When I first looked into buing the components to power a HD monitor (i.e. a 65" HD TV with no tuner), the equipment would have cost me over $800. I would have needed an OTA (off the air) tuner, a progressive DVD player, and all the cabling to hook these things up. Plus, the stand alone DVD player wasn't very customizable.
Finally, I settled on buying a computer to do all of this. I had quite a few of the parts I needed; the only thing I was missing was an OTA tuner card, the DVD software, and the sound card. I already had decided on Windows XP (which I will explain below), so I was set.
The DVD software I went with was called TheaterTek and the benefits it had over a standard player are numerous:
Ability to resize any move to any resolution including 1080i
Ability to expand the movie to get rid of the black bars around the edge (i.e. anamorphic widescreen)
Ability to save these changes for each individual movie
Using Windows to further enhance the output using various filters (i.e. fdshow filters)
The output from this setup was incredible. Watching DVDs at 1080i with the image cleaned up is so much better than 480p. I highly recommend it.
The other problem was getting the actual HD content from the main networks. Locally in Omaha, NE ABC, CBS, and NBC have been broadcasting in HD for a while, so an OTA tuner was the way to go. A stand alone box was going for $600 locally, and I had found a card that does it for $200, the MyHD OTA Tuner Card. The picture quality is incredible and the performance was great on my 850 Duron. It gave me everything the set top box would have done and also Tivo like functionality out of the box, something that still isn't available for HD yet.
As I mentioned before, I went with Windows XP as everything mentioned above is only available for that platform. Also, due to the mature video drivers on Win32 vs. Linux for the ATI card I went with, I was able to tweak more aspects of the output to the HD monitor through a program called Powerstrip. I tried DVD playback on Linux (mplayer), but it had no where near the functionality of the Theatertek software. Also, I did look into the pcHDTV card available, but it isn't nearly has mature as it should be for a commercial HD tuner card (the only user fiendly app I have found, MythTV, has very limited integration with the pcHDTV card. That is changing quickly, though).
All in all, I highly recommend making a HTPC if you have the time. Plus, you don't need that Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition crap to make it work, just plain old XP will do you fine.
Uhm, no. Most HDTVs and HD monitors support native 480p, and if that is all that is being sent by the device playing the DVD, that is all that will be displayed. Now, Best Buy is selling players that upconvert DVD content to 720p and 1080i, but those are quite a bit more than a standard deck. That is what makes the HTPC so enticing.....
My biggest complaint about what was promised but not delivered is the ability for Windows users to print to a Mac printer. I reinstalled my 950C on my eMac, made sure it was shared, and installed the proper drivers in WinXP. Nadda. My beef is that there is no error what so ever. It just sends the job and nothing happens. The printer center in X doesn't even start. Bah....
Wow, I'm surprised that a resolution of 10 cubic kilometers is enough to actually make any predictions besides the most general of weather trends.
Define "the most general of weather trends". Currently, at least for here in the US, the model of choice (something always of debate) is the Eta that typically is run at 44km (they have much higher resolutions, but those aren't as readily available). Believe it or not, this model has been great at forecasting for frontal based weather (like thunderstorms along a cold front) and winter storm systems (it is able to place the areas of heavy snow by county) Depending on how close the model run is the the event, the placement of this information is usually pretty close.
That isn't to say it is perfect. As you could imagine for a grid that size, the model will typically miss popcorn type showers and thunderstorms. Also, if you do any severe weather forecasting, you will miss the small scale features like a tornado or such.
I wonder if the system releases only one pattern that the weather will follow or if it returns many different ways that the weather could go.
I would hope so. The National Center for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) does this now with their model called the Global Forecast System (GFS) that goes out to 384 hours or 16 days. With this model, they do something called ensemble forecasts where they rerun the model another ten times at a reduced resolution from the master run with perturbations added to each. Then they compare the results and will, on some of the graphics, use all ten to perform a type of averaging to remove the really bogus forecasts.
My experience has been if you are doing any type of long range forecasting, the ensemble method is the way to go. I am not saying that it is exact, but has proven an invaluable guide past day 4 for good long range forecasting. My guess is that this project in Japan would be taking this into account and performing something like this type of ensemble method. If not, I would seriously question their results.
I believe that you are mixing things up. The sarcasm was centered on the commercial, not on the idea of what the MPAA is trying to teach. I, for one, appreciate the sarcasm. These commercials are stupid and treat the movie going audience as ignorant. I don't need to be reminded that thousands of people went into make the Lord of the Rings series and that these same people might have their bottom line hurt by movie piracy.
First the general Slashdot position was "Don't shut down P2P, shut down the criminals." Then it was "Don't shut down the criminals, they don't know any better." Now it is "Don't educate people on WHY a movie costs 8 dollars". --snip-- Seems to me Slashdot is becoming more and more a piracy advocacy board.
Give me a break. If you would, please site articles that back up this ludicrous statement. I agree that Slashdot and its admins have an agenda, but your statement is definately not even close.
Seems to me that educating people on why we need to contribute to movies is the best solution for everyone.
Seems to me that treating people as if they were intelligent is the best solution for everyone.
PS The Slashdot crowd is the FIRST ones to complain if a movie looks "cheap" or "fake".
I take it, then, that Slashdot is your only source for news? I find that reviewers in the national papers are more likely to be critical like that in the days before a movie is release, well before the "Slashdot crowd" gets their hands on it. Your statement here makes absolutely no sense.
Was Calvin and Hobbes one of the best comics ever? Yes. Was is miserably repetitive near the end and growing more and more unfunny? Sadly, yes. If it had continued on, it would have been nothing but a constant rehash of the same jokes and concepts with no new content... like Peanuts and Garfield both became.
While I agree with your comment, I do not believe it applies to Bloom County OR Outland. What the Peanuts and Garfields lacked and BC and O flourished was its ability to comment on current events. The content of the two latter would always remain current. Some of my favorite BC involved the whole animal testing at Mary Kay or any one political election from the 80's. Even Outland had its moments with the infamous "Human Fur Coat" cartoon early on to the whole Mortimer Mouse/Disney series which I thought was hilarious. One thing Mr. Breathed does extremely well is social commentary and it is something I have missed a great deal.
Outland was pretty miserable compared to Bloom County. I have high hopes for 'Opus', but I'm also a realist. It may be just as poor as Outland was, IMHO.
How so? The way I see it, where BC was a daily read, O had to become a once a week serial, and I think that affected the formula a great deal. I wouldn't say hurt, but it took some time to come into. I think by the end of the series, they had worked through a lot of those issues, and it was pretty strong (plus the appearances of Dallas and some of the other characters towards the end, something others have felt was an effort to bring back the comic, just added more in my opinion).
Skip: It's a cpu cooling system...like a jet engine for the water.
Only there are no moving parts, so it's very very quiet.
Ryan: Like how quiet?
Skip: Doubtful another computer user would even pick it up. Even if they did, it
would sound like...whales humping...or a seismic anomoly. Anything but
a cpu cooling system. We fooled with this a couple years ago, but couldn't get it
to work. *Pauses* This isn't a
mock-up, is it? They really built this thing?
SCO--We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known IP rights violator to justice.
Linux Users--Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about I give you the finger [gives SCO the finger] and you give me my kernel.
Not only this, but COE has something called a segment that allows pieces of software to be installed in the base OS in a common manner. My question is where are the COE segments for pieces of software like Oracle 9i (to be a segment in late March I hear, but still no mention of a Linux segment) and others that run under Linux?! If your project wants to be COE compliant (and there are various levels, but we are shooting for 5), you need to use COE compliant software. What good is an OS if you can't run some common apps on it?!
If we could find segments like that, we could actually consider running Linux in our project. Until then, it will have to be Solaris and a 280R.....
Forget TIVO, this is the year that HD will be widespread enough so that here in Omaha, NE USA we will have it for the first time broadcast over the air. ABC has announced that the broadcast will be HD and in Dolby Digital 5.1. The post game will also be that way as well! Plus, if that wasn't enough, Alias (with Jennifer Garner, yowza) will be on right afterwards, which has been in HD since its beginning.
I am pretty excited as this will be my first taste of the 21st century broadcasting technology for a live sporting event and it will only get better!
Completely True, Not Fake, Really Fake Spoilers
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
·
· Score: 2
Here you go, the list of the major developments in the latest Rings movie, all completely true:
Gollum is found to be Frodo's real father!
Sam and Frodo find out they are really brothers, after having shared a passionate kiss earlier in the movie.
Legolas gets his arm cut off by Saruman in a huge sword battle.
There is a bounty put out on Aragorn's head by the Rangers since he dumped a load of cargo back at Helm's Deep.
Treebeard has a bunch of fuzzy little muppets living in his branches.
Personally, I think that Jackson might be borrowing too much from another sci-fi movie, but I am not sure.
Re:Why do you guys hate Xbox so much?
on
Xbox Live Goes Online
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Maybe this is a flame, and maybe it isn't, but I will bite and post a reply.
Your statement about the Xbox being cool is partially right. The Xbox hardware is cool, and this is what upsets me the most. Microsoft has put out an extremely powerful console and the potential that it has is mind blowing. But, and this is a huge but, their games mostly blow!
This is not meant as a flame either, but their games truly stink. Of course, I should have prefaced this with the fact I don't like sports games, but even those are available on all systems and not a one is an Xbox exclusive. Since Halo was release, I challenge you to show me a game that you would consider a must own game. PS2 has them in spades (GTA: Vice City, Final Fantasy, Jak and Daxter, Virtua Fighter 4, etc) and even Gamecube has a few (Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid, the Resident Evil series, etc).
The main issue here is that I believe Microsoft sees the Xbox as a foot-in-the-door system to get them noticed. Their primary concern would be to build up momentum for their uber system in the Xbox 2 which will have all the TIVO stuff and central digital hub junk along with the game system. In that regard, they are pouring money into the advertising and the online aspect never considering the content. Hopefully, that will change since I have great hopes for the hardware in that box!
GR will do nice , as most players will have played cs....Whacked, I have no idea about actually.
Whacked! is supposed to be a multiplayer gameshow that allows the online player to pick a persona (including a woman who runs around naked-but-censored the entire show) and then compete in various contests. If you are at all into Nintendo games, think Mario Party, but for adults. It scored poorly, though, with only a 5.6 from Gamespot (who, I believe, is a truly impartial reviewer).
MechAssault
Unreal Championship
NFL 2K3
NBA 2K3
NFL Fever 2003
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Whacked!
To be quite honest, nothing earth shattering here. I guess I was hoping for something that would set their service on fire; but, like the rest of the games in their library, there isn't any one game that is fantastic except maybeMechAssault which Gamespot rated a 9.0. Personally, I was really hoping for a coop-able network Halo.
As an aside, it is important to note that companies aren't required to go with Xbox Live as Electronic Arts chose to support their own servers and ditch Microsoft.
Just for the record, Andreas Pour has responded to DEP's article with an email that was posted over on Linuxtoday.com. The response can be found here. At least, that is the only place I have read it....
For those who don't read METAR (which includes some of us meteorologist), here is the gist:
Temp: 63F/17C
Dewp: 51F/11C
Winds: Northwest at 14mph/12kts
Pressure: 1018.7mb
Sky: mostly scattered or broken between 4000ft/1220m to 7000ft/2135m
Visibility: 10miles/16km
All in all, not a bad day, though it was a little windy. I do agree with an above post that icing COULD be a possibility, but with a surface temp as warm as it was, they would have to be flying pretty high.
I am not quite sure I understand where Sony is coming from including a DVD-RW drive. From what I have read, they are completely DVD+RW driven, to the point of being a member of the alliance. The thing that irks me here is that this does not help the already splintered standard battle going on out there. On one hand you have Phillips, HP, Yamaha and Sony supporting DVD+RW, and on the other, you have Pioneer, Apple, and..... Sony supporting DVD-RW. How can this be good for the end user?!
I disagree with you here. The number of tutorials on the I'net is large and informative. I did pluck down the $20 for the book, but I found it wasn't nearly as useful as the tutorials both on Blender's webpage and also on other support sites.
Reasonable Interface?! Have you used Blender?
on
Blender Goes Open Source
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"Perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app."
Maybe if you have ever used Blender for any length of time, you would realize that the interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. In fact, after having learned the full interface, I had a full blown introduction to my home movies completed in three hours.
I would be the first to admit that the learning curve is steep, but once you are there, the program is a breeze to use.
Now that I am off of my soapbox, I am pumped by this announcement. There is a huge community out there that has been gunning for this, and now that it is done, it can only go up!
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, mod the parent up funny. That's pretty good...
Finally, I settled on buying a computer to do all of this. I had quite a few of the parts I needed; the only thing I was missing was an OTA tuner card, the DVD software, and the sound card. I already had decided on Windows XP (which I will explain below), so I was set.
The DVD software I went with was called TheaterTek and the benefits it had over a standard player are numerous:
- Ability to resize any move to any resolution including 1080i
- Ability to expand the movie to get rid of the black bars around the edge (i.e. anamorphic widescreen)
- Ability to save these changes for each individual movie
- Using Windows to further enhance the output using various filters (i.e. fdshow filters)
The output from this setup was incredible. Watching DVDs at 1080i with the image cleaned up is so much better than 480p. I highly recommend it.The other problem was getting the actual HD content from the main networks. Locally in Omaha, NE ABC, CBS, and NBC have been broadcasting in HD for a while, so an OTA tuner was the way to go. A stand alone box was going for $600 locally, and I had found a card that does it for $200, the MyHD OTA Tuner Card. The picture quality is incredible and the performance was great on my 850 Duron. It gave me everything the set top box would have done and also Tivo like functionality out of the box, something that still isn't available for HD yet.
As I mentioned before, I went with Windows XP as everything mentioned above is only available for that platform. Also, due to the mature video drivers on Win32 vs. Linux for the ATI card I went with, I was able to tweak more aspects of the output to the HD monitor through a program called Powerstrip. I tried DVD playback on Linux (mplayer), but it had no where near the functionality of the Theatertek software. Also, I did look into the pcHDTV card available, but it isn't nearly has mature as it should be for a commercial HD tuner card (the only user fiendly app I have found, MythTV, has very limited integration with the pcHDTV card. That is changing quickly, though).
All in all, I highly recommend making a HTPC if you have the time. Plus, you don't need that Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition crap to make it work, just plain old XP will do you fine.
Uhm, no. Most HDTVs and HD monitors support native 480p, and if that is all that is being sent by the device playing the DVD, that is all that will be displayed. Now, Best Buy is selling players that upconvert DVD content to 720p and 1080i, but those are quite a bit more than a standard deck. That is what makes the HTPC so enticing.....
My biggest complaint about what was promised but not delivered is the ability for Windows users to print to a Mac printer. I reinstalled my 950C on my eMac, made sure it was shared, and installed the proper drivers in WinXP. Nadda. My beef is that there is no error what so ever. It just sends the job and nothing happens. The printer center in X doesn't even start. Bah....
Wow, I'm surprised that a resolution of 10 cubic kilometers is enough to actually make any predictions besides the most general of weather trends.
Define "the most general of weather trends". Currently, at least for here in the US, the model of choice (something always of debate) is the Eta that typically is run at 44km (they have much higher resolutions, but those aren't as readily available). Believe it or not, this model has been great at forecasting for frontal based weather (like thunderstorms along a cold front) and winter storm systems (it is able to place the areas of heavy snow by county) Depending on how close the model run is the the event, the placement of this information is usually pretty close.
That isn't to say it is perfect. As you could imagine for a grid that size, the model will typically miss popcorn type showers and thunderstorms. Also, if you do any severe weather forecasting, you will miss the small scale features like a tornado or such.
They have something called the RUC which is run at 20km. I am not as familiar with this model, but a person I work with has used it to do tornado forecasting (check out the historic data towards the bottom) and has had incredible results.
I wonder if the system releases only one pattern that the weather will follow or if it returns many different ways that the weather could go.
I would hope so. The National Center for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) does this now with their model called the Global Forecast System (GFS) that goes out to 384 hours or 16 days. With this model, they do something called ensemble forecasts where they rerun the model another ten times at a reduced resolution from the master run with perturbations added to each. Then they compare the results and will, on some of the graphics, use all ten to perform a type of averaging to remove the really bogus forecasts.
My experience has been if you are doing any type of long range forecasting, the ensemble method is the way to go. I am not saying that it is exact, but has proven an invaluable guide past day 4 for good long range forecasting. My guess is that this project in Japan would be taking this into account and performing something like this type of ensemble method. If not, I would seriously question their results.
Why be sarcastic about this?
I believe that you are mixing things up. The sarcasm was centered on the commercial, not on the idea of what the MPAA is trying to teach. I, for one, appreciate the sarcasm. These commercials are stupid and treat the movie going audience as ignorant. I don't need to be reminded that thousands of people went into make the Lord of the Rings series and that these same people might have their bottom line hurt by movie piracy.
First the general Slashdot position was "Don't shut down P2P, shut down the criminals." Then it was "Don't shut down the criminals, they don't know any better." Now it is "Don't educate people on WHY a movie costs 8 dollars".
--snip--
Seems to me Slashdot is becoming more and more a piracy advocacy board.
Give me a break. If you would, please site articles that back up this ludicrous statement. I agree that Slashdot and its admins have an agenda, but your statement is definately not even close.
Seems to me that educating people on why we need to contribute to movies is the best solution for everyone.
Seems to me that treating people as if they were intelligent is the best solution for everyone.
PS The Slashdot crowd is the FIRST ones to complain if a movie looks "cheap" or "fake".
I take it, then, that Slashdot is your only source for news? I find that reviewers in the national papers are more likely to be critical like that in the days before a movie is release, well before the "Slashdot crowd" gets their hands on it. Your statement here makes absolutely no sense.
Was Calvin and Hobbes one of the best comics ever? Yes. Was is miserably repetitive near the end and growing more and more unfunny? Sadly, yes. If it had continued on, it would have been nothing but a constant rehash of the same jokes and concepts with no new content... like Peanuts and Garfield both became.
While I agree with your comment, I do not believe it applies to Bloom County OR Outland. What the Peanuts and Garfields lacked and BC and O flourished was its ability to comment on current events. The content of the two latter would always remain current. Some of my favorite BC involved the whole animal testing at Mary Kay or any one political election from the 80's. Even Outland had its moments with the infamous "Human Fur Coat" cartoon early on to the whole Mortimer Mouse/Disney series which I thought was hilarious. One thing Mr. Breathed does extremely well is social commentary and it is something I have missed a great deal.
Outland was pretty miserable compared to Bloom County. I have high hopes for 'Opus', but I'm also a realist. It may be just as poor as Outland was, IMHO.
How so? The way I see it, where BC was a daily read, O had to become a once a week serial, and I think that affected the formula a great deal. I wouldn't say hurt, but it took some time to come into. I think by the end of the series, they had worked through a lot of those issues, and it was pretty strong (plus the appearances of Dallas and some of the other characters towards the end, something others have felt was an effort to bring back the comic, just added more in my opinion).
Oh, Mr. Breathed. Two words, 'Web Comic'.
We can still dream, can't we?
Skip: It's a cpu cooling system...like a jet engine for the water. Only there are no moving parts, so it's very very quiet.
Ryan: Like how quiet?
Skip: Doubtful another computer user would even pick it up. Even if they did, it would sound like...whales humping...or a seismic anomoly. Anything but a cpu cooling system. We fooled with this a couple years ago, but couldn't get it to work. *Pauses* This isn't a mock-up, is it? They really built this thing?
Adopted from Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October . Thank you.
Your quote was close:
SCO--We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known IP rights violator to justice.
Linux Users--Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about I give you the finger [gives SCO the finger] and you give me my kernel.
Shamelessly ripped from the Matrix. Thank you.
Not only this, but COE has something called a segment that allows pieces of software to be installed in the base OS in a common manner. My question is where are the COE segments for pieces of software like Oracle 9i (to be a segment in late March I hear, but still no mention of a Linux segment) and others that run under Linux?! If your project wants to be COE compliant (and there are various levels, but we are shooting for 5), you need to use COE compliant software. What good is an OS if you can't run some common apps on it?!
If we could find segments like that, we could actually consider running Linux in our project. Until then, it will have to be Solaris and a 280R.....
Forget TIVO, this is the year that HD will be widespread enough so that here in Omaha, NE USA we will have it for the first time broadcast over the air. ABC has announced that the broadcast will be HD and in Dolby Digital 5.1. The post game will also be that way as well! Plus, if that wasn't enough, Alias (with Jennifer Garner, yowza) will be on right afterwards, which has been in HD since its beginning.
I am pretty excited as this will be my first taste of the 21st century broadcasting technology for a live sporting event and it will only get better!
- Gollum is found to be Frodo's real father!
- Sam and Frodo find out they are really brothers, after having shared a passionate kiss earlier in the movie.
- Legolas gets his arm cut off by Saruman in a huge sword battle.
- There is a bounty put out on Aragorn's head by the Rangers since he dumped a load of cargo back at Helm's Deep.
- Treebeard has a bunch of fuzzy little muppets living in his branches.
Personally, I think that Jackson might be borrowing too much from another sci-fi movie, but I am not sure.Maybe this is a flame, and maybe it isn't, but I will bite and post a reply.
Your statement about the Xbox being cool is partially right. The Xbox hardware is cool, and this is what upsets me the most. Microsoft has put out an extremely powerful console and the potential that it has is mind blowing. But, and this is a huge but, their games mostly blow!
This is not meant as a flame either, but their games truly stink. Of course, I should have prefaced this with the fact I don't like sports games, but even those are available on all systems and not a one is an Xbox exclusive. Since Halo was release, I challenge you to show me a game that you would consider a must own game. PS2 has them in spades (GTA: Vice City, Final Fantasy, Jak and Daxter, Virtua Fighter 4, etc) and even Gamecube has a few (Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid, the Resident Evil series, etc).
The main issue here is that I believe Microsoft sees the Xbox as a foot-in-the-door system to get them noticed. Their primary concern would be to build up momentum for their uber system in the Xbox 2 which will have all the TIVO stuff and central digital hub junk along with the game system. In that regard, they are pouring money into the advertising and the online aspect never considering the content. Hopefully, that will change since I have great hopes for the hardware in that box!
GR will do nice , as most players will have played cs....Whacked, I have no idea about actually.
Whacked! is supposed to be a multiplayer gameshow that allows the online player to pick a persona (including a woman who runs around naked-but-censored the entire show) and then compete in various contests. If you are at all into Nintendo games, think Mario Party, but for adults. It scored poorly, though, with only a 5.6 from Gamespot (who, I believe, is a truly impartial reviewer).
Unreal Championship
NFL 2K3
NBA 2K3
NFL Fever 2003
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Whacked!
To be quite honest, nothing earth shattering here. I guess I was hoping for something that would set their service on fire; but, like the rest of the games in their library, there isn't any one game that is fantastic except maybe MechAssault which Gamespot rated a 9.0. Personally, I was really hoping for a coop-able network Halo.
As an aside, it is important to note that companies aren't required to go with Xbox Live as Electronic Arts chose to support their own servers and ditch Microsoft.
Just for the record, Andreas Pour has responded to DEP's article with an email that was posted over on Linuxtoday.com. The response can be found here. At least, that is the only place I have read it....
Like I said, I am a meteorologist, not a pilot. I stand corrected and appreciate the information! Thanks.
For those who don't read METAR (which includes some of us meteorologist), here is the gist:
Temp: 63F/17C
Dewp: 51F/11C
Winds: Northwest at 14mph/12kts
Pressure: 1018.7mb
Sky: mostly scattered or broken between 4000ft/1220m to 7000ft/2135m
Visibility: 10miles/16km
All in all, not a bad day, though it was a little windy. I do agree with an above post that icing COULD be a possibility, but with a surface temp as warm as it was, they would have to be flying pretty high.
Article mentions Maxtor in the title, but all links point to Western Digital. Something I missed?
I am not quite sure I understand where Sony is coming from including a DVD-RW drive. From what I have read, they are completely DVD+RW driven, to the point of being a member of the alliance. The thing that irks me here is that this does not help the already splintered standard battle going on out there. On one hand you have Phillips, HP, Yamaha and Sony supporting DVD+RW, and on the other, you have Pioneer, Apple, and ..... Sony supporting DVD-RW. How can this be good for the end user?!
Q: In case something goes wrong, are you planning to take with you a large ten-gallon cowboy hat to wave around on reentry?
A from RG: No, I'll be wearing a space suit, and a cowboy hat would not be a wise fashion accessory.
Me thinks he completely missed the clever reference to Dr. Strangelove here. Pitty...
"You guys no nothing of designing good simple GUIs"
That's the problem with you trolls, you know nothing about spelling...
I disagree with you here. The number of tutorials on the I'net is large and informative. I did pluck down the $20 for the book, but I found it wasn't nearly as useful as the tutorials both on Blender's webpage and also on other support sites.
"Perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app."
Maybe if you have ever used Blender for any length of time, you would realize that the interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. In fact, after having learned the full interface, I had a full blown introduction to my home movies completed in three hours.
I would be the first to admit that the learning curve is steep, but once you are there, the program is a breeze to use.
Now that I am off of my soapbox, I am pumped by this announcement. There is a huge community out there that has been gunning for this, and now that it is done, it can only go up!