I suspect he thinks WMA would help because a lot of these fscking "audio CDs" have a data track on them which contain DRM'd WMAs.
Now, since they are DRM, I highly doubt they'd play on the portable music player.
And if you did return the iPod for a WMA player, you'd simply feeding back into the system, providing the music industry with incentive to strip even more of your rights away.
Short term, sure it's fine, but long term, we're all screwed because of some people's inability to think more than 5 minutes into the future.
South Park season 8 premieres tonight (Wednesday).
But as others have pointed out, it's not just Comedy Central. Viacom handles a LOT of channels, from some local CBS stations to Nick to MTV and beyond. There's a lot of pissy nerds out there right now who can't get their daily dose of Star Trek: TNG...
If the iPod Mini is like the regular iPods, then formatting can be handled by the host computer across the firewire/IDE bridge controller as a regular drive. The HD-based components are then loaded onto the HD by the host computer.
As for whether 8gb CF cards would work - I dunno. I suppose it would depend on how the iPod Mini addresses the HD. If the rumors floating around are true that the Hitachi drive supplied for iPod Minis is "non-standard" in some way (addresses it as an IDE drive, f'instance, not as CompactFlash), it's possible that the 8GB flash wouldn't work.
However this is pretty theoretical since I don't know if the necessary host-based software exists (outside of the mothership) to "flash" the iPod Minis like it does for the regular iPods. If I remember correctly the update utility is what you use to put the necessary HD-based components onto the iPod drive.
Oh. Hmm. When a Win9x user "converts" an iPod from HFS+ to FAT32, it is done via a utility that partitions the HD, formats it, & then loads the appropriate bits onto the volume. Theoretically the version of this utility that works with iPod Minis should be able to do the same for an 8GB compactflash. Assuming the CF is compatible with the iPod Mini.
I await the first person with the necessary disposable income to find out if this is possible, since I'm waiting for the 4GB iPod Mini to drop to $199 (my assumption is that'll happen when an 8GB version is released @ $249)...
It's not very fast in a straight line, but based on the specs it should be able to hang corners damn well. And I love taking corners, particularly when I'm being followed by an SUV whose driver isn't thinking too clearly about what he's following. Many an SUV has slid off the road behind me.
(Last time I tested it, my car hit.97 on a skid pad)
I dunno if it's realistically possible to introduce a 2G/$100 version later.
The determining factor will be is there a $150 difference in price between the 4G and 2G drive mechanisms? In my gut I'm saying no way in hell, but that's baseless.
Personally, I could see them introducing a $200 model, 2 or 4GB when the next bump ships, but $100 is just a massive jump and I just can't imagine the drive mechanism dropping that much in that short a time.
When your car doesn't start because your battery is dead, do you consider replacing it car repair?
Personally, I consider it maintenance, but then again, I do most of that myself - and, of course, I can diagnose a dead car battery. Some people are incapable of doing the latter, so "repair" probably qualifies when their battery fails.
Which is why I'm a little mystified at people getting their panties in a bunch over someone who can't wield a screwdriver. If you refuse to (or are so incompetant that you can't) do the maintenance yourself, you have to pay someone to do it. This is unusual... How?
Okay, smarty pants, go spend 106 million on R&D next year. You. Personally. Go. Do it.
R&D to earnings is a valid figure because money does not grow on trees. Companies that do not invest in R&D are condemned to a slow downward spiral, but investing in too much R&D is equally bad.
A balance between earnings and R&D must be struck. Therefore the ratio of earnings to R&D is a valid figure.
Personally, I've always seen this breakdown between Apple & Dell R&D expenditures and would be really interested on WHAT they spend R&D money on. It'd be real interesting to see how much of their respective R&Ds go towards constantly testing/redesigning their systems to use whatever component they found this week that costs $.05 less, what assembly-line practices can be used to shave assembly-line costs, and similar things that most computer geeks don't equate with R&D.
But. That's just me. Anonymous Cowards probably think different.
True. But given it's size, it's probably based on a 2.5" laptop HD. The iPod is based on a 1.5" HD and is substantially smaller as a result. It should, hopefully, be cheaper than the iPod, because 20GB 2.5" mechanisms are substantially cheaper.
Some people like the iPod's form factor, and you just can't do that with a 2.5" mechanism. Personally, I think the iPod has gotten TOO small - I'd lose it in the clutter on my desk.
In fairness, those were only hits to the web site that hosted both pages.
They did not divulge the number of people who got the "confirmation" page vs. the "input your card#" page. (in other words, if they got the "input your card#" page and closed it, it would count towards the listed numbers)
I'd guess the latter would probably be an equally depressing figure, but it would be less than those numbers.
Most license-based movies fail, not only due to time constraints, but also due to budget. They spent a serious amount of coin getting the license, leaving less than usual to spend on the game. This is less true with large publishers like EA, but even they have to play basic economics (profit > license+development+marketing).
FWIW, the engine and basic gameplay in your example, Spider-Man, was based, down to the control scheme & gameplay mechanics, on the SpiderMan game that came out roughly a year earlier (it was based on the comic book and wasn't released on as many platforms). That cuts out a huge part of the development cycle, because you know what you can do, you can use the tools you developed for the older game to make levels, interstitials, etc. for the new game, then deal with porting the game to all the new platforms.
As another poster mentioned, time constraints are often killer for movies in development. With some films artwork is not decided until very late.
A company I worked for had a pretty major movie license (you'd know it if I said it). The movie was being shot during the self-destruction of Orion and completely changed when another company picked it up. Up until Orion blewup, however, we had to redo virtually the entire game as the movie progressed and went through rewrites. Afterwards we had to say "screw it" and do whatever we had, because the new owners took some time to sort through the movie, shooting new scenes, editing for different interpretation, etc. We had little knowledge of what the final product was going to be until the very end. As a result we were one of the few licensed movie games in which the events portrayed in the film had virtually nothing to do with the film, a fact that was mentioned numerous times during reviews of the game.
By and large most movie games are timed to come out with the release of the movie, because then they don't have to spend as much on advertising to make people aware of the title. A new trick I've noticed is for games to be timed around the release of the VHS/DVD, for much the same reasons. Though sometimes I wonder how many drones pick up a PS2/GameCube/XBox game thinking they're getting a DVD, or vice-versa.
They do have an SDK for iTunes. It's called QuickTime.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the open source OGG QuickTime Plug-In works, albiet in a buggy beta kind of way, with iTunes.
Maybe I'm just dreaming, but with iTunes out maybe some enterprising OGG advocates will put their money where their mouth is and help finish that sucker... at least now theres a compelling reason...
As for the iPod... yeah, OGG support in the unit would be a good thing, but I wonder if iTunes would convert the OGGs before syncing them to the iPod? Not owning one I can't test that theory...
Oddly enough I started making up one-off email addresses when signing up to stuff online. They basically come down to nospam-(description)@mydomain.com.
I can assure you that at least some of those addresses have mysteriously fallen into the hands of spammers, and they are blithely spamming a nospam- address. Well, until I remove it from the server, but not before I send a terse email to the company who sold me out.
That doesn't disprove your rule, just saying there's lots of scumbags in that "industry", and not all of them think things out like you do.
Because when dealing with an open bidding process, often times you end up with Guy #2 coming in with a bid just SLIGHTLY under Guy #1, and so on, until you're left at the end with a price that, while cheaper than Guy #1's quote - is still fscking expensive.
Silent bidding with all the potential vendors knowing that you are getting bids from other vendors means they don't just fudge numbers to come in lower than the other guy.
And before you start - 3 fixed rounds of bidding just means round after round of fudged numbers, until the lowest bidder just happens to have fudged their numbers later than the last guy. This is, in part, why the government pays $75 for a toilet plunger (obligatory exclusion for secret military project paid for via $100 wrench x 1,000,000, etc.).
Truely silent bidding means the buyer wins. Of course, if the vendors conspire with one another to do effectively the same thing, then it's not really silent, and the buyer still gets screwed - which is where contracts and lawyers and courts and whistleblowers come into play.
If you have to think of it on a smaller scale - how many times do you think eBay auctions have prices driven up by friends/acquaintances of the seller? If you don't think it happens countless times every day you're living in a fantasy world. The price is being driven up slightly each time instead of slightly down, but the buyer still ends up being given the shaft.
Searching for the magic set of keywords is, like it or not, a key to using ANY search engine.
As with most everything computer-related, Garbage In = Garbage Out.
Until they get magic devices or mind-control... er... mind-reading devices that can infer a LOT of other information besides just the keyword (results weighted for what that word "means" to you in that instance)... you're going to have to wear the Sherlock Holmes hat every once in awhile.
Oh. It just hit me. MSN. Garbage. See, it makes sense...
Sure. But last time I checked the expensive bit for LCD screens wasn't just the # of pixels you cram on the screen, but the size too. UXGA, like the original thread discusses, is a pixel count, and doesn't take size into account.
I seriously doubt that the two items under question @ $1000 aren't going to have the same LCD part inside them.
LCDs are digital. Adding in circuitry to go analog->digital (VGA, with ALL the bizarro resolutions that it implies) or even traditional external DVI (with it's ability to drive long cable runs, unlike the typical short runs required inide a laptop) costs money.
Implementing straight VGA is kinda tricky because the conversion has to scale the signal up to the LCD's native resolution on-the-fly. With DVI (any form) the video chipset can handle this duty (and usually does a pretty good job of it), with VGA the entire onus is on this piece of hardware. Install a cheap piece of hardware and that expensive screen looks like crap - good luck selling them.
'course this is just my opinion, and probably an outdated one at that.
Doh! Guilty as charged. If anything though, I'm more geeky.
23" on the Mac, 20" VGA monitor hooked up to one of Viewsonic's older, cheaper NTSC-to-VGA A/V boxes. Both are hooked up to the dual-headed GF4Ti, just hardly ever use the 20" for anything else (it's, uh, an olllllld Viewsonic whose guns are pretty poorly aligned).
Last time I filled out a job application (granted it has been a long time) they asked "have you ever been convicted of a felony?" As did the previous two or three dozen I'd filled out as a young'n (I've been employed by a grand total of 2 companies in the past 13 years or so).
Christ, arrests happen for all kinds of nonsensical crap that have no bearing on employment. You can almost always get arrested during a traffic stop if the cop is having a bad day.
Committing a felony, and getting convicted of it, is a whole other story. In theory they're more serious crimes and indicate a certain willingness to go out of your way to break the law. The trust is not there.
Of course, you can be arrested and charged on trumped up felony charges too, no shortage of suburban keystone cops out there looking to fit a square peg in a round hole (or bored and trying to create an opportunity for advancement).
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect he thinks WMA would help because a lot of these fscking "audio CDs" have a data track on them which contain DRM'd WMAs.
Now, since they are DRM, I highly doubt they'd play on the portable music player.
And if you did return the iPod for a WMA player, you'd simply feeding back into the system, providing the music industry with incentive to strip even more of your rights away.
Short term, sure it's fine, but long term, we're all screwed because of some people's inability to think more than 5 minutes into the future.
You forgot areole density. That's two per person, unless the carnival is in town.
(Aw crud, maybe four per person. Dictionary.com wants to call part of the Iris an areole...)
No, not South Park reruns.
South Park season 8 premieres tonight (Wednesday).
But as others have pointed out, it's not just Comedy Central. Viacom handles a LOT of channels, from some local CBS stations to Nick to MTV and beyond. There's a lot of pissy nerds out there right now who can't get their daily dose of Star Trek: TNG...
If the iPod Mini is like the regular iPods, then formatting can be handled by the host computer across the firewire/IDE bridge controller as a regular drive. The HD-based components are then loaded onto the HD by the host computer.
As for whether 8gb CF cards would work - I dunno. I suppose it would depend on how the iPod Mini addresses the HD. If the rumors floating around are true that the Hitachi drive supplied for iPod Minis is "non-standard" in some way (addresses it as an IDE drive, f'instance, not as CompactFlash), it's possible that the 8GB flash wouldn't work.
However this is pretty theoretical since I don't know if the necessary host-based software exists (outside of the mothership) to "flash" the iPod Minis like it does for the regular iPods. If I remember correctly the update utility is what you use to put the necessary HD-based components onto the iPod drive.
Oh. Hmm. When a Win9x user "converts" an iPod from HFS+ to FAT32, it is done via a utility that partitions the HD, formats it, & then loads the appropriate bits onto the volume. Theoretically the version of this utility that works with iPod Minis should be able to do the same for an 8GB compactflash. Assuming the CF is compatible with the iPod Mini.
I await the first person with the necessary disposable income to find out if this is possible, since I'm waiting for the 4GB iPod Mini to drop to $199 (my assumption is that'll happen when an 8GB version is released @ $249)...
Crap, I'd take the roadster without being an EV.
.97 on a skid pad)
It's not very fast in a straight line, but based on the specs it should be able to hang corners damn well. And I love taking corners, particularly when I'm being followed by an SUV whose driver isn't thinking too clearly about what he's following. Many an SUV has slid off the road behind me.
(Last time I tested it, my car hit
So would Slashdot.nu in french qualify as an oxymoron?
I think they're going to team up with McDonalds and use all that heat to put The McGriddle Inside.
I dunno if it's realistically possible to introduce a 2G/$100 version later.
The determining factor will be is there a $150 difference in price between the 4G and 2G drive mechanisms? In my gut I'm saying no way in hell, but that's baseless.
Personally, I could see them introducing a $200 model, 2 or 4GB when the next bump ships, but $100 is just a massive jump and I just can't imagine the drive mechanism dropping that much in that short a time.
NWDOS7 thinks it's a perfectly acceptable date, but is secretly wondering why you're still using it on a P90 in 2094.
When your car doesn't start because your battery is dead, do you consider replacing it car repair?
Personally, I consider it maintenance, but then again, I do most of that myself - and, of course, I can diagnose a dead car battery. Some people are incapable of doing the latter, so "repair" probably qualifies when their battery fails.
Which is why I'm a little mystified at people getting their panties in a bunch over someone who can't wield a screwdriver. If you refuse to (or are so incompetant that you can't) do the maintenance yourself, you have to pay someone to do it. This is unusual... How?
Okay, smarty pants, go spend 106 million on R&D next year. You. Personally. Go. Do it.
R&D to earnings is a valid figure because money does not grow on trees. Companies that do not invest in R&D are condemned to a slow downward spiral, but investing in too much R&D is equally bad.
A balance between earnings and R&D must be struck. Therefore the ratio of earnings to R&D is a valid figure.
Personally, I've always seen this breakdown between Apple & Dell R&D expenditures and would be really interested on WHAT they spend R&D money on. It'd be real interesting to see how much of their respective R&Ds go towards constantly testing/redesigning their systems to use whatever component they found this week that costs $.05 less, what assembly-line practices can be used to shave assembly-line costs, and similar things that most computer geeks don't equate with R&D.
But. That's just me. Anonymous Cowards probably think different.
True. But given it's size, it's probably based on a 2.5" laptop HD. The iPod is based on a 1.5" HD and is substantially smaller as a result. It should, hopefully, be cheaper than the iPod, because 20GB 2.5" mechanisms are substantially cheaper.
Some people like the iPod's form factor, and you just can't do that with a 2.5" mechanism. Personally, I think the iPod has gotten TOO small - I'd lose it in the clutter on my desk.
In fairness, those were only hits to the web site that hosted both pages.
They did not divulge the number of people who got the "confirmation" page vs. the "input your card#" page. (in other words, if they got the "input your card#" page and closed it, it would count towards the listed numbers)
I'd guess the latter would probably be an equally depressing figure, but it would be less than those numbers.
Hey, now I am be a jerk, and I may be hoarding monkeys, but... uh... what was the first part?
Most license-based movies fail, not only due to time constraints, but also due to budget. They spent a serious amount of coin getting the license, leaving less than usual to spend on the game. This is less true with large publishers like EA, but even they have to play basic economics (profit > license+development+marketing).
FWIW, the engine and basic gameplay in your example, Spider-Man, was based, down to the control scheme & gameplay mechanics, on the SpiderMan game that came out roughly a year earlier (it was based on the comic book and wasn't released on as many platforms). That cuts out a huge part of the development cycle, because you know what you can do, you can use the tools you developed for the older game to make levels, interstitials, etc. for the new game, then deal with porting the game to all the new platforms.
As another poster mentioned, time constraints are often killer for movies in development. With some films artwork is not decided until very late.
A company I worked for had a pretty major movie license (you'd know it if I said it). The movie was being shot during the self-destruction of Orion and completely changed when another company picked it up. Up until Orion blewup, however, we had to redo virtually the entire game as the movie progressed and went through rewrites. Afterwards we had to say "screw it" and do whatever we had, because the new owners took some time to sort through the movie, shooting new scenes, editing for different interpretation, etc. We had little knowledge of what the final product was going to be until the very end. As a result we were one of the few licensed movie games in which the events portrayed in the film had virtually nothing to do with the film, a fact that was mentioned numerous times during reviews of the game.
By and large most movie games are timed to come out with the release of the movie, because then they don't have to spend as much on advertising to make people aware of the title. A new trick I've noticed is for games to be timed around the release of the VHS/DVD, for much the same reasons. Though sometimes I wonder how many drones pick up a PS2/GameCube/XBox game thinking they're getting a DVD, or vice-versa.
They do have an SDK for iTunes. It's called QuickTime.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the open source OGG QuickTime Plug-In works, albiet in a buggy beta kind of way, with iTunes.
Maybe I'm just dreaming, but with iTunes out maybe some enterprising OGG advocates will put their money where their mouth is and help finish that sucker... at least now theres a compelling reason...
As for the iPod... yeah, OGG support in the unit would be a good thing, but I wonder if iTunes would convert the OGGs before syncing them to the iPod? Not owning one I can't test that theory...
Oddly enough I started making up one-off email addresses when signing up to stuff online. They basically come down to nospam-(description)@mydomain.com.
I can assure you that at least some of those addresses have mysteriously fallen into the hands of spammers, and they are blithely spamming a nospam- address. Well, until I remove it from the server, but not before I send a terse email to the company who sold me out.
That doesn't disprove your rule, just saying there's lots of scumbags in that "industry", and not all of them think things out like you do.
Of course! If you can't trust monkeys, who can you trust?
Because when dealing with an open bidding process, often times you end up with Guy #2 coming in with a bid just SLIGHTLY under Guy #1, and so on, until you're left at the end with a price that, while cheaper than Guy #1's quote - is still fscking expensive.
Silent bidding with all the potential vendors knowing that you are getting bids from other vendors means they don't just fudge numbers to come in lower than the other guy.
And before you start - 3 fixed rounds of bidding just means round after round of fudged numbers, until the lowest bidder just happens to have fudged their numbers later than the last guy. This is, in part, why the government pays $75 for a toilet plunger (obligatory exclusion for secret military project paid for via $100 wrench x 1,000,000, etc.).
Truely silent bidding means the buyer wins. Of course, if the vendors conspire with one another to do effectively the same thing, then it's not really silent, and the buyer still gets screwed - which is where contracts and lawyers and courts and whistleblowers come into play.
If you have to think of it on a smaller scale - how many times do you think eBay auctions have prices driven up by friends/acquaintances of the seller? If you don't think it happens countless times every day you're living in a fantasy world. The price is being driven up slightly each time instead of slightly down, but the buyer still ends up being given the shaft.
Searching for the magic set of keywords is, like it or not, a key to using ANY search engine.
As with most everything computer-related, Garbage In = Garbage Out.
Until they get magic devices or mind-control... er... mind-reading devices that can infer a LOT of other information besides just the keyword (results weighted for what that word "means" to you in that instance)... you're going to have to wear the Sherlock Holmes hat every once in awhile.
Oh. It just hit me. MSN. Garbage. See, it makes sense...
So in other words you can get five OSes plus five desktop office suites plus support - for the cost of Office XP Pro plus Windows XP Pro?
That's nothing.
Sure. But last time I checked the expensive bit for LCD screens wasn't just the # of pixels you cram on the screen, but the size too. UXGA, like the original thread discusses, is a pixel count, and doesn't take size into account.
I seriously doubt that the two items under question @ $1000 aren't going to have the same LCD part inside them.
LCDs are digital. Adding in circuitry to go analog->digital (VGA, with ALL the bizarro resolutions that it implies) or even traditional external DVI (with it's ability to drive long cable runs, unlike the typical short runs required inide a laptop) costs money.
Implementing straight VGA is kinda tricky because the conversion has to scale the signal up to the LCD's native resolution on-the-fly. With DVI (any form) the video chipset can handle this duty (and usually does a pretty good job of it), with VGA the entire onus is on this piece of hardware. Install a cheap piece of hardware and that expensive screen looks like crap - good luck selling them.
'course this is just my opinion, and probably an outdated one at that.
Doh! Guilty as charged. If anything though, I'm more geeky.
23" on the Mac, 20" VGA monitor hooked up to one of Viewsonic's older, cheaper NTSC-to-VGA A/V boxes. Both are hooked up to the dual-headed GF4Ti, just hardly ever use the 20" for anything else (it's, uh, an olllllld Viewsonic whose guns are pretty poorly aligned).
They're asking if you've ever been arrested now?
Last time I filled out a job application (granted it has been a long time) they asked "have you ever been convicted of a felony?" As did the previous two or three dozen I'd filled out as a young'n (I've been employed by a grand total of 2 companies in the past 13 years or so).
Christ, arrests happen for all kinds of nonsensical crap that have no bearing on employment. You can almost always get arrested during a traffic stop if the cop is having a bad day.
Committing a felony, and getting convicted of it, is a whole other story. In theory they're more serious crimes and indicate a certain willingness to go out of your way to break the law. The trust is not there.
Of course, you can be arrested and charged on trumped up felony charges too, no shortage of suburban keystone cops out there looking to fit a square peg in a round hole (or bored and trying to create an opportunity for advancement).