Propriety formats are Apple's enemy. Or should be.
on
Sorenson Countersues Apple
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You'd think Apple would be a little more anxious to promote open file formats.
Consinder: The only thing that makes platform relevant in modern times (other than number of games available) is the ability of users to interoperate in a networked environment -- to open word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Other than that, people use their computers for largely platform-independant applications (surfing for porn and emailing prison inmates -- or is that just me?).
Given the rise of near-universal networking, you'd think that Apple would see this as their big second change. In fact, given their recent PR, it seems that at least part of the organization "gets" this. And yet, Apple continues to develop and promote decidedly unopen formats like Quicktime, which are definately not friendly to alternative platforms.
Maybe someone needs to drive to Cupertino, take Steve to Denny's and explain the concept of karma over a couple cups of coffee and some cheese sticks. Mmm... Cheese sticks.
Sorry. Seriously, though, if you're not rooted in too firmly, there are jobs out there if you're willing to move to them, especially in places with big defense companies (San Diego, various east coast cities, etc).
If you're stuck in the boonies, though, you've got problems -- the lack of fallback jobs is why I passed on a very well-paying job with a startup in Madison, WI, even though I really needed the work at the time and have family there. If you get laid off and are a niche-type worker, you're in trouble.
There are jobs up in the East Bay, my brother. They might not pay as well (although my new job actually pays a small bit more), but it's work.
Take my advice: find someplace and do your best to hide out for the next two years, even if it's not doing something groundbreaking. Remember: there's always the next time around the bubble.
Despite the "celebrity" factor Linus brought to the place, their product just never panned out. It was a good idea, and hopefully some larger company will buy up their proprietary technology, but I don't see how Transmeta on their own ever could have made a run at capitalizing the chips in an already severely swamped market -- the barriers to entry were just too high.
Still, having been laid off twice last year, I wish all the former Transmetites the best. I hope Linus is able to find an interesting job after Transmeta folds -- otherwise, my company could use a good code jockey...
Er, Einstein was never a member of the Manhattan Project. If you review the file, they seemed mostly concerned that he was jewish and therefore not to be trusted.
Blame the puffy, middle aged guys named Chuck who think that the right to own firearms is the only civil libery that matters, since it's the only civil liberty you can use to make an exciting loud noise and put holes in cans.
Blame the old people who don't understand the modern world, and as such believe all of the knee-jerk blame laying that demagogues spew out on cable news channels 24 hours a day.
Blame people who see the whole world in moronic stereotypes. Blame the people who think that speech ought to be free only when it matches their own opinions. Blame the people with severely outdated understandings of capitalism who believe that big corporations can self-police and the market can self-regulate. Blame the people who are so cowardly that one terrorist attack which kills a few thousand people is justification enough to toss our most valued rights out the window. Blame the people who think that the flag (and not the hard-won liberties it symbolizes) is sacred. Blame the people who think that their religion should be forced on everyone, and think the founding fathers secretly wanted it that way despite rather obvious evidence to the contrary.
Most of all, then, blame an education system that doesn't teach people how to think in an objective or independant manner. Blame parents who don't teach their kids to evaluate information or ask questions.
But don't blame Florida -- those ballots were pretty confusing.
I'd say distance doesn't matter so much as long as you have a decent communications infrastructure and are in the same or immediately adjacent time zones.
I've found things really suck when, say, you're trying to work on the east coast and west coast (much less having people overseas) -- it's tough getting people together for meetings, tough to have people travel back and forth (you pretty much always lose a day flying west-to-east three time zones, whereas you can get between, say, San Jose and Boulder rather easily).
But man, if I never have to work directly with another set of developers in India, it'll be too soon -- that was just a nightmare.
Affordible housing, jobs, stability, light traffic, companies with reasonable hours, good schools... All the same things that we in the Silicon Valley have to offer...
best tool for the job: The tool which can be utilized to most effectively perform a given task, balancing ease-of-use, speed and reliability in relation to the proficiency and needs of the target user base.
I've always found some of Fincher's use of panning effects somewhat distracting. There are some points where it's really effective (think Fight Club), but others where you just realize "hey, that was an effect" (several times in Panic Room).
I am much more of a fan of Robert Zemeckis's use in movies such as Contact (the non-obvious effects bits), where you fly in through a window or where it's used to drive home something important, like the whole run-to-the-medicine-cabinet-suddenly-in-the-mirror bit.
Of course it will. Eventually the technology will get so good you wont be able to tell the difference (both visually and interpretation)
That's so absurd that its probably blatent flamebait, but I'll answer it because I'm gullible:
There's a big, *big* difference between perfectly modeling the appearance of a human being and generating a believable and interesting range of acting from the model.
Many great performances start out on page with very little direction from the script. Consider the scene in Unforgiven where Gene Hackman's character beats a gunslinger played by Richard Harris: On paper, it was a severe beating which occurs because Harris's character (English Bob) is seen as a challenge by Hackman's Little Bill, who makes an example out of him.
Now watch the scene. Watch Little Bill's face and body language while he's beating English Bob -- you can see, *taste* his sadism and brutality. Watch Little Bill's face when he's done -- he visably reigns himself in, then looks dazed and almost post-orgasmic.
What made that a great scene was absolutely not the writing, but Hackman's exploration of the sadistic nature of his character. It takes a gifted, experienced actor with a lifetime of experience to generate that sort of performance, not some geek at a computer using a modeling tool.
Several directors have recently released "special editions" of their classic movies which subtly change the films by using computers effects to either clean up the old effects or (far worse) alter the original film.
The problem that I have with this is twofold: First, these "special editions" seem to be the ones that show up on TV and on video rental shelves, so that they and not the original become the pervasive copy.
Second,
I can foresee a day when older movies are edited in this fashion so they can be remarketed to audiences with more "modern" attitudes (think similar to Speilburg taking the guns out of the hands of the pursuing authorities in the ET rerelease).
Do you believe that, as a creative professional, you have any sort of ethical duty to resist these sorts of changes? Is there a line to be drawn between merely cleaning up the original effects and replacing them entirely (as in the Star Wars special edition), or between effects-patchup and all-out content alteration (aka, the wussification of Han Solo by having Greedo shoot first)? Do you feel that old films should be left alone, or do you consider them more as ongoing acts of creation?
It is my opinion that the real long-term effect of digital music will be to wipe out the music industry which has existed for the last 100 years and bring local bands to the forefront. This will be a Good Thing(tm), as it will effectively end the reign of manufactured music.
I see the emphesis being placed back on local bands, which will then be scouted by professionals from a bastardized version of the recording industry and put on tours designed to make money rather than sell albums. MTV and commercial stations will have to go back to (gasp) making their money off ad sales like everyone else.
This won't be anywhere near as lucritive as the current music monopoly, but that's life.
I would have loved to hear Heinlein answer questions about some of the, er, unconventional relationship issues in his later works. As such, it's nice to hear from an author on something like this.
As for his coorespondence with pedophiles: I write stories for fun. I find it is always much more interesting if I can understand the thinking process of my characters rather than just pulling them from central casting. IMO, in the real world, just about everyone thinks that the things they do are justified -- I'll bet Nazi death camp guards had some very complex reasoning going on to allow themselves to do what they did, for instance. It might be completely bogus reasoning colored by bigotry and peer pressure, but it was enough for them.
Given that, it's important to try to figure out how other people think and what makes them think that way. Almost all really good stories involve the character's struggle with shades of grey -- with "good guys" and "bad guys", you can't do that.
Things like this are why I firmly believe in having no discernible useful function within my organization other than to slack and criticise others -- lets see some computer database duplicate *that*.
Why pay $700+ dollars for a PC to play the latest SW game, instead of $200 for an XBox.
Agree wholeheartedly.
For about a month I heard buzz about this great game called Morrowind, which was available for both the PC and Xbox. My desktop PC had just met a long-overdue retirement (read: was reloaded with a fresh install of everything and shipped off to my aunt, where it replaces the Cyrix 150-based box I sent her a couple years ago), so I either had to put together a new kick-ass PC or buy an Xbox.
Well, the PC would have run about $700, whereas the Xbox had just been slashed to $200. I felt a little dumb buying a second modern game console -- I already have a PS2 -- but I just couldn't justify dropping $500 more on a general-purpose box to do the same thing.
Morrowind rocks, by the way. Now if I could only get a few more hours inserted into each day for playing time...
The trench run was really anticlimactic for me. Tie Fighter was just a better overall game from a lot of perspectives (updated engine, better mission development, the joy of being a bad guy, etc).
You fly in your little trench. Vader is my copilot (er, wingman).
I never understood why companies pay for time spent and not what was actually produced during the time.
One method requires clued-in, intelligent management that understands what it is their employees do and to actively reach out and engage them. The other requires beady-eyed management toadies with no real skills except the ability to read a clock.
I was one of three westerners in a Chinese office (as in, moved-from-Beijing-a-year-before) for just short of a year, and the place burned me out faster and more completely than I thought possible.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever put in less than a twelve hour day, six or seven days a week. Even when there was no deadline, you were expected to be there.
What was really happening was that nobody was really *working* that much, they'd just all adapted their lives around work -- they'd take long lunches and dinners, play at least an hour of ping-pong a day, have their kids would come visit at night, etc.
As an native American (although only a fraction Native American) with (IMO) a pretty solid work ethic, I looked terrible if I left "early" or said I couldn't come in on a Sunday for whatever reason. My boss called me on it one time, and I pointed out that I *always* met my deadlines and that I applied myself at work more than any of my coworkers. From his reaction, it was clear that wasn't the point -- I wasn't showing the proper dedication, defined strictly as spending time at work.
Anyhow, I got laid off last year after I told them I was going home to the midwest for Christmas (during a time with no pressing deadlines and using the company's posted holidays and a weekend). It took me five months to find another decent job, but not for one second did I wish I still worked there.
Superman doesn't really fight very well, either. I suspect it's just always been too easy for him -- it's like always practicing Quake with the bots set on the lowest possible level.
Effective tactics for Superman: Zip up to Batman at light speed and make balloon animals out of his small intestines tied together with his spinal cord. Do this very quickly -- preferably while the "get kryptonite from utility belt" message is still en route from Batman's brain to his hand.
But nooo... He's just got to showboat. That, plus a certain amount of writer irony, is what gets him in trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Consinder: The only thing that makes platform relevant in modern times (other than number of games available) is the ability of users to interoperate in a networked environment -- to open word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Other than that, people use their computers for largely platform-independant applications (surfing for porn and emailing prison inmates -- or is that just me?).
Given the rise of near-universal networking, you'd think that Apple would see this as their big second change. In fact, given their recent PR, it seems that at least part of the organization "gets" this. And yet, Apple continues to develop and promote decidedly unopen formats like Quicktime, which are definately not friendly to alternative platforms.
Maybe someone needs to drive to Cupertino, take Steve to Denny's and explain the concept of karma over a couple cups of coffee and some cheese sticks. Mmm... Cheese sticks.
Point, though: home prices are at an all-time high, probably due to the nesting instinct triggered deep in our monkey DNA by 9-11. I still rent.
Ay! That's Willy's retirement grease!
Nah, it was on the west side in some crappy bid'ness park. The best I could have hoped for was the Culvers on the beltline.
Sorry. Seriously, though, if you're not rooted in too firmly, there are jobs out there if you're willing to move to them, especially in places with big defense companies (San Diego, various east coast cities, etc).
If you're stuck in the boonies, though, you've got problems -- the lack of fallback jobs is why I passed on a very well-paying job with a startup in Madison, WI, even though I really needed the work at the time and have family there. If you get laid off and are a niche-type worker, you're in trouble.
Take my advice: find someplace and do your best to hide out for the next two years, even if it's not doing something groundbreaking. Remember: there's always the next time around the bubble.
Still, having been laid off twice last year, I wish all the former Transmetites the best. I hope Linus is able to find an interesting job after Transmeta folds -- otherwise, my company could use a good code jockey...
Er, Einstein was never a member of the Manhattan Project. If you review the file, they seemed mostly concerned that he was jewish and therefore not to be trusted.
Don't blame Florida.
Blame the puffy, middle aged guys named Chuck who think that the right to own firearms is the only civil libery that matters, since it's the only civil liberty you can use to make an exciting loud noise and put holes in cans.
Blame the old people who don't understand the modern world, and as such believe all of the knee-jerk blame laying that demagogues spew out on cable news channels 24 hours a day.
Blame people who see the whole world in moronic stereotypes. Blame the people who think that speech ought to be free only when it matches their own opinions. Blame the people with severely outdated understandings of capitalism who believe that big corporations can self-police and the market can self-regulate. Blame the people who are so cowardly that one terrorist attack which kills a few thousand people is justification enough to toss our most valued rights out the window. Blame the people who think that the flag (and not the hard-won liberties it symbolizes) is sacred. Blame the people who think that their religion should be forced on everyone, and think the founding fathers secretly wanted it that way despite rather obvious evidence to the contrary.
Most of all, then, blame an education system that doesn't teach people how to think in an objective or independant manner. Blame parents who don't teach their kids to evaluate information or ask questions.
But don't blame Florida -- those ballots were pretty confusing.
If you don't trust the government, the terrorists have already won. I know: I saw John Ashcroft say so on Fox News.
I've found things really suck when, say, you're trying to work on the east coast and west coast (much less having people overseas) -- it's tough getting people together for meetings, tough to have people travel back and forth (you pretty much always lose a day flying west-to-east three time zones, whereas you can get between, say, San Jose and Boulder rather easily).
But man, if I never have to work directly with another set of developers in India, it'll be too soon -- that was just a nightmare.
(pauses, frowns)
How's that?
I am much more of a fan of Robert Zemeckis's use in movies such as Contact (the non-obvious effects bits), where you fly in through a window or where it's used to drive home something important, like the whole run-to-the-medicine-cabinet-suddenly-in-the-mirror bit.
That's so absurd that its probably blatent flamebait, but I'll answer it because I'm gullible:
There's a big, *big* difference between perfectly modeling the appearance of a human being and generating a believable and interesting range of acting from the model.
Many great performances start out on page with very little direction from the script. Consider the scene in Unforgiven where Gene Hackman's character beats a gunslinger played by Richard Harris: On paper, it was a severe beating which occurs because Harris's character (English Bob) is seen as a challenge by Hackman's Little Bill, who makes an example out of him.
Now watch the scene. Watch Little Bill's face and body language while he's beating English Bob -- you can see, *taste* his sadism and brutality. Watch Little Bill's face when he's done -- he visably reigns himself in, then looks dazed and almost post-orgasmic.
What made that a great scene was absolutely not the writing, but Hackman's exploration of the sadistic nature of his character. It takes a gifted, experienced actor with a lifetime of experience to generate that sort of performance, not some geek at a computer using a modeling tool.
The problem that I have with this is twofold: First, these "special editions" seem to be the ones that show up on TV and on video rental shelves, so that they and not the original become the pervasive copy.
Second, I can foresee a day when older movies are edited in this fashion so they can be remarketed to audiences with more "modern" attitudes (think similar to Speilburg taking the guns out of the hands of the pursuing authorities in the ET rerelease).
Do you believe that, as a creative professional, you have any sort of ethical duty to resist these sorts of changes? Is there a line to be drawn between merely cleaning up the original effects and replacing them entirely (as in the Star Wars special edition), or between effects-patchup and all-out content alteration (aka, the wussification of Han Solo by having Greedo shoot first)? Do you feel that old films should be left alone, or do you consider them more as ongoing acts of creation?
I see the emphesis being placed back on local bands, which will then be scouted by professionals from a bastardized version of the recording industry and put on tours designed to make money rather than sell albums. MTV and commercial stations will have to go back to (gasp) making their money off ad sales like everyone else.
This won't be anywhere near as lucritive as the current music monopoly, but that's life.
As for his coorespondence with pedophiles: I write stories for fun. I find it is always much more interesting if I can understand the thinking process of my characters rather than just pulling them from central casting. IMO, in the real world, just about everyone thinks that the things they do are justified -- I'll bet Nazi death camp guards had some very complex reasoning going on to allow themselves to do what they did, for instance. It might be completely bogus reasoning colored by bigotry and peer pressure, but it was enough for them.
Given that, it's important to try to figure out how other people think and what makes them think that way. Almost all really good stories involve the character's struggle with shades of grey -- with "good guys" and "bad guys", you can't do that.
Things like this are why I firmly believe in having no discernible useful function within my organization other than to slack and criticise others -- lets see some computer database duplicate *that*.
(drools)
Agree wholeheartedly.
For about a month I heard buzz about this great game called Morrowind, which was available for both the PC and Xbox. My desktop PC had just met a long-overdue retirement (read: was reloaded with a fresh install of everything and shipped off to my aunt, where it replaces the Cyrix 150-based box I sent her a couple years ago), so I either had to put together a new kick-ass PC or buy an Xbox.
Well, the PC would have run about $700, whereas the Xbox had just been slashed to $200. I felt a little dumb buying a second modern game console -- I already have a PS2 -- but I just couldn't justify dropping $500 more on a general-purpose box to do the same thing.
Morrowind rocks, by the way. Now if I could only get a few more hours inserted into each day for playing time...
You fly in your little trench. Vader is my copilot (er, wingman).
One method requires clued-in, intelligent management that understands what it is their employees do and to actively reach out and engage them. The other requires beady-eyed management toadies with no real skills except the ability to read a clock.
Understand now?
I was one of three westerners in a Chinese office (as in, moved-from-Beijing-a-year-before) for just short of a year, and the place burned me out faster and more completely than I thought possible.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever put in less than a twelve hour day, six or seven days a week. Even when there was no deadline, you were expected to be there. What was really happening was that nobody was really *working* that much, they'd just all adapted their lives around work -- they'd take long lunches and dinners, play at least an hour of ping-pong a day, have their kids would come visit at night, etc.
As an native American (although only a fraction Native American) with (IMO) a pretty solid work ethic, I looked terrible if I left "early" or said I couldn't come in on a Sunday for whatever reason. My boss called me on it one time, and I pointed out that I *always* met my deadlines and that I applied myself at work more than any of my coworkers. From his reaction, it was clear that wasn't the point -- I wasn't showing the proper dedication, defined strictly as spending time at work.
Anyhow, I got laid off last year after I told them I was going home to the midwest for Christmas (during a time with no pressing deadlines and using the company's posted holidays and a weekend). It took me five months to find another decent job, but not for one second did I wish I still worked there.
Effective tactics for Superman: Zip up to Batman at light speed and make balloon animals out of his small intestines tied together with his spinal cord. Do this very quickly -- preferably while the "get kryptonite from utility belt" message is still en route from Batman's brain to his hand.
But nooo... He's just got to showboat. That, plus a certain amount of writer irony, is what gets him in trouble.