need DRM to protect it, like portable apps (I love being able to take my browser - and my office suite - with me) or live installs. I think this sort of thing may be areas that free software can really win against proprietary because the licence enforcement in a situation like that would be a headache, if not impossible...
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The annoying thing is that if you wait for a product to be *ready*, someone beats you to it and you get shafted by the competition. The way the tech industry works now, it's "hit the market early with a basically-functional product, clean it up later once you've captured first-mover advantage". Those who wait around miss out.
How many companies do you think are kicking themselves they didn't beat the iPad to market? If you get there first, you win - it doesn't matter whether you're better, just that you're first. Microsoft know this, and yes we suffer a bit with rubbish releases, but we wouldn't have Windows 7 if we hadn't had Vista, so yeah.... it sucks, but it's life.
(Admittedly a mail client is far from "entering the market early", so you are still mostly right - I expect either it's a late-inclusion, or they're going for heavy web integration, or both).
I wondered a similar thing (sort of - he indirectly answered that with "no cameras in their bedrooms") - I would far rather have seen "relationships/reproduction" questions answered than what was there. (I'm actually glad about the no cameras in the bedrooms thing, too - I think these astronauts need *some* privacy).
Would they be able to have kids? Would we sterilse everyone before they left? What are the implications for "long term" stay - somewhere or other, someone there is going to want a relationship, and while a lot harder for a lot of reasons (including the reality TV aspect), would it still happen? Would we let it happen, or would there be an "all male" rule (like some militaries), or similar? (I doubt it).
I would be keen to know what they think about couples, relationships and babies. Raising kids on Mars is a whole different scenario (I have kids).
I'm kinda surprised that there are a lot of "this is a scam", "this won't ever work" comments on here. Whatever happened to geeks getting excited about a cool use of science (that might - just possibly - actually work)? I'm an engineering student, and while I can see millions of things that could go wrong and wonder about their business model, I think it's brilliant - and think it could work. Let's get into space. I don't really care how, let's just do it, while we can (we are at a rare point between technological development and resource depletion where we actually have the ability to attempt this - wait too long and we'll likely miss it and, as a species, never get the chance again).
So what if it fails? So what if only 4 people make it and they die alone? At least we tried, and it might just inspire people to keep trying.
Also, wouldn't you rather have people excited about spaceships again, rather than sappy vampire teen romance? ;-) I certainly would.
Space travel! What could possibly be cooler than finally colonising another planet?
It appears you haven't actually looked at their website. Some of those longer-term techs are still in progress, but if you have a read, everything else they need *already exists*. It was one of the core things they were looking for - tech that isn't fiction, but which they can actually go and buy now. Go have a look: www.mars-one.com.
...(and arguing about how trustworthy the stats are).
Has anyone else considered that this now means that no one browser rules any more. This is a good thing! Someone above posted the Wikipedia browser share link (this), and basically Chrome/IE/Firefox/Safari are all roughly equal (my guess on Safari is probably more Apple's portable iOS devices than OS X). This means that there are three web engines competing healthily (with webkit in the lead), and it's forcing all of them to be standards compliant.
(Also, yay for Firefox rising from Netscape's ashes just in time to stop the one-browser-rules-all scenario we nearly had with IE, and making it possible for other browers to exist...)
Actually, NTSC is 29.97 frames per second with dropped frames. PAL is a far superior format. America is so backward. :-)
(PAL actually is a superior format for other technical reasons, despite being slower).
So, what you're saying is you'd like to see a movie that is well written, well acted, with great characters... and looks like trash? No, you want to see all of those. I know Peter Jackson's stuff well enough to know that the story, characters, acting will all be great, and that it will look gorgeous as well. I like that with the higher frame rate, there will be one less thing to distract me from the story.
Citation? Is it really those with "superior visual acuity", or just different?
But, I don't disagree that some can't watch it without headaches for the reason you've stated - my wife dislikes 3D movies because they give her headaches. I don't get headaches, but (perhaps thanks to the old "Magic Eye" steriograms back in the day) I can force my eyes to do what I want (converge and focus independently), which to me suggests greater visual control, not lesser (though it doesn't feel especially natural).
Knowing friends who get motion sickness from flickering sources, I think 48fps is a great idea and may reduce the number of "3D headaches" (possibly?)
You can train your brain to pick up more than you realise. I used to work in a TV station. I see even a small speck on a single frame.
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm gives quite a good description of how eyes work, and the framerates involved. Depending on what you are looking at (light on dark vs. dark on light), you might well notice a 120fps flash, though most people won't, and in most normal cases, you wouldn't be getting that specific a setup. I note you added "with proper motion blur", (which he wasn't saying) - of course you wouldn't be able to see 120fps with motion blur, but that's not what he's talking about... and neither is he talking about 120fps; he said 24fps.
Yes, 120fps with blur would be overkill. 48fps most certainly is not.
I think the grandparent's comment about MP3 artifacts is a good one - if you train yourself to see or hear artifacts, you can pick them up a lot. 24fps annoys me no end, so I hope 48fps stays (especially in many modern action movies - Transformers is a prime (sic) example).
I guess I can understand people liking the "art", but for me, anything flickering at less than about 75Hz annoys the heck out of me (believe it or not, even the flicker on my CCFL-backlit LCD screen is slightly distracting). I used to work in a TV station, and part of that in the transmission room checking programs for broadcast, so I see every single artifact on every single frame. To me, things like that aren't art, they're annoying and ruin the sense of disbelief. I once had some friends do a short film where they added a "film" effect that including dropping it to the lower frame rate - apparently it was more "filmic", but to me it looked stilted and disgusting compared to the original.
I for one am very much looking forward to seeing something that finally has enough of a frame rate that I don't have to spend the ads and previews getting my brain adjusted to actually put up with it enough to see what's going on, be constantly annoyed by the jittery display, and then feeling disoriented when I walk out of the theatre while I re-adjust to non-flicker.
Yes it sucks a bit for the small theatres, but how else do they differentiate themselves from the home theatre with a blu-ray player?
And yes, upconversions to a higher frame rate probably do look like rubbish, but that's another reason why The Hobbit is probably going to be amazing - it's made as artwork specifically for a beautiful frame rate on a beautiful camera at a stunning resolution. I am looking forward to finally seeing a movie that doesn't annoy me visually. I hope 48fps stays - I've long thought that I'd rather have moderate resolution and high framerate, than high resolution and low framerate (i.e. don't bother with more than 1080 until you get at least twice the temporal resolution - though, Hobbit is doing both).
Actually, I would complain if our TV didn't have user-serviceable parts... We have an LCD TV with built-in DVD drive, and I recently had to fix the DVD drive. On a student income, replacing the unit outright isn't an option.
Also, they have sacrificed features for space - ethernet port, optical drive. The latter particularly is something Jo Average will likely miss (of course, it will also funnel traffic to the iTunes store instead as they won't be buying physical disks...)
But yes, an engineering student with 10 years tech support experience (including laptop servicing, which even among techs is a bit more specialised) is not Apple's target market. :-)
Ok, so hang on, record brain impulses in the hope that someone can reconstruct them as thoughts? That's like saying "I'm going to record the hard drive and fan noises on my computer in the hope that someone can reconstruct the game I'm playing". Riiiight. That sounds like trying to get small pieces of a complex whole and expecting someone to be able to make use of it. And I thought Sagan was supposed to have been a respected scientist?
Hmm, reminds me of a quote I read in a book once, basically God saying "I like fractals". :-) I'd have to agree...
Umm, have you ever used the *nix command line? I'm guessing not, or you wouldn't be comparing it to MS-DOS commands. I've used both command lines and basically, I am glad that things like Cygwin exist, because the Windows command line is borderline useless in comparison. And the issue in question is about re-arranging UI for no reason - yes, the command lines in both haven't changed, but if you're falling back to the command line, it may be a sign that your UI changes were a fail, and I would rather use a *nix command line than a Windows one (despite the fact that I have spent a lot more time on the Windows one). Also, it's nice when you can actually *find* the command line. The unnecessary re-arranging is one of the reasons I hate Vista (and Office 2007 moreso). And, here's an experiment to try: put a user familiar with MS Office up to 2003 or so in front of (a) MS Office 2007 and (b) OpenOffice 3. Ask them to find simple operations (like Print).
I guess it's that most /.ers are like building professionals who like the best tools and learn to use them well and to whom construction is a artform, but most other people just need to bash in the occasional nail and so don't feel the need to develop the skills to use them properly.
I agree with what you say about IIS - the first time I had to set up a Windows server, I was worried about the fact that the help file was written like every other Windows help file - for novice users who know nothing. It frightened me - that sort of person shouldn't even be told allowed in the same room as the server, let alone be setting it up... But, in a lot of other cases (OSes, office software and web browsers for example), the people using it often don't have the time to learn lots of new things - they just need it to work. It may be interesting to note though that I have had times where I replaced both the M$ and Apple browsers with Firefox because they were broken and I couldn't fix them. It's why I hate Mac OS actually - sure, it's pretty and shiny and has lots of nicely configured defaults and is easy to use, but the moment you want to do anything even *remotely* technical, it is impossible (or you do what I usually did when I had to support Mac OS X and go to the command line because at least I know that will work...) I like Firefox for the same (opposite) reason - it is nicely configured by default, it does what one expects and is easy to use by a novice... and I can extend it to do virtually whatever I want, however I want (I use tabbed session browsing and mouse gestures and adblock especially). I think this is something that more FOSS projects need to catch on to (Ubuntu have the right idea, too, though has more work to do) - make it really easy and shiny to start with, but still let the power user/techie do what they need. /ramble :-)
Perhaps, but how many of the manufacturers actually built pre-N devices that were completely and properly compliant with the draft spec? If past experiences are anything to go by, there'll likely be a few that get broken anyway, despite Alliance promises... But a good point nonetheless :-)
There is one thing that annoys me more than anything with software and has caused me more headaches - more than interface (which also can ellicit rants from me), more than stability, more than all of that - and it's this: licensing.
I like open source software because I can go to a new computer somewhere, jump online, download, install and carry on working happily (or set someone else up to work).
I have spent far too many hours (I used to work as an IT admin) bashing my head against walls with proprietary-licenced software. Oh, you can't find your licence code? Oh, you're having trouble with Windows activation? Well, we could set that up on his machine, but we'd have to pay [arm, leg, firstborn], even though he will only use it once a week. What do you mean you didn't keep the original install disks? The list goes on.
As for the other reasons software sucks, it goes both ways (proprietary and FOSS) - broken upgrades? Bad interface? Ignoring users? Lack of support? (Have you ever actually read the average help file?) I've seen rubbish and gold in both free and proprietary.
But knowing I can install and not be stealing is really helpful.
And this is not mentioning things you can do with software that doesn't need DRM to protect it, like portable apps (I love being able to take my browser - and my office suite - with me) or live installs. I think this sort of thing may be areas that free software can really win against proprietary because the licence enforcement in a situation like that would be a headache, if not impossible...