This sounds completely insane to me, as a user of the full goddamn creative suite for everything I do. But then again, he said ten years... And who knows what things will be like then. Maybe web-based applications will be as-- or even more --practical compared to today's norms.
But I don't get the part about Adobe fending off competitors... WHAT. COMPETITION. DOES. ADOBE. HAVE? Macromedia was the closest thing they had to a competitor...and now it's ADOBE Flash.
I like FOSS solutions, or even just cheaper closed source stuff, as much as the next geek... But name one application that is a direct replacement for everything that any given Adobe application has. (Excluding, perhaps, Acrobat Reader)
You can't. Hey, the GIMP is great, but it's no Photoshop. Close only counts in horseshoes and global thermo-nuclear war. Just like blender is no replacement for say...Lightwave 3D. They're still great apps, but they don't do it.
Am I missing something? Is there a company out there producing stuff that is EXACTLY like all the stuff in the Adobe Creative Suite?!
Anyway, that's my morning rant. Don't flame me too hard, I haven't had my morning caffeination yet.
I've got Verizon DSL/Phone with no CATV, and Comcast STILL managed to screw me badly!
A couple weeks ago, in the middle of the afternoon, my internet connection started crapping all sorts of madness. Disconnecting constantly, poor throughput... I thought maybe the line was really noisy or something, so I pick up the phone... No dial tone.
It took a couple hours to piece together some of the information in my head. Hearing someone say something about cable while standing outside a new tenant's apartment across the hall, and later going to the top of the stairs and coming back down. (The box where all our phonelines come in is on the third floor, at the top of the stairs)
With this information, I go up and check the box... It's closed. I take the screw out and open it, the clasp that holds everything down in one of the blocks pops open on its own... Closer inspection reveals a broken retaining tab. (Later found on the floor.) One cordless phone handset, and a little wiggling of wirey bits later, I am able to determine that this unmarked and now quite fscked connection is my line. So I taped the clasp down with some gaffer's tape, taped a little ball of tape to the back so the door puts pressure on it, marked the thing correctly, and wandered back to my apartment grumbling about how it shouldn't be illegal to light stupid people on fire.
After talking to the new tenant, he confirmed that the Comcast technician said he had to make sure there was a phone line (wtf?!), and did in fact go play about in the box.
This is kinda ridiculous. Who would do such a thing unless they absolutely NEED to because the people they have to share the files with are MS Office users?! Seriously. Ever since I installed OOo, I've been using nothing but its own formats... Even converting any old.doc files I have. If I had to give it to someone who doesn't have OOo... Hell, I'd probably print it as a PDF or something if it came down to a choice between that and saving out a.doc file. If I was in a position to do so, I'd recommend OOo to them.
Speaking of recommending free alternatives... (Read: Only slightly offtopic) If anyone here does any screenwriting or anything else you would write a script for, even a webcomic or something, I can't recommend celtx enough. For the longest time I was faced with probably having to buy Final Draft, which is really damn expensive for what it does... And then I found celtx, and it does a _LOT_ more...for FREE. (It also handles pre-production organization and stuff, as well as having a collaborative online community.) And it's available for Windows, MacOS, AND Linux. Ain't that a hell of a thing?:)
I swear to god, it's shit like this that makes me angry it's illegal to set people on fire. Seriously. Some people are just so heinously STUPID that they need GRIEVOUS PHYSICAL HARM to befall them. ARRGH!
Last time I went to look at his wikipedia entry, I searched for 'Jack Thompson' and got the disambiguation page...which didn't list 'Jack Thompson (Attorney)' but instead 'Jack Thompson (Rabid Pedophile)' which linked to the former. xD (It was changed back and forth like ten times in the space of five minutes. Haha)
Yes, that's probably it. It's far more likely he simply doesn't know what the phrase is. Like those people who think it's 'for all intensive purposes' and not 'for all intents and purposes'. The English language is so totally screwed now, with this generation. Ugh. If we ever figure out how to TEACH them anything, let alone their KIDS, I really think an 'Idioms and Common Phrases' curriculum should be added starting in junior high. (Because the last thing we need is for the kids to start improperly using phrases and idioms their PARENTS don't understand while they're still in grade school.)
...I remember seeing a Tetris game where you clip something to your ear to take your pulse, and the game would slow down when you got too stressed. Same idea, opposite goal; bailing the player out instead of forcing them to stay calm.
It's been like a decade since I've listened to anything he's done, but I applaud him for this. Really, the whole thing is ridiculous. I think even the biggest record labels only have about five good years of life left in them.
Bands don't need the labels for promotion when they have the internet. Bands don't need the labels for production when anyone can build a usable digital recording studio in a spare bedroom. Bands don't need the labels for manufacturing when CD duplication is getting cheaper by the day. Bands don't need the labels for distribution and sales when there's UPS/FedEX/DHL, FOSS e-commerce solutions, and Paypal.
So what exactly DO bands need the labels for? As it stands, nothing. But many artists either don't know it, or are contractually enslaved for the time being.
Basically, all the labels are good for is putting your CD in big name stores no one actually buys music from anymore, and taking damn near every last penny of profit.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who uses an ad blocker ONLY to block ads on sites with annoying ads. Like those stupid bits of flashtastrophe that ask for user interaction to do something dumb, or the banners with SOUND. Because, yeah. Everyone wants to occasionally blast some moron saying "congratulations, you've won an X" from their speakers.
Any site that runs shit like that, is not allowed to complain. Plain and simple. I don't think it's really necessary or called for to block ads everywhere. If there was some sort of advertising standard saying what is okay and what isn't, this wouldn't be a problem. (Of course, there'd have to be some way to enforce such a thing with fines or whatever) Popup ads? Gone. Browser-jacking bullshittery? Gone. Ads that look like dialog boxes or tell the user they've won something? Gone.
The slow vista adoption does pretty much mirror XP uptake... I mean, there was a time, it might have been more than a year, during which me and most of the people I knew, swore off XP and stuck with 2k. Citing it as being merely a 'pretty' upgrade with a lot of useless-ass features, that won't work right for months.
DX10 makes little difference. ESPECIALLY since so few cards support DX10 anyway... And now with the idiocy of the whole DX10/DX10.1 issue... Well, fuck it. No one cares. DX10 may unleash the pretty, pretty, explosion-y goodness in World in Conflict... But the whole Vista situation is a clusterfuck.
This is total BS. And the fact that I can almost see the theater/MPPA's point of view, makes want to vomit, frankly. But no matter how you try to justify it, there is no excuse for such a ridiculous abuse of a policy. (I am a firm believer in Zero Tolerance policies being a bane of modern society, like mandatory minimums. Reality is not black and white.) If they're going to do away with judges, juries, and common sense, why don't they just snipe people from the projection booth? Assholes. No one recording 'twenty seconds of video' in the middle of a movie is trying to STEAL THE MOVIE, you morons.
I would give ANYTHING if the reason she recorded the clip for her brother was because he's bedridden or something and can't see the movie. Oh my GOD. Can you say flaming shitstorm? Tearful clip of the girl on the 11 o'clock news, and the MPAA would be FUCKED. After the case is thrown out, the theater would be sued for emotionally scarring her, AND she'd never see a movie in a theater ever again. Every time something like this happens, x * 1000 otherwise law-biding Americans become 'movie pirates', because the MPAA, and the movie industry as a whole, are assholes. If they keep going out of their way to treat everyone like theives, people start acting on it. A criminalized society is an angry one. (With more money in their wallets.)
People see movies in the theater for 'the theater experience', and as a social activity with their friends... That's what they pay a third of the price of the eventual home video release for. DLP projectors are getting cheaper and better, and once the same experience is available in the average livingroom, with better popcorn, fewer chatty morons, and better seats... Theater-going will drop off sharply. I know, because I'm already there. Last two movies I saw in a commercial theater? Spiderman (The first one) and Episode II. And the theater is NEXT DOOR. Let's just say that doesn't mean I go without.
MPAA: Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us. (We're also the people who pay to watch and own the movies in the first place, assholes.)
...the feds are going to come knocking at my door because I use a mod device to play import PS2 games. OH-FUCKING-NOES. There are so many things in this world that make me angry, the whole wind-up and cool-down thing in between being pissed off is just too much effort, it isn't worth it to ever NOT be pissed off anymore...
The only unbelievable thing about this is the number of people who will claim that "this politician can't have done anything wrong, he is a good man", despite the fact he *is* a politician. As opposed to the people who heard the 'series of tubes' gaffe and will argue that he's too STUPID to actually be corrupt.;)
Know a lot of professional photographers who take their CF cards to Wally World to get prints, do you?
I print photographs, fine art prints, all sorts of stuff, on my Epson R1800. The photos actually look better than 'real' photos, and are lightfast and waterproof. The media and ink is rated for archival use, and is supposed to be stable for like a hundred years. How much of that is reality and how much is bullshit, I don't know. But none of my large-ass (13x19, for example) photographic inkjet prints have faded or discolored. (Unlike actual photos I have.) Being a now exclusively digital photographer, I really have no desire to trust the second most important part of the process; output, to someone else. If I were still using film, I'd be doing my own prints. But you know what? Digital is much more economical, and with current technology, yields almost identical results. (And it will only get better from here.)
The printer was roughly $500, and the ink is like $120 for all seven colors, and the gloss optimizer...which will last about a month at most. I'm now switching to a third-party continuous flow system for my R1800 that uses a custom archival ink which is $140 for 4 ounces of each color. (I am told that's roughly 10 times what's in the cartridges.)
Different people have different needs, but to be honest, I don't know anyone who actually gets digital photos printed at a store. In my experience, the people with digitals print their own, and the people who would get the stuff printed, still use film. But that's my two yen.
I am a member of a class action suit against Epson of America in regards to this cartridge BS. I have 4 eligible Epson printers, and the settlement was enough to pay for nearly half of my new Continuous Flow System. (And a substantial amount of Epson store credit for paper) From now on, I'll be paying what I did before for a load of 8 cartridges, for 4 ounces of all 8 inks in my R1800.
The amount of ink still in the cartridges when it stops letting you print is patently ridiculous. I have a little box that zaps the chips so it'll think it's full again... You can usually get almost another whole cartridge worth out of it.
How is it they justify this? I mean, what the hell?
There are other ways to detonate explosives remotely. Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance. We can only hope...
Haha. I wish. My father got his hands on the original X10 (No relation to the pop-under assholes who began using the technology for evil) hardware back in the day with a Macintosh interface... I still have most of it, and bought some new modules like seven years ago.:P (And the caller ID thing is a service of verizon, a web interface. They also have a windows app that pops it up on your desktop)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, shit. For $1,000 I'd tap my own line!
This sounds completely insane to me, as a user of the full goddamn creative suite for everything I do. But then again, he said ten years... And who knows what things will be like then. Maybe web-based applications will be as-- or even more --practical compared to today's norms.
But I don't get the part about Adobe fending off competitors... WHAT. COMPETITION. DOES. ADOBE. HAVE? Macromedia was the closest thing they had to a competitor...and now it's ADOBE Flash.
I like FOSS solutions, or even just cheaper closed source stuff, as much as the next geek... But name one application that is a direct replacement for everything that any given Adobe application has. (Excluding, perhaps, Acrobat Reader)
You can't. Hey, the GIMP is great, but it's no Photoshop. Close only counts in horseshoes and global thermo-nuclear war. Just like blender is no replacement for say...Lightwave 3D. They're still great apps, but they don't do it.
Am I missing something? Is there a company out there producing stuff that is EXACTLY like all the stuff in the Adobe Creative Suite?!
Anyway, that's my morning rant. Don't flame me too hard, I haven't had my morning caffeination yet.
I've got Verizon DSL/Phone with no CATV, and Comcast STILL managed to screw me badly!
A couple weeks ago, in the middle of the afternoon, my internet connection started crapping all sorts of madness. Disconnecting constantly, poor throughput... I thought maybe the line was really noisy or something, so I pick up the phone... No dial tone.
It took a couple hours to piece together some of the information in my head. Hearing someone say something about cable while standing outside a new tenant's apartment across the hall, and later going to the top of the stairs and coming back down. (The box where all our phonelines come in is on the third floor, at the top of the stairs)
With this information, I go up and check the box... It's closed. I take the screw out and open it, the clasp that holds everything down in one of the blocks pops open on its own... Closer inspection reveals a broken retaining tab. (Later found on the floor.) One cordless phone handset, and a little wiggling of wirey bits later, I am able to determine that this unmarked and now quite fscked connection is my line. So I taped the clasp down with some gaffer's tape, taped a little ball of tape to the back so the door puts pressure on it, marked the thing correctly, and wandered back to my apartment grumbling about how it shouldn't be illegal to light stupid people on fire.
After talking to the new tenant, he confirmed that the Comcast technician said he had to make sure there was a phone line (wtf?!), and did in fact go play about in the box.
This is kinda ridiculous. Who would do such a thing unless they absolutely NEED to because the people they have to share the files with are MS Office users?! Seriously. Ever since I installed OOo, I've been using nothing but its own formats... Even converting any old .doc files I have. If I had to give it to someone who doesn't have OOo... Hell, I'd probably print it as a PDF or something if it came down to a choice between that and saving out a .doc file. If I was in a position to do so, I'd recommend OOo to them.
:)
Speaking of recommending free alternatives... (Read: Only slightly offtopic) If anyone here does any screenwriting or anything else you would write a script for, even a webcomic or something, I can't recommend celtx enough. For the longest time I was faced with probably having to buy Final Draft, which is really damn expensive for what it does... And then I found celtx, and it does a _LOT_ more...for FREE. (It also handles pre-production organization and stuff, as well as having a collaborative online community.) And it's available for Windows, MacOS, AND Linux. Ain't that a hell of a thing?
Wow, the one time I speak the truth instead of trying to be funny and I get modded Flamebait. Awesome! :D
I swear to god, it's shit like this that makes me angry it's illegal to set people on fire. Seriously. Some people are just so heinously STUPID that they need GRIEVOUS PHYSICAL HARM to befall them. ARRGH!
That 'certain element' is no doubt Vista. Which is NOT READY for primetime by anyone's standards.
Last time I went to look at his wikipedia entry, I searched for 'Jack Thompson' and got the disambiguation page...which didn't list 'Jack Thompson (Attorney)' but instead 'Jack Thompson (Rabid Pedophile)' which linked to the former. xD (It was changed back and forth like ten times in the space of five minutes. Haha)
I think you're giving waaaay too much credit to someone who was writing something that goddamn stupid. :P
Yes, that's probably it. It's far more likely he simply doesn't know what the phrase is. Like those people who think it's 'for all intensive purposes' and not 'for all intents and purposes'. The English language is so totally screwed now, with this generation. Ugh. If we ever figure out how to TEACH them anything, let alone their KIDS, I really think an 'Idioms and Common Phrases' curriculum should be added starting in junior high. (Because the last thing we need is for the kids to start improperly using phrases and idioms their PARENTS don't understand while they're still in grade school.)
...I remember seeing a Tetris game where you clip something to your ear to take your pulse, and the game would slow down when you got too stressed. Same idea, opposite goal; bailing the player out instead of forcing them to stay calm.
It's been like a decade since I've listened to anything he's done, but I applaud him for this. Really, the whole thing is ridiculous. I think even the biggest record labels only have about five good years of life left in them.
Bands don't need the labels for promotion when they have the internet.
Bands don't need the labels for production when anyone can build a usable digital recording studio in a spare bedroom.
Bands don't need the labels for manufacturing when CD duplication is getting cheaper by the day.
Bands don't need the labels for distribution and sales when there's UPS/FedEX/DHL, FOSS e-commerce solutions, and Paypal.
So what exactly DO bands need the labels for? As it stands, nothing. But many artists either don't know it, or are contractually enslaved for the time being.
Basically, all the labels are good for is putting your CD in big name stores no one actually buys music from anymore, and taking damn near every last penny of profit.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who uses an ad blocker ONLY to block ads on sites with annoying ads. Like those stupid bits of flashtastrophe that ask for user interaction to do something dumb, or the banners with SOUND. Because, yeah. Everyone wants to occasionally blast some moron saying "congratulations, you've won an X" from their speakers.
Any site that runs shit like that, is not allowed to complain. Plain and simple. I don't think it's really necessary or called for to block ads everywhere. If there was some sort of advertising standard saying what is okay and what isn't, this wouldn't be a problem. (Of course, there'd have to be some way to enforce such a thing with fines or whatever) Popup ads? Gone. Browser-jacking bullshittery? Gone. Ads that look like dialog boxes or tell the user they've won something? Gone.
...consumers rightfully declare the copyright holders should 'Get F***ED!'. That is all.
The slow vista adoption does pretty much mirror XP uptake... I mean, there was a time, it might have been more than a year, during which me and most of the people I knew, swore off XP and stuck with 2k. Citing it as being merely a 'pretty' upgrade with a lot of useless-ass features, that won't work right for months.
DX10 makes little difference. ESPECIALLY since so few cards support DX10 anyway... And now with the idiocy of the whole DX10/DX10.1 issue... Well, fuck it. No one cares. DX10 may unleash the pretty, pretty, explosion-y goodness in World in Conflict... But the whole Vista situation is a clusterfuck.
This is total BS. And the fact that I can almost see the theater/MPPA's point of view, makes want to vomit, frankly. But no matter how you try to justify it, there is no excuse for such a ridiculous abuse of a policy. (I am a firm believer in Zero Tolerance policies being a bane of modern society, like mandatory minimums. Reality is not black and white.) If they're going to do away with judges, juries, and common sense, why don't they just snipe people from the projection booth? Assholes. No one recording 'twenty seconds of video' in the middle of a movie is trying to STEAL THE MOVIE, you morons.
I would give ANYTHING if the reason she recorded the clip for her brother was because he's bedridden or something and can't see the movie. Oh my GOD. Can you say flaming shitstorm? Tearful clip of the girl on the 11 o'clock news, and the MPAA would be FUCKED. After the case is thrown out, the theater would be sued for emotionally scarring her, AND she'd never see a movie in a theater ever again. Every time something like this happens, x * 1000 otherwise law-biding Americans become 'movie pirates', because the MPAA, and the movie industry as a whole, are assholes. If they keep going out of their way to treat everyone like theives, people start acting on it. A criminalized society is an angry one. (With more money in their wallets.)
People see movies in the theater for 'the theater experience', and as a social activity with their friends... That's what they pay a third of the price of the eventual home video release for. DLP projectors are getting cheaper and better, and once the same experience is available in the average livingroom, with better popcorn, fewer chatty morons, and better seats... Theater-going will drop off sharply. I know, because I'm already there. Last two movies I saw in a commercial theater? Spiderman (The first one) and Episode II. And the theater is NEXT DOOR. Let's just say that doesn't mean I go without.
MPAA: Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us. (We're also the people who pay to watch and own the movies in the first place, assholes.)
...the feds are going to come knocking at my door because I use a mod device to play import PS2 games. OH-FUCKING-NOES. There are so many things in this world that make me angry, the whole wind-up and cool-down thing in between being pissed off is just too much effort, it isn't worth it to ever NOT be pissed off anymore...
This certainly sounds too good to be true. Makes me wonder who's funding the research.
Know a lot of professional photographers who take their CF cards to Wally World to get prints, do you?
I print photographs, fine art prints, all sorts of stuff, on my Epson R1800. The photos actually look better than 'real' photos, and are lightfast and waterproof. The media and ink is rated for archival use, and is supposed to be stable for like a hundred years. How much of that is reality and how much is bullshit, I don't know. But none of my large-ass (13x19, for example) photographic inkjet prints have faded or discolored. (Unlike actual photos I have.) Being a now exclusively digital photographer, I really have no desire to trust the second most important part of the process; output, to someone else. If I were still using film, I'd be doing my own prints. But you know what? Digital is much more economical, and with current technology, yields almost identical results. (And it will only get better from here.)
The printer was roughly $500, and the ink is like $120 for all seven colors, and the gloss optimizer...which will last about a month at most. I'm now switching to a third-party continuous flow system for my R1800 that uses a custom archival ink which is $140 for 4 ounces of each color. (I am told that's roughly 10 times what's in the cartridges.)
Different people have different needs, but to be honest, I don't know anyone who actually gets digital photos printed at a store. In my experience, the people with digitals print their own, and the people who would get the stuff printed, still use film. But that's my two yen.
I am a member of a class action suit against Epson of America in regards to this cartridge BS. I have 4 eligible Epson printers, and the settlement was enough to pay for nearly half of my new Continuous Flow System. (And a substantial amount of Epson store credit for paper) From now on, I'll be paying what I did before for a load of 8 cartridges, for 4 ounces of all 8 inks in my R1800.
The amount of ink still in the cartridges when it stops letting you print is patently ridiculous. I have a little box that zaps the chips so it'll think it's full again... You can usually get almost another whole cartridge worth out of it.
How is it they justify this? I mean, what the hell?
...it crashed into Antarctica and caused the Second Impact.
I made an Evangelion reference, my day is complete.
I read something about a year ago about Verizon looking to sell off their copper here in Vermont... No FIOS yet though...bastards.
Haha. I wish. My father got his hands on the original X10 (No relation to the pop-under assholes who began using the technology for evil) hardware back in the day with a Macintosh interface... I still have most of it, and bought some new modules like seven years ago. :P (And the caller ID thing is a service of verizon, a web interface. They also have a windows app that pops it up on your desktop)