"Blu-Ray" is a play on a basically meaningless technical detail of the product. Nothing about the term "Blu-Ray" implies 'video' or 'movie' or 'something that you can get at Blockbuster'. People will have to say "Blu-Ray video disk" or something equally redundant. To even tell someone what Blu-Ray is you basically have to say "It's like a DVD, but in HD."
"HD-DVD" is a concatenation of two very common and well-known terms. It isn't, as you say, five "random" letters. Anyone in the market for HD discs of either format will know what HD is. And everyone knows what a DVD is. It doesn't matter what the letters stand for -- people know that movies come on DVD, and you need a DVD player. Why should HD-DVD be any different?
"But they're passionate about those degrees!" you might exclaim. Yeah, so what? Where's the money to follow those passions?
I'm sure you've been told this before, but: you're completely missing the point.
Real Actual Scientific Studies(TM) have shown that greater income does not mean greater happiness. Basically, once you get above the poverty line, how you spend your time plays a much greater role in your happiness than how you spend your money. i.e. You really can't buy happiness.
"Following your passion" is a way of acknowledging this ahead of time, and saying "fuck being rich", I'm going to do what I want regardless. The point is that you stop caring how much money you'll make, and start doing the thing that makes you happy now.
Strangely enough, some people have become incredibly wealthy doing this. A lot more have become ecstatically happy.
Of course, most kids coming into out of public high schools don't even know what a "passion" is -- they mistake idealism for passion, and end up doing something they don't love, but sounds cool, for no money, and secretly hope to get rich. These are fools as much as those who only chase after "job prospects".
But what do I know, I didn't go to college, and I only make twice as much as my friends that did.
Also, the ability to read and comprehend dense factual text is a useful skill
If only modern school textbooks could be described as "dense" or "factual"! By and large they are composed in a frighteningly shallow and meaningless bullet-points, designed for rote memorization and regurgitation. They are rarely a good source for accurate and worthwhile information.
Make no mistake, the textbook industry is just another huge racket chasing after the same pork as the technology companies. The difference is only that they are older and more established.
- how are these kids going to cope in the real world where everything isn't broken down into bite-size multimedia presentations?
What real world is that? By and large I think our world has too much broken down into bite-size multimedia presentations. People have become accustomed to getting everything in unambiguous bullet-points, and our schools have relflected that. The idea that schools are supposed to prepare kids to "cope" with "the real world" invariably devolves into forcing them to memorize bite-size facts and be regularly measured on their ability to do so. Meanwhile, they never learn to think or be interested in anything, or be self-confident, because apparently those aren't things required in "the real world".
This is, just maby, a stab at a *server* or it will be required for the next high end Nvidia card.
Why on earth would you use this in a server? In a server environment you are probably going to be much more concerned with redundancy and energy efficiency, the two things notably lacking here.
No, this thing is squarely directed at people uncomfortable with the size of their penis.
Probably around the time that they climb out of the enormous vat of money they make every time they do something that only pissess off a fraction of the population.
Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like there is something horribly, obviously, wrong with them, but fail to indicate what that might be. Remember: just because you wouldn't choose to use one, for whatever vague reason, doesn't mean that it isn't useful to someone.
For instance, lots of small-to-large music, video, and design studios use them as file servers, render nodes, directory servers, etc. These are traditionally Mac-heavy markets, so it should be no surprise.
They also sell a lot as part of clusters. the US Army uses one, and Virgina Tech's is pretty well-known. There are also a lot of other, much smaller clusters (say, under 10 nodes) used in universities around the world, commonly for bioinformatics.
To summarize things here: RSS 3 is only "official" to the one guy that modified the RSS 2 standard (which he doesn't control), itself not related to RSS 0.91 and 1.0, neither of which are controlled by the same people. Atom is the only thing remotely like a standard, and everybody hates it because of that. Aggregator authors don't give a flying fuck about any of them because they're doomed to support broken non-compliant implementations of all of them anyway.
Basically, it's all a bunch of pointless dick-waving.
If Bob Smith signs an NDA and then runs to me and tells me what he saw, I am not civilly liable, Bob is.
Actually, you are. Or rather, you are in a lot of circumstances. For example: If you know that what he told you was under NDA, and you go printing it on your website, you are liable (in most places).
Yes, if you didn't know, or didn't publish, or the laws in your state/country differ, it might be different, but the point is this: not signing an NDA does not automatically mean you have the right to disclose information obtained by others under an NDA.
This is the kind of thing, ironically, that will hurt Apple's adoption on the x86.
How is that? Even when Apple moves to x86, a Mac will still be a Mac, and Apple will still be the only source. Apple will have no more direct competition than it does now.
It's hard enough to get people to try another operating system when it's free.
I think Apple's strategy might involve the 100+ retail stores they operate where people can try the aforementioned other operating system for free, with no effort, no threat to their data, in a nice, comfy, well-lit space, surrounded by items for sale.
Word-of-mouth and the theoretical iPod "halo effect" sure help, too, but Apple's main drive at getting people to try Mac OS X is in the hands-on experience of their playground-like retail stores.
The kind of nut that could be an excellent customer down the road if Apple capitalized on this fanaticism and offered legit demos of the technology in lieu of the illegal downloads already out there.
I really don't see how one can come to this conclusion. We're talking about people that have already expressed that they 1) won't buy Apple hardware; 2) won't buy Apple software; 3) are willing to break the law in order to avoid paying for both. Basically, the people least likely to become customers.
As for the copyrights lawsuits I do not know, can Red vs Blue count as a derivative work of Halo?? I think that is an interesting ground for laws uh?
Red vs. Blue uses maps, textures, models, etc. directly from Halo. It definitely counts as a derivative work. If, as some machinima, it used all-original textures and models, it would not be.
I do not doubt the big companies will try to suck the last dollar from those indies film makers...
In is case, Microsoft/Bungie has been openly supportive. In fact, if I remember correctly Red vs. Blue is featured on some of the newer Xbox in-store demo disks.
Likewise, EA/Maxis has been supportive of The Strangerhood. I even saw a clip from it on IFC one night, though I'm not sure what the context was.
Woooooah there. Are you a Panasonic dealer? You sound like one.
No, but I did just buy a DVX100A (like, today), and I did get the advice, from many sources, to stick with Panasonic tapes vs. Sony tapes. Not that they're any better, just that mixing tapes causes problems.
You could just as easily use only Sony tapes in your Panasonic cam, but then you wouldn't get to join in on all the brand-zealotry flame wars.
It seems like the person posting the topic doesn't really understand what they are doing - or rather, they don't have a good foundation on which to improve their problems. So instead they are looking for a product (that's not prohibitively expensive) that caters to the way they think things 'should be done'.
Welcome to Ask Slashdot.
"Hi, I'd like to do $THING. I know that $SOLUTION_A and $SOLUTION_B will do it very easily and for a very reasonable price, but I don't want to use $SOLUTION_A or $SOLUTION_B because $VAGUE_REASON and $CONTRADICTORY_REASON. Instead, I'd like your under-informed ideas on how to achieve my $POORLY_CONCEIVED_AMBITIONS using Linux, duct tape, an iPod, and hours and hours of my precious time."
To get less dropped frames, use DVCAM tape in your miniDV camera, not cheap miniDV tape. DVCAM has a much stronger backing, better lubrication and is generally worth the extra money.
Wooooooah there. Are you a Sony dealer? You sound like one.
For one thing, using DVCAM tapes in your non-Sony camera will cause *more* dropouts as the "better lubrication" gets mixed up with the lubricants from whatever tapes you were using before and basically creates a big mess. Notably, sticking Sony tapes in a Panasonic camera is asking for trouble.
Better advice would be: Use one brand of tapes, and never, ever, switch.
Better yet, use a Sony DVCAM camera with the DVCAM tape...
And does anyone know for a given fact beyond the shadow of doubt that the MacIntel machines will be running traditional x86 PentiumIV/M/etc. chips and not something like the ItaniumII and successors?
What doubt would there be? All of the demoed machines were P4s, all of the developer kits are P4s. Itanium is a completely different architecture, is incredibly expensive, has no mobile version, and is poorly suited to desktop computing.
What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market?
I think you answered your own question. Market control. Microsoft wants to spread it's viscous sheet of mediocrity across all the markets they can, to ensure that the little fish will never grow up and take them by surprise again. They move in, take control, and then squat until everyone gives up. This means they can direct more resources at trying to catch up to the ones that got away, like Google.
And this might be a decent analogy if we were talking about portable digital audio players, but Apple is hardly a "Goliath" in the desktop market, or even the useless desktop widget market.
Or maybe, if, you know, Apple had ~10,000 employees vs. ~5 and effectively owns the ground that Konfabulator walks on.
You must've reached far into the depths of your own lack of understanding to want to bring up "the desktop market" and Microsoft in a story that has absolutely nothing to do with either.
Who really cares though?
Obviously you do. Why would you even enter into a thread that you don't know anything about, don't understand, and claim to not care about? Does "trying to build a high quality foes list" really require you to such pointless crap?
Go ahead, foe away. And once you're done purifying your environment so you never have to be exposed to ideas that you don't agree with, maybe then you can learn how to post a meaningful comment.
Apple's behaviour apparently wasn't breaking any law as such but it was the equivalent of some kid leaning over your shoulder and copying your homework.
Actually, it's more like being assigned the same problem and coming up with a similar solution. And there's no law against fair competition.
I expect the Dashboard apologists will appear shortly pointing to a piece of FUD called daringfireball, but the question remains:
"FUD" does not mean what you think it means. Also what on earth is a "Dashboard apologist"?
would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
Maybe not, but some other product filling the same need, likely in a similar way, would have. Likewise, people wouldn't call foul if someone other than Apple had released Dashboard. People love a David-and-Goliath story, even after David gets bought by Yahoo.
What would the reason be to put it in there then? Perhaps the publicity that they are getting now?
Given GTA:SA's record-breaking sales before any of this business made news, I really don't think they needed the publicity. Retailers pulling your product off the shelves, having to stop production, and enduring a scaremongering media shitstorm are not good for business.
My 8 y/o son would not have known about GTA except that it has been in the news lately. (Yep, an 8 y/o that watches the news)
What difference does that make? You're the adult. You, presumably, won't buy it for him. He certainly hears about real sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence in the news, and I doubt he's been particularly warped by any of it.
Terrorists DO use large crowds as weapons...Whether it harms, maims, mutilates or kills anybody is just a happy coincidence. The REAL effect is to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt in the collective population, and a large crowd certainly is a part of that equation.
I think you missed the point. Yes, terrorists do use crowded places full of innocent people as targets, but attacking the crowd with a ray-gun isn't going to change that.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you have it completely backwards.
"Blu-Ray" is a play on a basically meaningless technical detail of the product. Nothing about the term "Blu-Ray" implies 'video' or 'movie' or 'something that you can get at Blockbuster'. People will have to say "Blu-Ray video disk" or something equally redundant. To even tell someone what Blu-Ray is you basically have to say "It's like a DVD, but in HD."
"HD-DVD" is a concatenation of two very common and well-known terms. It isn't, as you say, five "random" letters. Anyone in the market for HD discs of either format will know what HD is. And everyone knows what a DVD is. It doesn't matter what the letters stand for -- people know that movies come on DVD, and you need a DVD player. Why should HD-DVD be any different?
In other words, Bush saved thousand, if not tens of thousands of lives. The deaths can be put squarely on the government of Louisiana and New Orleans.
No, I think the deaths can be put squarely on the fucking hurricane.
I'm sorry but honestly what the fuck is the real market for Winzip?
The people who would read "tar + bzip2 + mkisofs + cdrecord" and think your cat walked accross the keyboard.
At least for regular IrDA, you need not only line-of-sight but also a proper phase-of-the-moon. Getting that fixed would be nifty.
All you really need is favor-of-the-gods. Just sacrifice a goat or two and it works every time.
This is common knowledge in the radio world. I wonder if Apple has incorporated this type of logic into it's iTunes algorithms?
This is the exact kind of conspiracy theory that this article just debunked.
"But they're passionate about those degrees!" you might exclaim. Yeah, so what? Where's the money to follow those passions?
I'm sure you've been told this before, but: you're completely missing the point.
Real Actual Scientific Studies(TM) have shown that greater income does not mean greater happiness. Basically, once you get above the poverty line, how you spend your time plays a much greater role in your happiness than how you spend your money. i.e. You really can't buy happiness.
"Following your passion" is a way of acknowledging this ahead of time, and saying "fuck being rich", I'm going to do what I want regardless. The point is that you stop caring how much money you'll make, and start doing the thing that makes you happy now.
Strangely enough, some people have become incredibly wealthy doing this. A lot more have become ecstatically happy.
Of course, most kids coming into out of public high schools don't even know what a "passion" is -- they mistake idealism for passion, and end up doing something they don't love, but sounds cool, for no money, and secretly hope to get rich. These are fools as much as those who only chase after "job prospects".
But what do I know, I didn't go to college, and I only make twice as much as my friends that did.
Also, the ability to read and comprehend dense factual text is a useful skill
If only modern school textbooks could be described as "dense" or "factual"! By and large they are composed in a frighteningly shallow and meaningless bullet-points, designed for rote memorization and regurgitation. They are rarely a good source for accurate and worthwhile information.
Make no mistake, the textbook industry is just another huge racket chasing after the same pork as the technology companies. The difference is only that they are older and more established.
- how are these kids going to cope in the real world where everything isn't broken down into bite-size multimedia presentations?
What real world is that? By and large I think our world has too much broken down into bite-size multimedia presentations. People have become accustomed to getting everything in unambiguous bullet-points, and our schools have relflected that. The idea that schools are supposed to prepare kids to "cope" with "the real world" invariably devolves into forcing them to memorize bite-size facts and be regularly measured on their ability to do so. Meanwhile, they never learn to think or be interested in anything, or be self-confident, because apparently those aren't things required in "the real world".
This is, just maby, a stab at a *server* or it will be required for the next high end Nvidia card.
Why on earth would you use this in a server? In a server environment you are probably going to be much more concerned with redundancy and energy efficiency, the two things notably lacking here.
No, this thing is squarely directed at people uncomfortable with the size of their penis.
When Will These Idiots Get It?
Probably around the time that they climb out of the enormous vat of money they make every time they do something that only pissess off a fraction of the population.
Honestly, does anyone use an Apple server?
Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like there is something horribly, obviously, wrong with them, but fail to indicate what that might be. Remember: just because you wouldn't choose to use one, for whatever vague reason, doesn't mean that it isn't useful to someone.
For instance, lots of small-to-large music, video, and design studios use them as file servers, render nodes, directory servers, etc. These are traditionally Mac-heavy markets, so it should be no surprise.
They also sell a lot as part of clusters. the US Army uses one, and Virgina Tech's is pretty well-known. There are also a lot of other, much smaller clusters (say, under 10 nodes) used in universities around the world, commonly for bioinformatics.
To summarize things here: RSS 3 is only "official" to the one guy that modified the RSS 2 standard (which he doesn't control), itself not related to RSS 0.91 and 1.0, neither of which are controlled by the same people. Atom is the only thing remotely like a standard, and everybody hates it because of that. Aggregator authors don't give a flying fuck about any of them because they're doomed to support broken non-compliant implementations of all of them anyway.
Basically, it's all a bunch of pointless dick-waving.
If Bob Smith signs an NDA and then runs to me and tells me what he saw, I am not civilly liable, Bob is.
Actually, you are. Or rather, you are in a lot of circumstances. For example: If you know that what he told you was under NDA, and you go printing it on your website, you are liable (in most places).
Yes, if you didn't know, or didn't publish, or the laws in your state/country differ, it might be different, but the point is this: not signing an NDA does not automatically mean you have the right to disclose information obtained by others under an NDA.
This is the kind of thing, ironically, that will hurt Apple's adoption on the x86.
How is that? Even when Apple moves to x86, a Mac will still be a Mac, and Apple will still be the only source. Apple will have no more direct competition than it does now.
It's hard enough to get people to try another operating system when it's free.
I think Apple's strategy might involve the 100+ retail stores they operate where people can try the aforementioned other operating system for free, with no effort, no threat to their data, in a nice, comfy, well-lit space, surrounded by items for sale.
Word-of-mouth and the theoretical iPod "halo effect" sure help, too, but Apple's main drive at getting people to try Mac OS X is in the hands-on experience of their playground-like retail stores.
The kind of nut that could be an excellent customer down the road if Apple capitalized on this fanaticism and offered legit demos of the technology in lieu of the illegal downloads already out there.
I really don't see how one can come to this conclusion. We're talking about people that have already expressed that they 1) won't buy Apple hardware; 2) won't buy Apple software; 3) are willing to break the law in order to avoid paying for both. Basically, the people least likely to become customers.
I've always seen Apple as company selling pretty things to women who want to send email.
And you've always been shallow and ignorant in making that assessment. They make some other stuff that you seem to have overlooked.
They're picking on geeks with the desire to hack and make stuff work!
No, they're picking on geeks with a willingness to break NDAs, pirate pre-release operating systems, and not pay for anything.
As for the copyrights lawsuits I do not know, can Red vs Blue count as a derivative work of Halo?? I think that is an interesting ground for laws uh?
Red vs. Blue uses maps, textures, models, etc. directly from Halo. It definitely counts as a derivative work. If, as some machinima, it used all-original textures and models, it would not be.
I do not doubt the big companies will try to suck the last dollar from those indies film makers...
In is case, Microsoft/Bungie has been openly supportive. In fact, if I remember correctly Red vs. Blue is featured on some of the newer Xbox in-store demo disks.
Likewise, EA/Maxis has been supportive of The Strangerhood. I even saw a clip from it on IFC one night, though I'm not sure what the context was.
Woooooah there. Are you a Panasonic dealer? You sound like one.
No, but I did just buy a DVX100A (like, today), and I did get the advice, from many sources, to stick with Panasonic tapes vs. Sony tapes. Not that they're any better, just that mixing tapes causes problems.
You could just as easily use only Sony tapes in your Panasonic cam, but then you wouldn't get to join in on all the brand-zealotry flame wars.
It seems like the person posting the topic doesn't really understand what they are doing - or rather, they don't have a good foundation on which to improve their problems. So instead they are looking for a product (that's not prohibitively expensive) that caters to the way they think things 'should be done'.
Welcome to Ask Slashdot.
"Hi, I'd like to do $THING. I know that $SOLUTION_A and $SOLUTION_B will do it very easily and for a very reasonable price, but I don't want to use $SOLUTION_A or $SOLUTION_B because $VAGUE_REASON and $CONTRADICTORY_REASON. Instead, I'd like your under-informed ideas on how to achieve my $POORLY_CONCEIVED_AMBITIONS using Linux, duct tape, an iPod, and hours and hours of my precious time."
With apologies to the inquirer.
To get less dropped frames, use DVCAM tape in your miniDV camera, not cheap miniDV tape. DVCAM has a much stronger backing, better lubrication and is generally worth the extra money.
Wooooooah there. Are you a Sony dealer? You sound like one.
For one thing, using DVCAM tapes in your non-Sony camera will cause *more* dropouts as the "better lubrication" gets mixed up with the lubricants from whatever tapes you were using before and basically creates a big mess. Notably, sticking Sony tapes in a Panasonic camera is asking for trouble.
Better advice would be: Use one brand of tapes, and never, ever, switch.
Better yet, use a Sony DVCAM camera with the DVCAM tape...
You *are* a Sony dealer!
Check out the Panasonic P2 cameras
Ok, maybe you're not a Sony dealer...
And does anyone know for a given fact beyond the shadow of doubt that the MacIntel machines will be running traditional x86 PentiumIV/M/etc. chips and not something like the ItaniumII and successors?
What doubt would there be? All of the demoed machines were P4s, all of the developer kits are P4s. Itanium is a completely different architecture, is incredibly expensive, has no mobile version, and is poorly suited to desktop computing.
Apple will definitely be using x86.
What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market?
I think you answered your own question. Market control. Microsoft wants to spread it's viscous sheet of mediocrity across all the markets they can, to ensure that the little fish will never grow up and take them by surprise again. They move in, take control, and then squat until everyone gives up. This means they can direct more resources at trying to catch up to the ones that got away, like Google.
And this might be a decent analogy if we were talking about portable digital audio players, but Apple is hardly a "Goliath" in the desktop market, or even the useless desktop widget market.
Or maybe, if, you know, Apple had ~10,000 employees vs. ~5 and effectively owns the ground that Konfabulator walks on.
You must've reached far into the depths of your own lack of understanding to want to bring up "the desktop market" and Microsoft in a story that has absolutely nothing to do with either.
Who really cares though?
Obviously you do. Why would you even enter into a thread that you don't know anything about, don't understand, and claim to not care about? Does "trying to build a high quality foes list" really require you to such pointless crap?
Go ahead, foe away. And once you're done purifying your environment so you never have to be exposed to ideas that you don't agree with, maybe then you can learn how to post a meaningful comment.
Apple's behaviour apparently wasn't breaking any law as such but it was the equivalent of some kid leaning over your shoulder and copying your homework.
Actually, it's more like being assigned the same problem and coming up with a similar solution. And there's no law against fair competition.
I expect the Dashboard apologists will appear shortly pointing to a piece of FUD called daringfireball, but the question remains:
"FUD" does not mean what you think it means. Also what on earth is a "Dashboard apologist"?
would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
Maybe not, but some other product filling the same need, likely in a similar way, would have. Likewise, people wouldn't call foul if someone other than Apple had released Dashboard. People love a David-and-Goliath story, even after David gets bought by Yahoo.
What would the reason be to put it in there then? Perhaps the publicity that they are getting now?
Given GTA:SA's record-breaking sales before any of this business made news, I really don't think they needed the publicity. Retailers pulling your product off the shelves, having to stop production, and enduring a scaremongering media shitstorm are not good for business.
My 8 y/o son would not have known about GTA except that it has been in the news lately. (Yep, an 8 y/o that watches the news)
What difference does that make? You're the adult. You, presumably, won't buy it for him. He certainly hears about real sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence in the news, and I doubt he's been particularly warped by any of it.
Someone had a plan when they initated and funded the development of this, and it doesnt look like a good one.
I suspect it was something like the usual defense contractor plan, which is:
1) lobby government to pay you to develop new thing
2) lobby government to buy new thing from you
3) cackle with glee at all your new money
Terrorists DO use large crowds as weapons...Whether it harms, maims, mutilates or kills anybody is just a happy coincidence. The REAL effect is to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt in the collective population, and a large crowd certainly is a part of that equation.
I think you missed the point. Yes, terrorists do use crowded places full of innocent people as targets, but attacking the crowd with a ray-gun isn't going to change that.