The talks broke down because Sony was a little too greedy about branding and royalties. The basic plot is that it would have mutated into a Sony device using Nintendo's fan base.
MS was probably looking to do the same thing. Had Nintendo been bought by MS, that would have seriously made me cautious about investing in Nintendo products anymore. Nintendo's an awesome company that *knows* how to make games. If MS bought them (and changed them....) I'd have serious doubts about the future of the game market. Still, I'd much prefer MS buying Nintendo than Sony.
Windows needs to be consistent if it's going to be used on a wide scale. If the manual says "Go to Start/Programs/Accessories/Communications/Internet Explorer", what's somebody going to do when an OEM changes it? What happens when somebody goes to find a tutorial on the web on how to tweak their system, and they can't because everything's different?
I can understand MS not being happy about it. (Note: I'm not saying I'm on MS's side, just providing a point of view.)
Move on, not too many originality points here.
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Touchscreen Watch
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· Score: 2
Did everybody here think they'd be the first to post "I won't buy it because it's expensive."?
I'm a little surprised this story made it to Slashdot. Thing is, this watch appears to be geared towards the Rolex crowd as opposed to being made for the general purpose. In that case, I think it's pretty cool that they made it. I had $100 burning in my pocket a couple of years ago and I wanted to get a nice dressy watch, preferably one with style to it, and maybe a techie doo-dad or two. I found a nice watch that , well, told time. But it was pretty, looked a little like the one Will Smith wore in MiB. $400. My attitude was "Uhhh, for $400, I want my watch to run MAME too." I ended up with a Timex watch, which I'm still wearing today.
What's my point? Well, I imagine there is a market for people to spend $400 on a nice looking watch. And why not? If you want to look good, money is no object. Yet, the people paying $400 for that watch, really only have the demand that it tell time. Well, one day I plan on having lots of money to spend on things like ridiculously fashionable watches. To pay $600 for one with an electronic compass plus thermometer etc would be far better than to pay $400 for one that just tells time.
Think about it. It's not really geared for the Slashdot crowd, it's geared for the people who use $20 bills to wipe their butt with.
Seeing as how a watch with a built in camera (which is sometimes remotely useful...) is right around the $200 range, I'd agree.
OT: Woopie, Linux running on something else...
on
Touchscreen Watch
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"If someone makes a post about how they got Linux running on this watch, then I will be impressed."
Am I the only one who is like super burnt out on seeing 'Linux installed on so and so device'? It sounded cool at first, but I never seem to find anybody doing something cool with it. If somebody said "We got Linux installed on this watch and then made it act like a Tricorder from Star Trek", then that'd be the start to me thinking it was cool again.
Sorry about the OT rant. There's so much potential when getting Linux to run on something, but damn never anything ever comes from it.
In a previous post I made here about boycotting, I said that boycotting isn't enough, and sometimes it's harder on yourself than it is on your intended target. Expanding on that idea, I think boycotting is one of the least effectual (and cheapest) ways to send a message to a company.
It's one thing to boycott Coca-Cola, for example. It'd show up on a chart somewhere if a large number of people suddenly stopped drinking Coke. But for a company like Adobe (like I mentioned in the previous post), they wouldn't get that chart until they either a.) released a new product or b.) released a new upgrade to an existing product. They have 0 ways of determining that the lack of income was the result of angry customers vs. releasing a product that nobody wants. So besides inconeniencing yourself, what good did you do?
Most companies (particularly the big ones) would shrug off a boycott with little to no problem. As a matter of fact, I think they would prefer a boycott to nearly any other form of expression. Let's say Newtek (creators of Lightwave) were to piss me off. It'd cost me a minimum of $2,000 to have an adequate replacement. For me to do that, I'd have to spend a good deal of hard earned money. And for what? Chances are, it'd make me want to use Lightwave even more. I'd be buying a product for the sake of getting rid of another one, instead of buying it because I think it'd be better. Under that mindset, I'd be saying "Damn, this program's different from LW, how annoying." Even if ultimately it is better, that's an attitude that'd work against it. That would make forgiving Newtek a lot easier.
Boycots just don't do any good. You know what I think does do good? Ever see the TRUTH ads against Cigarette Smoking? They are commercials showing people making public anti-smoking events. For example, they had a guy in a rat suit climb out of New York's subay and suddenly fall over on his side and die (well, play dead...). There was a sign next to his body saying 'Cigarettes contain the same chemicals used in rat poison...'. Not only did their message get across, but it's the type of thing that would scare a tobacco company. Cigs are addictive. Cig companies don't have to worry about anybody 'boycotting' them. It's too hard to quit! But they will have a problem if those ads reach potential customers.
I'm not willing to boycott Adobe or Blizzard or anybody else for that matter, but I am willing to donate time/money towards methods like that to fight things like the DMCA or the CBT..uh.. SSSCA (easier to spell). I'm willing to take a day off of work to publically protest Adobe, but I'm not willing to stop using After Effects or Photoshop. If I'm willing to do that, then I'm basically quitting my job.
You know what'd be neat? What if there was an organization for 'the little people' that would air commericals similar to the TRUTH ads I mentioned earlier? "If you can get 10,000 people to spend $10 each and raise $100,000, we'll make a nationally aired commercial for you."
I agree with you. There's a difference between having a difference of opinion and not wanting to support somebody who can potentially destroy something important to you. From the text of his article, I don't think Flint understands that concept. If an author starts taking steps to act against something you believe in (such as fair use rights, for example) then you have every right to say "I don't want to give somebody money who'll use it against me."
"...it hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music"
I would think that the RIAA is doing this without the help of 'piracy'. As long as the RIAA says "Pay a premium for albums instead of individual songs...", and "You cannot copy your music even though you can copy your music...", and "We're going to create a contract with you, Mr. Music Creator, so that you can get little to no royalties."
Personally, if I were a music maker, I'd find a better job. I'd want a different, more reasonable, organization to publish my music.
They seem dangerous to me too, but not as dangerous as moutain bikes. For one thing, this seems more like a 'stop and go' vehicle as opposed to a 'go and prepare to slow down' vehicle like a mountain bike. Slowing down for a turn, for example, is no big deal. The Segway can just pivot, unlike a bike.
Being electrical vs. pedaled means that somebody piloting one of these machines is less likely to value their constant speed. A bicyclist has to start pedalling again after slowing down to make up for lost momentum. I think this is the cause of some unnecessarily risks/maneuvers.
Again, I'm not saying that it's totally safe, I'm just saying it's different enough that it's possible that it'd be allowed. Personally, though, I think sidewalk travel with these devices should be capped to roughly the speed of soembody walking past. If they were to implant the proper indicator on the housing, one could be fined for going too fast on a sidewalk. (i.e. put a light that turns on when the device goes faster than x mph.)
So they really only want one session at a time? I'm not saying I support this, but it makes more sense than 'MS hates VNC'.
I think what they're trying to do is get people to either buy the 25-license version of Windows XP, or have everybody run XP so they can talk to each other.
... to make a piece of software, like a music sharing network, for example with a EULA that states 'anybody who works the RIAA must pay a mandatory license fee of 1,000,000,000,000,000 US dollars (or pesos) for starting this software.'
I think if the RIAA were to target the legality of EULA's, it might draw their attention away from trying to take away our fair use rights.
Stories sometimes touch on each other. That's not the same as 'linking to the same story.'
Besides, I wouldn't complain about it. If EULAs are being abused (ie MS preventing XP users from using VNC unless the VNC client is running on XP also...) and attention is constantly drawn to it, then something will be done about them.
Why not use Aura? I played with the demo a bit, and didn't see anything over AE. There were a couple of things I thought were really cool, like recording brush movement and sending the motion data to LW. But After Effects has singularly impressed me, particularly for the price.
I don't have 10k for a compositing program, though I am really curious what the extra 9.5k gets me for that. My work with Lightwave is for off-line/computer stuff, and occasionally NTSC. It's not time critical so real time hardware, for example is lost on me.... Actually that makes a good point. I think I'm in the minority of users for the requirements I demand, so maybe I shouldn't be voicing a 'this is better than that' argument without clarifying where I come from. I'm sorry about that.
I'm not sure what you mean by limited. I've done some really kick ass stuff with AE and am totally satisfied with it. I have no doubt that it's slow, but for what I do AE is not the biggest bottleneck in my pipeline. *Shrug*
So what happens when I spend 1.5k or more on compositing software? What do I get?
"But the answer is, if you are doing graphics, get it. It is 100% worth the extra money. "
I'm not arguing with you about Maya's capabilities, but you need to understand that COST is a huge factor of a 3D rendering program. If you're doing broadcast animation (like Foundation Imaging does for Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine), then you don't have $10,000 to spend on one seat of Software. Lightwave until recently cost $2,500. Subsequent upgrades were/are $500. Maya (until recently) was several thousand ($4000-$7000), and if you wanted quality rendering you had to shell out extra for a renderer. And what does that buy you? For television, not a whole lot.
Lightwave has a kick ass renderer out of the box. It is second only to Renderman. Lightwave's character animation tools are great, it's modelling tools are excellent, and it's interface is customizable to boot.
Could Maya beat Lightwave in most aspects? Sure. Is Maya worth the multitude in cost over Lightwave? Maybe for the movies, but not for TV or video games. There's a reason that Lightwave is used so extensively in TV.
I'm not familiar with Shake, can you direct me at an info site on it? How much does it cost?
As for After Effects not being a 'real compositing program', i beg to differ. After Effects is totally cool. Bear in mind I work on animations for computers and occasionally broadcast. I don't think anybody's using After Effects for the movies.
Actually, if Earth becomes unlivable, Mars is our next big bet. With politics going on the way they are these days, I really would like a guest house for humanity to move into.
Err okay. Problem number one is that it's not possible to define good or bad scifi. For example, Star Trek 4 was actually a good movie. I think you meant Star Trek 5. Starship Troopers had horrible dialog, but was still fun to watch.
Problem number two is that even if there was a way to fairly measure good or bad scifi, it still wouldn't stop scifi from getting made. Look at cigarettes. Those are taxed, people still buy them.
Personally, I'd rather pay extra to watch Scifi and have that money go towards Nasa etc rather than try to vote for the right guy to make sure Nasa gets well funded. Being able to directly say what areas I want funded with my tax money is a right I'd take advantage of TODAY.
I'd rather pay Nasa directly than try to vote for the right politicians to make sure Nasa stays afloat. I think it's a step in the right direction. What I really want is my tax form to have checkboxes for what programs I'm interested in my tax money funding. Not only would that be a true democracy, but it'd help get rid of those stupid "Dont vote for this guy because he is pro abortion" commericals around election time.
Slashdot Mirror
The talks broke down because Sony was a little too greedy about branding and royalties. The basic plot is that it would have mutated into a Sony device using Nintendo's fan base.
MS was probably looking to do the same thing. Had Nintendo been bought by MS, that would have seriously made me cautious about investing in Nintendo products anymore. Nintendo's an awesome company that *knows* how to make games. If MS bought them (and changed them....) I'd have serious doubts about the future of the game market. Still, I'd much prefer MS buying Nintendo than Sony.
Windows needs to be consistent if it's going to be used on a wide scale. If the manual says "Go to Start/Programs/Accessories/Communications/Internet Explorer", what's somebody going to do when an OEM changes it? What happens when somebody goes to find a tutorial on the web on how to tweak their system, and they can't because everything's different?
I can understand MS not being happy about it. (Note: I'm not saying I'm on MS's side, just providing a point of view.)
... for the Panty Raid Party Pack!
Did everybody here think they'd be the first to post "I won't buy it because it's expensive."?
I'm a little surprised this story made it to Slashdot. Thing is, this watch appears to be geared towards the Rolex crowd as opposed to being made for the general purpose. In that case, I think it's pretty cool that they made it. I had $100 burning in my pocket a couple of years ago and I wanted to get a nice dressy watch, preferably one with style to it, and maybe a techie doo-dad or two. I found a nice watch that , well, told time. But it was pretty, looked a little like the one Will Smith wore in MiB. $400. My attitude was "Uhhh, for $400, I want my watch to run MAME too." I ended up with a Timex watch, which I'm still wearing today.
What's my point? Well, I imagine there is a market for people to spend $400 on a nice looking watch. And why not? If you want to look good, money is no object. Yet, the people paying $400 for that watch, really only have the demand that it tell time. Well, one day I plan on having lots of money to spend on things like ridiculously fashionable watches. To pay $600 for one with an electronic compass plus thermometer etc would be far better than to pay $400 for one that just tells time.
Think about it. It's not really geared for the Slashdot crowd, it's geared for the people who use $20 bills to wipe their butt with.
Seeing as how a watch with a built in camera (which is sometimes remotely useful...) is right around the $200 range, I'd agree.
"If someone makes a post about how they got Linux running on this watch, then I will be impressed."
Am I the only one who is like super burnt out on seeing 'Linux installed on so and so device'? It sounded cool at first, but I never seem to find anybody doing something cool with it. If somebody said "We got Linux installed on this watch and then made it act like a Tricorder from Star Trek", then that'd be the start to me thinking it was cool again.
Sorry about the OT rant. There's so much potential when getting Linux to run on something, but damn never anything ever comes from it.
In a previous post I made here about boycotting, I said that boycotting isn't enough, and sometimes it's harder on yourself than it is on your intended target.
Expanding on that idea, I think boycotting is one of the least effectual (and cheapest) ways to send a message to a company.
It's one thing to boycott Coca-Cola, for example. It'd show up on a chart somewhere if a large number of people suddenly stopped drinking Coke. But for a company like Adobe (like I mentioned in the previous post), they wouldn't get that chart until they either a.) released a new product or b.) released a new upgrade to an existing product. They have 0 ways of determining that the lack of income was the result of angry customers vs. releasing a product that nobody wants. So besides inconeniencing yourself, what good did you do?
Most companies (particularly the big ones) would shrug off a boycott with little to no problem. As a matter of fact, I think they would prefer a boycott to nearly any other form of expression. Let's say Newtek (creators of Lightwave) were to piss me off. It'd cost me a minimum of $2,000 to have an adequate replacement. For me to do that, I'd have to spend a good deal of hard earned money. And for what? Chances are, it'd make me want to use Lightwave even more. I'd be buying a product for the sake of getting rid of another one, instead of buying it because I think it'd be better. Under that mindset, I'd be saying "Damn, this program's different from LW, how annoying." Even if ultimately it is better, that's an attitude that'd work against it. That would make forgiving Newtek a lot easier.
Boycots just don't do any good. You know what I think does do good? Ever see the TRUTH ads against Cigarette Smoking? They are commercials showing people making public anti-smoking events. For example, they had a guy in a rat suit climb out of New York's subay and suddenly fall over on his side and die (well, play dead...). There was a sign next to his body saying 'Cigarettes contain the same chemicals used in rat poison...'. Not only did their message get across, but it's the type of thing that would scare a tobacco company. Cigs are addictive. Cig companies don't have to worry about anybody 'boycotting' them. It's too hard to quit! But they will have a problem if those ads reach potential customers.
I'm not willing to boycott Adobe or Blizzard or anybody else for that matter, but I am willing to donate time/money towards methods like that to fight things like the DMCA or the CBT..uh.. SSSCA (easier to spell). I'm willing to take a day off of work to publically protest Adobe, but I'm not willing to stop using After Effects or Photoshop. If I'm willing to do that, then I'm basically quitting my job.
You know what'd be neat? What if there was an organization for 'the little people' that would air commericals similar to the TRUTH ads I mentioned earlier? "If you can get 10,000 people to spend $10 each and raise $100,000, we'll make a nationally aired commercial for you."
I agree with you. There's a difference between having a difference of opinion and not wanting to support somebody who can potentially destroy something important to you. From the text of his article, I don't think Flint understands that concept. If an author starts taking steps to act against something you believe in (such as fair use rights, for example) then you have every right to say "I don't want to give somebody money who'll use it against me."
"...it hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music"
I would think that the RIAA is doing this without the help of 'piracy'. As long as the RIAA says "Pay a premium for albums instead of individual songs...", and "You cannot copy your music even though you can copy your music...", and "We're going to create a contract with you, Mr. Music Creator, so that you can get little to no royalties."
Personally, if I were a music maker, I'd find a better job. I'd want a different, more reasonable, organization to publish my music.
" If this were such a great idea, wouldn't cars have had these a long time ago?"
If great ideas drove the car market, cars would be far more sophisticated than they are today. Notice we're all still driving cars that require gas...
They seem dangerous to me too, but not as dangerous as moutain bikes. For one thing, this seems more like a 'stop and go' vehicle as opposed to a 'go and prepare to slow down' vehicle like a mountain bike. Slowing down for a turn, for example, is no big deal. The Segway can just pivot, unlike a bike.
Being electrical vs. pedaled means that somebody piloting one of these machines is less likely to value their constant speed. A bicyclist has to start pedalling again after slowing down to make up for lost momentum. I think this is the cause of some unnecessarily risks/maneuvers.
Again, I'm not saying that it's totally safe, I'm just saying it's different enough that it's possible that it'd be allowed. Personally, though, I think sidewalk travel with these devices should be capped to roughly the speed of soembody walking past. If they were to implant the proper indicator on the housing, one could be fined for going too fast on a sidewalk. (i.e. put a light that turns on when the device goes faster than x mph.)
"b) very inflexible"
;)
Aren't firewalls SUPPOSED to be inflexibe?
Heh I think I should wear asbestos underpants when I make a comment like that...
They'd probably just pay it. :/
Lightwave you mean? Hmm... I'm a little surprised I never discovered that, heh.
:)
Aura can definitely do that. Aura captures mouse movements and sends the motion data to LW.
I just thought it was cool that I used unusual means to get a problem solved.
So they really only want one session at a time? I'm not saying I support this, but it makes more sense than 'MS hates VNC'.
I think what they're trying to do is get people to either buy the 25-license version of Windows XP, or have everybody run XP so they can talk to each other.
... to make a piece of software, like a music sharing network, for example with a EULA that states 'anybody who works the RIAA must pay a mandatory license fee of 1,000,000,000,000,000 US dollars (or pesos) for starting this software.'
I think if the RIAA were to target the legality of EULA's, it might draw their attention away from trying to take away our fair use rights.
Stories sometimes touch on each other. That's not the same as 'linking to the same story.'
Besides, I wouldn't complain about it. If EULAs are being abused (ie MS preventing XP users from using VNC unless the VNC client is running on XP also...) and attention is constantly drawn to it, then something will be done about them.
Well... the people who want to control an XP machine with VNC certainly care...
"Why didn't you just parent the eye objects to a null and move the null to where-ever the object of interest were in the scene? "
a.) Eyes do a LOT of movement, really fast. Manually keyframing that would have been a bitch.
b.) Doing whatyou suggest would involve moving the null in 3 Dimensional space (x, y, z) but with this technique I simplified it down to (x,y)
c.) The way I did it made it more like moving a puppet, so I got more motion out of it.
Why not use Aura? I played with the demo a bit, and didn't see anything over AE. There were a couple of things I thought were really cool, like recording brush movement and sending the motion data to LW. But After Effects has singularly impressed me, particularly for the price.
I don't have 10k for a compositing program, though I am really curious what the extra 9.5k gets me for that. My work with Lightwave is for off-line/computer stuff, and occasionally NTSC. It's not time critical so real time hardware, for example is lost on me.... Actually that makes a good point. I think I'm in the minority of users for the requirements I demand, so maybe I shouldn't be voicing a 'this is better than that' argument without clarifying where I come from. I'm sorry about that.
I'm not sure what you mean by limited. I've done some really kick ass stuff with AE and am totally satisfied with it. I have no doubt that it's slow, but for what I do AE is not the biggest bottleneck in my pipeline. *Shrug*
So what happens when I spend 1.5k or more on compositing software? What do I get?
"But the answer is, if you are doing graphics, get it. It is 100% worth the extra money. "
I'm not arguing with you about Maya's capabilities, but you need to understand that COST is a huge factor of a 3D rendering program. If you're doing broadcast animation (like Foundation Imaging does for Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine), then you don't have $10,000 to spend on one seat of Software. Lightwave until recently cost $2,500. Subsequent upgrades were/are $500. Maya (until recently) was several thousand ($4000-$7000), and if you wanted quality rendering you had to shell out extra for a renderer. And what does that buy you? For television, not a whole lot.
Lightwave has a kick ass renderer out of the box. It is second only to Renderman. Lightwave's character animation tools are great, it's modelling tools are excellent, and it's interface is customizable to boot.
Could Maya beat Lightwave in most aspects? Sure. Is Maya worth the multitude in cost over Lightwave? Maybe for the movies, but not for TV or video games. There's a reason that Lightwave is used so extensively in TV.
I'm not familiar with Shake, can you direct me at an info site on it? How much does it cost?
As for After Effects not being a 'real compositing program', i beg to differ. After Effects is totally cool. Bear in mind I work on animations for computers and occasionally broadcast. I don't think anybody's using After Effects for the movies.
Actually, if Earth becomes unlivable, Mars is our next big bet. With politics going on the way they are these days, I really would like a guest house for humanity to move into.
Err okay. Problem number one is that it's not possible to define good or bad scifi. For example, Star Trek 4 was actually a good movie. I think you meant Star Trek 5. Starship Troopers had horrible dialog, but was still fun to watch.
Problem number two is that even if there was a way to fairly measure good or bad scifi, it still wouldn't stop scifi from getting made. Look at cigarettes. Those are taxed, people still buy them.
Personally, I'd rather pay extra to watch Scifi and have that money go towards Nasa etc rather than try to vote for the right guy to make sure Nasa gets well funded. Being able to directly say what areas I want funded with my tax money is a right I'd take advantage of TODAY.
I'd rather pay Nasa directly than try to vote for the right politicians to make sure Nasa stays afloat. I think it's a step in the right direction. What I really want is my tax form to have checkboxes for what programs I'm interested in my tax money funding. Not only would that be a true democracy, but it'd help get rid of those stupid "Dont vote for this guy because he is pro abortion" commericals around election time.