First time I've heard of outsourcing actually causing prices to fall. And here I was thinking it was because technology is reaching a broader market, causing prices to drop.
.. but I'm not sure how relevent it is to this article. I'm an artist, not an IT dude. So why am I even posting? Well, I've noticed a trend in recent weeks. There's a lot more 'gotta have' deals floating around. Just today I purchased an upgrade for Lightwave. They're about to release version 8. By pre-purchasing it, I'm getting another piece of software for free (made by another company, it's sort of like After Effects, costing around $1400...) and I'm getting a free subscription to a magazine that normally costs $100.
In recent weeks, I've also noticed that DVD prices have gone down significantly. Both the Hulk and Matrix Rebloated were $15. I bought another DVD player for the house for $40. I bought a good DVD burner for under $200, whereas months ago it would have been $300-400. I got a cell phone for $150 where not long before it was a $300 item.
I think what has happened is prices down the board have gone down. Your hard earned dollar buys you more stuff. If this trend continues, I think we can expect more positive growth. It's hard to spend $500 on something that has questionable usefulness, but when it's $200, then it starts getting down to the "I can afford to experiment this" range.
"Sure is one great way to increase your productivity.;-)"
Not for me in particular. I'm an artist. I design everything from aliens to UIs. Games need a good UI, so playing a game both directly and indirectly helps me with my job. I was even asked by my boss once to play a game at a local pub for a bit. A system we built used a similar trackball interface to a golf game, and they wanted me to drop a couple of quarters in it and take a few notes.
Not saying you're wrong, just thought you might find that experience I had interesting for this discussion.:)
"Europeans laugh at American movies where the first reaction of the hero is to pull out a gun. You just don't realize how completely bizarre American society has become that guns are commonplace."
Since you like to make assumptions about society based solely on movies, are you going to go to Japan and shout GOJIRA!!! just to see if anybody runs?
" I recall it had the serious limitation that you couldn't input data on it, but it was very tiny."
Yes, that's true. It was more of a display device than a PDA. I have a watch made by Fossil like that. It's a big, very big watch. (Surprisingly comfy tho..) Also, it only syncs with my PocketPC and not my laptop. Still, it was handy to have around. I'm a little surprised there isn't a market for teeny little read only devices like that. My watch was great for storing stuff like business trip information.
Not sure if I'm hyped about seeing this movie, but there is a concept about it I get a kick out of. Niether the Predator nor the Alien is really a good guy. So the actual ending might actually be a surprise. It's hard to watch a movie like The Matrix, for example, because the good guys are so 'good' and the bad guys are so 'bad'. Who's gonna win? Duh. Suspense goes bye bye. At least here, the potential exists for surprise. That'd be cool.
"The fact of the matter is, most of us geeks just aren't good communicators and teachers when it comes to people outside of the community. We assume that the person we're educating has a modicum of understanding from the get go."
That lack of understanding comes from lack of interest in understanding it. Computers are not exciting toys for everybody. In some ways, they are downright abstract. It's sort of like how you feel when your girlfriend babbles about Big Brother.
"How to now get free music? There are more than enough geeky MIT students to find a solution to the problem. MIT-only file sharing? Passing around burned copies of CDs? Having everyone switch to using Kazaa? All I know is that something new will show up sooner or later to replace LAMP. "
There's expressed demand here. People are saying "we want compressed music we can put on portable devices, we want individual tracks as opposed to complete albums, and we want to be charged reasonably for it." Since the RIAA isn't responding to supply and demand (Why should they? They're an oligopoly!) they won't provide these. The result? The people find their own way to get what they want. This didn't happen overnight. It started way back in 96-97. It really din't become a 'let the cat out of the bag' situation until Napster was sued. Oops RIAA, good job.
The RIAA really fouled up here. They forced people to solve their own distribution problems, and now they have to face the very real possibility that their customers are so independent delivery-wise that the RIAA is not as necessary for an artist to become popular.
Double oops, RIAA.
There are quite a few people here that think this whole music thing is about getting music for free. There are bound to be cases where it is true, but in the vast majority of cases it's not even close to being the only factor. Once the RIAA figures this out, assuming it's not too late, they'll be able to provide the services these people want instead of butting heads with places like MIT.
Hey RIAA, how about fulfilling consumer demand? Ya make more money that way than with lawsuits.
Um, no. The reason is that WMV's are a different animal from.AVIs. Besides that, it's not like Windows comes with Media Encoder. There is no 'pushing WMV on people'.
No. When Slashdot starts reporting on Microsoft responsibly, then I can change my sig to that. Right now, when a story is posted about MS, it's followed by a lot of comments about hating MS, followed up quickly with 'RTFA!'.
"I'm curious why people see a hard drive as a good thing in a console. Why not just buy a PC?"
Console games and PC games are not the same thing. It's sort of like comparing movies to TV shows. One's not necessarily better than the other, but the format is different.
"That means calculations, such as working out the factors of prime numbers, which present problems for even the fastest supercomputers could be trivialized by a quantum computer."
The new quantum computer will sport real live emotions! For example, once presented with the task of working out the factors of prime numbrs, the quantum computer responded with "bah, who cares? It's just a bunch of 1s and 0s."
"We are already hitting the limits of how much code can work together without being riddled by bugs. I think we need a advance in programming first."
If they can build it, then they're at the right level of 'advancement' to control it. By your logic, early processors would have been totally unacceptable as a mass-market product.
"DivX also has WMV beat in terms of availability to run on other systems."
Yeah, I more or less covered that when I said "it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world." Can't say that pro is all that interesting, though. DivX's installed base isn't that large, and not everybody who runs across a DivX video is going to hunt down and install the codec. No matter which way you spin it, WMV is still generally a better delivery choice in terms of how large the potential audience is.
"Heaven forbid people would actually have to find & install software!"
You may not think it's a big problem. However, not everybody landing on a video file they don't have the player for is just dying to see it. Had that happen today. A CG site I frequent mentioned a trailer for a new movie coming out. I clicked on it, but didn't have Quicktime installed. I just brushed it aside and said "nah. Don't care." I would have happiliy watched it if Quicktime was already there, but since it wasn't I didn't feel like going there and jumping through Apple's hoops to set it up. Not for a movie I have barely any interest in. I'm not the only one that feels that way, and it is damn frustrating when you create a video and the people aren't all that interested to begin with.
It is a legitimate problem, don't shove it aside and grumble about how stupid everybody is. It's a matter of interest, not a matter of intelligence. Can you honestly tell me you'd install a codec to watch a teaser for Gigli?
"When Microsoft released the WMV code & player for Linux (even if it is binary-only), then we can talk about free beer."
A lot of people assume that Microsoft isn't supporting Linux because they don't want to do anything to help it compete. I'm not 100% convinced that's the case. The problem is that if they spend all that time porting it, how many new people can view Microsoft content? Not a lot. That's why Media Player never got past 7 on the Mac. Get a few million desktop users using Linux or Mac, and you'll probably see a WMP port. You see, it isn't realistic to assume that Media Player is holding people back from switching to Linux. However, Microsoft does get a chunk of change from websites using Microsoft's media serving technology. For that to work, lots and lots of people have to be able to play WMV files.
"From what I have seen, WMV9 is a decent codec, but it is far from "innovative". It' sjust another hash of MPEG4, and has huge attributes in common with DivX 4/5, XViD, and other MPEG4 codecs."
Innovative is not the word I'd use, but you are oversimplifying the value of WMV. It's not just a codec, it's a suite of tools.
Here are a few pros to using WMV:
- *Anybody* running Windows 9x - XP can play a video from it. Even if the codec's not installed, the player will go get it and install it. The other players in this field are Real and Quicktime. If DivX somehow did this (or became a must-have like Quicktime) I could finally ditch WMV.
- The quality's not bad for low-bitrate stuff. It's not as good as DivX, but it suffices. (Note: One thing that stinks, though, is I don't have a lot of control over the compression. I can't play with the Quantizer, for example... GRR.)
- The toolset is pretty decent. Though the UI is a little confusing, you get plenty of cool stuff up front. If I wanted to, right now, I could set up my computer to capture video from cable and broadcast it in realtime WMV. The Media Encoder tool makes that possible. Never used it, not sure I'll ever use it, but it's something DivX doesn't immediately provide.
- While you're encoding, you can see the encoded video as it progresses. That's useful in determining the right compression etc.
- You can encode it to stream at different bitrates. I can't tell you much about this, though, as I haven't personally played with it.
For the record, I'm not posting this with the idea that people should immediately go use this. I personally prefer DivX. But I did want to share my own experiences here. DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.
So no, I wouldn't call it 'innovative', but it does solve problems that DivX and related codecs cannot, plus it's got a spiffier toolset in some respects. Don't be so quick to discredit it.
"Huh? The xbox is clunky, huge, and looks like the industrial design was done by the programmers. It was clearly thrown together quickly from stock parts."
I'm glad you pointed that out. Now I hate both my keyboard and my optical mouse!
Slashdot Mirror
"Welcome to the benifits of outsourcing."
First time I've heard of outsourcing actually causing prices to fall. And here I was thinking it was because technology is reaching a broader market, causing prices to drop.
.. but I'm not sure how relevent it is to this article. I'm an artist, not an IT dude. So why am I even posting? Well, I've noticed a trend in recent weeks. There's a lot more 'gotta have' deals floating around. Just today I purchased an upgrade for Lightwave. They're about to release version 8. By pre-purchasing it, I'm getting another piece of software for free (made by another company, it's sort of like After Effects, costing around $1400...) and I'm getting a free subscription to a magazine that normally costs $100.
In recent weeks, I've also noticed that DVD prices have gone down significantly. Both the Hulk and Matrix Rebloated were $15. I bought another DVD player for the house for $40. I bought a good DVD burner for under $200, whereas months ago it would have been $300-400. I got a cell phone for $150 where not long before it was a $300 item.
I think what has happened is prices down the board have gone down. Your hard earned dollar buys you more stuff. If this trend continues, I think we can expect more positive growth. It's hard to spend $500 on something that has questionable usefulness, but when it's $200, then it starts getting down to the "I can afford to experiment this" range.
"Sure is one great way to increase your productivity. ;-)"
:)
Not for me in particular. I'm an artist. I design everything from aliens to UIs. Games need a good UI, so playing a game both directly and indirectly helps me with my job. I was even asked by my boss once to play a game at a local pub for a bit. A system we built used a similar trackball interface to a golf game, and they wanted me to drop a couple of quarters in it and take a few notes.
Not saying you're wrong, just thought you might find that experience I had interesting for this discussion.
"We can do without devices whose sole purpose is killing."
I don't own a gun. But if my family were in danger, I'd certainly rethink that policy.
"Europeans laugh at American movies where the first reaction of the hero is to pull out a gun. You just don't realize how completely bizarre American society has become that guns are commonplace."
Since you like to make assumptions about society based solely on movies, are you going to go to Japan and shout GOJIRA!!! just to see if anybody runs?
"Linux."
Yay! I can stop viruses and render all my games useless! All that, and I still get the privledge of installing patches regularly. Sign me up!
" I recall it had the serious limitation that you couldn't input data on it, but it was very tiny."
Yes, that's true. It was more of a display device than a PDA. I have a watch made by Fossil like that. It's a big, very big watch. (Surprisingly comfy tho..) Also, it only syncs with my PocketPC and not my laptop. Still, it was handy to have around. I'm a little surprised there isn't a market for teeny little read only devices like that. My watch was great for storing stuff like business trip information.
Not sure if I'm hyped about seeing this movie, but there is a concept about it I get a kick out of. Niether the Predator nor the Alien is really a good guy. So the actual ending might actually be a surprise. It's hard to watch a movie like The Matrix, for example, because the good guys are so 'good' and the bad guys are so 'bad'. Who's gonna win? Duh. Suspense goes bye bye. At least here, the potential exists for surprise. That'd be cool.
"The fact of the matter is, most of us geeks just aren't good communicators and teachers when it comes to people outside of the community. We assume that the person we're educating has a modicum of understanding from the get go."
That lack of understanding comes from lack of interest in understanding it. Computers are not exciting toys for everybody. In some ways, they are downright abstract. It's sort of like how you feel when your girlfriend babbles about Big Brother.
"How to now get free music? There are more than enough geeky MIT students to find a solution to the problem. MIT-only file sharing? Passing around burned copies of CDs? Having everyone switch to using Kazaa? All I know is that something new will show up sooner or later to replace LAMP. "
There's expressed demand here. People are saying "we want compressed music we can put on portable devices, we want individual tracks as opposed to complete albums, and we want to be charged reasonably for it." Since the RIAA isn't responding to supply and demand (Why should they? They're an oligopoly!) they won't provide these. The result? The people find their own way to get what they want. This didn't happen overnight. It started way back in 96-97. It really din't become a 'let the cat out of the bag' situation until Napster was sued. Oops RIAA, good job.
The RIAA really fouled up here. They forced people to solve their own distribution problems, and now they have to face the very real possibility that their customers are so independent delivery-wise that the RIAA is not as necessary for an artist to become popular.
Double oops, RIAA.
There are quite a few people here that think this whole music thing is about getting music for free. There are bound to be cases where it is true, but in the vast majority of cases it's not even close to being the only factor. Once the RIAA figures this out, assuming it's not too late, they'll be able to provide the services these people want instead of butting heads with places like MIT.
Hey RIAA, how about fulfilling consumer demand? Ya make more money that way than with lawsuits.
"it seems the corporations want to all make one product that does everything."
It seems people want to buy that stuff. Interesting coincidence.
Um, no. The reason is that WMV's are a different animal from .AVIs. Besides that, it's not like Windows comes with Media Encoder. There is no 'pushing WMV on people'.
No. When Slashdot starts reporting on Microsoft responsibly, then I can change my sig to that. Right now, when a story is posted about MS, it's followed by a lot of comments about hating MS, followed up quickly with 'RTFA!'.
"I'm curious why people see a hard drive as a good thing in a console. Why not just buy a PC?"
Console games and PC games are not the same thing. It's sort of like comparing movies to TV shows. One's not necessarily better than the other, but the format is different.
"ETA for the first quantum computers: 10 to 100 years."
I predict Duke Nukem Forever will be a launch title for the Nintendo Game Qubit.
"That means calculations, such as working out the factors of prime numbers, which present problems for even the fastest supercomputers could be trivialized by a quantum computer."
The new quantum computer will sport real live emotions! For example, once presented with the task of working out the factors of prime numbrs, the quantum computer responded with "bah, who cares? It's just a bunch of 1s and 0s."
"We are already hitting the limits of how much code can work together without being riddled by bugs. I think we need a advance in programming first."
If they can build it, then they're at the right level of 'advancement' to control it. By your logic, early processors would have been totally unacceptable as a mass-market product.
"Maybe that is how black holes get started; one for every planet that just gets to this point and then loads Windows on a quantum computer."
Funny? Well, I suppose there are still a few people left who chuckle at Lewinski.
"And pay Nintendo how much in licensing fees per cart? And how much per dev station?"
You think either of those is going to be more expensive than R&D + parts to build systems?
I agree with you that the games will be a tough sell, but the other arguments are ridiculous.
"Uh, no. The reason it's as cheap as a PS2 is that Microsoft makes a loss on every Xbox sale, whereas Sony makes a profit on every PS2 sale."
I'm curious if Sony has recouped the 2 billion dollars they spent on R&D for the PS2 yet.
"I guess I let my imagination get away from me when thinking about what goes on in rural Kansas."
Nah, that kinda shit doesn't happen in rural Kansas. Cows are too big to hump.
"DivX also has WMV beat in terms of availability to run on other systems."
Yeah, I more or less covered that when I said "it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world." Can't say that pro is all that interesting, though. DivX's installed base isn't that large, and not everybody who runs across a DivX video is going to hunt down and install the codec. No matter which way you spin it, WMV is still generally a better delivery choice in terms of how large the potential audience is.
"Heaven forbid people would actually have to find & install software!"
You may not think it's a big problem. However, not everybody landing on a video file they don't have the player for is just dying to see it. Had that happen today. A CG site I frequent mentioned a trailer for a new movie coming out. I clicked on it, but didn't have Quicktime installed. I just brushed it aside and said "nah. Don't care." I would have happiliy watched it if Quicktime was already there, but since it wasn't I didn't feel like going there and jumping through Apple's hoops to set it up. Not for a movie I have barely any interest in. I'm not the only one that feels that way, and it is damn frustrating when you create a video and the people aren't all that interested to begin with.
It is a legitimate problem, don't shove it aside and grumble about how stupid everybody is. It's a matter of interest, not a matter of intelligence. Can you honestly tell me you'd install a codec to watch a teaser for Gigli?
"When Microsoft released the WMV code & player for Linux (even if it is binary-only), then we can talk about free beer."
A lot of people assume that Microsoft isn't supporting Linux because they don't want to do anything to help it compete. I'm not 100% convinced that's the case. The problem is that if they spend all that time porting it, how many new people can view Microsoft content? Not a lot. That's why Media Player never got past 7 on the Mac. Get a few million desktop users using Linux or Mac, and you'll probably see a WMP port. You see, it isn't realistic to assume that Media Player is holding people back from switching to Linux. However, Microsoft does get a chunk of change from websites using Microsoft's media serving technology. For that to work, lots and lots of people have to be able to play WMV files.
" I hear the visualization for IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is quite soothing."
This joke is getting very tired.
"From what I have seen, WMV9 is a decent codec, but it is far from "innovative". It' sjust another hash of MPEG4, and has huge attributes in common with DivX 4/5, XViD, and other MPEG4 codecs."
Innovative is not the word I'd use, but you are oversimplifying the value of WMV. It's not just a codec, it's a suite of tools.
Here are a few pros to using WMV:
- *Anybody* running Windows 9x - XP can play a video from it. Even if the codec's not installed, the player will go get it and install it. The other players in this field are Real and Quicktime. If DivX somehow did this (or became a must-have like Quicktime) I could finally ditch WMV.
- The quality's not bad for low-bitrate stuff. It's not as good as DivX, but it suffices. (Note: One thing that stinks, though, is I don't have a lot of control over the compression. I can't play with the Quantizer, for example... GRR.)
- The toolset is pretty decent. Though the UI is a little confusing, you get plenty of cool stuff up front. If I wanted to, right now, I could set up my computer to capture video from cable and broadcast it in realtime WMV. The Media Encoder tool makes that possible. Never used it, not sure I'll ever use it, but it's something DivX doesn't immediately provide.
- While you're encoding, you can see the encoded video as it progresses. That's useful in determining the right compression etc.
- You can encode it to stream at different bitrates. I can't tell you much about this, though, as I haven't personally played with it.
For the record, I'm not posting this with the idea that people should immediately go use this. I personally prefer DivX. But I did want to share my own experiences here. DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.
So no, I wouldn't call it 'innovative', but it does solve problems that DivX and related codecs cannot, plus it's got a spiffier toolset in some respects. Don't be so quick to discredit it.
"Huh? The xbox is clunky, huge, and looks like the industrial design was done by the programmers. It was clearly thrown together quickly from stock parts."
I'm glad you pointed that out. Now I hate both my keyboard and my optical mouse!