Please, if you do decide to take a job like that, don't join the Dark Side, as this poor individual has.
I do consulting for free on the side for private schools who's teaching methods and ideologies i support (hey - you spend YOUR time supporting your interests, and I will spend my time on mine. Fair?) and i recently set up their Mac mini on a big screen that runs Keynote 2 presentations all day long. The thing turns itself on in the morning, and off in the evening. I can upload newer videos and Keynote files to it remotely, and it works just great. They freaking love it.
I'm about to offer them up a G4/800 with Mac OS X Server to run all of their email/webmail. The current MSCE dipshit runs some POP mail server i've never heard of, and sets up client machines to download emails and erase them from the server once downloaded....
you see where this could be a problem, but apparently, he doesn't. Yeah, that means that what users have on their Outlook clients and what they can see on their webmail are two different things.. and they LOVE that.
i hate lazy ass sys admins who say any of the following..
i'm convinced that most IT people don't understand the point of their job - provide service to their users so that their users can get their shit done. That means, if you have to research something you don't know (how to get Macs to connect to SMB shares) then get off your fat ass and find out how!!!! Then help your user!
they will do just as they have with every other Mac in their inventory..
run around and claim "they're incompatible", let the users flop around on their own, and then wait for 3 years until its been shown that "Macs are too much trouble to support" and then they end up with Dell laptops.
of course, i have no idea if these are going to be iBooks - TFA didn't say that.
no - it should stay where it is... in paying MSCEs to keep this POS laptops up and running.
The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 Empire High School students for the entire year. in California, i'm strongly concidering quitting a high-paying job at a major defense firm to go be a lazy-ass administrator pulling down over 6 figures in the Los Angeles or surrounding area school districts. These people make shitloads of money, and all they have to do is constantly keep the computers upgraded with the latest virus definitions.. they email servers don't actually work, and the systems don't actually accomplish very much - but all the administrators have great computers and can surf with them all day just fine.
with LASUSD spending over $11k/child/year, its no wonder that they can afford to pay for Windows Adminsitrators a fsckton of money.
Re:OK to be fair...
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to me, it looks like virtual folders are nothing more than items in a folder grouped together by meta-data that you have to manually hack in, or by other built in meta-data (like creation dates).
Yes - i said manually enter meta data... look at the previous screen shot.
That means that i can type "2005 yesemite vacation" 89 times in 89 "get info" windows... versus that clumsy old way of putting 89 files into a folder called "2005 yosemite vacation".
hellz yeah - sign me the fsck up!/Mitch Hedberg
This HAS to be a joke. I know MS is slipping, but these sophmore-year computer science assignemnts are being touted as "improvements" to Windows.. i cannot believe it.
this is all, of course, a moot point if you're a Mac os X 10.4 user, where i have about 15 actual, useful virtual folders that track things like "all my.m2v compressed files that i've made in the last week" so that i can wipe them out when i make my batch of DVDs at the end of the week - which i want separated from the m2v files i that want to keep from way back. and, of course, all the project folders which are virutal that keep organized each project by either account or project name (doesn't matter, i put in both and it finds everything) so that even if they're on the RAID or on my archives disk (i NEVER have to work from the archive files, because it always is right he first time....) i have them all in one folder.
the worst part of this article is what doesn't happen - the editor does NOT take MS to task for their sad-ass new features that are trivially implimented or years past old-hat on other operating systems - and point out that if this is all we can expect, we're in for a shock. And that shock could be major problems at microsoft.
the very concept of "spelling bees" is an absolute abomination of the human intellect in terms of wasting mental capacity on something so outrageously vapid.
For what LOGICAL purpose could there be...
Three words that sound identical, yet have 3 spellings and 3 meanings...
Silent letters
The existance of the letter "c"
all the different vowels, yet often being used identically in pronunciation
The following letter combinations..."ph", "ie", "rh"...
English is a fscking train wreck of a language. there's no consistency, no logic, and no way to learn it unless you emmerse in it for a few years - at least.
I have no problem with people breaking English.. its a horrid horrid language - from a purely logical point of view.
Japanese, on the other hand, is quite easy to learn, spell (leave out Kangi), and is actually beautiful.. English doesn't even have that last one going for it.
Worse than english? French.. i mean, you don't pronounce 1/2 of the word most of the time.. its all silent.. lame.
"To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom."
Hold the phone... how can it be "manifestly irrational" to criticize someone's race (and what he REALLY means is culture, not race, and we all know it) and yet NOT the same to do so when its their religion.
I reserve the right to mock Mormons, Hindus, hip-hop artists, those who woof, wear bling-bling, thow down 24" spinners on their Escalades, Bhuddists, and all types of niggas equally. The problem becomes when people ASSUME i'm talking about skin colors. I have absolutely no issue with your race - there's nothing you can do about it...
but i have also no issue rightfully criticizing the Mexican culture and its lack of educational discipline by bringing the US 10 million uneducated and pregnant illegal entrants...
i can also criticize white American culture for its inane love of NASCAR as a leitimate sport, belt buckles thge size of satellte dishes, and their insessent need to overfill their homes with crap made by Chinese slave labor.
Niether one of these makes any derrogatory comment about race... i've seen very pale skinned Mexican nationals bring 5 kids here to be clothed, fed, educated, and medicated by my tax dollars (and the money they save me in the price of lettuce doesn't come close to covering the bill, sorry), and i've met some absolutely humbling African people of tremendous stature, wisdom, and courage.
as John Cleese said.. Race "doesntenterintoit!"
I judge by the content of character, not on the content of skin...
but what Rowan says means that i wouldn't get the chance to call him the pasty simpleton cracker limey that he is... and that's just not fair.
that will be the device that plays back purchased videos from the iTunes Video store.
it can hold a tiny h.264 decoder chip from Texas Instruments, and can have a DVI/HDMI/S-VHS output to connect to your plasma/LCD/Standard TV. It also, of course, already has the audio output.
Charge $150 for it - that's a duable price - and stream HD and SD h.264 content you've bought from the iTunes Video store - bamo.
You're watching movies and TV shows you've paid $2 a piece for - instead of waiting for the DVD to come out.. I'm so there.
You do not need the so-called traditional channels of distribution to get your work to an audience, and you'll probably be happier and more successful by not going through those channels.
Amen.
my own movies are often for a very very very small audience, but i can't imagine the pain of working with a bunch of suits and wankers trying to get my stuff published.
So i don't. Do i make a ton of money? Absolutely not. but i have a day job to pay bills - I make movies and create because i NEED to do these things. My longest movie so far, a spoof on "24" done for my jr high group at church was some of the most fun, and hardest work i've ever done.. and i can't imagine having any more fun doing anything else "work"-wise.
Did i make any money on that? No... i won't sell enough DVD's to the kids to make back the costs of the tape i used... but i couldn't care less. I'm already planning next years, spending time working on an idea, a script, production, etc.. and i'm doing it for the fun of it. so long as i have money coming in from a day job that also allows me to create and funds my hardware and software needs, I can't imagine ever wanting to go mainstream.
Sell DVDs online from my home or from a duplication house? Yeah... hell yeah.. Deal with movie companies? No... never.
If you want to get a feeling of what its like to be in the position of loving the creation, rather than the accolades, go buy THX1138 on DVD. Watch the American Zoetrope video that comes on the 2nd DVD. It explains a lot... now, you can take-or-leve Lucas' work - and he'd welcome you to that.
but i am saddend that Lucas gave up 20 years of creativity to make the starwars movies instead of making movies that he really liked. THX was his best movie he's ever made... at least to me.. because you can see the creativity put into making it.
In the future - fsck the TV "execs"
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do what i did - just make a movie, put it on the net, let people enjoy it. If someone wants to hire you for your talent and abilities, they will. That's what basically has happened to me.
My boss saw my editing abilities when it got around that I do video junk for the kids at church, and now, instead of doing requirements validation and system engineering paper studies, i now sit behind a G5 with Final Cut Studio and Motion...and i even get paid to do it!
its a spoof of "24", made for Jr High kids at my church. Beware - as with all no-budget videos like this, there are a ton of inside jokes you probably won't get, and remind yourself of the target audience... jr high kids.
Rosetta, apparently, will allow low-end software to run thru a JIT converter that apparently has enough oomph to handle Phtotoshop, and other "1% power users needs.";-) (sorry, inside jab at pudge, God bless him.)
plus, those power apps like the Apple Production Suite for the 1% power users have been built with Xcode - so i'm sure that Apple will eat their own dog-food on that one.
Mathematica is already done - it took 2 hours to make the move (according to Wolfram) - so i wonder how long it will actually take for the big apps to fall along side.
honestly - i was ready to be a fan of IBM - but they have lagged, and i'm sick of slow-ass PowerBooks
i (and i'm sure, many others) want a field-portable havey duty workstation.. i get that with a Intel-based PowerBook.
here are a list of "options" that were standard features on laptops that Apple made before any other company made them standard.. some still don't have some of them as optional...
- palm rests - built-in mouse control device - trackball - monitor spanning - trackpads - ethernet - software controlled hard drive spin-downs and backlight - sleep on close/awake when open - wireless ethernet - bluetooth
and that's only after thinking about it for 10 seconds.
i recall non-apple laptops from yesteryear...
spacebars at the edge of the laptop and a 1/4 acre above it... Microsoft hook-on trackball with PS/2 cable... having to do that OfficeSpace-like dance waiting for Windows to shutdown to get to the DOS prompt...
seriously - that laptops are even useable in this day and age - almost every single feature from the Compaq Luggable to today's kick-ass AMD Athlon 64 rockets that makes them useable as desktop replacements (other than the processor) is all thanks to apple.
i believe my friends at Apple would say... "you're welcome"
will continue to be the workhorse of the industy for years to come because
it works its solid (well, when not on the Net)
i'm in the Mil/Ind complex - and i promise you, W2k is still and will continue to be the workhorse for a long time to come. Users know how it works, and all the Win32 apps that have been developed for the last 10 years work on it just peachy... so there is no need to change.
there are often mass-downgrades that happen to w2k when machines are shipped with XP.
i don't know how MS is going to get itself out of this easily - when you have billions of home-built scientific apps that work fine, and now, we're going to make them work less good in Longhorn and get out there and re-do them all in.Net?
We're not talking about the Windows 3.1 to 95 or even the DOS to Windows leap - where GUI and 32-bit happieness were key features. We're talking about getting Avalon - so windows can be transparent and shimmy?
anyone here who's ever worked on Final Cut, After Effects, Motion, Logic, Shake, or Maya or any number of hundreds of applications that often require seconds to HOURS of rendering can imagine Cell processors in their Macs, you collective morons that say stupid things like "why do you need a DSP processor to make file serving go faster"?
Some of us in content creation could use a little help here...
That some people are stumped by the utility of using Cell processors in Apple-built blade servers to take the place of XServes, or for what purpose would there be in 1-4 Cells in the Mac of the average Joe makes me really doubt the usefullness of our public schools.
Power users being able to add 15 animation effects with translucency and kenetics in Motion to a video with 8 layers of HD video and then watch it automatically copy straight to a DVD-R - without rendering time - makes us wet with anticipation...
and wondering when the hell hard drives are going to be able to catch up.
I would easily give up my right nut for a Apple-based blade server now that the Pro apps are starting to use XGrid for co-processing the heavy lifting portions of our work. My DVD projects of 2 hours still take long over an hour to render 2-pass MPEG2 on a high end DP G5. Multiples faster than realtime, could the Cell do.
But the average Joe? Why does Safari have to use a 8 core DSP? its doesn't, dumbass. But that's not all people do with their macs...
That iDVD render? What render? The lag is now your DVD burner - 100%.
Encoding settings for your iPod, vs. encoding settings for your files. iTunes could EASILY convert - on the fly - Apple Lossless encoded files to some kind of smaller, lossy codec as it filled your iPod. No waiting except for your iPod's slow-ass hard drive.
all this - while the Cell is still using a basic G5 at its core... so, no, Word isn't going to get any punch - but if Cell processors are as cheap as G5's, then what the hell is the issue here?
I'm damn ready for radical leaps in DSP... i'm fscking sick and tired of watching progress bars, DAMNIT! and if the Cell can do everything IBM says it can - hell, yeah, bring it on.
Server guys - try to think beyond your damn file services.
... that was put together with a toy computer, a MAC. Therefore, its only good for graphics, and not real business work. This is because MAC software can't run on Windows, which is cheaper and has two button mice.
/every rant against using Macs for solutions to problems that would be best solved using Macs
> How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?
easy.
decent quality standard def video at 30fps is quite wonderful at 768k... with "talking head" type content, 512kbps is freaking overkill, if you want to know the truth. (yes, i've spent the last week at work doing all kinds of encoding testing, since we're going to be moving to h.264 for our engineering video for our customers)
As for HD content... H.264 can make clean HD content flow at as low as 2mbps at 720p... so nice it makes you do a double take. With 100 meg ethernet being the low end standard... you can do the math as to how HD content is going to shoot thru pipes. Hell, many people get pretty decent speeds over their cable modems these days...
the bigger problem is still the encoding/decoding. Well, its a problem now.. but i'm waiting for a H.264 Firewire thumb-drive gizmo that will do it all for you offline using one of TI's h.264 encoder chips. I'm ready for hardware H.264 encoding for my Mac that's QuickTime/Compressor-ready...
(APPLE... TI.... 3rd PARTY DEVELOPERS...do you hear us??? Desktop/laptop H.264 dedicated encoding hardware for FCP/Compressor users!!! We'll buy it if its under $500)
for those of you interested in actual products which exist now - check this link. They have everyone's stuff listed here, including Polycom's new stuff.
What i want to know is if anyone here has EVER seen actual 640x480 (720x480 if using a DV camera) 30fps cleanly being done?
While iChat in Tiger is hella good, i'm still only getting 15 fps... and i bet money that it still remains at 15fps when i get two machines chatting on the same subnet. (anyone? anyone tried this?)
The idea of using a Mac Mini for this only means that the submitter, while well intentioned, is totally missing the fact that what he's talking about is impossible without additional hardware.
Can anyone give a quick review of iChat in Tiger over fast ethernet on the same network?
I swear - in the last.. what... 6 months, if I haven't heard Bill bitch about the inadequacy of something that Apple was doing, at least once a week, i'm a monkey's uncle... What's FUNNIER is that in every single one of these "don't look at them... listen as i niggerdomus your ass with empty promises of atomic-powerd credit card sized super computers!", all i can think of is that old over the top "Food for Windows" joke...
i mean, seriously - read it, and then replace Cuisine International with Apple and iPod and iTunes with Word and Food Processing... and its a scream...
Monday, 10 AM -- Chicago, Illinois -- Apple Computer announced , the first interworking program to seamlessly integrate iPods and Music with the iTunes Music Store. Called breakthrough for music listeners, Apple Chairman Steve JobsSteve Jobs confidently predicted sales of thousands of copies with shipments soon to begin.
Monday, 4 PM -- New York -- Apple Computer shares closed sharply higher on announcement of new iTunes Music Store product.
You can't sit there and watch someone for over a year call their product "Tiger" and then, 1 day before it goes on sale yell foul. Tiger direct knew about Tiger for well over a year - as we all did - and therefore, they cannot, because of estoppel.
The law states that you can't know about some "wrong doing" by someone and then conveniently use it against them long after you knew about the wrong doing. Its what (in theory) prevents a cop from simply following you around all day and then giving you 24 tickets when you get home.
(tangent: if you actually had someone following you around all day, you'd probably rack up well over 1 ticket per mile... did you change lanes more than one time per 200 feet? did you signal 100 feet prior to turning right? did you allow 3 seconds between you and the car ahead of you? Did you come to a full stop before turning right on red? Did you travel more than 200 feet in the suicide lane? Did you go more than 1 mile per hour faster than the allowed speed limit? Did you go slow enough in the rain?)
That would be like me annoucing on Dec 24th, 2006 that my company, Longhorn Computers, is suing Microsoft to cease and desist from sales of Windows Longhorn. I (and everyone else) knows that Microsoft has called it Longhorn for who know s how long... its unfair to last minute try to torpedo Microsoft.
google the word "estoppel" yourself, or go read up on it on groklaw.
Here's the thing... Boeing initially ran FCS on DP machines running Windows 2000. We got sick of running it because it blue screened, we couldn't easily build our own version of windows stripped down, with services removed that we didn't want in there...
basically, Windows is a desktop operating system that is closed source and a pain in the ass to take apart and use exactly how you want. It is what it is, and there's only so much you can do.
at some point, it was obvious that a RTOS was what was needed. You have total control - i mean total control - of what happens and when it happens. And if someone's life is on the line, the last thing you need is to not know what's going on in your code.
>You can keep believing otherwise if you like, of course... right up until they take you to the camps.
I'm a born-again Jesus loving Bible reading libertarian...
and as a matter of fact, yes, me and others like me are quite ready and prepared to be the first ones taken to the camps... We are already seeing the signs and are determined to not change our thoughts.
now, we'd be perfectly happy for you to hate Jesus and want to screw each other in the butt all day long if you'd just let us say we think its wrong.. but then, that would be hate speach, wouldn't it?
there is already legal precident in Canada stating that the Bible is hate speech... we know its coming, we just don't stop loving Him and will let you know that He loves you too if you'd stop using the government to shut us up.
for all the hate you apparently have for the Pope - you _do_ know that he went to the jail of the man that attempted to kill him and forgave him... personally... not in some disattached global way...
he actually went to his jail cell, talked with him, and became friends with him... he also told everyone that he had forgiven him...
which is easier, to tell someone that shot you "you're forgiven"? or to shut up those that you disagree with?
>Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance.
there's a difference between actively, with government help, SILENCEING people who say things against a political correctness, and simply not liking them.
There is a difference between the government using the force of law to silence someone with any number of 4th Amendment violations, and for the masses to simply be pissed as your ass.
f'rinstance.. "The Left" at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, a student was, by the government of the state of california, told to remove a flyer from a wall because it was offensive, told to write a letter of apology because he offended a couple of easily offendable black folk, and was threatened with expulsion and forfieture of his tuition. That is ACTUAL censorship. That is done by the government against the people with the force of law.
on "The Right" - when we didn't like what the Dixie Chicks had to say, we didn't send Janet Reno out to get them to lay siege to their house longer than it took to take over Baghdad and then light it on fire... we simply stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks and buying their CDs.
there's a big fscking difference there, my friend.
>This legislation only applies to communications that are paid for by a PAC
Yes... and moveon.org, backed with $25M qualifies on my planet as a PAC.. no matter how much they want to swear that they aren't.
and lets get serious for a moment - so is ABC news... so is CBS news.. they are not "media" in the sense of netural journalists.. there are no such thing as "neutral journalists". Why Dan Rather can break the law and spew obvous bullshit about Bush weeks before the election - and get away with it - with FAR more funding than any PAC i know of (except maybe the Old lobby (aarp)) smacks of FEC violations to me.
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Please, if you do decide to take a job like that, don't join the Dark Side, as this poor individual has.
I do consulting for free on the side for private schools who's teaching methods and ideologies i support (hey - you spend YOUR time supporting your interests, and I will spend my time on mine. Fair?) and i recently set up their Mac mini on a big screen that runs Keynote 2 presentations all day long. The thing turns itself on in the morning, and off in the evening. I can upload newer videos and Keynote files to it remotely, and it works just great. They freaking love it.
I'm about to offer them up a G4/800 with Mac OS X Server to run all of their email/webmail. The current MSCE dipshit runs some POP mail server i've never heard of, and sets up client machines to download emails and erase them from the server once downloaded....
you see where this could be a problem, but apparently, he doesn't. Yeah, that means that what users have on their Outlook clients and what they can see on their webmail are two different things.. and they LOVE that.
i hate lazy ass sys admins who say any of the following..
i'm convinced that most IT people don't understand the point of their job - provide service to their users so that their users can get their shit done. That means, if you have to research something you don't know (how to get Macs to connect to SMB shares) then get off your fat ass and find out how!!!! Then help your user!
they will do just as they have with every other Mac in their inventory..
run around and claim "they're incompatible", let the users flop around on their own, and then wait for 3 years until its been shown that "Macs are too much trouble to support" and then they end up with Dell laptops.
of course, i have no idea if these are going to be iBooks - TFA didn't say that.
no - it should stay where it is... in paying MSCEs to keep this POS laptops up and running.
The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 Empire High School students for the entire year. in California, i'm strongly concidering quitting a high-paying job at a major defense firm to go be a lazy-ass administrator pulling down over 6 figures in the Los Angeles or surrounding area school districts. These people make shitloads of money, and all they have to do is constantly keep the computers upgraded with the latest virus definitions.. they email servers don't actually work, and the systems don't actually accomplish very much - but all the administrators have great computers and can surf with them all day just fine.
with LASUSD spending over $11k/child/year, its no wonder that they can afford to pay for Windows Adminsitrators a fsckton of money.
to me, it looks like virtual folders are nothing more than items in a folder grouped together by meta-data that you have to manually hack in, or by other built in meta-data (like creation dates).
/Mitch Hedberg
.m2v compressed files that i've made in the last week" so that i can wipe them out when i make my batch of DVDs at the end of the week - which i want separated from the m2v files i that want to keep from way back. and, of course, all the project folders which are virutal that keep organized each project by either account or project name (doesn't matter, i put in both and it finds everything) so that even if they're on the RAID or on my archives disk (i NEVER have to work from the archive files, because it always is right he first time....) i have them all in one folder.
Yes - i said manually enter meta data... look at the previous screen shot.
That means that i can type "2005 yesemite vacation" 89 times in 89 "get info" windows... versus that clumsy old way of putting 89 files into a folder called "2005 yosemite vacation".
hellz yeah - sign me the fsck up!
This HAS to be a joke. I know MS is slipping, but these sophmore-year computer science assignemnts are being touted as "improvements" to Windows.. i cannot believe it.
this is all, of course, a moot point if you're a Mac os X 10.4 user, where i have about 15 actual, useful virtual folders that track things like "all my
the worst part of this article is what doesn't happen - the editor does NOT take MS to task for their sad-ass new features that are trivially implimented or years past old-hat on other operating systems - and point out that if this is all we can expect, we're in for a shock. And that shock could be major problems at microsoft.
the very concept of "spelling bees" is an absolute abomination of the human intellect in terms of wasting mental capacity on something so outrageously vapid.
For what LOGICAL purpose could there be...
Three words that sound identical, yet have 3 spellings and 3 meanings...
Silent letters
The existance of the letter "c"
all the different vowels, yet often being used identically in pronunciation
The following letter combinations..."ph", "ie", "rh"...
English is a fscking train wreck of a language. there's no consistency, no logic, and no way to learn it unless you emmerse in it for a few years - at least.
I have no problem with people breaking English.. its a horrid horrid language - from a purely logical point of view.
Japanese, on the other hand, is quite easy to learn, spell (leave out Kangi), and is actually beautiful.. English doesn't even have that last one going for it.
Worse than english? French.. i mean, you don't pronounce 1/2 of the word most of the time.. its all silent.. lame.
Wait a second - thats total bullshit.
"To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom."
Hold the phone... how can it be "manifestly irrational" to criticize someone's race (and what he REALLY means is culture, not race, and we all know it) and yet NOT the same to do so when its their religion.
I reserve the right to mock Mormons, Hindus, hip-hop artists, those who woof, wear bling-bling, thow down 24" spinners on their Escalades, Bhuddists, and all types of niggas equally. The problem becomes when people ASSUME i'm talking about skin colors. I have absolutely no issue with your race - there's nothing you can do about it...
but i have also no issue rightfully criticizing the Mexican culture and its lack of educational discipline by bringing the US 10 million uneducated and pregnant illegal entrants...
i can also criticize white American culture for its inane love of NASCAR as a leitimate sport, belt buckles thge size of satellte dishes, and their insessent need to overfill their homes with crap made by Chinese slave labor.
Niether one of these makes any derrogatory comment about race... i've seen very pale skinned Mexican nationals bring 5 kids here to be clothed, fed, educated, and medicated by my tax dollars (and the money they save me in the price of lettuce doesn't come close to covering the bill, sorry), and i've met some absolutely humbling African people of tremendous stature, wisdom, and courage.
as John Cleese said.. Race "doesntenterintoit!"
I judge by the content of character, not on the content of skin...
but what Rowan says means that i wouldn't get the chance to call him the pasty simpleton cracker limey that he is... and that's just not fair.
that will be the device that plays back purchased videos from the iTunes Video store.
it can hold a tiny h.264 decoder chip from Texas Instruments, and can have a DVI/HDMI/S-VHS output to connect to your plasma/LCD/Standard TV. It also, of course, already has the audio output.
Charge $150 for it - that's a duable price - and stream HD and SD h.264 content you've bought from the iTunes Video store - bamo.
You're watching movies and TV shows you've paid $2 a piece for - instead of waiting for the DVD to come out.. I'm so there.
You do not need the so-called traditional channels of distribution to get your work to an audience, and you'll probably be happier and more successful by not going through those channels.
Amen.
my own movies are often for a very very very small audience, but i can't imagine the pain of working with a bunch of suits and wankers trying to get my stuff published.
So i don't. Do i make a ton of money? Absolutely not. but i have a day job to pay bills - I make movies and create because i NEED to do these things. My longest movie so far, a spoof on "24" done for my jr high group at church was some of the most fun, and hardest work i've ever done.. and i can't imagine having any more fun doing anything else "work"-wise.
Did i make any money on that? No... i won't sell enough DVD's to the kids to make back the costs of the tape i used... but i couldn't care less. I'm already planning next years, spending time working on an idea, a script, production, etc.. and i'm doing it for the fun of it. so long as i have money coming in from a day job that also allows me to create and funds my hardware and software needs, I can't imagine ever wanting to go mainstream.
Sell DVDs online from my home or from a duplication house? Yeah... hell yeah.. Deal with movie companies? No... never.
If you want to get a feeling of what its like to be in the position of loving the creation, rather than the accolades, go buy THX1138 on DVD. Watch the American Zoetrope video that comes on the 2nd DVD. It explains a lot... now, you can take-or-leve Lucas' work - and he'd welcome you to that.
but i am saddend that Lucas gave up 20 years of creativity to make the starwars movies instead of making movies that he really liked. THX was his best movie he's ever made... at least to me.. because you can see the creativity put into making it.
do what i did - just make a movie, put it on the net, let people enjoy it. If someone wants to hire you for your talent and abilities, they will. That's what basically has happened to me.
My boss saw my editing abilities when it got around that I do video junk for the kids at church, and now, instead of doing requirements validation and system engineering paper studies, i now sit behind a G5 with Final Cut Studio and Motion...and i even get paid to do it!
Hey - it beats working.
btw: have fun watching my video.
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/thrive2005.mp4
its H.264, just so you know.
its a spoof of "24", made for Jr High kids at my church. Beware - as with all no-budget videos like this, there are a ton of inside jokes you probably won't get, and remind yourself of the target audience... jr high kids.
Rosetta, apparently, will allow low-end software to run thru a JIT converter that apparently has enough oomph to handle Phtotoshop, and other "1% power users needs." ;-) (sorry, inside jab at pudge, God bless him.)
plus, those power apps like the Apple Production Suite for the 1% power users have been built with Xcode - so i'm sure that Apple will eat their own dog-food on that one.
Mathematica is already done - it took 2 hours to make the move (according to Wolfram) - so i wonder how long it will actually take for the big apps to fall along side.
honestly - i was ready to be a fan of IBM - but they have lagged, and i'm sick of slow-ass PowerBooks
i (and i'm sure, many others) want a field-portable havey duty workstation.. i get that with a Intel-based PowerBook.
here are a list of "options" that were standard features on laptops that Apple made before any other company made them standard.. some still don't have some of them as optional...
- palm rests
- built-in mouse control device - trackball
- monitor spanning
- trackpads
- ethernet
- software controlled hard drive spin-downs and backlight
- sleep on close/awake when open
- wireless ethernet
- bluetooth
and that's only after thinking about it for 10 seconds.
i recall non-apple laptops from yesteryear...
spacebars at the edge of the laptop and a 1/4 acre above it...
Microsoft hook-on trackball with PS/2 cable...
having to do that OfficeSpace-like dance waiting for Windows to shutdown to get to the DOS prompt...
seriously - that laptops are even useable in this day and age - almost every single feature from the Compaq Luggable to today's kick-ass AMD Athlon 64 rockets that makes them useable as desktop replacements (other than the processor) is all thanks to apple.
i believe my friends at Apple would say... "you're welcome"
will continue to be the workhorse of the industy for years to come because
.Net?
it works
its solid (well, when not on the Net)
i'm in the Mil/Ind complex - and i promise you, W2k is still and will continue to be the workhorse for a long time to come. Users know how it works, and all the Win32 apps that have been developed for the last 10 years work on it just peachy... so there is no need to change.
there are often mass-downgrades that happen to w2k when machines are shipped with XP.
i don't know how MS is going to get itself out of this easily - when you have billions of home-built scientific apps that work fine, and now, we're going to make them work less good in Longhorn and get out there and re-do them all in
We're not talking about the Windows 3.1 to 95 or even the DOS to Windows leap - where GUI and 32-bit happieness were key features. We're talking about getting Avalon - so windows can be transparent and shimmy?
Yeah - that will sell to us.
anyone here who's ever worked on Final Cut, After Effects, Motion, Logic, Shake, or Maya or any number of hundreds of applications that often require seconds to HOURS of rendering can imagine Cell processors in their Macs, you collective morons that say stupid things like "why do you need a DSP processor to make file serving go faster"?
Some of us in content creation could use a little help here...
That some people are stumped by the utility of using Cell processors in Apple-built blade servers to take the place of XServes, or for what purpose would there be in 1-4 Cells in the Mac of the average Joe makes me really doubt the usefullness of our public schools.
Power users being able to add 15 animation effects with translucency and kenetics in Motion to a video with 8 layers of HD video and then watch it automatically copy straight to a DVD-R - without rendering time - makes us wet with anticipation...
and wondering when the hell hard drives are going to be able to catch up.
I would easily give up my right nut for a Apple-based blade server now that the Pro apps are starting to use XGrid for co-processing the heavy lifting portions of our work. My DVD projects of 2 hours still take long over an hour to render 2-pass MPEG2 on a high end DP G5. Multiples faster than realtime, could the Cell do.
But the average Joe? Why does Safari have to use a 8 core DSP? its doesn't, dumbass. But that's not all people do with their macs...
That iDVD render? What render? The lag is now your DVD burner - 100%.
Encoding settings for your iPod, vs. encoding settings for your files. iTunes could EASILY convert - on the fly - Apple Lossless encoded files to some kind of smaller, lossy codec as it filled your iPod. No waiting except for your iPod's slow-ass hard drive.
all this - while the Cell is still using a basic G5 at its core... so, no, Word isn't going to get any punch - but if Cell processors are as cheap as G5's, then what the hell is the issue here?
I'm damn ready for radical leaps in DSP... i'm fscking sick and tired of watching progress bars, DAMNIT! and if the Cell can do everything IBM says it can - hell, yeah, bring it on.
Server guys - try to think beyond your damn file services.
> How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?
...do you hear us??? Desktop/laptop H.264 dedicated encoding hardware for FCP/Compressor users!!! We'll buy it if its under $500)
easy.
decent quality standard def video at 30fps is quite wonderful at 768k... with "talking head" type content, 512kbps is freaking overkill, if you want to know the truth. (yes, i've spent the last week at work doing all kinds of encoding testing, since we're going to be moving to h.264 for our engineering video for our customers)
As for HD content... H.264 can make clean HD content flow at as low as 2mbps at 720p... so nice it makes you do a double take. With 100 meg ethernet being the low end standard... you can do the math as to how HD content is going to shoot thru pipes. Hell, many people get pretty decent speeds over their cable modems these days...
the bigger problem is still the encoding/decoding. Well, its a problem now.. but i'm waiting for a H.264 Firewire thumb-drive gizmo that will do it all for you offline using one of TI's h.264 encoder chips. I'm ready for hardware H.264 encoding for my Mac that's QuickTime/Compressor-ready...
(APPLE... TI.... 3rd PARTY DEVELOPERS
for those of you interested in actual products which exist now - check this link. They have everyone's stuff listed here, including Polycom's new stuff.
What i want to know is if anyone here has EVER seen actual 640x480 (720x480 if using a DV camera) 30fps cleanly being done?
While iChat in Tiger is hella good, i'm still only getting 15 fps... and i bet money that it still remains at 15fps when i get two machines chatting on the same subnet. (anyone? anyone tried this?)
The idea of using a Mac Mini for this only means that the submitter, while well intentioned, is totally missing the fact that what he's talking about is impossible without additional hardware.
Can anyone give a quick review of iChat in Tiger over fast ethernet on the same network?
I swear - in the last.. what... 6 months, if I haven't heard Bill bitch about the inadequacy of something that Apple was doing, at least once a week, i'm a monkey's uncle... What's FUNNIER is that in every single one of these "don't look at them... listen as i niggerdomus your ass with empty promises of atomic-powerd credit card sized super computers!", all i can think of is that old over the top "Food for Windows" joke...
/etc
i mean, seriously - read it, and then replace Cuisine International with Apple and iPod and iTunes with Word and Food Processing... and its a scream...
Monday, 10 AM -- Chicago, Illinois -- Apple Computer announced , the first interworking program to seamlessly integrate iPods and Music with the iTunes Music Store. Called breakthrough for music listeners, Apple Chairman Steve JobsSteve Jobs confidently predicted sales of thousands of copies with shipments soon to begin.
Monday, 4 PM -- New York -- Apple Computer shares closed sharply higher on announcement of new iTunes Music Store product.
etc.. etc..
1984: apple puts out 1984 commercial decrying IBM as Orwellian PC maker stifling industry.
2005: IBM NO LONGER MAKES IBM compatible personal computers... They now they make Apple Power Macintosh and iMac computers.
Estoppel.
You can't sit there and watch someone for over a year call their product "Tiger" and then, 1 day before it goes on sale yell foul. Tiger direct knew about Tiger for well over a year - as we all did - and therefore, they cannot, because of estoppel.
The law states that you can't know about some "wrong doing" by someone and then conveniently use it against them long after you knew about the wrong doing. Its what (in theory) prevents a cop from simply following you around all day and then giving you 24 tickets when you get home.
(tangent: if you actually had someone following you around all day, you'd probably rack up well over 1 ticket per mile... did you change lanes more than one time per 200 feet? did you signal 100 feet prior to turning right? did you allow 3 seconds between you and the car ahead of you? Did you come to a full stop before turning right on red? Did you travel more than 200 feet in the suicide lane? Did you go more than 1 mile per hour faster than the allowed speed limit? Did you go slow enough in the rain?)
That would be like me annoucing on Dec 24th, 2006 that my company, Longhorn Computers, is suing Microsoft to cease and desist from sales of Windows Longhorn. I (and everyone else) knows that Microsoft has called it Longhorn for who know s how long... its unfair to last minute try to torpedo Microsoft.
google the word "estoppel" yourself, or go read up on it on groklaw.
Here's the thing... Boeing initially ran FCS on DP machines running Windows 2000. We got sick of running it because it blue screened, we couldn't easily build our own version of windows stripped down, with services removed that we didn't want in there...
basically, Windows is a desktop operating system that is closed source and a pain in the ass to take apart and use exactly how you want. It is what it is, and there's only so much you can do.
at some point, it was obvious that a RTOS was what was needed. You have total control - i mean total control - of what happens and when it happens. And if someone's life is on the line, the last thing you need is to not know what's going on in your code.
>Extremists on both sides will always try to muzzle those with whom they disagree.
;-)
i can see that by the moderators this evening.
>You can keep believing otherwise if you like, of course ... right up until they take you to the camps.
I'm a born-again Jesus loving Bible reading libertarian...
and as a matter of fact, yes, me and others like me are quite ready and prepared to be the first ones taken to the camps... We are already seeing the signs and are determined to not change our thoughts.
now, we'd be perfectly happy for you to hate Jesus and want to screw each other in the butt all day long if you'd just let us say we think its wrong.. but then, that would be hate speach, wouldn't it?
there is already legal precident in Canada stating that the Bible is hate speech... we know its coming, we just don't stop loving Him and will let you know that He loves you too if you'd stop using the government to shut us up.
for all the hate you apparently have for the Pope - you _do_ know that he went to the jail of the man that attempted to kill him and forgave him... personally... not in some disattached global way...
he actually went to his jail cell, talked with him, and became friends with him... he also told everyone that he had forgiven him...
which is easier, to tell someone that shot you "you're forgiven"? or to shut up those that you disagree with?
>Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance.
there's a difference between actively, with government help, SILENCEING people who say things against a political correctness, and simply not liking them.
There is a difference between the government using the force of law to silence someone with any number of 4th Amendment violations, and for the masses to simply be pissed as your ass.
f'rinstance.. "The Left" at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, a student was, by the government of the state of california, told to remove a flyer from a wall because it was offensive, told to write a letter of apology because he offended a couple of easily offendable black folk, and was threatened with expulsion and forfieture of his tuition. That is ACTUAL censorship. That is done by the government against the people with the force of law.
on "The Right" - when we didn't like what the Dixie Chicks had to say, we didn't send Janet Reno out to get them to lay siege to their house longer than it took to take over Baghdad and then light it on fire... we simply stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks and buying their CDs.
there's a big fscking difference there, my friend.
>This legislation only applies to communications that are paid for by a PAC
Yes... and moveon.org, backed with $25M qualifies on my planet as a PAC.. no matter how much they want to swear that they aren't.
and lets get serious for a moment - so is ABC news... so is CBS news.. they are not "media" in the sense of netural journalists.. there are no such thing as "neutral journalists". Why Dan Rather can break the law and spew obvous bullshit about Bush weeks before the election - and get away with it - with FAR more funding than any PAC i know of (except maybe the Old lobby (aarp)) smacks of FEC violations to me.
>Why is it always the seemingly most liberal places that seem to be so conservative on certain issues?
what are you talking about?
the conservtives were 100% against Campaing Finance Reform. Esp. us libertarians.
Regulation of political speech is about as core to the left-wing of politics as the passing game was to USC last year.
Look at eveyr single socialist/communist state - every sing one, without fail, regulated speech and ensured that it was politically correct.
Saying things like nigger, kike, grabtastic faggot are protected by the libertarian document, the US Constitution in its 1st Amendment.
Saying ANYTHING politically INCORRECT is very much a right-wing/libertarian point of view.. always has been, always will be.
call me a sexist, homophobic, racist right wing Christian pig - that's YOUR right.
but my right to think how I want and the right for you to think how YOU want is not in any way a liberal/left wing idea. never has been.