You have a point, but one of the biggest reasons for people sticking with Windows has been the dearth of games for the Mac. Being able to dual boot Windows and Mac OS X effectively destroys that problem. A person could email, web browse, do some PHP/MySQL unixy stuff and even some Garage Band / video editing in Mac OS X, then reboot and play Half Life 2 for a few hours in Windows. Suddenly the Mac is a gamer's platform.
If Apple aren't willing to lose their hardware sales to clones, they should definitely sell gamer-class Intel Macs that can run Windows as well. Not the pansy faux-gamer machines they sell now either, real top-of-the line kickass rigs with all the latest and greatest specs. Then gamers could buy those, and dual boot Windows for their games. Blam, no more gamer lock in.
Nigel: Because ours go to nine. See? The numbers all go to nine. Look...right across the board. Marty: Ahh...oh, I see.... Nigel: Nine...nine...nine.... Marty:..and most of these instruments go up to ten.... Nigel: Exactly. Marty: Does that mean it's...safer? Is it any safer? Nigel: Well, it's one safer, isn't it? It's not ten.
It's an expensive mobile video solution for sure, but with the high-quality screen it could be very good stuff. I'm going to wait for a few actual reviews, but I could easily see myself watching an episode of BSG on it while driving the kids to soccer practice in my SUV.
Yep, JMS's buildups and continuity were HIGHLY overrated. They flew right through "underwhelming" to "pointless", to "just plain dumb" briefly through "bizarre", crash-landing soon after in "this is stupid, i'm not watching this anymore". I gave B5 a massive amount of personal tether, and I realised that it was simply more fun to weed the garden or do my taxes.
Besides, continuity is everywhere now. 24, the new Galactica series, West Wing, hell even the Simpsons does it now and again. Trek's done it too, although not to such a degree, as they were always hunting the "undevoted viewer", rather than comic book guy and his overwhelmingly male buddies who had seen every episode and debated detox gel on usenet. Saying JMS will rebuild Trek with continuity is like saying he's going to rebuild Trek with those new special effects doohickeys.
This reminds me of an analogy that I read somewhere, perhaps from Robert X Cringely... it said there are three types of tech companies:
1) The Commandos These guys are doing crazy new stuff in wacky situations, inventing and improvising and breaking new ground. They are happiest going where no-one has gone before, creating new products and whole new markets. If they aren't doing wild new stuff, they get bored and go somewhere else. In many ways, this is Apple.
2) The Soldiers Soldiers go in once markets and products have been established by the commandos. They take these original ideas and solidify them, securing the area with polish and marketing glitz. In many ways, this is Microsoft.
3) The Police Once the war is won, the Police maintain the status quo. They aren't interested in creating markets or inventing new products, they just want things to say the same and keep making cash for their organization. In many ways, this is Dell.
Now I can see holes in these descriptions already, but I do get the feeling that Microsoft isn't in the insanely great new product business. It's risky, requires rare and volatile skills, and it doesn't end up making that much money in the long run. And that last point is the key, because Microsoft really isn't a tech company. They are a money company. They make tonnes and tonnes of money, and they don't care about the other stuff.
I really don't think Apple have been particularly original with the design of the Mini. We've been seeing mini-barebones systems from manufacturers like Shuttle for all over the place for the last few years, and they've driven the idea well and truly into the mainstream. Non-tech friends of mine regularly present the XPC style as their first requirement in a new system, before any other spec like RAM, CPU or video. Gamers often have an XPC machine so they can cart them easily to LAN parties. They're all really common, so I think the paradigm shift to small cases already happened, and quite a while ago.
Of course, the original seed of the whole style might've just been the Apple Cube, I won't argue too hard against that.
I found this page recently, it has a listing of example file sizes for a bunch of different formats, data rates, and frame sizes/rates. I found it really useful when trying to convert a high quality source file to a certain size for the web.
My recommendation for a good cross-platform format is still MPEG-1. Will play on pretty much anything, and the quality is decent. You can get better compression with MPEG-4, but not all players can render it properly.
I agree, but the problem is that companies usual file that nice polite advisory email at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.' Sometimes going public is the only way to get them to even admit the problem exists.
Of course, it's awfully fun to make companies look silly be pointing out flaws in their code...
Funny, I'll admit... but there's no good reason why there shouldn't be a torrent for this. Or the latest Debian ISOs, or anything else open source. So how about it - would SlashTorrent work? How about TorrentForge?
I know that it would lack the oodles of sci-fi movies, Enterprise episodes and hentai clips that everyone loves, but it'd be genuinely useful and prove that BitTorrent can be used in a legal manner.
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Agreed... it's ridiculously difficult to get hold of specific world content on local lowest-common-denominator tv and cable networks. It's all about niche programming, and the tv model simply isn't built that way. It's built for mass appeal and maximum eyeballs. It's fine if you're a member of the mass, but if you're on the fringe, you get nothing.
My current tv annoyance is sport (hmmmm... posting on Slashdot about sport, uh... try the Wikipedia entry?). I'm from Australia, and I'm currently in Canada. I want to watch every international rugby union test I can stand (well, maybe not Bolivia vs Romania, but all the big ones). The problem is that Canadians only ever want to watch curling and ice hockey*, which leaves me out in the cold without any pants.
Here in Canada I've bought cable, and then digital cable, and then the specific international sports channels, and they still don't carry the rugby games. I'm seriously considering cutting my cable off and sending the equivalent cash to friends in other countries so they can vidcap the games and send them to me, either over the net or on posted DVD-Rs. My timeframe is shorter than new episodes of Stargate SG-1 too, since it's inevitable that I'll end up accidentally seeing the scores on a news site or when my dad emails me next, and then I'm screwed.
The kicker is that I have money for this. I will pay. No-one seems to want my cash, though.
* Don't get me wrong, I think ice hockey is awesome. It's just that I like rugby more. Curling, on the other hand, does nothing for me.
I don't want a web browser, organiser, games system, movie camera or LED wave messaging in my mobile phone, but I do want a digital camera. I won't be texting pictures to people (waste of money) but I'd definitely be taking random pics of stuff during my normal day. What I really want is something like the Nokia 3120 except with a camera. Then I could dump the images onto another machine when I got home in the evening via IR or Bluetooth.
Obviously it will never compete with the quality or features of my real digicam, but it's useful to be able to take okay quality shots of stuff at any time. Since I carry my mobile all the time anyway...
This isn't my quote, but it seemed to sum up the game pretty well:
I don't know, Galaxies always seemed like the mmo for people who wanted to play those two guys in the background in mos eisley while obi wan and luke drove through on their speeder. The two shoveling bantha shit.
They probably bought one of the geotargetting databases and are using it to filter according to country. It's as easy as:
if (countrycode != "US") {
echo "No web for you!!"); } else {
echo "Business as usual."; }
You can implement it as a database loaded on your server, as a web service, as a COM component, whatever. It's the same kinda stuff google uses to bounce people through to local versions of their main site.
Ah, I see - It's our fault for using those nasty third party viruses and worms. We should be sticking with the official Microsoft virus and worm family, that are, by a massive stroke of irony, totally harmless to our systems.
Apparently the upcoming version of Windows will have enhanced official viruses too, that do even less but will need significantly more powerful hardware to run.
I saw an old guy cruising around a big park in Vancouver on a Segway. He was having a pretty good time, since he could move through the crowd much easier than if he was in a wheelchair. He even had a yappy dog in the front bucket of the Segway, that was also having a ball. I can see how it would work for older people, particularly as motorized wheelchairs cost thousands of bucks anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point, but one of the biggest reasons for people sticking with Windows has been the dearth of games for the Mac. Being able to dual boot Windows and Mac OS X effectively destroys that problem. A person could email, web browse, do some PHP/MySQL unixy stuff and even some Garage Band / video editing in Mac OS X, then reboot and play Half Life 2 for a few hours in Windows. Suddenly the Mac is a gamer's platform.
If Apple aren't willing to lose their hardware sales to clones, they should definitely sell gamer-class Intel Macs that can run Windows as well. Not the pansy faux-gamer machines they sell now either, real top-of-the line kickass rigs with all the latest and greatest specs. Then gamers could buy those, and dual boot Windows for their games. Blam, no more gamer lock in.
Nigel: Because ours go to nine. See? The numbers all go to nine. Look...right across the board. ..and most of these instruments go up to ten....
Marty: Ahh...oh, I see....
Nigel: Nine...nine...nine....
Marty:
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it's...safer? Is it any safer?
Nigel: Well, it's one safer, isn't it? It's not ten.
There were a few good links posted on the Shacknews forums with info on PSPcasting (watching videos on your PSP)
It's an expensive mobile video solution for sure, but with the high-quality screen it could be very good stuff. I'm going to wait for a few actual reviews, but I could easily see myself watching an episode of BSG on it while driving the kids to soccer practice in my SUV.
Yep, JMS's buildups and continuity were HIGHLY overrated. They flew right through "underwhelming" to "pointless", to "just plain dumb" briefly through "bizarre", crash-landing soon after in "this is stupid, i'm not watching this anymore". I gave B5 a massive amount of personal tether, and I realised that it was simply more fun to weed the garden or do my taxes.
Besides, continuity is everywhere now. 24, the new Galactica series, West Wing, hell even the Simpsons does it now and again. Trek's done it too, although not to such a degree, as they were always hunting the "undevoted viewer", rather than comic book guy and his overwhelmingly male buddies who had seen every episode and debated detox gel on usenet. Saying JMS will rebuild Trek with continuity is like saying he's going to rebuild Trek with those new special effects doohickeys.
"You are likely to be eaten by a Grue."
This reminds me of an analogy that I read somewhere, perhaps from Robert X Cringely... it said there are three types of tech companies:
1) The Commandos
These guys are doing crazy new stuff in wacky situations, inventing and improvising and breaking new ground. They are happiest going where no-one has gone before, creating new products and whole new markets. If they aren't doing wild new stuff, they get bored and go somewhere else. In many ways, this is Apple.
2) The Soldiers
Soldiers go in once markets and products have been established by the commandos. They take these original ideas and solidify them, securing the area with polish and marketing glitz. In many ways, this is Microsoft.
3) The Police
Once the war is won, the Police maintain the status quo. They aren't interested in creating markets or inventing new products, they just want things to say the same and keep making cash for their organization. In many ways, this is Dell.
Now I can see holes in these descriptions already, but I do get the feeling that Microsoft isn't in the insanely great new product business. It's risky, requires rare and volatile skills, and it doesn't end up making that much money in the long run. And that last point is the key, because Microsoft really isn't a tech company. They are a money company. They make tonnes and tonnes of money, and they don't care about the other stuff.
I really don't think Apple have been particularly original with the design of the Mini. We've been seeing mini-barebones systems from manufacturers like Shuttle for all over the place for the last few years, and they've driven the idea well and truly into the mainstream. Non-tech friends of mine regularly present the XPC style as their first requirement in a new system, before any other spec like RAM, CPU or video. Gamers often have an XPC machine so they can cart them easily to LAN parties. They're all really common, so I think the paradigm shift to small cases already happened, and quite a while ago.
Of course, the original seed of the whole style might've just been the Apple Cube, I won't argue too hard against that.
I found this page recently, it has a listing of example file sizes for a bunch of different formats, data rates, and frame sizes/rates. I found it really useful when trying to convert a high quality source file to a certain size for the web.
My recommendation for a good cross-platform format is still MPEG-1. Will play on pretty much anything, and the quality is decent. You can get better compression with MPEG-4, but not all players can render it properly.
I agree, but the problem is that companies usual file that nice polite advisory email at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.' Sometimes going public is the only way to get them to even admit the problem exists.
Of course, it's awfully fun to make companies look silly be pointing out flaws in their code...
Funny, I put 'porn dwarfs the movie industry' into Google and it gave me some quite different stuff...
Funny, I'll admit... but there's no good reason why there shouldn't be a torrent for this. Or the latest Debian ISOs, or anything else open source. So how about it - would SlashTorrent work? How about TorrentForge?
I know that it would lack the oodles of sci-fi movies, Enterprise episodes and hentai clips that everyone loves, but it'd be genuinely useful and prove that BitTorrent can be used in a legal manner.
Indeed... and naturally Penny Arcade have a comic about just this phenomenon:
- 11 -08&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004
Agreed... it's ridiculously difficult to get hold of specific world content on local lowest-common-denominator tv and cable networks. It's all about niche programming, and the tv model simply isn't built that way. It's built for mass appeal and maximum eyeballs. It's fine if you're a member of the mass, but if you're on the fringe, you get nothing.
My current tv annoyance is sport (hmmmm... posting on Slashdot about sport, uh... try the Wikipedia entry?). I'm from Australia, and I'm currently in Canada. I want to watch every international rugby union test I can stand (well, maybe not Bolivia vs Romania, but all the big ones). The problem is that Canadians only ever want to watch curling and ice hockey*, which leaves me out in the cold without any pants.
Here in Canada I've bought cable, and then digital cable, and then the specific international sports channels, and they still don't carry the rugby games. I'm seriously considering cutting my cable off and sending the equivalent cash to friends in other countries so they can vidcap the games and send them to me, either over the net or on posted DVD-Rs. My timeframe is shorter than new episodes of Stargate SG-1 too, since it's inevitable that I'll end up accidentally seeing the scores on a news site or when my dad emails me next, and then I'm screwed.
The kicker is that I have money for this. I will pay. No-one seems to want my cash, though.
* Don't get me wrong, I think ice hockey is awesome. It's just that I like rugby more. Curling, on the other hand, does nothing for me.
ED-209: Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
Dick Jones: I think you'd better do as he says, Mr. Kinney.
I don't want a web browser, organiser, games system, movie camera or LED wave messaging in my mobile phone, but I do want a digital camera. I won't be texting pictures to people (waste of money) but I'd definitely be taking random pics of stuff during my normal day. What I really want is something like the Nokia 3120 except with a camera. Then I could dump the images onto another machine when I got home in the evening via IR or Bluetooth.
Obviously it will never compete with the quality or features of my real digicam, but it's useful to be able to take okay quality shots of stuff at any time. Since I carry my mobile all the time anyway...
This isn't my quote, but it seemed to sum up the game pretty well:
I don't know, Galaxies always seemed like the mmo for people who wanted to play those two guys in the background in mos eisley while obi wan and luke drove through on their speeder. The two shoveling bantha shit.
From the Shacknews forums
Ah yes, and there are pictures of such a tiny PIN-stealing camera, disguised as an official leaflet holder:
These particular naughty people used a card reader as well, so they could copy the info off the magnetic stripe on the card as well.
Ah, I see - It's our fault for using those nasty third party viruses and worms. We should be sticking with the official Microsoft virus and worm family, that are, by a massive stroke of irony, totally harmless to our systems.
Apparently the upcoming version of Windows will have enhanced official viruses too, that do even less but will need significantly more powerful hardware to run.
I saw an old guy cruising around a big park in Vancouver on a Segway. He was having a pretty good time, since he could move through the crowd much easier than if he was in a wheelchair. He even had a yappy dog in the front bucket of the Segway, that was also having a ball. I can see how it would work for older people, particularly as motorized wheelchairs cost thousands of bucks anyway.
And Poland. You forgot Poland.
I totally agree, and here's a good quote:
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." - Isaac Asimov
Yes. If you let him continue his terrible singing, then the terrorists have already won.
I believe the a more practical unit of measurement is the "collected works of Jenna Jameson".
Dammmmnnn... this writer could be the next Eminem!
"When dot-com became dot-bomb, Sun was shown to have no aplomb."
No more Dom for Tom with the ROM? Shake a pom-pom at the prom? Word to your mom?