...there's a chance that this disk can be made 100% biodegradable...something your precious iPod will never be.
You expect an iPod or any other digital audio player to last for years of use as a portable device to also be biogedradable? Have you ever considered buying a clue?
It might be worth noticing that an iPod allows a person to enjoy entertainment without requiring plastic (for a disc and its packaging) to deliver it. We don't need no stinkin' biodegradability when we deliver bits instead of atoms.
Did you mean this statement seriously and did you bother to read the article? I am not claiming that copyright infringement is unimportant or that their lists of IP addresses is not associated with the activity. But if one of the cases outlined in the article goes to trial and it is viewed from a human angle (like a jury would), I don't see how the RIAA lawyer can avoid having his ass handed to him by a jury, or if he is unlucky enough to win, by the public.
In the cases presented it seems unlikely that the person paying for the internet connection is swapping rappers tracks so the case would imply all those parents (single or otherwise) having a million dollar liability if they don't run a tight ship on the home network. There is danger for them whether they win or lose a high profile case with a sympathetic defendent. As a result I expect any such case to be dropped before it goes to trial.
...Why does the Motherhood of these women matter?,
This is speculation but I suspect the reason there was a case to consider is probably because a child or a friend of a child installed some file sharing program on the computer. The account with the ISP was registered and paid by the mother. So when an action was filed it is the mother who was named though she probably had no idea of what might have been the cause.
It should be understood that the copyright laws that are being invoked were written in the draconian terms because they were intended for legal actions of one commercial venture against another. All the mother might know is that she was providing an internet connection that the child is required to have for school work (if you are a parent you are probably aware that this has become a new requirement).
The idea that a parent is responsible for policing a home computer or face possible legal action that could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages is a new and startling development. If these cases go to trial and the mothers involved lose then the RIAA loses BIG TIME. The laws that they rely on to intimidate and win in the other cases will be seen as unreasonable laws and politicians will be falling over each other trying to address this perception. So if the RIAA wins then they definitely lose and if they lose they may still lose. Their best hope is that these individuals can be convinced to quietly settle.
That is why in the earlier case the most important development was that the judge told the lawyer from the RIAA that their resolution center was no longer involved in the case in any manner. They brought a suit in the judge's court and she [the judge] was determined that it would be adjudicated. Attempts to quietly settle were no longer an option. I suspect she was upset that the RIAA appeared to be using her court as a tool to force a settlement while avoiding a trial. Of course that is exactly what the RIAA wants to do.
"... [Euclid] he was asked by a student who had just begun to work through the Elements what good he would derive from his work; Euclid is said to have responded to his assistant, "give the man three obols, since he must profit from what he learns.""
Perhaps Euclid was just in a sour mood that day but why bother trying to influence those who value how little they can learn? Isn't it time for another article complaining about the outsourcing of jobs to societies that try to maximize rather than minimize the material required of graduates?
By the way, I have three children in middle/high school so I know that the slacker mentality shown here is not entirely dominant.
...like when Apple came out with their ipod, some three years after the advent of mp3 players, and everybody congratulated them on their "innovation". Except the innovation couldn't even play ogg format files.
That makes at least two of us who did not have a clue when the iPod was introduced. I also did not see why Apple thought it was such a big deal. But it was! Haven't you noticed what has happened over the past few years? By making an entire system (iTunes, iTMS and iPod) that works together so easily anyone can use it and producing a necessarily expensive device that can usually hold all of your music, Apple created something new. While others were making compromises to drive down the price of a portable MP3 player, Apple went the opposite direction and built a device around an expensive tiny drive.
There is going to be some serendipidy and just plain dumb luck in any cultural phenomenon this large but it is hard to argue that Apple did a remarkable job of creating something that many people really like and want. This would be in contrast to others who might think that compatibility with ogg format would be a big deal.
What an ignorant set of comments. Are you aware that the entire region was called French Indochina and it was a colony of the French until WW II? After the war the French tried to reassert their control but were ultimately defeated an Dien Bien Phu which effectively ended their power in the region.
The assumption that all would have been fine if nothing else had happenned is Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst kind. Also the notion that the Chinese were the backers of the Vietnamese is also peculiar given all that we know of Soviet influence in the area. In fact, were you aware that after the US was forced out in the mid 70's the Chinese invaded Vietnam with a much larger force than either the French or the US and were also expelled?
Forget the decline of science and technology, this is more like a decline of literacy and basic awareness. I suppose next you'll say there wasn't a war between China and India in the 60's.
I suppose your experience may be different from mine when it comes to optical storage versus paper. The small possible defects that seem most likely result in a change to a book which just doesn't matter to me while an error in a CD or DVD that impedes playback just about ruins the experience. One of the first DVD's I purchased was The Matrix which I found fairly entertaining. Not long ago I put it in my current DVD player and found that after a certain point it just stopped playing. Nothing visible on the disc and it had always been carefully treated and stored. It just stopped working. I've not had the end of a book disappear on me.
Even my 3 year old knows that you only hold a CD by the edge. How hard of a concept is that to grasp?
Do you think that jack ass piece of advice is actually useful? CD's fail because of inherent design defects. They could have been delivered like MiniDiscs and the more recent UMDs to minimize normal day to day wear but they chose an exposed design leaving it to the purchaser to take measures needed to protect his purchase. That is precisely what I do when I rip my CD to my hard drive. It has nothing to do with careless handling which you so pompously imply.
What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.
Really, it's not that hard to understand.
I don't agree that your proposition is so easy to agree with and understand. CD's are inherently fragile so I have learned through repeated experience that using the original disc is foolhardy. It will fail and the only remedy available is to purchase another one.
So if I were to lend a CD to a friend I would certainly only do so with a copy of the original. As long as the replacement cost for failed media remains about $15 - $20 there is no way I would willingly agree to taking that risk.
Of course in real life I have lent out books and CDs never to see them again. That is part of the charm of the whole social process. But if I were to analyze and act rationally I would only lend copies of CD's. I'm less concerned about books because that media is not subject to the same catastrophic failure as aluminized plastic.
Well, I was trying to be inoffensive or at least not inflammatory in my reply, but you just can't seem to get enough. First, you might want to learn how to spell legitimate before emphasizing it with parentheses. Second, there is a more ominous aspect that just doesn't go away no matter how politely one might try to frame these sorts of discussions.
The world is full of dangers and we can't avoid all of them but when I see morons driving SUV's as personal transportation I can't help thinking of how it pointlessly promotes terrorism and strengthens the causes of those in the middle east who have demonstrated what they are quite willing to do given the option. During WW II there were campaigns to promote various conservation measures with the incendiary claim that careless people were helping the cause of the enemy. That is what I had in mind when using the term legitimate.
So in answer to your undoubtedly rhetorical question of "Who are you...", I am no one in particular with anything resembling authority over an issue like this. But your fellow citizens may increasingly view some decisions that you make as being short-sighted and self indulgent. Possibly even anti-patriotic. Do you really believe that economic decisions don't have moral implications?
On the other hand as long as those people pay for their indulgence I have no inclination to interfere.
What part of that sentence is in disagreement with what you said? Were you just unable to make it to the second paragraph?
My other statements in the first paragraph are simple observations that anyone can verify independently on any given day. People drive SUV's in the same manner as a Geo Metro driver: one person, the driver with no passengers, and no vast quantity of items to transport.
There has always been a small percentage of vehicles that were needed by working people to transport large groups of passengers and/or bulky items. There is still a need by some small percentage of people for large vehicles. It is an utter myth (a polite term for bullshit) that 80% of the population has a legitimate need for these mammoth vehicles. Again, I have no inclination to suggest anything should be done about these choices but I refuse to pretend it makes any sense.
The next time you are on the freeway, or city street for that matter, take a look around at all the SUV's. Almost every one of them has exactly one person in the vehicle, the driver. All these excuses and stories are just that, excuses and stories. Something very odd is going on and I think it is nasty that we will see gasoline go to $4 per gallon before this odd behavior begins to change.
On the other hand as long as those people pay for their indulgence I have no inclination to interfere. But when they insist on carrying on telephone conversations in these death dealing behemoths because they can't stand the idea of the boredom involved in actually paying attention to driving, I wish phone calls by a driver would be illegal if the driver does not pull over.
You need to get in touch with Michael Dell to let him know that he doesn't know what he is talking about. He has made statements that contradict what you have said.
I agree with your sentiment but I'm not certain about the specifics. Others indicate that cable company VOD has been the victim of mediocre execution (poor selection, etc) and it's hard to predict how well TiVo will innovate with the constant threat of lawsuits.
But the overall issue of DVD rental whether mediated by the internet or otherwise is how remarkably retrograde it is. Sort of like the surge in the fax and fax modem market as email started to grow in the 90's. Since Amazon is in the business of moving boxes it makes sense for them. But the future most certainly belongs to electronic delivery. I suppose this means the future is going to take that much longer to arrive.
A slightly different interpretation is that Amazon is aggressively planning for online delivery of video but believes that market will depend on having a large physical delivery organization in place first, much like NetFlix and its flirting with the online delivery market.
I think it would be amusing if Apple outflanks all of them with an online video store similar to iTMS which delivers HD streams using H.264 to get high quality and less extravagent bitrates. That would be better than DVD quality and really instant gratification. Already with QuickTime 7 they have made the locally cached content less easily read than previous versions of QuickTime so secure delivery (at least at iTMS level) may feasible.
Among other issues holding back this possibility is providing a sufficiently comforting security blanket for Hollywood, having enough people with sufficiently powerful processors to decode H.264, and a nerdless connection to that large HD screen.
Two points: I'm not convinced that a double blind comparison of UMD to non-UMD video would be easily decided in favor of UMD, second, I wouldn't assume deviousness (on the part of Sony) is the most likely explanation when incompetence is also a possibility. For instance, the absence of a web browser initially was just that it had not been finished. Maybe they'll improve their video import capability in newer firmware.
The main point I wanted to emphasize is that I got terrible results when I tried the various utility programs that proclaim they can automate the conversion of video for the PSP and rather impressive results when I did the conversions myself. So if someone owns a DVD and assumes he has to buy the corresponding UMD I want to suggest that conversion may be a useful option.
A 480x272 video file should be of higher quality than a stretched 320x240 pixel picture...
It took me a while to find the converted video on my drive to which I referred in my previous post. Its actual resolution is only 368 x 208 so it doesn't include a pixel for each dot on the PSP display but it scales nicely to 480 x 272 and the data rate of 50 kB/s produces a nice smooth picture.
My 19 MB file plays for about 4 minutes and 24 seconds. So it would take a little over 220 MB for an entire episode. That means you could fit four episodes on a 1 Gig memory stick.
The picture does fail to blow nicely on a screen that is 1280 x 1024 (some of the detail is lost) but I can say from experience that on the 480 x 272 PSP screen it is very nice.
Or the fact that the maximum supported resolution for such videos is considerably lower than that of UMD movies.
I have seen people allude to this fact repeatedly and assumed it might be true. But out of curiosity I used QuickTime to export a segment of an episode of Firefly. When I viewed the result on the PSP the picture appeared to be as good as what I had seen in UMD movies. Is it possible that this fact is an artifact of poorly done conversions produced by utility programs? When I tried some of those utility programs I got uniformly dismal results. They didn't handle aspect ratio correctly and the resolution was nothing to write home about. But the clip I converted myself (and then named, put in a folder with the right name, yada, yada,...) looked remarkably good. Now I'm just waiting for the price of memory sticks to drop to levels that are not obscene.
I believe you do know the difference. As far as I could tell there was nothing else that was misspelled or grammatically incorrect. I apologize if my observation was too harsh. However, now that this common error has been brought to your attention you will also be doomed to seeing it everywhere. It is almost ironic that one of the words we lose by this process is the word lose.
I've generally accepted the reality that most people don't know when to use lose and when to use loose. So I seldom bother to comment. But there it is typed out in all capital letters:... might be LOOSING you money...
I wish I understood why this confusion is so nearly universal. Lose and loose are two different words and they are not interchangeable.
Google Earth, which is the relevant product, does support the mouse wheel and has since before the product was acquired from Keyhole.com. Google Maps is a web application that is surprisingly good but to see the real thing you need to get Google Earth which is available for download at no cost (premium options are available for a subscription fee).
He was already employed by Apple as an Apple Fellow back in 1984 when the Macintosh was first released. I'm not certain how many years he worked there but he left to join Disney together with a group of high profile individuals (e.g. Danny Hillis) as Disney Fellows. I don't know when or why he left Disney to join HP but there will probably be another corporation, possibly Google, that will happily seize this opportunity. Maybe Apple will rehire him.
I called it a cheap shot because you chose to make an invidious comparison of something that exists (just barely) with something you claim would exist if only enough people were as discriminating as you. You say Whedon's stuff is crap but you only make promises for what would exist if only we weren't such sheep. Why be so coy? Why not be more explicit about what is so much better?
Part of your frustration with the limited success of Firefly may be that you assume its main reason for existing is its exploration of science fiction themes. I don't claim they are entirely absent but feel it is a mistake to put too great an emphasis on that aspect of the story. The appeal of Firefly is the collection of diverse characters and the writing that makes their interaction so entertaining to a fairly large group of people.
You claim the formulaic writing and hackneyed wisecracks renders the series inferior to what should be available. There are wisecracks and formulas are not entirely absent. But the end result is still enjoyable. Oh, the wisecracks are often more clever than could reaslistically occur to the characters but so what? At the risk of stretching too far do you think Shakespeare's characters would really speak in iambic pentameter? It is what is done with formulas that counts, not that formulas are used.
My main point of contention remains that you are awfully imprecise when you fault Whedon in comparison to writers to whom you only allude. Why not be more forthcoming so others could evaluate the potential which you claim is surpressed by Whedon's popularity?
Apple did make available a 141 MB HD encoded version of the first Serenity trailer using H.264. I don't see it in the HD Gallery currently but there are probably a lot of copies of it out there. You do need a lot of processing power to play it. My Athlon XP2400 can't handle it and my poor 350 MHz G4 doesn't have a chance. But eventually any $200 PC should be able to play it without breaking a sweat. Just not yet.
...I saw the first Serenity trailer and my immediate reaction was...
Please tell me you aren't trying to make a critical judgment about a body of work that comprises fourteen "hour" long episodes and now a feature film, based on a sixty second trailer? Do you do book reviews based on blurbs on the dust jacket?
There is no telling if you would enjoy the movie but if you haven't ever seen the series it might be worth your time to rent the DVD's of the series. Like many others I saw a few of the oddly sequenced episodes when it was first shown and did not find it very interesting. Since seeing the episodes in order I'd say it is the most entertaining SF-related series I've seen on TV.
Yep, I think there is something wrong with the encoding. After having this occur in my browser I right clicked and downloaded the file directly. It locked up QuickTime Player on my Mac and after transferring it to my PC running XP and QuickTime it locked up hard in QuickTime Player PC both running QuickTime 7.0. Did they bother to check this stuff before posting it?
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...there's a chance that this disk can be made 100% biodegradable...something your precious iPod will never be.
You expect an iPod or any other digital audio player to last for years of use as a portable device to also be biogedradable? Have you ever considered buying a clue?
It might be worth noticing that an iPod allows a person to enjoy entertainment without requiring plastic (for a disc and its packaging) to deliver it. We don't need no stinkin' biodegradability when we deliver bits instead of atoms.
No, they're pretty strong cases.
Did you mean this statement seriously and did you bother to read the article? I am not claiming that copyright infringement is unimportant or that their lists of IP addresses is not associated with the activity. But if one of the cases outlined in the article goes to trial and it is viewed from a human angle (like a jury would), I don't see how the RIAA lawyer can avoid having his ass handed to him by a jury, or if he is unlucky enough to win, by the public.
In the cases presented it seems unlikely that the person paying for the internet connection is swapping rappers tracks so the case would imply all those parents (single or otherwise) having a million dollar liability if they don't run a tight ship on the home network. There is danger for them whether they win or lose a high profile case with a sympathetic defendent. As a result I expect any such case to be dropped before it goes to trial.
...Why does the Motherhood of these women matter?,
This is speculation but I suspect the reason there was a case to consider is probably because a child or a friend of a child installed some file sharing program on the computer. The account with the ISP was registered and paid by the mother. So when an action was filed it is the mother who was named though she probably had no idea of what might have been the cause.
It should be understood that the copyright laws that are being invoked were written in the draconian terms because they were intended for legal actions of one commercial venture against another. All the mother might know is that she was providing an internet connection that the child is required to have for school work (if you are a parent you are probably aware that this has become a new requirement).
The idea that a parent is responsible for policing a home computer or face possible legal action that could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages is a new and startling development. If these cases go to trial and the mothers involved lose then the RIAA loses BIG TIME. The laws that they rely on to intimidate and win in the other cases will be seen as unreasonable laws and politicians will be falling over each other trying to address this perception. So if the RIAA wins then they definitely lose and if they lose they may still lose. Their best hope is that these individuals can be convinced to quietly settle.
That is why in the earlier case the most important development was that the judge told the lawyer from the RIAA that their resolution center was no longer involved in the case in any manner. They brought a suit in the judge's court and she [the judge] was determined that it would be adjudicated. Attempts to quietly settle were no longer an option. I suspect she was upset that the RIAA appeared to be using her court as a tool to force a settlement while avoiding a trial. Of course that is exactly what the RIAA wants to do.
Another interesting story about Euclid is:
"... [Euclid] he was asked by a student who had just begun to work through the Elements what good he would derive from his work; Euclid is said to have responded to his assistant, "give the man three obols, since he must profit from what he learns.""
Perhaps Euclid was just in a sour mood that day but why bother trying to influence those who value how little they can learn? Isn't it time for another article complaining about the outsourcing of jobs to societies that try to maximize rather than minimize the material required of graduates?
By the way, I have three children in middle/high school so I know that the slacker mentality shown here is not entirely dominant.
...like when Apple came out with their ipod, some three years after the advent of mp3 players, and everybody congratulated them on their "innovation". Except the innovation couldn't even play ogg format files.
That makes at least two of us who did not have a clue when the iPod was introduced. I also did not see why Apple thought it was such a big deal. But it was! Haven't you noticed what has happened over the past few years? By making an entire system (iTunes, iTMS and iPod) that works together so easily anyone can use it and producing a necessarily expensive device that can usually hold all of your music, Apple created something new. While others were making compromises to drive down the price of a portable MP3 player, Apple went the opposite direction and built a device around an expensive tiny drive.
There is going to be some serendipidy and just plain dumb luck in any cultural phenomenon this large but it is hard to argue that Apple did a remarkable job of creating something that many people really like and want. This would be in contrast to others who might think that compatibility with ogg format would be a big deal.
What an ignorant set of comments. Are you aware that the entire region was called French Indochina and it was a colony of the French until WW II? After the war the French tried to reassert their control but were ultimately defeated an Dien Bien Phu which effectively ended their power in the region.
The assumption that all would have been fine if nothing else had happenned is Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst kind. Also the notion that the Chinese were the backers of the Vietnamese is also peculiar given all that we know of Soviet influence in the area. In fact, were you aware that after the US was forced out in the mid 70's the Chinese invaded Vietnam with a much larger force than either the French or the US and were also expelled?
Forget the decline of science and technology, this is more like a decline of literacy and basic awareness. I suppose next you'll say there wasn't a war between China and India in the 60's.
I suppose your experience may be different from mine when it comes to optical storage versus paper. The small possible defects that seem most likely result in a change to a book which just doesn't matter to me while an error in a CD or DVD that impedes playback just about ruins the experience. One of the first DVD's I purchased was The Matrix which I found fairly entertaining. Not long ago I put it in my current DVD player and found that after a certain point it just stopped playing. Nothing visible on the disc and it had always been carefully treated and stored. It just stopped working. I've not had the end of a book disappear on me.
Even my 3 year old knows that you only hold a CD by the edge. How hard of a concept is that to grasp?
Do you think that jack ass piece of advice is actually useful? CD's fail because of inherent design defects. They could have been delivered like MiniDiscs and the more recent UMDs to minimize normal day to day wear but they chose an exposed design leaving it to the purchaser to take measures needed to protect his purchase. That is precisely what I do when I rip my CD to my hard drive. It has nothing to do with careless handling which you so pompously imply.
What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.
Really, it's not that hard to understand.
I don't agree that your proposition is so easy to agree with and understand. CD's are inherently fragile so I have learned through repeated experience that using the original disc is foolhardy. It will fail and the only remedy available is to purchase another one.
So if I were to lend a CD to a friend I would certainly only do so with a copy of the original. As long as the replacement cost for failed media remains about $15 - $20 there is no way I would willingly agree to taking that risk.
Of course in real life I have lent out books and CDs never to see them again. That is part of the charm of the whole social process. But if I were to analyze and act rationally I would only lend copies of CD's. I'm less concerned about books because that media is not subject to the same catastrophic failure as aluminized plastic.
Well, I was trying to be inoffensive or at least not inflammatory in my reply, but you just can't seem to get enough. First, you might want to learn how to spell legitimate before emphasizing it with parentheses. Second, there is a more ominous aspect that just doesn't go away no matter how politely one might try to frame these sorts of discussions.
...", I am no one in particular with anything resembling authority over an issue like this. But your fellow citizens may increasingly view some decisions that you make as being short-sighted and self indulgent. Possibly even anti-patriotic. Do you really believe that economic decisions don't have moral implications?
The world is full of dangers and we can't avoid all of them but when I see morons driving SUV's as personal transportation I can't help thinking of how it pointlessly promotes terrorism and strengthens the causes of those in the middle east who have demonstrated what they are quite willing to do given the option. During WW II there were campaigns to promote various conservation measures with the incendiary claim that careless people were helping the cause of the enemy. That is what I had in mind when using the term legitimate.
So in answer to your undoubtedly rhetorical question of "Who are you
On the other hand as long as those people pay for their indulgence I have no inclination to interfere.
What part of that sentence is in disagreement with what you said? Were you just unable to make it to the second paragraph?
My other statements in the first paragraph are simple observations that anyone can verify independently on any given day. People drive SUV's in the same manner as a Geo Metro driver: one person, the driver with no passengers, and no vast quantity of items to transport.
There has always been a small percentage of vehicles that were needed by working people to transport large groups of passengers and/or bulky items. There is still a need by some small percentage of people for large vehicles. It is an utter myth (a polite term for bullshit) that 80% of the population has a legitimate need for these mammoth vehicles. Again, I have no inclination to suggest anything should be done about these choices but I refuse to pretend it makes any sense.
The next time you are on the freeway, or city street for that matter, take a look around at all the SUV's. Almost every one of them has exactly one person in the vehicle, the driver. All these excuses and stories are just that, excuses and stories. Something very odd is going on and I think it is nasty that we will see gasoline go to $4 per gallon before this odd behavior begins to change.
On the other hand as long as those people pay for their indulgence I have no inclination to interfere. But when they insist on carrying on telephone conversations in these death dealing behemoths because they can't stand the idea of the boredom involved in actually paying attention to driving, I wish phone calls by a driver would be illegal if the driver does not pull over.
No, Dell wouldn't be selling Apple anything.
You need to get in touch with Michael Dell to let him know that he doesn't know what he is talking about. He has made statements that contradict what you have said.
I agree with your sentiment but I'm not certain about the specifics. Others indicate that cable company VOD has been the victim of mediocre execution (poor selection, etc) and it's hard to predict how well TiVo will innovate with the constant threat of lawsuits.
But the overall issue of DVD rental whether mediated by the internet or otherwise is how remarkably retrograde it is. Sort of like the surge in the fax and fax modem market as email started to grow in the 90's. Since Amazon is in the business of moving boxes it makes sense for them. But the future most certainly belongs to electronic delivery. I suppose this means the future is going to take that much longer to arrive.
A slightly different interpretation is that Amazon is aggressively planning for online delivery of video but believes that market will depend on having a large physical delivery organization in place first, much like NetFlix and its flirting with the online delivery market.
I think it would be amusing if Apple outflanks all of them with an online video store similar to iTMS which delivers HD streams using H.264 to get high quality and less extravagent bitrates. That would be better than DVD quality and really instant gratification. Already with QuickTime 7 they have made the locally cached content less easily read than previous versions of QuickTime so secure delivery (at least at iTMS level) may feasible.
Among other issues holding back this possibility is providing a sufficiently comforting security blanket for Hollywood, having enough people with sufficiently powerful processors to decode H.264, and a nerdless connection to that large HD screen.
Two points: I'm not convinced that a double blind comparison of UMD to non-UMD video would be easily decided in favor of UMD, second, I wouldn't assume deviousness (on the part of Sony) is the most likely explanation when incompetence is also a possibility. For instance, the absence of a web browser initially was just that it had not been finished. Maybe they'll improve their video import capability in newer firmware.
The main point I wanted to emphasize is that I got terrible results when I tried the various utility programs that proclaim they can automate the conversion of video for the PSP and rather impressive results when I did the conversions myself. So if someone owns a DVD and assumes he has to buy the corresponding UMD I want to suggest that conversion may be a useful option.
A 480x272 video file should be of higher quality than a stretched 320x240 pixel picture...
It took me a while to find the converted video on my drive to which I referred in my previous post. Its actual resolution is only 368 x 208 so it doesn't include a pixel for each dot on the PSP display but it scales nicely to 480 x 272 and the data rate of 50 kB/s produces a nice smooth picture.
My 19 MB file plays for about 4 minutes and 24 seconds. So it would take a little over 220 MB for an entire episode. That means you could fit four episodes on a 1 Gig memory stick.
The picture does fail to blow nicely on a screen that is 1280 x 1024 (some of the detail is lost) but I can say from experience that on the 480 x 272 PSP screen it is very nice.
Or the fact that the maximum supported resolution for such videos is considerably lower than that of UMD movies.
...) looked remarkably good. Now I'm just waiting for the price of memory sticks to drop to levels that are not obscene.
I have seen people allude to this fact repeatedly and assumed it might be true. But out of curiosity I used QuickTime to export a segment of an episode of Firefly. When I viewed the result on the PSP the picture appeared to be as good as what I had seen in UMD movies. Is it possible that this fact is an artifact of poorly done conversions produced by utility programs? When I tried some of those utility programs I got uniformly dismal results. They didn't handle aspect ratio correctly and the resolution was nothing to write home about. But the clip I converted myself (and then named, put in a folder with the right name, yada, yada,
...I clearly know the difference...
I believe you do know the difference. As far as I could tell there was nothing else that was misspelled or grammatically incorrect. I apologize if my observation was too harsh. However, now that this common error has been brought to your attention you will also be doomed to seeing it everywhere. It is almost ironic that one of the words we lose by this process is the word lose.
I've generally accepted the reality that most people don't know when to use lose and when to use loose. So I seldom bother to comment. But there it is typed out in all capital letters: ... might be LOOSING you money ...
I wish I understood why this confusion is so nearly universal. Lose and loose are two different words and they are not interchangeable.
Google maps doesn't support mouse wheel
Google Earth, which is the relevant product, does support the mouse wheel and has since before the product was acquired from Keyhole.com. Google Maps is a web application that is surprisingly good but to see the real thing you need to get Google Earth which is available for download at no cost (premium options are available for a subscription fee).
Maybe Apple will hire him.
He was already employed by Apple as an Apple Fellow back in 1984 when the Macintosh was first released. I'm not certain how many years he worked there but he left to join Disney together with a group of high profile individuals (e.g. Danny Hillis) as Disney Fellows. I don't know when or why he left Disney to join HP but there will probably be another corporation, possibly Google, that will happily seize this opportunity. Maybe Apple will rehire him.
I called it a cheap shot because you chose to make an invidious comparison of something that exists (just barely) with something you claim would exist if only enough people were as discriminating as you. You say Whedon's stuff is crap but you only make promises for what would exist if only we weren't such sheep. Why be so coy? Why not be more explicit about what is so much better?
Part of your frustration with the limited success of Firefly may be that you assume its main reason for existing is its exploration of science fiction themes. I don't claim they are entirely absent but feel it is a mistake to put too great an emphasis on that aspect of the story. The appeal of Firefly is the collection of diverse characters and the writing that makes their interaction so entertaining to a fairly large group of people.
You claim the formulaic writing and hackneyed wisecracks renders the series inferior to what should be available. There are wisecracks and formulas are not entirely absent. But the end result is still enjoyable. Oh, the wisecracks are often more clever than could reaslistically occur to the characters but so what? At the risk of stretching too far do you think Shakespeare's characters would really speak in iambic pentameter? It is what is done with formulas that counts, not that formulas are used.
My main point of contention remains that you are awfully imprecise when you fault Whedon in comparison to writers to whom you only allude. Why not be more forthcoming so others could evaluate the potential which you claim is surpressed by Whedon's popularity?
Apple did make available a 141 MB HD encoded version of the first Serenity trailer using H.264. I don't see it in the HD Gallery currently but there are probably a lot of copies of it out there. You do need a lot of processing power to play it. My Athlon XP2400 can't handle it and my poor 350 MHz G4 doesn't have a chance. But eventually any $200 PC should be able to play it without breaking a sweat. Just not yet.
...I saw the first Serenity trailer and my immediate reaction was...
Please tell me you aren't trying to make a critical judgment about a body of work that comprises fourteen "hour" long episodes and now a feature film, based on a sixty second trailer? Do you do book reviews based on blurbs on the dust jacket?
There is no telling if you would enjoy the movie but if you haven't ever seen the series it might be worth your time to rent the DVD's of the series. Like many others I saw a few of the oddly sequenced episodes when it was first shown and did not find it very interesting. Since seeing the episodes in order I'd say it is the most entertaining SF-related series I've seen on TV.
Yep, I think there is something wrong with the encoding. After having this occur in my browser I right clicked and downloaded the file directly. It locked up QuickTime Player on my Mac and after transferring it to my PC running XP and QuickTime it locked up hard in QuickTime Player PC both running QuickTime 7.0. Did they bother to check this stuff before posting it?