But here's the problem: Microsoft doesn't deliver on promises. Microsoft keeps screwing up the user experience. Microsoft can't - or won't - get its act together in terms of security. Windows still has stability issues.
Meanwhile, even inexperienced users have alternatives. Mac OS X provides a better computing experience than Windows, and IMO recent releases of several Linux distros do the same. These OSes can interoperate with Windows machines just fine and provide (the Mac in particular, but Linux is getting there) the software most users need.
Businesses have existing investments in MS technology. Yet one would imagine that given all the security problems they'd be considering whether it's worth it. Most individual Windows users seem to have no great love for Microsoft (understandably). Yet few people seem to be switching. What's more, I don't think most people think it's a viable option, despite the fact that it clearly is. Misconceptions (like "it won't have the software I need") plague would-be Mac switchers, and the word isn't out the Linux is a viable option. As a Mac user and OSS fan, I am frequently frustrated by Windows users who would happily switch but are convinced, quite erroneously, that there's some reason they just can't.
It's crazy, it's annoying, but I think to some degree it makes sense. The reason MS is where it is is not because it makes excellent software. It's because it does excellent marketing, while the alternatives remain unknown or misunderstood. That's the most convincing way I can account for their continued success in the face of the fact that their products are clearly inferior.
Yeah...Sure it's possible to get consumers to accept some nasty limitations if you do it gradually. However, I suspect that most people will only put up with upgrading their software and hardware so often; and more specifically, most people will get fed up with enough rounds of "you have to go out and buy something else for our stuff to keep working." I could be wrong but geez, I hope I'm right.
I agree in part, but I think politically (as someone who'd like to see as many decent IE alternatives as possible) I'm glad they did it that way. Firefox has been an excellent alternative to IE even as a 0.x release. My guess is that most users don't use extensions all that often, so in terms of less technical folks I doubt it's been a big deal.
I don't think this is true... I think political views can develop, and change. It's not something that you have when you're born...
I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. The article itself says, "patterns of brain activity are shaped by experience as much as by genes." Multiple genetic factors and multiple environmental factors add up to shape individual choices. All this article really suggests is a genetic predisposition -- a factor among many -- not a genetically determined certainty.
While you respond in disgust, what happens if one day science does indeed discover that biology trumphs freewill? What if almost all of out behaviors are predetermined by chemistry?
Yeah...a key point and one I didn't mention in my last post. The longer we wait to dissociate ethics, morality, and other aspects of society from scientific inquiry, the harder it will be to do so when it becomes absolutely necessary.
To put it another way: Societally, it doesn't matter what free will is (scientifically), because it's a useful concept for things like making decisions, interacting with other people, and writing laws. No matter what we discover about it that doesn't change.
This sort of argument is a dangerous one that's plagued science for a number of years now: "If there are biological underpinnings for our actions, preferences, and personalities, how can we be responsible for anything?"
But the question itself assumes a connection where none has to exist: Science and ethics aren't connected like that. Maybe I'm a liberal because of my genetic makeup; maybe it's my environment; probably it's both. In any of these cases, I have made choices, and it's appropriate for me to accept responsibility for them, regardless of the various biological and environmental factors that went into them.
The notion that explaining our behavior eliminates free will or responsibility is an unfortunate one, and has held back a number of scientific fields. Learning what lies behind our choices doesn't invalidate them, but merely helps us understand ourselves better and perhaps make more informed decisions.
(A much more complete, better-written, and better-supported version of what I'm saying can be found in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.)
I went through this process myself about 6 months ago, bought Cinema 4D (the XL bundle), and have been very happy with it. It's $595 for the core package, which has recently gotten a very positive Macworld review. (The XL bundle includes a bunch of modules that give you more animation tools and advanced rendering options. There are additional bundles and modules as well.)
However, there's no one right answer to this question. Your decision will depend on whether you plan to work in animation eventually; what you plan to do with the software; and to some degree what platform you're using (though there are many who say that if you're serious about 3D you should buy some PC hardware specifically for that purpose).
Beyond that I'll try to be brief, since a lot of my original questions and their answers are contained in the first linked discussion above.
I tried Blender. I found the UI both difficult to understand and buggy. It also lacks a raytracer and some other advanced tools. But the price is right and it's great that such an advanced tool exists as an open source project. Certainly can't hurt to download and try it.
Maya looked like a great app, though it seems a little more "techie" than some. I really liked it, though, and the main reason I didn't buy it was that Alias|Wavefront doesn't seem set up to deal with one-man operations. They attach the license to your Ethernet card, charge you to switch computers, charge you for tech support, and I think charge for point releases.
My understanding is that LightWave is great, but I didn't like the UI. I like having some icons and I like UI's that conform better to the standards of the platform they're running on. The non-standard, text-only UI didn't work for me, and I wasn't thrilled about the separate apps for modeling and rendering. LightWave's customer service people are nice, and support is free with the app. I believe you do need a USB dongle to use it. There's no downloadable demo but they'll send you one on CD.
A lot of people recommended ElectricImage Universe to me. A lot of people also said it's not as serious a tool as Maya, LightWave, or Cinema 4D. I tried it and, like LightWave, wasn't thrilled about the multiple-app workflow. There's an inexpensive version of it out there that you can try, and if you go to 3dny.org you'll find a lot of EI users.
Cinema 4D is not as widely used as Maya or LightWave by 3D professionals (though it seems to be used more overseas), but what I was hearing from several places was that it's been improving and can now compete with these more popular apps. Its UI conforms better than some of its competitors to the standards of the platform (Maya also does this well, at least on the Mac), it's fairly easy to learn, and it can produce great photorealistic results. I've mostly been doing still images so I can't really comment on the animation tools, but they are there. There seems to be general agreement, though, that something like Maya might be better for serious character animation. I've been using C4D for several months now and am generally quite happy with it. Maxon's customer support people are nice and helpful, and support is free. I also like the fact that it doesn't require any sort of dongle to use, just a license code.
There are many many other apps. Some, like 3dsmax, are PC-only so I don't know anything about them. Others seem to be considered by graphics professionals to be "less serious," but may be adequate for your needs.
Ultimately, as I said, there's no one right answer. Read what you can online, try some demos, call the companies, and see what fits. I do recommend checking out the
My knowledge of stereo equipment isn't as complete as I'd like it to be, so if you'll set aside the sarcasm for a minute I'd like to know what you mean.
Obviously I'm interested in good sound, and I bought a fairly nice receiver for that reason. My understanding is that a digital connection (from a digital device, anyway) to a receiver is going to deliver better quality sound than an analog one, and I had presumed it's because that method virtually guarantees no loss of quality: The information that hits the receiver is the exact same information that left the component, which in turn is the exact information in whatever media you're reading from. Obviously if the source is of low quality it wouldn't be worth it. But with a CD -- and, presumably, with a high-quality mp3 -- the preservation of signal would mean higher-quality sound in the end.
Anyway, that's my understanding, and if it's wrong, or if there are other aspects of it I'm missing, I'd love it if someone would set me straight.
Cool. Looks promising. How do you (or anyone else with one) like it? Is the sound quality, feature set, etc., good and mature enough at this point?
Also, what technologies does it use for connecting to your computer? Is it something that would work with a Mac (bearing in mind that Macs support SMB networking)?
All this stuff is exciting and steps in the right direction. This new Philips stereo is great for those who want a portable option, and the SLIMP3 and HP Digital Media Receiver look great for those of us who want to integrate this kind of technology into a component system. The prices are getting reasonable, and the sooner I don't have to worry about physical media to listen to music, the better.
But why no digital audio out on the HP and Slim devices? Seems odd...these things are obviously targeted at geeks, yet I won't buy one until it can match the quality I get off a CD...which means it has to have a digital audio out.
Seems to me people on this site aren't actually reacting reacting to the article, but to a generic statement, "Microsoft and the MPAA say piracy funds terrorism." That statement is not in the article, nor is it what the article is about. I can't promise they won't bring their claims to bear on the fight against P2P sharing, but they're talking about _counterfeiting_, not piracy, and that is a much bigger deal. P2P users may be downloading the latest Britney Spears album or even an illegal copy of Windows, but they're not trying to recreate the product packaging and sell it as the original. If MS and the MPAA want to go after counterfeiters specifically, I don't see a problem with that.
I don't think Schofield quite knows what point he's making.
First he says VHS won because there were more tapes and more players available, rather than on the basis of features. But that's not an explanation at all: It boils down to "VHS won because VHS had won." It'd be like saying "Windows has most of the market share because Windows has most of the market share." Well, sure, but why?
But then he goes on to point out a feature of VHS tapes -- their length -- that was better, and that tipped the scales in VHS's favor. This seems to contradict his "whole product" point from the first half of the article: If there was a basic features of VHS tapes that met consumers' needs better than Beta, then it wasn't all those auxiliary things that made VHS popular after all. So he seems simply to be debunking myths about the VHS-Beta story rather than making the larger point he started out with.
While Blender's rendering is certainly a concern for me, what's really put me off it is that at least on my G4, the UI is sluggish, somewhat unresponsive, and worst of all not reliably responsive. In other words, I click on a button. It may respond, it may not, and I'll have to wait a few seconds to see. That's not only bad for productivity, but extremely frustrating, _especially_ in an app without an undo function for when I think the button didn't click and end up clicking it twice.
Looks like 3.8 is out, with OS X support. This is an interesting option. How far behind Lightwave or Maya is it, feature-wise? Since I'm a UI designer and thus do a bunch of Web design, the Flash export could be really useful. Do the other apps have anything like that?
Actually it _was_ a computer science course, which is why I mentioned it as a course on "computer graphics," not "graphic design." Over the course of the semester we wrote a projective rendering engine, including all the various scene transformations, antialiasing, texture mapping, etc. We also covered animation algorithms such as keyframing and physics models. My final project was a raytracer written in C++.
Since Mental Ray is now included with Maya that would be the obvious render choice then. I'm not entirely sure what it means to redo shaders. Is that something I'll need to worry about rendering with Mental Ray? And if so, will that be true if I'm rendering exclusively with it, or only if I'm switching renderers? Not really sure how plug-in renderers work and what overhead is involved.
So would it be safer to say it's more of a competitor for Mozilla and its app-building capabilities?
Also, is this related to the rumors of Office switching over to an XML-based file format? 'Cause that would be a good thing, even if it's a somewhat proprietary spin on XML.
As a previous poster said, there are tons of books, but some may be costly. If you're looking for some pointers there are also Web resources. You could start at Jakob Nielsen's Web site (useit.com) and check out the archives for his Alertbox column, as well as the links he has to a bunch of other UI-related sites. For more researchy stuff check out the University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab at www.cs.umd.edu/hcil. I have a couple other links on my Web site at http://designtheworld.com/phi/links .
Much of these arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users like it this way" and assuming that the typical Mac user is a UI expert.
No, the arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users will expect it this way," which is the whole point of the document. Any GUI has a set of user interface guidelines to ensure consistent user experience and look & feel. Mac users expect their apps to look like Mac apps, just as Windows users expect theirs to look like Windows. The typical Mac user may not be a UI expert, but he'll notice if one of his apps doesn't act like the rest.
You can't extrapolate from a simple example like that to negating a basic tenet of User Interface Design.
That's not to say you shouldn't think about it. But it's not that simple, and my vehemence in responding comes from being a UI designer and facing clients or managers who believe things are fine and that the established design principles are silly.
Why are the controls on all your kitchen appliances different? Are they really unique or are they perhaps familiar types of controls, each different from the others because of a slightly different purpose? My guess is these are all fairly standard controls, or twists on standard controls, and the differences among them are offset by the general familiarity you already had with each type.
User interfaces of any type benefit from familiar controls, because the focus is shifted from figuring out how to work the controls to performing the task for which the UI was intended. Obviously custom controls are called for sometimes, but the more they can draw on the appearance and functionality of established controls, the easier they'll be to learn.
...Which works great until you need to open a file with an application that doesn't think it can open the file. Then you're stuck messing around with altering the type and creator codes. Or you receive a file over email, it's lost its type and creator codes, and you're stuck trying to figure out what it is and recreate them.
At least for me, while the original Mac OS scheme worked well when it worked, the addition of file extensions is a welcome one because it's easy to tweak when it doesn't work. (I agree with the earlier poster who pointed out that the extension-handling is more elegant than that in Windows.) Beyond that, it makes sense in a world where files are routinely exchanged among platforms.
To some degree, yes, I think they're doing the same thing. It may not be quite as forceful, as it sounds like Microsoft used some additional muscle to get their way. But ultimately it seems similar, and my understanding is that some developers of apps in the iApps' spaces are not happy.
Probably what restricts Apple's practices from being as evil as Microsoft's is simply Apple's smaller market share. You have to play nicer with others when you don't dominate the market.
Slashdot Mirror
But here's the problem: Microsoft doesn't deliver on promises. Microsoft keeps screwing up the user experience. Microsoft can't - or won't - get its act together in terms of security. Windows still has stability issues.
Meanwhile, even inexperienced users have alternatives. Mac OS X provides a better computing experience than Windows, and IMO recent releases of several Linux distros do the same. These OSes can interoperate with Windows machines just fine and provide (the Mac in particular, but Linux is getting there) the software most users need.
Businesses have existing investments in MS technology. Yet one would imagine that given all the security problems they'd be considering whether it's worth it. Most individual Windows users seem to have no great love for Microsoft (understandably). Yet few people seem to be switching. What's more, I don't think most people think it's a viable option, despite the fact that it clearly is. Misconceptions (like "it won't have the software I need") plague would-be Mac switchers, and the word isn't out the Linux is a viable option. As a Mac user and OSS fan, I am frequently frustrated by Windows users who would happily switch but are convinced, quite erroneously, that there's some reason they just can't.
It's crazy, it's annoying, but I think to some degree it makes sense. The reason MS is where it is is not because it makes excellent software. It's because it does excellent marketing, while the alternatives remain unknown or misunderstood. That's the most convincing way I can account for their continued success in the face of the fact that their products are clearly inferior.
Yeah...Sure it's possible to get consumers to accept some nasty limitations if you do it gradually. However, I suspect that most people will only put up with upgrading their software and hardware so often; and more specifically, most people will get fed up with enough rounds of "you have to go out and buy something else for our stuff to keep working." I could be wrong but geez, I hope I'm right.
I agree in part, but I think politically (as someone who'd like to see as many decent IE alternatives as possible) I'm glad they did it that way. Firefox has been an excellent alternative to IE even as a 0.x release. My guess is that most users don't use extensions all that often, so in terms of less technical folks I doubt it's been a big deal.
I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. The article itself says, "patterns of brain activity are shaped by experience as much as by genes." Multiple genetic factors and multiple environmental factors add up to shape individual choices. All this article really suggests is a genetic predisposition -- a factor among many -- not a genetically determined certainty.
Yeah...a key point and one I didn't mention in my last post. The longer we wait to dissociate ethics, morality, and other aspects of society from scientific inquiry, the harder it will be to do so when it becomes absolutely necessary.
To put it another way: Societally, it doesn't matter what free will is (scientifically), because it's a useful concept for things like making decisions, interacting with other people, and writing laws. No matter what we discover about it that doesn't change.
This sort of argument is a dangerous one that's plagued science for a number of years now: "If there are biological underpinnings for our actions, preferences, and personalities, how can we be responsible for anything?"
But the question itself assumes a connection where none has to exist: Science and ethics aren't connected like that. Maybe I'm a liberal because of my genetic makeup; maybe it's my environment; probably it's both. In any of these cases, I have made choices, and it's appropriate for me to accept responsibility for them, regardless of the various biological and environmental factors that went into them.
The notion that explaining our behavior eliminates free will or responsibility is an unfortunate one, and has held back a number of scientific fields. Learning what lies behind our choices doesn't invalidate them, but merely helps us understand ourselves better and perhaps make more informed decisions.
(A much more complete, better-written, and better-supported version of what I'm saying can be found in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.)
Thanks...nice to see someone else who cares about proper usage :-)
Unless, of course, MS is trying to convince us that our wisdom teeth will be OK if we upgrade.
However, there's no one right answer to this question. Your decision will depend on whether you plan to work in animation eventually; what you plan to do with the software; and to some degree what platform you're using (though there are many who say that if you're serious about 3D you should buy some PC hardware specifically for that purpose).
There's a great discussion of this topic at zaon.org. Also a previous slashdot discussion I started on the same topic when I was figuring this out.
Beyond that I'll try to be brief, since a lot of my original questions and their answers are contained in the first linked discussion above.
Ultimately, as I said, there's no one right answer. Read what you can online, try some demos, call the companies, and see what fits. I do recommend checking out the
Obviously I'm interested in good sound, and I bought a fairly nice receiver for that reason. My understanding is that a digital connection (from a digital device, anyway) to a receiver is going to deliver better quality sound than an analog one, and I had presumed it's because that method virtually guarantees no loss of quality: The information that hits the receiver is the exact same information that left the component, which in turn is the exact information in whatever media you're reading from. Obviously if the source is of low quality it wouldn't be worth it. But with a CD -- and, presumably, with a high-quality mp3 -- the preservation of signal would mean higher-quality sound in the end.
Anyway, that's my understanding, and if it's wrong, or if there are other aspects of it I'm missing, I'd love it if someone would set me straight.
Also, what technologies does it use for connecting to your computer? Is it something that would work with a Mac (bearing in mind that Macs support SMB networking)?
But why no digital audio out on the HP and Slim devices? Seems odd...these things are obviously targeted at geeks, yet I won't buy one until it can match the quality I get off a CD...which means it has to have a digital audio out.
Seems to me people on this site aren't actually reacting reacting to the article, but to a generic statement, "Microsoft and the MPAA say piracy funds terrorism." That statement is not in the article, nor is it what the article is about. I can't promise they won't bring their claims to bear on the fight against P2P sharing, but they're talking about _counterfeiting_, not piracy, and that is a much bigger deal. P2P users may be downloading the latest Britney Spears album or even an illegal copy of Windows, but they're not trying to recreate the product packaging and sell it as the original. If MS and the MPAA want to go after counterfeiters specifically, I don't see a problem with that.
Correct, without the sarcasm. Both my computers are OS X boxes, and I use ls, vi, and grep daily.
First he says VHS won because there were more tapes and more players available, rather than on the basis of features. But that's not an explanation at all: It boils down to "VHS won because VHS had won." It'd be like saying "Windows has most of the market share because Windows has most of the market share." Well, sure, but why?
But then he goes on to point out a feature of VHS tapes -- their length -- that was better, and that tipped the scales in VHS's favor. This seems to contradict his "whole product" point from the first half of the article: If there was a basic features of VHS tapes that met consumers' needs better than Beta, then it wasn't all those auxiliary things that made VHS popular after all. So he seems simply to be debunking myths about the VHS-Beta story rather than making the larger point he started out with.
While Blender's rendering is certainly a concern for me, what's really put me off it is that at least on my G4, the UI is sluggish, somewhat unresponsive, and worst of all not reliably responsive. In other words, I click on a button. It may respond, it may not, and I'll have to wait a few seconds to see. That's not only bad for productivity, but extremely frustrating, _especially_ in an app without an undo function for when I think the button didn't click and end up clicking it twice.
Yeah, but it hasn't got brush mirrors. No brush mirrors, no deal.
Looks like 3.8 is out, with OS X support. This is an interesting option. How far behind Lightwave or Maya is it, feature-wise? Since I'm a UI designer and thus do a bunch of Web design, the Flash export could be really useful. Do the other apps have anything like that?
Actually it _was_ a computer science course, which is why I mentioned it as a course on "computer graphics," not "graphic design." Over the course of the semester we wrote a projective rendering engine, including all the various scene transformations, antialiasing, texture mapping, etc. We also covered animation algorithms such as keyframing and physics models. My final project was a raytracer written in C++.
Since Mental Ray is now included with Maya that would be the obvious render choice then. I'm not entirely sure what it means to redo shaders. Is that something I'll need to worry about rendering with Mental Ray? And if so, will that be true if I'm rendering exclusively with it, or only if I'm switching renderers? Not really sure how plug-in renderers work and what overhead is involved.
So would it be safer to say it's more of a competitor for Mozilla and its app-building capabilities?
Also, is this related to the rumors of Office switching over to an XML-based file format? 'Cause that would be a good thing, even if it's a somewhat proprietary spin on XML.
As a previous poster said, there are tons of books, but some may be costly. If you're looking for some pointers there are also Web resources. You could start at Jakob Nielsen's Web site (useit.com) and check out the archives for his Alertbox column, as well as the links he has to a bunch of other UI-related sites. For more researchy stuff check out the University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab at www.cs.umd.edu/hcil. I have a couple other links on my Web site at http://designtheworld.com/phi/links .
No, the arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users will expect it this way," which is the whole point of the document. Any GUI has a set of user interface guidelines to ensure consistent user experience and look & feel. Mac users expect their apps to look like Mac apps, just as Windows users expect theirs to look like Windows. The typical Mac user may not be a UI expert, but he'll notice if one of his apps doesn't act like the rest.
You can't extrapolate from a simple example like that to negating a basic tenet of User Interface Design.
That's not to say you shouldn't think about it. But it's not that simple, and my vehemence in responding comes from being a UI designer and facing clients or managers who believe things are fine and that the established design principles are silly.
Why are the controls on all your kitchen appliances different? Are they really unique or are they perhaps familiar types of controls, each different from the others because of a slightly different purpose? My guess is these are all fairly standard controls, or twists on standard controls, and the differences among them are offset by the general familiarity you already had with each type.
User interfaces of any type benefit from familiar controls, because the focus is shifted from figuring out how to work the controls to performing the task for which the UI was intended. Obviously custom controls are called for sometimes, but the more they can draw on the appearance and functionality of established controls, the easier they'll be to learn.
...Which works great until you need to open a file with an application that doesn't think it can open the file. Then you're stuck messing around with altering the type and creator codes. Or you receive a file over email, it's lost its type and creator codes, and you're stuck trying to figure out what it is and recreate them.
At least for me, while the original Mac OS scheme worked well when it worked, the addition of file extensions is a welcome one because it's easy to tweak when it doesn't work. (I agree with the earlier poster who pointed out that the extension-handling is more elegant than that in Windows.) Beyond that, it makes sense in a world where files are routinely exchanged among platforms.
To some degree, yes, I think they're doing the same thing. It may not be quite as forceful, as it sounds like Microsoft used some additional muscle to get their way. But ultimately it seems similar, and my understanding is that some developers of apps in the iApps' spaces are not happy.
Probably what restricts Apple's practices from being as evil as Microsoft's is simply Apple's smaller market share. You have to play nicer with others when you don't dominate the market.