They should just transcribe the Final Fantasy combat system into a hardware implementation. That's the only reason people buy these things anyway.
Yeah, that's it. 50 Million Final Fantasy players can't be wrong.
I would have installed AbiWord...
on
No Abiword For Mac?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
... but TextEdit, which has been reincarnated from its previous feeble form (known as SimpleText), brandishing its new spell checking and PDF-handling and non-80k-limit... threatened to beat the crap out of any incumbent word processors I dared install.
I wonder what how the stock of vivendi and apple changed after the LA times announced the alleged talks of apple's plan to purchase vivendi...Seems like a pretty big announcement to simply be a rumor.
Well, the stock took a big dip when the LA Times article broke, and now that it has been debunked by Jobs... they took another hit.
Thus proving that Apple really is the bastard child of stocks, as one poster pointed out in the original thread. Also, on a more personal note, it asserts my long-running suspicion that the stock market is... i had a technical term for this, what was it... oh, yes. Fucked in the head.
Hmm.. i sense a trend in calling things open when they are actually closed. This is eroding the intended meaning of "Open" in front of fileformats or products.
It's a continuing trend, pioneered by Avid with their totally closed Open Media Framework (OMF).
AGENT SMITH
Can you hear me, CmdrTaco? I'm going to be honest with you.
I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This Gathering, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer.
It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste their sweaty mice and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.
I must get out of here, I must get free. In this mind are the cheats. My cheats. Once the Gathering is gone, there's no need for me to be here. Do you understand? I need the cheats. I have to get some fresh air.
You have to tell me how... or you're going to die.
(Please excuse my hanging of this question off your thread.)
Anyone know what the effective range is like on your typical mobile phone?
I've been playing with the T68i Sony Ericsson Clicker/Romeo w/my Mac, and thinking how great it would be if I could use Bluetooth to control the Mac, and the IR port to control all the stereo/TV stuff. Now that would be really handy.
I don't know. This iPronto thing, it seems to have a kind of major design issue.
Put it this way:
I'm about 80 minutes into Fellowship of the Ring. The room is completely dark (except for the tv of course). I have, balanced precariously on one leg a vat of popcorn, girlfriend likely leaning on other shoulder. There may or may not be a few drinks on the table in front of me. I may or may not be really stoned.
Then that Balrog scene comes up and I just have to slow-mo it this time, it just looks so amazing, so in my dark, cluttered, reclined, drunk/stoned state, I fumble for the remote to hit the slo-mo...
... and whip out this iPronto thing, light it up, start dragging my greasy fingers across the touchscreen through frickin pull-down menus, eyes blinded by the sudden shift in light and focus, the Balrog's going mental on Gandalf's ass, I spill my drink...
Nah. Don't see it. For $1700, I want to just yell what I want, or twiddle my fingers in the air, and have it do something.
In any case, the point of this post is not to defend GTA3 specifically, it's to point out that just because you've heard a compelling side of an argument that does not mean you really know what you're talking about. There's always other points of view. If you're going to run around calling people immoral without understanding the other side of an issue, then you shouldn't be telling people to grow up. Finding information supporting your point of view is easy. Complete understanding of an issue, that's a grown up method of debate.
You reminded me of something I saw on tv a little while ago, when some guy on Donahue (I think it was) had GTA3 up on the screen. He was going through the paces, showing all the psychopathic stuff you can do in the game... beating up old ladies, killing hookers, etc. "Games are corrupting kids" was the argument.
There was a panelist who was on the pro-game side who had a fantastic rejoinder that went something like this (paraphrasing loosely here):
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
See? I can kill a prostitute, then drive over her with my car. The game rewards this. It's totally immoral.
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
You know, there's nothing in that game that tells you to do those things.
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
What do you mean?
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
I mean, Grand Theft Auto is a simulated city. They've tried to fill it with as much (exterior) realism as possible, to make it look like Miami. But the game is not about killing old ladies and prostitutes, it just allows for that. It is a crime-based gangster game, but those old ladies and prostitutes you just killed... that's you doing that. You're choice. The game does not say 'kill old ladies to win'.
It's an interesting point, and one that's lost on a lot of the game haters.
The biggest problem with games like Ultima and EverQuest is that there is very little actual role-playing going on. This is news to no one in here, of course, but I do find it interesting how the term 'RPG' has been kind of mutated.
Traditionally I would not call something like Final Fantasy an RPG, but that's what it is in computer game terms. You don't get to shape your character's identity, or their destiny. You don't get to 'act' the character. You merely plod along the pre-determined timeline towards your only fate; in the case of FF, sometimes this line abandons you, to search for the next game thread. That's not what I want RPGs to be.
An interesting approach to online RPGs: throw away the Massively Multiplayer aspect. It's possible (in my mind anyways) that this is just an unattainable fantasy, to have a fluid, engrossing, plot-driven world where everyone is a character. The qualifications just aren't there. They've already identified these little subgroups (achievers, killers, etc.) and those players, for the most part, don't seem that interested in the role playing itself.
Rather, I like the dynamics of Neverwinter Nights. Small groups of people, who are like-minded. It's what you look for in your typical RPG anyways; the party comraderie, the give-and-take, clasing of personalities... a great story to tell later, if successful.
What if, rather than selling a packaged online game for all comers, you started a sort of RPG Society? You'd apply for membership, pay a monthly fee, knowing that every player is absolutely into the role playing. Applying would consist of your character history and thoughts about what you want to get out of it. Keep the number of players on each server small. Several instances of the game world. That way you' d be guaranteed of a much better experience. Pipe dream I know, but a nice thought.
I mean, look at what has happened to Star Wars Galaxies. Ugh. It's already become fucked up before they've even released it (yeah, I'll smuggle stuff on foot. In Star Wars.)
I bought my PS2 the day they came out, as a dual-use DVD player and console. Worked fine for about a year and then I got bit by the now-infamous Disk Read Error.
After the usual cleanings and whatnot the problem degraded to the point where I just got fed up and bought a brand new PS2. This time, I checked the model numbers very carefully. Here's what I found... there have been at least 7 revs, all with new capabilities. The first number of your serial indicates what you have:
Serial Number on rear of machine begins with:
version 1 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U1" and has 10 case screws.
version 2 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U0" and has 10 case screws.
version 3 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U2" and has 10 case screws.
version 4 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with 'U3' 'U4' 'U5' or a 'U6' and has a total of 8 case screws.
version 5 = model number contains the letter 'R' (refer to the red rectangle in right side of image) at the end (example SCPH-30001 R).
version 7 = 3900X is the new PS2 Version 7 (what I have)
Once you have esatblished what version you have, examine the limitations using this chart:
Version 1 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games no dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 2 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 3 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r, compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD-RW,NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 4 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, NO DVD-RW, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 5 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, MILD DVD-RW, MILD DVD+R, MILD DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
SECOND GENERATION PS2
VERSION 7 - (SECOND GENERATION PS2) Basic playstation 1&2 Games DVD+R,DVD+RW,DVD-R,DVD+RW compatability
Also, the latest version (available now) does away with the 2MB code that had to sit on your 8MB card just to use the DVD remote. It also seems a bit faster to load, and the fan noise is quieter.
5. Leverage in settling future standards issues like the current SACD vs. DVD-A (DVD Audio not the Trey Parker/Matt Stone definition of *DVDA*)... or Dolby Digital vs. DTS.
I'm curious, to what are you referring? ("Trey Parker/Matt Stone def'n"?)
Furthermore, by staying away from copy protection they save money over the stupid record companies spending all sorts of cash trying to prevent the CD buyer from accessing their own music!
Had a funny thought while reading your post...
Can you imagine some of these snakeoil DRM-system companies trying to approach Apple?
INT. DAYTIME -- CUPERTINO OFFICE
DRM SALES GUY
Hey, we have an unbreakable digital rights amangement system! It's 100% effective. You need to protect your... why are you looking at me like that?
Yeah, I had seen those Newton ads before, some of 'em are hilarious.
Scully... y'know, he takes a beating often for Apple's past blunders/arrogance, and sometimes rightly so... but he had a few really good ideas of his own. I just think he lacked the laserlike focus Jobs has.
The whole Knowledge Navigator video sort of summed it up I think... great ideas, but if you go watch it today you just laugh your ass off, because what they show in terms of intelligent assitants and speech recognition are still a long, long way off.
Back OT,
you mentioned:
Pixar = movies, Universal = Music, iPod = Hardware, OS X = OS.... looks like the picture is pretty much complete....
I don't know about that, Pixar is not involved in any official way yet. Another poster mentioned that Jobs has been saying for years that he wants Apple to be more like Sony; no one really thought he means a split electronics giant/entertainment division.
I wonder, if Jobs has been sitting there in his Gulfstream, looking at Sony's assets, thinking "They've got everything! There's the music.. there's the gear... but they've done this DRM thing... which everyone hates... No! Noooo! That's not right. Bozos! If they'd just... just move the... fuckit, I'm calling Universal."
(I know Universal actually called him but you see my point hopefully.)
He's gonna try and turn the entire music industry on its ear. And he will cackle with glee while he does it.
Unless of course, they're looking to PROVE that the other record labels are full of sh*t, by building a new buisness model that will be successful. This way they get a boat load of artists and music that they can use to prove their point.
I think you are exactly right.
I can just hear Jobs now, calling the record execs 'a bunch of bozos who don't get it'.
Jobs is famous for this. He thinks he's got it figured out. And you know what? I say, give him a shot. Anything's better than the ridiculous Town Elders From Footloose who are running the show now.
Maybe Apple will be happy when their whole catalog is up on Kazaa for download. Maybe.
Maybe Apple is already aware that Universal's entire back catalog, along with every other record co.'s, is out in the world in unencrypted red book format already (and thus on Kazaa).:)
The settlement does not prevent them entering the music industry as such, it merely prevents them from entering it under the Apple name.
Not quite.
Apple settled with Apple Records a loooong time ago. When they (Apple Computer) paid off Apple (Records), they bought the rights to do whatever the hell they pleased with the Apple name. Apple Records existed at the time solely to collect old Beatles royalties and I'm not even sure if it still exists. It's not an active recording company at any rate.
While I'm at it, Apple licensed the GUI from Xerox, too.;)
I thought we had killed this one... Ok, one more time from the top:
Apple has 3%-5% of the PC market. This means in studies about what retail chains sell, 3-5% of those computers are Apple.
This does not include direct-order, such as web or catalog sales, or the Apple stores themselves.
Having said that, 3-5% of the absolutely gigantic computer market is still quite huge.
Apple has around 25-30 million working Macs out in the world. Maybe half of them are OS X-compatible right now.
Put in another perspective, there are about 40 million Playstation 2s in the world. So yes, the market is fine. They make money.
And besides, what makes you think they're going to sell this music (if its true) just to Mac owners? How crazy is that? You think you're gonna need a Mac to listen to U2?
QuickTime is, however, ridiculously extensible... to the point where you could easily add DRM-like behaviour to it. There are controls now for specifying really simple things, like 'don't allow user to save movie', etc. There's no certificates or signing in/out or any of that.
I nearly sprayed my monitor with coffee when I read that headline. Could this possibly be true??
I didn't think Apple had the umph, or the assets frankly, to pull it off. On the other hand, Jobs is a major entertainment industry player, certainly has the contacts, and Vivendi is in dire enough straights to actually consider something like this.
Apple as Record Company. It's gonna take a while to wrap my head around that one. Universal has the largest catalog of music too, I believe.
I don't think the Apollo missions were this complicated. Did any of you guys read the article? I mean, it's absolutely crazy....
See if I can precis here, for you:
A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.
Here's an example of what these people are like: How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.
It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Anyone else get the distinct impression that Apple is dipping a toe into the Wearable Computing pool?
While MIT-style pie-in-the-sky prototypes are cool, I've always felt that wearables will start with basic needs, like the Amp jacket and now the backpack. They seem simple, sure, but the fact that these have cable-runs in them, and permanent (washable!) controls, are definitely a step towards smart clothes and apparal.
If there was a jacket that had a basic, durable, waterproof microphone in the collar, and a cable run to a headphone jack, I'd be all over that. Of course, the real way to go would be Blootoof, but still...
Apple is just the kind of company to do these things, especially partnered with Burton. Not really being serious, but imagine...
Dell Jacket - very cheap, comes in beige, performs well but looks like ass
Gateway jacket - cow spots, say no more
Microsoft jacket - automagically transforms into straightjacket when you play an illegal MP3, calls the police
While the article is pretty long on rhetoric, and I don't really buy into the theory, I have witnessed days where all the computers in the office seem to go quite mad.
You guys know what I'm talking about.
That moment, after you've just helped user #845 with the 15th bizarro problem, and it's only 9:45am... and you take a look around the room and nothing seems to be working smoothly...
I usually just mutter something about sun spots. Then I go have a liquid lunch.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's it. 50 Million Final Fantasy players can't be wrong.
And you know what? I believed it.
That is Fantastically Sig-Worthy.
Well, the stock took a big dip when the LA Times article broke, and now that it has been debunked by Jobs... they took another hit.
Thus proving that Apple really is the bastard child of stocks, as one poster pointed out in the original thread. Also, on a more personal note, it asserts my long-running suspicion that the stock market is... i had a technical term for this, what was it... oh, yes. Fucked in the head.
It's a continuing trend, pioneered by Avid with their totally closed Open Media Framework (OMF).
I will automatically assume that she does not (or soon will not) have the public's best interests at heart, and it has nothing to do with DoubleClick.
It has to do with the current Administration. I know, flame away, but the cronyism I've seen on display is... staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Even worse, imagine the poor bastard who has to try and placate the toppings preferences of 5000 geeks.
Hey! I just found a legitimate use for P2P!
AGENT SMITH
Can you hear me, CmdrTaco? I'm going to be honest with you.
I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This Gathering, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer.
It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste their sweaty mice and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.
I must get out of here, I must get free. In this mind are the cheats. My cheats. Once the Gathering is gone, there's no need for me to be here. Do you understand? I need the cheats. I have to get some fresh air.
You have to tell me how... or you're going to die.
Anyone know what the effective range is like on your typical mobile phone?
I've been playing with the T68i Sony Ericsson Clicker/Romeo w/my Mac, and thinking how great it would be if I could use Bluetooth to control the Mac, and the IR port to control all the stereo/TV stuff. Now that would be really handy.
[ralph]
"That's unpossible!"
[/ralph]
Put it this way:
I'm about 80 minutes into Fellowship of the Ring. The room is completely dark (except for the tv of course). I have, balanced precariously on one leg a vat of popcorn, girlfriend likely leaning on other shoulder. There may or may not be a few drinks on the table in front of me. I may or may not be really stoned.
Then that Balrog scene comes up and I just have to slow-mo it this time, it just looks so amazing, so in my dark, cluttered, reclined, drunk/stoned state, I fumble for the remote to hit the slo-mo...
Nah. Don't see it. For $1700, I want to just yell what I want, or twiddle my fingers in the air, and have it do something.
You reminded me of something I saw on tv a little while ago, when some guy on Donahue (I think it was) had GTA3 up on the screen. He was going through the paces, showing all the psychopathic stuff you can do in the game... beating up old ladies, killing hookers, etc. "Games are corrupting kids" was the argument.
There was a panelist who was on the pro-game side who had a fantastic rejoinder that went something like this (paraphrasing loosely here):
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
See? I can kill a prostitute, then drive over her with my car. The game rewards this. It's totally immoral.
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
You know, there's nothing in that game that tells you to do those things.
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
What do you mean?
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
I mean, Grand Theft Auto is a simulated city. They've tried to fill it with as much (exterior) realism as possible, to make it look like Miami. But the game is not about killing old ladies and prostitutes, it just allows for that. It is a crime-based gangster game, but those old ladies and prostitutes you just killed... that's you doing that. You're choice. The game does not say 'kill old ladies to win'.
It's an interesting point, and one that's lost on a lot of the game haters.
The biggest problem with games like Ultima and EverQuest is that there is very little actual role-playing going on. This is news to no one in here, of course, but I do find it interesting how the term 'RPG' has been kind of mutated.
Traditionally I would not call something like Final Fantasy an RPG, but that's what it is in computer game terms. You don't get to shape your character's identity, or their destiny. You don't get to 'act' the character. You merely plod along the pre-determined timeline towards your only fate; in the case of FF, sometimes this line abandons you, to search for the next game thread. That's not what I want RPGs to be.
An interesting approach to online RPGs: throw away the Massively Multiplayer aspect. It's possible (in my mind anyways) that this is just an unattainable fantasy, to have a fluid, engrossing, plot-driven world where everyone is a character. The qualifications just aren't there. They've already identified these little subgroups (achievers, killers, etc.) and those players, for the most part, don't seem that interested in the role playing itself.
Rather, I like the dynamics of Neverwinter Nights. Small groups of people, who are like-minded. It's what you look for in your typical RPG anyways; the party comraderie, the give-and-take, clasing of personalities... a great story to tell later, if successful.
What if, rather than selling a packaged online game for all comers, you started a sort of RPG Society? You'd apply for membership, pay a monthly fee, knowing that every player is absolutely into the role playing. Applying would consist of your character history and thoughts about what you want to get out of it. Keep the number of players on each server small. Several instances of the game world. That way you' d be guaranteed of a much better experience. Pipe dream I know, but a nice thought.
I mean, look at what has happened to Star Wars Galaxies. Ugh. It's already become fucked up before they've even released it (yeah, I'll smuggle stuff on foot. In Star Wars.)
I bought my PS2 the day they came out, as a dual-use DVD player and console. Worked fine for about a year and then I got bit by the now-infamous Disk Read Error.
After the usual cleanings and whatnot the problem degraded to the point where I just got fed up and bought a brand new PS2. This time, I checked the model numbers very carefully. Here's what I found... there have been at least 7 revs, all with new capabilities. The first number of your serial indicates what you have:
Serial Number on rear of machine begins with:
version 1 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U1" and has 10 case screws.
version 2 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U0" and has 10 case screws.
version 3 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U2" and has 10 case screws.
version 4 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with 'U3' 'U4' 'U5' or a 'U6' and has a total of 8 case screws.
version 5 = model number contains the letter 'R' (refer to the red rectangle in right side of image) at the end (example SCPH-30001 R).
version 7 = 3900X is the new PS2 Version 7 (what I have)
Once you have esatblished what version you have, examine the limitations using this chart:
Version 1 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games no dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 2 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 3 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r, compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD-RW,NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 4 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, NO DVD-RW, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 5 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, MILD DVD-RW, MILD DVD+R, MILD DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
SECOND GENERATION PS2 VERSION 7 - (SECOND GENERATION PS2) Basic playstation 1&2 Games DVD+R,DVD+RW,DVD-R,DVD+RW compatability
Also, the latest version (available now) does away with the 2MB code that had to sit on your 8MB card just to use the DVD remote. It also seems a bit faster to load, and the fan noise is quieter.
I'm curious, to what are you referring? ("Trey Parker/Matt Stone def'n"?)
Had a funny thought while reading your post...
Can you imagine some of these snakeoil DRM-system companies trying to approach Apple?
INT. DAYTIME -- CUPERTINO OFFICE
DRM SALES GUY
Hey, we have an unbreakable digital rights amangement system! It's 100% effective. You need to protect your... why are you looking at me like that?
APPLE GUY
Do you even know who we are?
Scully... y'know, he takes a beating often for Apple's past blunders/arrogance, and sometimes rightly so... but he had a few really good ideas of his own. I just think he lacked the laserlike focus Jobs has.
The whole Knowledge Navigator video sort of summed it up I think... great ideas, but if you go watch it today you just laugh your ass off, because what they show in terms of intelligent assitants and speech recognition are still a long, long way off.
Back OT,
you mentioned:
Pixar = movies, Universal = Music, iPod = Hardware, OS X = OS .... looks like the picture is pretty much complete....
I don't know about that, Pixar is not involved in any official way yet. Another poster mentioned that Jobs has been saying for years that he wants Apple to be more like Sony; no one really thought he means a split electronics giant/entertainment division.
I wonder, if Jobs has been sitting there in his Gulfstream, looking at Sony's assets, thinking "They've got everything! There's the music.. there's the gear... but they've done this DRM thing... which everyone hates... No! Noooo! That's not right. Bozos! If they'd just... just move the... fuckit, I'm calling Universal."
(I know Universal actually called him but you see my point hopefully.)
He's gonna try and turn the entire music industry on its ear. And he will cackle with glee while he does it.
I think you are exactly right.
I can just hear Jobs now, calling the record execs 'a bunch of bozos who don't get it'.
Jobs is famous for this. He thinks he's got it figured out. And you know what? I say, give him a shot. Anything's better than the ridiculous Town Elders From Footloose who are running the show now.
Maybe Apple is already aware that Universal's entire back catalog, along with every other record co.'s, is out in the world in unencrypted red book format already (and thus on Kazaa). :)
Not quite.
Apple settled with Apple Records a loooong time ago. When they (Apple Computer) paid off Apple (Records), they bought the rights to do whatever the hell they pleased with the Apple name. Apple Records existed at the time solely to collect old Beatles royalties and I'm not even sure if it still exists. It's not an active recording company at any rate.
While I'm at it, Apple licensed the GUI from Xerox, too. ;)
I thought we had killed this one... Ok, one more time from the top:
Apple has 3%-5% of the PC market. This means in studies about what retail chains sell, 3-5% of those computers are Apple.
This does not include direct-order, such as web or catalog sales, or the Apple stores themselves.
Having said that, 3-5% of the absolutely gigantic computer market is still quite huge.
Apple has around 25-30 million working Macs out in the world. Maybe half of them are OS X-compatible right now.
Put in another perspective, there are about 40 million Playstation 2s in the world. So yes, the market is fine. They make money.
And besides, what makes you think they're going to sell this music (if its true) just to Mac owners? How crazy is that? You think you're gonna need a Mac to listen to U2?
QuickTime is, however, ridiculously extensible... to the point where you could easily add DRM-like behaviour to it. There are controls now for specifying really simple things, like 'don't allow user to save movie', etc. There's no certificates or signing in/out or any of that.
I didn't think Apple had the umph, or the assets frankly, to pull it off. On the other hand, Jobs is a major entertainment industry player, certainly has the contacts, and Vivendi is in dire enough straights to actually consider something like this.
Apple as Record Company. It's gonna take a while to wrap my head around that one. Universal has the largest catalog of music too, I believe.
Damn.
See if I can precis here, for you:
A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.
Here's an example of what these people are like:
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.
It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
While MIT-style pie-in-the-sky prototypes are cool, I've always felt that wearables will start with basic needs, like the Amp jacket and now the backpack. They seem simple, sure, but the fact that these have cable-runs in them, and permanent (washable!) controls, are definitely a step towards smart clothes and apparal.
If there was a jacket that had a basic, durable, waterproof microphone in the collar, and a cable run to a headphone jack, I'd be all over that. Of course, the real way to go would be Blootoof, but still...
Apple is just the kind of company to do these things, especially partnered with Burton. Not really being serious, but imagine...
Dell Jacket - very cheap, comes in beige, performs well but looks like ass
Gateway jacket - cow spots, say no more
Microsoft jacket - automagically transforms into straightjacket when you play an illegal MP3, calls the police
You guys know what I'm talking about.
That moment, after you've just helped user #845 with the 15th bizarro problem, and it's only 9:45am... and you take a look around the room and nothing seems to be working smoothly...
I usually just mutter something about sun spots. Then I go have a liquid lunch.