Application Programming
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Beyond Java
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What ever happened to programming stand-alone application programs? For several years now I've seen almost nothing discussed on Slashdot other than web programming. It's all about scripting websites and accessing databases, etc. Is application programming no longer interesting, or profitable, or fashionable? Is it an activity now considered contemptible?
Looking at Java, the only thing I found interesting was the ability to write platform-independent applications. Even for that, Java appeared to have some significant shortcomings. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way -- considering how few stand-alone Java apps I have installed on my computer now. Let me count. . .
Three. I have three Java apps. I have more apps built in REALbasic than in Java. So much for Java taking over the world, eh? And now people are buzzing about Ruby. Ruby? Man, it's an *interpreted* language! If I were coding a CMS, sure, I'd consider it. I may use it as a scripting language for my apps, it should be very spiffy for that. Will I code the apps themselves in Ruby? No!
Recently I've been learning my way around Mac OS X, with Objective-C and Cocoa. It's not perfect. But. . . For what it's designed for, for developing stand-alone GUI-based applications, I haven't seen anything dramatically better. And you know, I have doubts about whether I'm ever going to. Nobody is working on languages oriented toward application programming anymore. Some of the newer languages can do it, but they aren't focused on it. Apps and GUIs are a sideline, an afterthought.
Global Warming and the Ice Age
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Forecasting Doomsday
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Just ask any geologist. . . The Earth is in an Ice Age. Actually we're in an "interglacial period", which is what we call it when an ice age pauses and the ice sheets retreat for 10 or 20 thousand years, then they advance again. In the 1970s several climatologists looked at the available data -- solar cycles and records, precession of Earth's orbit, etc. -- and concluded that the interglacial period was about to end, and the ice was going to come back Real Soon Now. They started warning their governments about the need to prepare for a colder climate, shorter growing seasons, dropping ocean levels, etc.
That was before all the talk about global warming began, of course.
And yet, their data didn't lie. What some climatologists are beginning to figure out is that global warming -- from greenhouse gases emitted as a by-product of human industry -- came along just in time to hold back the ice sheets. It began with clearing forests for farmland (which released carbon), and raising livestock which produce methane. It accelerated with the industrial revolution, and all the coal that was burned. Up to that point the greenhouse gases were roughly staving off the natural cooling trend.
Then, in the 20th Century, we saw an explosion in the burning of oil and gas for power. That's when the global warming effect began to outstrip and overwhelm the natural cooling trends. Today we have a climate that is definitely growing warmer, alarmingly so. And yet. . .
If we were to cut off greenhouse gas emissions today -- either on purpose, or as a result of our industrial civilization's collapse -- it seems likely that it wouldn't take long for the current situation to reverse. It certainly ought not take 100,000 years for the global climate to recover from our CO2 emissions. Like it or not, we are still in that ice age, and we'd soon feel it.
Many years ago I used my old Sears KS-2 SLR with common Kodak ISO 100 film, most of the time. One time I collected my favorite negatives and shipped them off to have a Kodak PhotoCD made. The maximum resolution of a PhotoCD image is 3072x2048 pixels. At that resolution I could see the grain in my film, and it appeared to me that there was no more useful information to extract. That works out to 6.29 megapixels.
Yes, I'm sure with special 35mm film and an expensive lens it's possible to go higher, maybe a lot higher. But then you are getting into the realm of specialized needs, not something most photographers -- even professionals -- would use on a regular basis. Based on my experience, I say for most people a 6 megapixel digital camera is practically equivalent to a 35mm film camera.
Ah! This must be some new meaning of "complete and utter failure" that I previously was not aware of.
Usually failed products are taken off the market. Yet somehow LD players and discs continued to be made and sold by multiple companies for more than a 20-year stretch. Those companies didn't stay in the business from some misguided sense of technological chivalry -- they were out to make money. The "home theater" trend and positive associations with audio CD technology actually caused LD to increase in popularity during the early 1990s, right up until DVD took off.
Just because your local rental place didn't have LD movies doesn't mean they didn't exist, or that they weren't profitable for somebody.
The majority of those old films are landfill, just like the majority made today are destined to be landfill. Nobody will bother to restore them (which can be fairly expensive) and prevent them from turning to dust in the film cans. And it's okay, because 90% of them were worthless to begin with. But there are the classics, there are gems to be mined.
Gone With the Wind? The Wizard of Oz? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Frankenstein? Those were all made in the 1930s. And I'm sure the Marx Brothers are well worth saving and seeing again.
A lot of this stuff has already been issued on VHS, LD or DVD. There's a market for it. There people who watch Turner Classic Movies every day. I'm not one of them, usually, but. . .
I switched on HDNet Movies a few days ago and caught most of My Fair Lady (1964), fully restored version. The restoration looked great in hi-def. And I thought. . . Man, this is not my usual kind of movie, and nobody would make a movie like it today (with people bursting into song and dance every few minutes!), but it's actually pretty good.
LaserDisc didn't fail. It survived for many years and was still going strong right up until DVD format came along and pushed it aside. Your platform doesn't have to take over the world to be counted as a success. (Unless you are Bill Gates!)
Incidentally, LD had a few advantages over DVD. The full-size cover art was nice, and nobody ever had to sit through a bunch of promos, FBI warning, or other stuff like that because their player wouldn't allow them to skip over it. There were no region codes either. (Although there were PAL and NTSC versions.)
DVD Audio and SACD haven't "failed utterly" . . . Not yet, not quite. But yes, I think they are on the way to destruction. I just don't think we are there yet with video. I think HD video will present enough improvement for most people to appreciate and want it. But I can't prove that, we'll just have to watch and see.
It may be that Blu-Ray (or less likely, HD-DVD) will become the new LaserDisc format -- beloved of collectors and video geeks, surviving for years or decades, but not destined to quickly take over the world the way DVD did.
I'm getting sick and tired of people saying things like:
"DVDs are great, why do we need anything better?"
When LaserDisc was introduced in 1978, they were GREAT. They were amazing. They could push right up against the limits of the NTSC standard. LD was really over-designed because very few people had TV sets good enough to show them off properly. DVD video is basically the same thing, it's designed to hit the NTSC standard. TV sets today are many times better than those of 1978, it's the signal standard that needs to catch up now.
So. . . 27 years after the introduction of LD format, how much longer should we wait for an improvement? 50 years? 100 years? Should we just give up on the idea of progress completely, and settle for watching blurry NTSC-quality images from now on?
No. We need a pre-recorded format for ATSC -- we've needed it badly for several years, in fact. This is the one huge element that has been missing from the HDTV transition.
Now we're on the verge of a video format that can show movies in a reasonably close approximation to how they appeared in theaters. VHS can't do that, LD can't do that, DVD can't do that. HD discs will. Nobody should underestimate the importance of this, because the back catalog of movies that can benefit from this presentation goes back many decades, there are literally thousands of them. There are movies from the 1930s or possibly even earlier that will look better on HD discs than they can on DVDs.
That won't happen again. If somebody 10 years from now tries to come up with some new format to replace Blu-Ray, or replace HD-DVD, they're going to run into a big obstacle. It's because most movies in the back catalog don't contain a lot more information than ATSC can present. Most movies weren't shot in 3D, they weren't shot in IMAX. There's nothing to be gained by presenting them in a format more advanced than ATSC-HD.
We can already see a preview of that, because there have been quite a few TV series shot, or produced, on NTSC videotape, which means they won't benefit from being put on HD discs. This is why I think HD format has a lot to offer, but anything that comes after it will probably falter in much the same way that SACD and DVD-A are faltering.
I'm sure the movie people are licking their chops at the prospect of selling many of us our favorite movies for the second or third time. However. . . They probably don't realize it yet, but HD discs are the end of that gravy train. There's nowhere else to go after HD.
You ask, aren't DVDs good enough? No. Personally, I don't think DVDs are good enough. They're the video equivalent of LP records. The video quality of DVD is basically the same as Laserdiscs, which have been around since 1978. For that matter, they're basically the same standard as NTSC, which goes back much further than that. HD isn't arriving too soon, I think it's long overdue.
Most importantly, HD discs will allow us to have a pretty close approximation of what was shown in movie theaters. The whole back catalog can be mined for HD discs. But if there are any future improved formats beyond HD, they'll run into the problem of finding material (other than IMAX) to show off its capabilities.
HD discs will be the video equivalent of CDs. That -- in my estimation -- is the threshold after which it won't be worth the hassle and expense of upgrading further.
You see what's happening with SACD and DVD-A? They're not winning the hearts and minds (and dollars) of the people because CD audio really is good enough. I don't think DVD video is good enough, but I think whatever comes after HD discs will falter for the same reason that SACD and DVD-A are faltering. The improvements offered will become too subtle for most people to be bothered about.
You shouldn't dismiss biodiesel with the assumption that SOYBEANS are the only thing you can make the stuff from. We naturally look forward to advances in solar cell technology, we look forward to advances in nuclear fission and fusion technology, but for some reason people hit a mental wall with biodiesel and can't imagine any technological advances happening.
The US Govt conducted studies on the cultivation of algae with high oil content, using open-raceway ponds. Greenfuel Technologies have an enclosed system using algae to synthesize fuel from CO2 waste, such as from power plants. Synthetic Genomics are working on genetically engineered organisms that secret biofuels (they are focused more on methanol or hydrogen, but the same approach could produce vegetable oil).
You can get around the whole problem of conventional farming and consuming too much arable land. None of these approaches are fully proven on a commercial scale yet. . . But then, a lot of things we discuss on Slashdot are more far-fetched than making biodiesel fuel from algae. It's hardly fair to wave away the whole idea of biofuel as if it were some annoying insect buzzing around your head, just because you found out soybeans won't fill the bill.
BSG just might be the best TV show these days, and there's a strong argument that it's the best science fiction show of recent years. That's a sad commentary on the state of SF TV, because BSG isn't great. It's good, but also has some serious shortcomings. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it about a 6. It just seems wonderful because few other SF shows ever score higher than about 3.
Put another way. . . It's worth watching, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
Serenity had all the makings of success. It was promoted, it looked good, it had all the loyal Firefly fans behind it, it got glowing reviews from the critics. What does it *take* to get people to go see a movie these days?
Well. . . Putting it in theaters would help. I never went to see Serenity because it never opened at the local Texan Theater here in my town, which is the only screen within about 40 miles of my home.
Err. . . What's the problem with Second Life? It's been available for Macintosh since early on, as far as I know. Is it a Linux version you want, or is it some other development issue that you're thinking about? Seems to me that if it's running on Mac OS X, then a Linux client shouldn't be a huge challenge.
I'll be the first to say that SL has some problems and kinks that need to be ironed out. But it's not like any other MMOG out there, they are doing something unique and I might even say cutting-edge. It's still in the early days. So I cut them slack, and I wait patiently for those problems to be resolved.
That is a very pleasant welcome surprise to me. Yes, obviously I'm a Mac user and I'm hoping that Mac support makes it into Multiverse sooner rather than later. It's great to see that the company is, after all, planning to move that direction. It's great to see someone from the company posting here, too.
I still can't help being a bit skeptical, though. Doesn't the client software use DirectX 9? Surely you must be aware that DirectX (and notably Direct3D) is not available on Mac and Linux -- OpenGL is the cross-platform standard for 3D graphics.
Now this following part isn't directed at anybody, it's just me rambling. . .
There appear to be a lot of game companies around, large and small, that are "thinking about" doing a Mac version of their stuff sometime in the future, but they never seem to get around to it. One reason is, they wake up one day and realize they've already build their software around Windows-only APIs and components like DirectX. And it's not because Direct3D is better than OpenGL: it's just because DirectX is what Microsoft promotes, promotes, promotes. It's what most game programmers are already familiar with, and Mac and Linux weren't even in their thoughts when they were starting the project.
Then they're stuck either going back and rewriting your client program almost from the ground up, or going through a DirectX-to-OpenGL translation process for the Mac and Linux clients. There are Mac porting houses who can do that, and I think there may be companies selling library components that can help with that translation. I wouldn't expect either route to be cheap.
By way of comparison, programmers at Blizzard observed that developing the Mac and PC versions in parallel made for a lot of advantages. It makes debugging go easier, since you can compare the two versions and figure out why a bug appears in one, or the other, or both. (I actually think I heard comments about that phenomenon first from the Shadowbane developers, but of course when Blizzard say it more people tend to listen.)
The Multiverse website says nothing about Mac support -- in fact, I couldn't find where it says anything at all about hardware requirements or operating systems. However. . . There is something on the Kothuria website. Their FAQ says:
Q: Will your game appear on other platforms? A: Currently we aren't developing for other platforms than Windows PCs.
Based on history, I would assume if it's not being developed for both Mac and Windows simultaneously, then it's highly unlikely that it will ever support Macintosh (or Linux for that matter). As a general rule, it's not economically viable to take an already-developed MMOG and make a Mac port of it. (That was the official answer to our question about a Mac version of Star Wars Galaxies, in fact.)
Almost all the MMOGs that have appeared on the Mac platform came out of a combined PC-and-Mac development process: WW2 Online, Shadowbane, Second Life, and World of Warcraft.
Of MMOGs that began on PC and were later ported to Mac, the only one that comes to mind is Everquest. It was so late arriving that EQ2 and WoW were already knocking at the door, and it lacked compatibility to allow Mac and PC users play on the same servers.
Another example is Neverwinter Nights, which is not quite really a MMOG but is similar in some respects. It was ported to Macintosh, but the whole Aurora toolkit was left out -- excuse being that it depended on some developer library provided by a vendor who promised Mac support but never came through with it.
Multiverse are setting themselves up to be the same kind of obstacle. Basically, they're creating an ecosystem that locks out Macintosh not at the consumer level, but at the developer level.
Nanotubes and buckyballs aren't nanotechnology, as I see it. They are precursors of nanotechnology. They're getting ready for nanotech, working towards nanotech. . . And they can indeed be useful and profitable in their own right. But with regards to actual nanotech, we aren't there yet. And I never said that "no one" is investigating nanotech. A great many people are investigating it and working on the problem. They just haven't solved it yet.
As for the Ad hominem argument. . . ? Oh wait, I see. You think I'm assuming that because some people use the word nanotech as a meaningless buzzword, I'm then concluding that *everybody* who uses it is discredited.
No. I didn't say that. I freely and happily admit that there are people and companies researching real nanotechnology. But I stand by my statement that those companies aren't turning out any useful products yet, and they probably won't for several years at least. I follow this stuff, I'm not just pulling these assertions out of thin air.
Real nanotechnology: The "nanocar" they made at Rice University qualifies. It has multiple moving parts and is made with true atomic precision. It's about as simple as a machine can get, and it doesn't do anything useful, but it's undeniably nanotech. This is the stage we're at in nanotechnology research, right at the very beginning. If you compared with computer technology, for example, this is like trying to invent the first transistor.
I can't see how this article has any connection with nanotechnology -- except in the sense that it's about something small, and nanotechnology is about something small. People are throwing the words "nanotechnology" and "nanotech" and nano-everything around without the foggiest idea what they mean.
CLUE: We do not have nanotechnology yet. No company today, anywhere on Planet Earth, is producing working nanomachines that do something useful. The article is about computer chips: it's as ridiculous as some company announcing a new laser pointer, and somehow linking it to Star Wars lightsabers.
. ..it must noted that Microsoft is simply one in a long line of companies that have used their size and deep pockets to quash the competition. Microsoft is not alone and joins companies such as American Airlines, Ford and General Motors, Wal-Mart and more that have engaged in practices that while good for their stockholders, have not been good for the competition."
That statement shows unawareness of Microsoft's history for the last 20 years. Yes, all those other companies have had ethical lapses. Shady practices and bullying are commonplace among big business, it's undeniably true. However. . .
None of them even come close to Microsoft. The bullying, lying, cheating, stealing and sabotage that Microsoft have carried out -- blatantly and relentlessly for two decades -- make Sony and Wal-Mart look like boy scout camps. Just because everybody cheats doesn't make it OK for Microsoft to cheat, and sure as hell doesn't make it OK for them to cheat twenty times as much as everybody else. And that's before we even get to how the majority of Microsoft's products have been either seriously flawed, or they were five years behind what other companies had done, or both.
I already got rid of all my Microsoft products some while back, and saving a few bucks had nothing to do with it. (They don't give away Mac OS X, anyhow.) Here are some better reasons to ditch Microsoft:
1. Not helping to support a company that has willfully and maliciously caused tremendous harm to the computer industry.
2. Not doing business with a company that has ripped off customers for countless billions, and will undoubtedly rip you off too, if you give them a chance.
3. Avoiding the spyware and DRM that Microsoft would like to slip into your computer.
4. Avoid the many security holes that riddle Microsoft products like swiss cheese.
5. Buy from companies that don't have a track record of putting out crummy products.
The problem, of course, is that people on the whole don't care about right and wrong. Or if they do, they think it's somebody else's problem to do something about it. They may grumble that the DOJ didn't crack down on Microsoft, but the same people will be standing in line to get a XBox 360.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke
And unfortunately, that's exactly what most good people do. Nothing. Ignore the problem. Tune out the few who complain. Tar them as fanatics or kooks, then you can safely ignore them too. Rationalize.
"Microsoft cheats, but so what? All the big companies do."
"Look at all the innovation Microsoft brought to computers!"
"They wouldn't be so huge and successful if they weren't providing what people want, after all."
"What are you, some kind of communist?"
But if you scratch under the surface, past all the excuses and rationalization, what they're really thinking is: "Man, I want to play Halo 3. .." And they probably don't even know or care that Bungie was a star Macintosh developer before Microsoft bought them out.
I don't spend a lot of time on Usenet, but it's still highly useful for some things. The various alt.binaries.** groups are good for picking up music, MAME ROMs, cartoons. . . things that are hard to find on WWW. Have you ever tried to get MAME ROMs from web sites? It's like stumbling through a maze filled with traps.
Aside from file sharing, I can get into comp.sys.mac.programmer.help and get answers to tough questions quickly. . . and without the various hassles of going through ADC and their mailing lists. Mailing lists are just a pain in the neck, while web-based discussion forums are worse. The useful discussion groups on Usenet are the moderated ones (like rec.guns) and the ones that are specialized and don't pick up a lot of spam.
My ISP contract out their Usenet access to a third party. The service has been excellent. . . And if I had to guess, I'd suspect they aren't paying too much for it, as I assume the majority of customers don't even know what Usenet is.
One point I would make is that most Usenet client programs are much harder to use than they should be. They can be very hard to configure and use. I avoided Usenet for several years, or accessed it only through Google Groups, because I couldn't find a decent newsreader. I finally found Unison, and I've been tremendously happy with it.
No. There is no situation where I would be open to using an ad-supported OS.
My philosophy about an OS is that it's merely a functional component of my computer, like the processor, or the RAM, or the hard drive, or the keyboard, etc. Would you be open to using ad-supported RAM?
Anyhow. . . I'm sick of ads. Even my tolerance for ad-supported TV has almost run out. The only thing that keeps me watching TV is the ability to record shows on my DVR and skip over commercials when I watch later.
We're not starved for freedom in the USA. But people tend to become anxious and upset when something that they're accustomed to having is taken away. In the USA we have a lot of freedom, but a little less than we did, say, 30 years ago.
We haven't lost much. . . yet. And many people haven't noticed or don't care because various issues don't appear to affect them personally. Our liberty has been nibbled away around the edges. But there are always some who are affected and some who do care. And they figure out, if they can lose a little freedom when what's to stop them from losing a lot more?
You wrote: "DVD was a big step up from VHS - clarity, features, accessibilty. .."
Actually, Super VHS and LaserDisc were big steps up from VHS. DVD was a big step sideways from LaserDisc. It's still something of a mystery to me why LaserDisc never caught on big-time, but so many years later DVD did, when they provided almost the same performance, features, etc.
The failure of Super VHS is an even bigger mystery. Because you know, the video quality of standard VHS was absolutely dreadful. Then came Super VHS to fix that glaring problem, and it was met with a big yawn. I bought a series of S-VHS machines, they worked well for me. But at Circuit City they usually had a table full of returned S-VHS machines on sale for cheap -- people returned those because they couldn't see any difference from standard VHS. I can only guess, but I'd assume those people had their S-VHS machines plugged into poorly adjusted 10 year old TV sets through the RF input. Then again, maybe they expected some dramatic improvement to leap out that them. . . S-VHS was indeed better, but it was still NTSC.
Getting back to the subject of NTSC versus ATSC HD video. . . You certainly won't need a 60-inch screen or an A-B test to see the difference. It's not subtle at all, it's dramatic. It does depend somewhat on the source material, since some programs are softer looking than others. Film transfers to HD look softer and somewhat different from footage shot with a HD camera. (To me, film transfers to NTSC video look like NTSC video. Film transfers to HD video look like film. Pure HD video has it's own distinctive look.)
Most people can't hear any difference between CD audio and DVD-A or SACD. You need good speakers and good ears and some idea about what to listen for. Most people can indeed tell the difference between DVD video and HDTV, easily. With a DVD you are basically getting the NTSC standard, which is quite old and limited. It's markedly inferior to the visual quality of movies shot on film as far back as the 1930s. The difference in resolution may not be as apparent on a small screen, but when you put NTSC video up on a bigger screen the fuzziness becomes quite noticeable and annoying. With HD you get something that looks pretty close to the original film. Not identical, but Close Enough.
As for most stuff on TV being garbage. . . Yeah, that's true. But the great thing about Blu-Ray is that -- presumably -- we'll be able to collect movies from the back catalog of the last 70+ years. There's got to be some good stuff in there somewhere.
And the other great thing is that it's the end of the upgrade path. Like CDs. . . They aren't going to be replaced any time soon because they really are "good enough" for most of our music and most of our ears. HDTV is good enough for most of our movies (setting aside IMAX). If you bought movies on VHS, and then bought movies on LaserDisc, and then bought movies on DVD. . . You probably got pretty tired of changing formats, and it's especially rough if you bought the same movie in more than one format. But HDTV should be the Very Last Format for movies. Past that, you'll be into the area of diminishing returns, which is exactly why SACD and DVD-A aren't having widespread success.
This seems almost too easy from where I sit. Everything plays MP3. I can play MP3 tracks on my iPod. I can stream them to my Roku Soundbridge. I can burn them to a CD-R and play them in a lot of recent CD and DVD players, including car stereos. I can get MP3 tracks off Usenet, or Limewire, or allofmp3.com, MP3tunes.com, Broadjam.com, music.download.com, or any number of other sources. I can rip my CDs to MP3 tracks with the encoder and bitrate options of my choosing. I don't have to worry about compatibility, I don't have to worry about DRM schemes or that things will someday stop working for any reason.
What do AAC and WMA have to offer that MP3 doesn't? DRM, basically. Somehow that's not a big selling point for me.
Slashdot Mirror
What ever happened to programming stand-alone application programs? For several years now I've seen almost nothing discussed on Slashdot other than web programming. It's all about scripting websites and accessing databases, etc. Is application programming no longer interesting, or profitable, or fashionable? Is it an activity now considered contemptible?
Looking at Java, the only thing I found interesting was the ability to write platform-independent applications. Even for that, Java appeared to have some significant shortcomings. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way -- considering how few stand-alone Java apps I have installed on my computer now. Let me count. . .
Three. I have three Java apps. I have more apps built in REALbasic than in Java. So much for Java taking over the world, eh? And now people are buzzing about Ruby. Ruby? Man, it's an *interpreted* language! If I were coding a CMS, sure, I'd consider it. I may use it as a scripting language for my apps, it should be very spiffy for that. Will I code the apps themselves in Ruby? No!
Recently I've been learning my way around Mac OS X, with Objective-C and Cocoa. It's not perfect. But. . . For what it's designed for, for developing stand-alone GUI-based applications, I haven't seen anything dramatically better. And you know, I have doubts about whether I'm ever going to. Nobody is working on languages oriented toward application programming anymore. Some of the newer languages can do it, but they aren't focused on it. Apps and GUIs are a sideline, an afterthought.
Just ask any geologist. . . The Earth is in an Ice Age. Actually we're in an "interglacial period", which is what we call it when an ice age pauses and the ice sheets retreat for 10 or 20 thousand years, then they advance again. In the 1970s several climatologists looked at the available data -- solar cycles and records, precession of Earth's orbit, etc. -- and concluded that the interglacial period was about to end, and the ice was going to come back Real Soon Now. They started warning their governments about the need to prepare for a colder climate, shorter growing seasons, dropping ocean levels, etc.
That was before all the talk about global warming began, of course.
And yet, their data didn't lie. What some climatologists are beginning to figure out is that global warming -- from greenhouse gases emitted as a by-product of human industry -- came along just in time to hold back the ice sheets. It began with clearing forests for farmland (which released carbon), and raising livestock which produce methane. It accelerated with the industrial revolution, and all the coal that was burned. Up to that point the greenhouse gases were roughly staving off the natural cooling trend.
Then, in the 20th Century, we saw an explosion in the burning of oil and gas for power. That's when the global warming effect began to outstrip and overwhelm the natural cooling trends. Today we have a climate that is definitely growing warmer, alarmingly so. And yet. . .
If we were to cut off greenhouse gas emissions today -- either on purpose, or as a result of our industrial civilization's collapse -- it seems likely that it wouldn't take long for the current situation to reverse. It certainly ought not take 100,000 years for the global climate to recover from our CO2 emissions. Like it or not, we are still in that ice age, and we'd soon feel it.
Many years ago I used my old Sears KS-2 SLR with common Kodak ISO 100 film, most of the time. One time I collected my favorite negatives and shipped them off to have a Kodak PhotoCD made. The maximum resolution of a PhotoCD image is 3072x2048 pixels. At that resolution I could see the grain in my film, and it appeared to me that there was no more useful information to extract. That works out to 6.29 megapixels.
Yes, I'm sure with special 35mm film and an expensive lens it's possible to go higher, maybe a lot higher. But then you are getting into the realm of specialized needs, not something most photographers -- even professionals -- would use on a regular basis. Based on my experience, I say for most people a 6 megapixel digital camera is practically equivalent to a 35mm film camera.
Check it: http://mam-a.com/products/gold/archive.html
They claim "storage life in excess of 300 years".
Granted, claims like that are easy to make. . . Still, there's a huge difference between 5 years and 300 years. Who is closer to being right?
Ah! This must be some new meaning of "complete and utter failure" that I previously was not aware of.
Usually failed products are taken off the market. Yet somehow LD players and discs continued to be made and sold by multiple companies for more than a 20-year stretch. Those companies didn't stay in the business from some misguided sense of technological chivalry -- they were out to make money. The "home theater" trend and positive associations with audio CD technology actually caused LD to increase in popularity during the early 1990s, right up until DVD took off.
Just because your local rental place didn't have LD movies doesn't mean they didn't exist, or that they weren't profitable for somebody.
The majority of those old films are landfill, just like the majority made today are destined to be landfill. Nobody will bother to restore them (which can be fairly expensive) and prevent them from turning to dust in the film cans. And it's okay, because 90% of them were worthless to begin with. But there are the classics, there are gems to be mined.
Gone With the Wind? The Wizard of Oz? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Frankenstein? Those were all made in the 1930s. And I'm sure the Marx Brothers are well worth saving and seeing again.
A lot of this stuff has already been issued on VHS, LD or DVD. There's a market for it. There people who watch Turner Classic Movies every day. I'm not one of them, usually, but. . .
I switched on HDNet Movies a few days ago and caught most of My Fair Lady (1964), fully restored version. The restoration looked great in hi-def. And I thought. . . Man, this is not my usual kind of movie, and nobody would make a movie like it today (with people bursting into song and dance every few minutes!), but it's actually pretty good.
LaserDisc didn't fail. It survived for many years and was still going strong right up until DVD format came along and pushed it aside. Your platform doesn't have to take over the world to be counted as a success. (Unless you are Bill Gates!)
Incidentally, LD had a few advantages over DVD. The full-size cover art was nice, and nobody ever had to sit through a bunch of promos, FBI warning, or other stuff like that because their player wouldn't allow them to skip over it. There were no region codes either. (Although there were PAL and NTSC versions.)
DVD Audio and SACD haven't "failed utterly" . . . Not yet, not quite. But yes, I think they are on the way to destruction. I just don't think we are there yet with video. I think HD video will present enough improvement for most people to appreciate and want it. But I can't prove that, we'll just have to watch and see.
It may be that Blu-Ray (or less likely, HD-DVD) will become the new LaserDisc format -- beloved of collectors and video geeks, surviving for years or decades, but not destined to quickly take over the world the way DVD did.
I'm getting sick and tired of people saying things like:
"DVDs are great, why do we need anything better?"
When LaserDisc was introduced in 1978, they were GREAT. They were amazing. They could push right up against the limits of the NTSC standard. LD was really over-designed because very few people had TV sets good enough to show them off properly. DVD video is basically the same thing, it's designed to hit the NTSC standard. TV sets today are many times better than those of 1978, it's the signal standard that needs to catch up now.
So. . . 27 years after the introduction of LD format, how much longer should we wait for an improvement? 50 years? 100 years? Should we just give up on the idea of progress completely, and settle for watching blurry NTSC-quality images from now on?
No. We need a pre-recorded format for ATSC -- we've needed it badly for several years, in fact. This is the one huge element that has been missing from the HDTV transition.
Now we're on the verge of a video format that can show movies in a reasonably close approximation to how they appeared in theaters. VHS can't do that, LD can't do that, DVD can't do that. HD discs will. Nobody should underestimate the importance of this, because the back catalog of movies that can benefit from this presentation goes back many decades, there are literally thousands of them. There are movies from the 1930s or possibly even earlier that will look better on HD discs than they can on DVDs.
That won't happen again. If somebody 10 years from now tries to come up with some new format to replace Blu-Ray, or replace HD-DVD, they're going to run into a big obstacle. It's because most movies in the back catalog don't contain a lot more information than ATSC can present. Most movies weren't shot in 3D, they weren't shot in IMAX. There's nothing to be gained by presenting them in a format more advanced than ATSC-HD.
We can already see a preview of that, because there have been quite a few TV series shot, or produced, on NTSC videotape, which means they won't benefit from being put on HD discs. This is why I think HD format has a lot to offer, but anything that comes after it will probably falter in much the same way that SACD and DVD-A are faltering.
I'm sure the movie people are licking their chops at the prospect of selling many of us our favorite movies for the second or third time. However. . . They probably don't realize it yet, but HD discs are the end of that gravy train. There's nowhere else to go after HD.
You ask, aren't DVDs good enough? No. Personally, I don't think DVDs are good enough. They're the video equivalent of LP records. The video quality of DVD is basically the same as Laserdiscs, which have been around since 1978. For that matter, they're basically the same standard as NTSC, which goes back much further than that. HD isn't arriving too soon, I think it's long overdue.
Most importantly, HD discs will allow us to have a pretty close approximation of what was shown in movie theaters. The whole back catalog can be mined for HD discs. But if there are any future improved formats beyond HD, they'll run into the problem of finding material (other than IMAX) to show off its capabilities.
HD discs will be the video equivalent of CDs. That -- in my estimation -- is the threshold after which it won't be worth the hassle and expense of upgrading further.
You see what's happening with SACD and DVD-A? They're not winning the hearts and minds (and dollars) of the people because CD audio really is good enough. I don't think DVD video is good enough, but I think whatever comes after HD discs will falter for the same reason that SACD and DVD-A are faltering. The improvements offered will become too subtle for most people to be bothered about.
You shouldn't dismiss biodiesel with the assumption that SOYBEANS are the only thing you can make the stuff from. We naturally look forward to advances in solar cell technology, we look forward to advances in nuclear fission and fusion technology, but for some reason people hit a mental wall with biodiesel and can't imagine any technological advances happening.
The US Govt conducted studies on the cultivation of algae with high oil content, using open-raceway ponds. Greenfuel Technologies have an enclosed system using algae to synthesize fuel from CO2 waste, such as from power plants. Synthetic Genomics are working on genetically engineered organisms that secret biofuels (they are focused more on methanol or hydrogen, but the same approach could produce vegetable oil).
You can get around the whole problem of conventional farming and consuming too much arable land. None of these approaches are fully proven on a commercial scale yet. . . But then, a lot of things we discuss on Slashdot are more far-fetched than making biodiesel fuel from algae. It's hardly fair to wave away the whole idea of biofuel as if it were some annoying insect buzzing around your head, just because you found out soybeans won't fill the bill.
BSG just might be the best TV show these days, and there's a strong argument that it's the best science fiction show of recent years. That's a sad commentary on the state of SF TV, because BSG isn't great. It's good, but also has some serious shortcomings. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it about a 6. It just seems wonderful because few other SF shows ever score higher than about 3.
Put another way. . . It's worth watching, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
Serenity had all the makings of success. It was promoted, it looked good, it had all the loyal Firefly fans behind it, it got glowing reviews from the critics. What does it *take* to get people to go see a movie these days?
Well. . . Putting it in theaters would help. I never went to see Serenity because it never opened at the local Texan Theater here in my town, which is the only screen within about 40 miles of my home.
Err. . . What's the problem with Second Life? It's been available for Macintosh since early on, as far as I know. Is it a Linux version you want, or is it some other development issue that you're thinking about? Seems to me that if it's running on Mac OS X, then a Linux client shouldn't be a huge challenge.
I'll be the first to say that SL has some problems and kinks that need to be ironed out. But it's not like any other MMOG out there, they are doing something unique and I might even say cutting-edge. It's still in the early days. So I cut them slack, and I wait patiently for those problems to be resolved.
That is a very pleasant welcome surprise to me. Yes, obviously I'm a Mac user and I'm hoping that Mac support makes it into Multiverse sooner rather than later. It's great to see that the company is, after all, planning to move that direction. It's great to see someone from the company posting here, too.
I still can't help being a bit skeptical, though. Doesn't the client software use DirectX 9? Surely you must be aware that DirectX (and notably Direct3D) is not available on Mac and Linux -- OpenGL is the cross-platform standard for 3D graphics.
Now this following part isn't directed at anybody, it's just me rambling. . .
There appear to be a lot of game companies around, large and small, that are "thinking about" doing a Mac version of their stuff sometime in the future, but they never seem to get around to it. One reason is, they wake up one day and realize they've already build their software around Windows-only APIs and components like DirectX. And it's not because Direct3D is better than OpenGL: it's just because DirectX is what Microsoft promotes, promotes, promotes. It's what most game programmers are already familiar with, and Mac and Linux weren't even in their thoughts when they were starting the project.
Then they're stuck either going back and rewriting your client program almost from the ground up, or going through a DirectX-to-OpenGL translation process for the Mac and Linux clients. There are Mac porting houses who can do that, and I think there may be companies selling library components that can help with that translation. I wouldn't expect either route to be cheap.
By way of comparison, programmers at Blizzard observed that developing the Mac and PC versions in parallel made for a lot of advantages. It makes debugging go easier, since you can compare the two versions and figure out why a bug appears in one, or the other, or both. (I actually think I heard comments about that phenomenon first from the Shadowbane developers, but of course when Blizzard say it more people tend to listen.)
Based on history, I would assume if it's not being developed for both Mac and Windows simultaneously, then it's highly unlikely that it will ever support Macintosh (or Linux for that matter). As a general rule, it's not economically viable to take an already-developed MMOG and make a Mac port of it. (That was the official answer to our question about a Mac version of Star Wars Galaxies, in fact.)
Almost all the MMOGs that have appeared on the Mac platform came out of a combined PC-and-Mac development process: WW2 Online, Shadowbane, Second Life, and World of Warcraft.
Of MMOGs that began on PC and were later ported to Mac, the only one that comes to mind is Everquest. It was so late arriving that EQ2 and WoW were already knocking at the door, and it lacked compatibility to allow Mac and PC users play on the same servers.
Another example is Neverwinter Nights, which is not quite really a MMOG but is similar in some respects. It was ported to Macintosh, but the whole Aurora toolkit was left out -- excuse being that it depended on some developer library provided by a vendor who promised Mac support but never came through with it.
Multiverse are setting themselves up to be the same kind of obstacle. Basically, they're creating an ecosystem that locks out Macintosh not at the consumer level, but at the developer level.
Nanotubes and buckyballs aren't nanotechnology, as I see it. They are precursors of nanotechnology. They're getting ready for nanotech, working towards nanotech. . . And they can indeed be useful and profitable in their own right. But with regards to actual nanotech, we aren't there yet. And I never said that "no one" is investigating nanotech. A great many people are investigating it and working on the problem. They just haven't solved it yet.
As for the Ad hominem argument. . . ? Oh wait, I see. You think I'm assuming that because some people use the word nanotech as a meaningless buzzword, I'm then concluding that *everybody* who uses it is discredited.
No. I didn't say that. I freely and happily admit that there are people and companies researching real nanotechnology. But I stand by my statement that those companies aren't turning out any useful products yet, and they probably won't for several years at least. I follow this stuff, I'm not just pulling these assertions out of thin air.
Real nanotechnology: The "nanocar" they made at Rice University qualifies. It has multiple moving parts and is made with true atomic precision. It's about as simple as a machine can get, and it doesn't do anything useful, but it's undeniably nanotech. This is the stage we're at in nanotechnology research, right at the very beginning. If you compared with computer technology, for example, this is like trying to invent the first transistor.
I can't see how this article has any connection with nanotechnology -- except in the sense that it's about something small, and nanotechnology is about something small. People are throwing the words "nanotechnology" and "nanotech" and nano-everything around without the foggiest idea what they mean.
CLUE: We do not have nanotechnology yet. No company today, anywhere on Planet Earth, is producing working nanomachines that do something useful. The article is about computer chips: it's as ridiculous as some company announcing a new laser pointer, and somehow linking it to Star Wars lightsabers.
That statement shows unawareness of Microsoft's history for the last 20 years. Yes, all those other companies have had ethical lapses. Shady practices and bullying are commonplace among big business, it's undeniably true. However. . .
None of them even come close to Microsoft. The bullying, lying, cheating, stealing and sabotage that Microsoft have carried out -- blatantly and relentlessly for two decades -- make Sony and Wal-Mart look like boy scout camps. Just because everybody cheats doesn't make it OK for Microsoft to cheat, and sure as hell doesn't make it OK for them to cheat twenty times as much as everybody else. And that's before we even get to how the majority of Microsoft's products have been either seriously flawed, or they were five years behind what other companies had done, or both.
I already got rid of all my Microsoft products some while back, and saving a few bucks had nothing to do with it. (They don't give away Mac OS X, anyhow.) Here are some better reasons to ditch Microsoft:
1. Not helping to support a company that has willfully and maliciously caused tremendous harm to the computer industry.
2. Not doing business with a company that has ripped off customers for countless billions, and will undoubtedly rip you off too, if you give them a chance.
3. Avoiding the spyware and DRM that Microsoft would like to slip into your computer.
4. Avoid the many security holes that riddle Microsoft products like swiss cheese.
5. Buy from companies that don't have a track record of putting out crummy products.
The problem, of course, is that people on the whole don't care about right and wrong. Or if they do, they think it's somebody else's problem to do something about it. They may grumble that the DOJ didn't crack down on Microsoft, but the same people will be standing in line to get a XBox 360.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke
And unfortunately, that's exactly what most good people do. Nothing. Ignore the problem. Tune out the few who complain. Tar them as fanatics or kooks, then you can safely ignore them too. Rationalize.
"Microsoft cheats, but so what? All the big companies do."
"Look at all the innovation Microsoft brought to computers!"
"They wouldn't be so huge and successful if they weren't providing what people want, after all."
"What are you, some kind of communist?"
But if you scratch under the surface, past all the excuses and rationalization, what they're really thinking is: "Man, I want to play Halo 3. .
I don't spend a lot of time on Usenet, but it's still highly useful for some things. The various alt.binaries.** groups are good for picking up music, MAME ROMs, cartoons. . . things that are hard to find on WWW. Have you ever tried to get MAME ROMs from web sites? It's like stumbling through a maze filled with traps.
Aside from file sharing, I can get into comp.sys.mac.programmer.help and get answers to tough questions quickly. . . and without the various hassles of going through ADC and their mailing lists. Mailing lists are just a pain in the neck, while web-based discussion forums are worse. The useful discussion groups on Usenet are the moderated ones (like rec.guns) and the ones that are specialized and don't pick up a lot of spam.
My ISP contract out their Usenet access to a third party. The service has been excellent. . . And if I had to guess, I'd suspect they aren't paying too much for it, as I assume the majority of customers don't even know what Usenet is.
One point I would make is that most Usenet client programs are much harder to use than they should be. They can be very hard to configure and use. I avoided Usenet for several years, or accessed it only through Google Groups, because I couldn't find a decent newsreader. I finally found Unison, and I've been tremendously happy with it.
No. There is no situation where I would be open to using an ad-supported OS.
My philosophy about an OS is that it's merely a functional component of my computer, like the processor, or the RAM, or the hard drive, or the keyboard, etc. Would you be open to using ad-supported RAM?
Anyhow. . . I'm sick of ads. Even my tolerance for ad-supported TV has almost run out. The only thing that keeps me watching TV is the ability to record shows on my DVR and skip over commercials when I watch later.
We're not starved for freedom in the USA. But people tend to become anxious and upset when something that they're accustomed to having is taken away. In the USA we have a lot of freedom, but a little less than we did, say, 30 years ago.
We haven't lost much. . . yet. And many people haven't noticed or don't care because various issues don't appear to affect them personally. Our liberty has been nibbled away around the edges. But there are always some who are affected and some who do care. And they figure out, if they can lose a little freedom when what's to stop them from losing a lot more?
That's where the anxiety comes from.
You wrote: "DVD was a big step up from VHS - clarity, features, accessibilty. . ."
Actually, Super VHS and LaserDisc were big steps up from VHS. DVD was a big step sideways from LaserDisc. It's still something of a mystery to me why LaserDisc never caught on big-time, but so many years later DVD did, when they provided almost the same performance, features, etc.
The failure of Super VHS is an even bigger mystery. Because you know, the video quality of standard VHS was absolutely dreadful. Then came Super VHS to fix that glaring problem, and it was met with a big yawn. I bought a series of S-VHS machines, they worked well for me. But at Circuit City they usually had a table full of returned S-VHS machines on sale for cheap -- people returned those because they couldn't see any difference from standard VHS. I can only guess, but I'd assume those people had their S-VHS machines plugged into poorly adjusted 10 year old TV sets through the RF input. Then again, maybe they expected some dramatic improvement to leap out that them. . . S-VHS was indeed better, but it was still NTSC.
Getting back to the subject of NTSC versus ATSC HD video. . . You certainly won't need a 60-inch screen or an A-B test to see the difference. It's not subtle at all, it's dramatic. It does depend somewhat on the source material, since some programs are softer looking than others. Film transfers to HD look softer and somewhat different from footage shot with a HD camera. (To me, film transfers to NTSC video look like NTSC video. Film transfers to HD video look like film. Pure HD video has it's own distinctive look.)
Most people can't hear any difference between CD audio and DVD-A or SACD. You need good speakers and good ears and some idea about what to listen for. Most people can indeed tell the difference between DVD video and HDTV, easily. With a DVD you are basically getting the NTSC standard, which is quite old and limited. It's markedly inferior to the visual quality of movies shot on film as far back as the 1930s. The difference in resolution may not be as apparent on a small screen, but when you put NTSC video up on a bigger screen the fuzziness becomes quite noticeable and annoying. With HD you get something that looks pretty close to the original film. Not identical, but Close Enough.
As for most stuff on TV being garbage. . . Yeah, that's true. But the great thing about Blu-Ray is that -- presumably -- we'll be able to collect movies from the back catalog of the last 70+ years. There's got to be some good stuff in there somewhere.
And the other great thing is that it's the end of the upgrade path. Like CDs. . . They aren't going to be replaced any time soon because they really are "good enough" for most of our music and most of our ears. HDTV is good enough for most of our movies (setting aside IMAX). If you bought movies on VHS, and then bought movies on LaserDisc, and then bought movies on DVD. . . You probably got pretty tired of changing formats, and it's especially rough if you bought the same movie in more than one format. But HDTV should be the Very Last Format for movies. Past that, you'll be into the area of diminishing returns, which is exactly why SACD and DVD-A aren't having widespread success.
When will we be able to play the game on a Macintosh?
This seems almost too easy from where I sit. Everything plays MP3. I can play MP3 tracks on my iPod. I can stream them to my Roku Soundbridge. I can burn them to a CD-R and play them in a lot of recent CD and DVD players, including car stereos. I can get MP3 tracks off Usenet, or Limewire, or allofmp3.com, MP3tunes.com, Broadjam.com, music.download.com, or any number of other sources. I can rip my CDs to MP3 tracks with the encoder and bitrate options of my choosing. I don't have to worry about compatibility, I don't have to worry about DRM schemes or that things will someday stop working for any reason.
What do AAC and WMA have to offer that MP3 doesn't? DRM, basically. Somehow that's not a big selling point for me.