Yes, these things don't happen magically, y'know? The metric system isn't just a "lucky coincidence". It is the way it is because some people spent a couple of minutes thinking about it before declaring it as a "standard".:-)
As I wrote before, and since we normally don't need to count to zero, I would use 00000 to represent 32, just as a closed hand is sometimes used to represent 10 (ten).
Actually, 1 foot = 30.5 cm, so one third of a foot would be (almost exactly) 10 cm.
Metric also makes it much easier to convert between linear measurements (metres, decimetres, centimetres, etc.) and volumes (1 litre = 1 cubic decimetre; 1000 litres = 1 cubic metre). English / imperial measurements are a mess (1 gallon = 231 cubic inches / 0.1337 cubic feet). And then there's the fact that 1000 litres of water (or 1 cubic metre) weigh approximately 1000 kilograms (depending on the temperature), so it's also pretty easy to match volumes to weights.
Try to do that under the table while the teacher is waiting for the answer and you'll end up with RSI.:-)
Anyway, counting up to 12 isn't the same as using base-12.
The point is: there is no reason to count on your fingers. As long as you have some basic knowledge of arithmetic, your brain is much more efficient (and sort of base-independent).
I just said base-10 was a legacy from the time when people only knew how to count using their fingers, not that we should find some magical way to use base-12 and still count on our fingers.
Switching to base-12 probably wouldn't be all that hard for people. The problem is all the machines, documents, etc. that were created using 10 digits. Of course, a lot of them could remain unchanged (ex., telephone numbers), because they don't represent amounts, they're just sequences of digits. But can you imagine changing all the keyboards, all the calculators, all the computer codepages, all the books, etc.?
It's not going to happen, even if we suddenly grow two extra fingers.
When I went to school I used almost exclusively fractions in maths, and decimals in physics.
Which I think is a good approach (keep numbers more abstract and a bit more "base-independent" in pure maths, and use a more "practical" representation when you're dealing with the physical world).
Also, I learned to convert between different bases way back in 3rd grade (yes, I went to a very strange school), so I never had a big problem with separating the actual amount from the number that represents it. I only remember seeing a couple of kids in that school use their fingers to count, most of us did everything mentally.
People don't normally need to count to zero. I think most of the time I would use 00000 to represent 32 (just as a closed hand is sometimes used to represent 10, not 0).
Personally I'd use the zeros and ones the other way around (stretched=1), so my naughty number would be 4 (00100).
The chinese have these "meanings" for numbers. I can't remember what 4 means, but I think it's the number of death or disgrace something like that. Which could make some sense (1... 2... 3... you're fucked!).:-)
We use base 10 because we were born with 10 fingers. But that doesn't make it the "best" numeric base. In fact, base 12 has a lot of advantages over base 10. 10 can only be divided by 5 and 2. 12 can be divided by 6, 4, 3 and 2.
Time is based on bases 24 and 60, which are multiples of 12. It's easy to count exacly half a day (12 hours), one third of a day (8 hours) and one quarter of a day (6 hours). The happen to correspond (roughly) to day / night, awake / asleep and morning / day / afternoon / night, which are "important" periods from a biological & natural point of view. Same goes for years (if a year had 10 months, each season would be 2.5 months long, and seasons are not quite as "artificial" as they may seem).
Of course, changing everything from base 10 to base 12 would be more trouble than it's worth, but there's no reason to "downgrade" the way we count time just to comply with a "rule" that exists only because some people count by their fingers. I suppose men could learn to use base 11 with a bit of training...:-]
The main problem with the way we keep time is converting quickly (mentally) between seconds, minutes and hours. But the solution is pretty simple: always work in seconds (the SI unit).
P.S. - In fact, it's possible to count up to 32 using just one hand (think binary), but I've never met anyone who does it intuitively.
I meant for the PC / Mac. I think Atari released several games for consoles (even before being bought by Infogrames), but I don't remember any Atari games for PCs (although there were some conversions of old Atari games).
You see a lot of Macs being used for sound editing (with ProTools), and some these are now being replaced by Windows machines (also running ProTools). Ataris are crap for sound editing, they only have simple FM sound. What gave them a place in most music studios was the fact they all came with integrated MIDI. And a lot of music studios still use them.
I have an ST 1040, but I'm absolutely incapable of putting more than 3 musical notes in sequence without creating something that's physically painful to hear.:-P
The program I used the most was CAD 3D, which was written by some of the people who later created 3D Studio and 3DS MAX. It's funny that some features of CAD 3D only made it into 3D Studio by the time MAX 2.0 was released.
I still run some old games on my ST. Dungeon Master, Kick Off 2, Speedball, etc. 8 MHz of pure fun.:-)
A lot of musicians still have Atari ST computers in their studios. Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) often wears a t-shirt with an Atari logo on stage. And recently Infogrames bought Atari, so we'll probably be seeing a lot of games released under the Atari brand (Neverwinter Nights being the first of those).
Unless you want to make video DVDs, don't buy one (at least not yet). Not only are the drives quite expensive, but the disks are also more expensive (per MB) than CD-Rs. Buy a good CDRW drive (DVD recorders are not very good at recording CDs).
And 4.3 GB really aren't a lot. It's not even enough to store one hour of DV video (13 GB).
In a few months or a year you will have a) much cheaper DVD-Rs and b) new optical discs, likely to be over 10 times bigger than DVD-Rs.
On the other hand, if you do want to make video DVDs, make sure you buy a drive that will record in a format compatible with most readers. Mine is a Pioneer (DVR-A03) and so far all discs have worked fine in all set-top players I have tried. From what I've heard, DVD-RW and DVD+RW have problems with a lot of players (especially old ones, but also some recent models). There is a nice list of formats and players here:
Also, most "consumer" DVD authoring programs are crap. Be ready to pay at least an extra 1000 dollars / euros on software if you want to be able to do any interesting stuff like multiple audio tracks, animated menus, etc..
To do the MPEG-2 encoding, I use TMPGEnc (slow but has the best quality, IMO). I wrote a small guide that you can find here.
Personally I can't stand PKD. Some of his ideas are interesting, but I don't like the style of writing. I think he might be medically insane.
Heinlein is competent, but all his books seem to follow more or less the same patterns (the hero is usually filthy rich, there's always some battle in court, etc.). Somewhat like Hollywood cinema, they're always extraordinary stories about extraordinary people. Personally I prefer extraordinary stories about ordinary people.
Silverberg has one good book (The Labyrinth) and the rest (the ones I've read, at least) are painfully bad.
Another author I like is John Varley. He usually has interesting, original ideas, and writes quite well. But in some of his books I have a feeling he just got lost and couldn't come up with an ending that made any sense.
Lem is definitely one of my favourite authors, and I'd recommend him to anyone who likes SF (and most people who don't as well). Memoirs is not a good place to start, though. Most of his books are much "lighter" and easier to read. I wouldn't recommend Memoirs (or His Master's Voice, or even Solaris) to someone who doesn't know any of his work.
Fiasco is a more or less conventional novel, where Lem's usual cynicism is woven into the story in a way that won't put off the casual readers.
Futurological Congress, Star Diaries and Memoirs of a Space Traveler are very funny books, and a good introduction to Lem's habit of creating new words to give a shape to new concepts. The same applies to a lot of his short stories. The Invasion from Aldebaran is brilliant.
Return from the Stars is (like Solaris) more about people than it is about the world, and will probably appeal to people who don't like SF, as well as to those who do.
Here are links to a couple of sites dedicated to Lem's work:
Well, I usually buy Memorex because I get it terribly cheap from an importer. But I've used Princo, Mitsai (both CD-R and CD-RW), Mitsumi, Sony, Verbatim and a couple of weird brands and, except for one disc that was obvioulsy damaged (I noticed it before burning but decided to try it anyway), all have worked fine.
A couple of months ago there was a slight mix-up with the importer and they sent me 300 discs (I had asked for 30), so now I think I have enough Memorexes to last me for the next 5 or 6 years.:-)
Here's a nice article about different kinds of CD-R media.
The great thing about Plextors insn't the reading, though, it's the writing. I've never seen a CD burned in a Plextor fail anywhere. Which is more than I can say for a lot of other drives I've tried (Philips, HP, Sony, etc.), regardless of the CD-R brand.
Here's a table comparing the BLER (block error) ratio of several CD writers:
When the headlines and the photos take up more space than the article itself, something is clearly not quite right.
When I go there I'm always half-expecting to see a half-naked girl holding a CPU (ATHLON 2300+ HOTTER THAN HOT - WE PROVE HOW AMD'S NEW CPU CAN SET FIRE TO YOUR HOUSE - DOWNLOAD OUR 745 MB VIDEO).
P.S. - To your list of reliable sites I'd add Anandtech. Yes, the articles are 20 pages long and each page only has about 5 sentences, but they are usually objective and well-written.
RayZ used Ultimatte, I think. They also had a simple keyer like most compositing programs (even Premiere has one), but Apple wouldn't buy them for that.
DFusion's keyer is quite good, although I often get lost in the middle of all those sliders.:-)
> Without Shake or Nothing Real, is there software available on > the Mac that even allows you even consider Apple?
Discreet Combustion and Pinnacle Commotion, for example, run on Macs. So does Shake (there was a Mac version before Apple bought Nothing Real). Do does After Effects (not high-end, but not as low-end as it used to be, either).
Making a Mac version of RayZ or any other program (or optimising an existing version) is a great thing. Competition drives prices down and quality up. But killing existing versions, especially the versions that run on the fastest, cheapest platforms (x86), only makes the software less competitive for existing users and less attractive to (potential) future users.
The rest of your points are valid, which is why I say: show me read-world benchmarks. Stop arguing about Altivec and SSE2 and x86-64 and compare software that exists, running on systems that exist.
For example, Pentium 4s are much faster than Athlons in Lightwave, but slower in 3D Studio MAX. So if you're going to be using Lightwave a lot, a Petnium 4 may be a better deal, even if it is more expensive than an Athlon. On the other hand, if you use MAX a lot, Athlons are probably a better deal.
So maybe in some applications a Mac is faster or cheaper than a PC. But the way to find that out is to compare both versions (and in most cases, they already exist). It's not to kill a product that a lot of people have bought and probably depend on. If you've just invested on 50 x86 Linux render nodes, how would it make you feel to hear that the program you use is going to become Mac-only...? Or even that Linux will continue to be supported, but all new versions are going to be Mac-only?
I've written this before: I can understand that Mac users feel happy because of some new program, or new optimisations (even if they don't use that specific program, some innovations might make their way into software they do use). But I cannot understand why they seem to feel so happy just because the other versions (Windows, Linux, Irix) are getting the axe.
You don't seem to understand what more speed means. I doesn't mean more free time. It means more options.
What's important is not rendering a sequence in half the time. It's having enough time to render two slightly different sequences, and picking the one that works best.
So I have no doubt that with a system that's five times as fast, ILM artists will do a better job. Perhaps not five times better (how do you measure quality anyway?), but definitely better.
Nothing is ever finished until the deadline. But on a slow system, it's not finished because it's not finished. On a fast system, it's not finished because you still have time to improve it.
And on code that takes advantage of SSE2 you can see a huge improvement on Pentium 4s over Athlons. And so on, and so on.
But new code doesn't grow on trees. Someone has to write it. And even if there's someone around to write it (which often there isn't, especially in closed-source software), a lot of operations don't benefit the least bit from the Altivec, or SSE2, or 3DNow!, or MMX.
There's no point in speculating about code that doesn't exist and optimisations that cannot be made. Vector operations are useful in very specific situations, they're not a magic powder that you can sprinkle over any program to make it faster.
You can only compare things that actually exist, in their current form.
Intel wrote a Pentium 4 optimisation pack for 3D Studio MAX and it turned out that some of those optimisations also helped Athlon systems. But it did make the Pentium 4 more competitive (actually faster, in certain operations). And that's a healthy attitude: show what you product can do and take on the competition. AMD is free to do the same thing, but they probably won't (at least until the Hammer is released).
But Apple's attitude is simply to kill the other versions so they have no competition (and naturally this gives them even less incentive to improve the Mac version). I can see what's in it for Apple (just as I can understand why Microsoft behaves the way it does), but I definitely can't see what's in it for the end users.
Anyway, as I wrote before, I don't use RayZ, (I'm a Discreet / Eyeon kind of guy) so this doesn't really bother me. I just wish Apple would give Intel and AMD a run for their money in the hardware side of things instead of going "the Microsoft Way". Even if they didn't manage to be faster, at least they'd drive prices down.
> Actually, check out the latest Gartner group study on the total cost of > ownership between Macs and PC's. They found that Macs are about > 36% cheaper to run than PC's.
>> So next you're going to say I can't compare a 1.8 GHz Athlon with a 2.53 >> GHz Pentium because the Athlon has a lower clock speed...?
> Nope. Never even implied that.
You said:
>> They tested software (After Effects) that does not take advantage >> of dual processors on a dual G4 of slower individual processor speed.
How could they have tested it on a system of higher (or the same) processor speed (I presume you meant clock speed) if they don't make G4s any faster than 1 GHz...?
> Adobe hasn't been that helpful to Apple is quite a while.
Why should they be "helpful" to Apple when Apple has become one of their main competitors in Mac software?
It's up to Adobe's customers to pressure them to improve their software. If there's room for improvement, and if the clients let Adobe know that those improvements will increase their sales, Adobe will surely invest more time and money optimising their programs.
> The tests invariably come out the way the review wants them to.
Well, I've seen thousands of tests that pitch Pentiums against Athlons and ATI against NVidia and so on, and they all seem to agree on the results (within 10%). The article I linked to was a reasonably fair comparison between a Dual G4 and an Athlon MP workstion (although it wasn't the fastest Athlon available at the time, and although they halved the amount of RAM in the Athlon, and although the G4 was more epxensive).
But you say that test is no good because After Effects doesn't use the second G4 CPU properly (but do you know if it uses the second Athlon CPU properly?).
So I ask you: what program do you suggest one should use to compare both plaftorms? Lightwave? Combustion? Both are quite well optimised for SMP workstations, so they should be a good test, right?
I didn't find any data for Combustion, but here's a page with a ton of Lightwave benchmarks:
> "Strangely enough"?? It was used to support my > statement that the second processor is barely > used by After Effects. It had nothing to do > with other platforms.
Yes, but it's strange that in that article they say "After Effects runs slower on the G4 than on the Athlon because it's not properly optimised", and then they mention a series of programs that (they say) are optimised for the G4 and... don't compare them to the same programs on an Athlon (or Xeon). Don't you find that a bit strange...? How hard would it have been to run the Combustion benchmarks on a PC?
> Your message was nothing but an Apple-bashing.
No offence, but I really couldn't care less about Apple. I don't sell PCs or Macs, and I'll use whichever hardware and software get the job done better (be it PC, Mac, SGI, etc., and Linux, Irix, Windows, MacOS, etc.). Here's my original message again:
If you "do 3D" (or compositing) professionally you will be using the platform that lets you meet deadlines.
True or false? Does a frame rendered on a Mac look any different from the same frame rendered by the same program on a PC or SGI? If the resulting quality is the same, the difference boils down to speed.
And the G4 is definitely not it.
True or false? Aren't the fastest G4s slower than the fastest Xeons / Athlons? Try this with any program that runs on both platforms. The 1 GHz G4 may be able to keep up with a 1.7 GHz P4. But it cannot keep up with a P4 running at 2.5 GHz.
Unless the G5 manages to at least keep up with the Pentium 4 / Athlon / Hammer, Apple doesn't really stand much of a chance in the high-end.
The P4 is likely to scale up to 3 GHz until the end of the year. Athlons are likely to scale up to 2 GHz at least. AMD's new CPU (Hammer / Opteron) will be released early next year, and will work in up to 8-way SMP (that's eight CPUs in a single workstation). It will be rated at around 3400+ (about 1.5 times faster than the Athlon XP 2000+). Will a 1 GHz G4 be able to compete with these CPUs? I think not. Apple needs a fast G5.
If they continue to support Linux render nodes it's not because they like Linux, it's because that's the only way people will buy the (slower, more expensive) Apple workstations.
Who do people buy Linux render nodes? Because they're faster than the Windows versions? Not really (sometimes they are, but we're talking less than 5%). They buy them because they're cheaper. You only need to pay for the hardware; no "Microsoft tax". No-one is going to make a render farm of Macs. Even if they weren't slower than the x86 systems, it would simply be too expensive. If Apple killed the Linux versions, they wouldn't sell the software at all, except possibly to very small companies and home users. This way they manage to sell 3 or 4 Mac workstations plus 20 or 50 licenses for Linux render nodes.
Again: my message was on-topic and accurate. I work in the field, I know what I'm talking about. I don't care if you're sentimentally attached to Apple or Microsoft or Intel or AMD or SGI or Transmeta or Linux or whatever. That may influence home users, but it doesn't influence the high-end industry. It's all about "bang for the buck". And right now, bang for the buck means Athlons and Linux.
Exactly. I'm glad you understood my point: you can't compare anything with a 1.5 GHz G4 for the simple reason that it doesn't exist. So instead they compared the fastest G4 with a mid-range Athlon (with a similar price). In fact, they even crippled the Athlon by taking half its memory.
Who cares if an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 (that I have in my good ol' Atari ST) is faster than an 8 MHz Pentium 4? They don't make 2.5 GHz 68000s.
The G4 runs at 1 GHz. The Pentium 4 will soon be running at 3 GHz (currently at 2.53). Even if it's only half as fast per clock cycle, in the end it's still faster. You cand disqualify it on the basis that "it runs too fast and it's not fair".
It's not a matter of MHz; I don't care if a CPU runs at 1 MHz or at 10 GHz. It's a matter of how fast it gets the job done. And right now, the fastest Athlons and Pentiums get pretty much any job done faster than the fastest G4.
There are plenty of good reasons to buy a Mac. But raw speed is not one of them.
Will the G5 change that? Maybe. Personally, I doubt it, but competition is always a good thing.
So next you're going to say I can't compare a 1.8 GHz Athlon with a 2.53 GHz Pentium because the Athlon has a lower clock speed...?
You can only compare products that exist. After Effects is one of (if not the) most common compositing program in Windows and Mac platforms. The Dual G4 used in the test was the fastest Mac that existed at the time (it still is, I think). Also, both systems were similarly priced ($2564 for the PC, $2870 for the Mac). They even removed some of the PC's memory to make it match the G4.
It's about as fair as it gets. In fact, I think they should have used a faster PC (that did exist), even if it was a more expensive.
Now, I find it rather odd that Affter Effects (mady by Adobe, which is traditionally an Apple partner) is so poorly optimised for the Mac, and so well optimised for the PC. If this is the case, then people running AE on the Mac should probably drop Adobe a note.
Can you post a link to any other independent test (ie, not made by Apple or a PC manufacturer) where the same program is shown running on two top (PC & Mac) workstations? Say, Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave, Combustion, etc...?
That link you posted compares single G4s to dual G4s, but (strangely enough) not to dual Athlon MPs or Xeons.
And my message has everything to do with the subject. Selling cheap software my be important for the low-end market, but for the high-end (professional) market, what counts is deadlines. And that boils down to render speed. Why would anyone buy 50 G4 render nodes when they can get the same speed with 30 Athlon MPs or Xeons...? And if their budget is enough for 50 G4s, then they can probably buy 70 Athlons and finish the jobs even faster. Rendering faster doesn't just mean you can meet the deadlines; it often means you can do two versions of each project, and keep your clients happy.
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Yes, these things don't happen magically, y'know? The metric system isn't just a "lucky coincidence". It is the way it is because some people spent a couple of minutes thinking about it before declaring it as a "standard". :-)
RMN
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As I wrote before, and since we normally don't need to count to zero, I would use 00000 to represent 32, just as a closed hand is sometimes used to represent 10 (ten).
RMN
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Actually, 1 foot = 30.5 cm, so one third of a foot would be (almost exactly) 10 cm.
Metric also makes it much easier to convert between linear measurements (metres, decimetres, centimetres, etc.) and volumes (1 litre = 1 cubic decimetre; 1000 litres = 1 cubic metre). English / imperial measurements are a mess (1 gallon = 231 cubic inches / 0.1337 cubic feet). And then there's the fact that 1000 litres of water (or 1 cubic metre) weigh approximately 1000 kilograms (depending on the temperature), so it's also pretty easy to match volumes to weights.
RMN
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Try to do that under the table while the teacher is waiting for the answer and you'll end up with RSI. :-)
Anyway, counting up to 12 isn't the same as using base-12.
The point is: there is no reason to count on your fingers. As long as you have some basic knowledge of arithmetic, your brain is much more efficient (and sort of base-independent).
I just said base-10 was a legacy from the time when people only knew how to count using their fingers, not that we should find some magical way to use base-12 and still count on our fingers.
Switching to base-12 probably wouldn't be all that hard for people. The problem is all the machines, documents, etc. that were created using 10 digits. Of course, a lot of them could remain unchanged (ex., telephone numbers), because they don't represent amounts, they're just sequences of digits. But can you imagine changing all the keyboards, all the calculators, all the computer codepages, all the books, etc.?
It's not going to happen, even if we suddenly grow two extra fingers.
RMN
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When I went to school I used almost exclusively fractions in maths, and decimals in physics.
Which I think is a good approach (keep numbers more abstract and a bit more "base-independent" in pure maths, and use a more "practical" representation when you're dealing with the physical world).
Also, I learned to convert between different bases way back in 3rd grade (yes, I went to a very strange school), so I never had a big problem with separating the actual amount from the number that represents it. I only remember seeing a couple of kids in that school use their fingers to count, most of us did everything mentally.
RMN
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People don't normally need to count to zero. I think most of the time I would use 00000 to represent 32 (just as a closed hand is sometimes used to represent 10, not 0).
RMN
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Personally I'd use the zeros and ones the other way around (stretched=1), so my naughty number would be 4 (00100).
:-)
The chinese have these "meanings" for numbers. I can't remember what 4 means, but I think it's the number of death or disgrace something like that. Which could make some sense (1... 2... 3... you're fucked!).
RMN
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We use base 10 because we were born with 10 fingers. But that doesn't make it the "best" numeric base. In fact, base 12 has a lot of advantages over base 10. 10 can only be divided by 5 and 2. 12 can be divided by 6, 4, 3 and 2.
:-]
Time is based on bases 24 and 60, which are multiples of 12. It's easy to count exacly half a day (12 hours), one third of a day (8 hours) and one quarter of a day (6 hours). The happen to correspond (roughly) to day / night, awake / asleep and morning / day / afternoon / night, which are "important" periods from a biological & natural point of view. Same goes for years (if a year had 10 months, each season would be 2.5 months long, and seasons are not quite as "artificial" as they may seem).
Here are a couple of pages about base 12:
DGSB
StudyWorks
Of course, changing everything from base 10 to base 12 would be more trouble than it's worth, but there's no reason to "downgrade" the way we count time just to comply with a "rule" that exists only because some people count by their fingers. I suppose men could learn to use base 11 with a bit of training...
The main problem with the way we keep time is converting quickly (mentally) between seconds, minutes and hours. But the solution is pretty simple: always work in seconds (the SI unit).
P.S. - In fact, it's possible to count up to 32 using just one hand (think binary), but I've never met anyone who does it intuitively.
RMN
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Is there any connection between this story and the poll about cheese...?
RMN
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I meant for the PC / Mac. I think Atari released several games for consoles (even before being bought by Infogrames), but I don't remember any Atari games for PCs (although there were some conversions of old Atari games).
RMN
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You see a lot of Macs being used for sound editing (with ProTools), and some these are now being replaced by Windows machines (also running ProTools). Ataris are crap for sound editing, they only have simple FM sound. What gave them a place in most music studios was the fact they all came with integrated MIDI. And a lot of music studios still use them.
:-P
:-)
I have an ST 1040, but I'm absolutely incapable of putting more than 3 musical notes in sequence without creating something that's physically painful to hear.
The program I used the most was CAD 3D, which was written by some of the people who later created 3D Studio and 3DS MAX. It's funny that some features of CAD 3D only made it into 3D Studio by the time MAX 2.0 was released.
I still run some old games on my ST. Dungeon Master, Kick Off 2, Speedball, etc. 8 MHz of pure fun.
RMN
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A lot of musicians still have Atari ST computers in their studios. Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) often wears a t-shirt with an Atari logo on stage. And recently Infogrames bought Atari, so we'll probably be seeing a lot of games released under the Atari brand (Neverwinter Nights being the first of those).
RMN
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Unless you want to make video DVDs, don't buy one (at least not yet). Not only are the drives quite expensive, but the disks are also more expensive (per MB) than CD-Rs. Buy a good CDRW drive (DVD recorders are not very good at recording CDs).
And 4.3 GB really aren't a lot. It's not even enough to store one hour of DV video (13 GB).
In a few months or a year you will have a) much cheaper DVD-Rs and b) new optical discs, likely to be over 10 times bigger than DVD-Rs.
On the other hand, if you do want to make video DVDs, make sure you buy a drive that will record in a format compatible with most readers. Mine is a Pioneer (DVR-A03) and so far all discs have worked fine in all set-top players I have tried. From what I've heard, DVD-RW and DVD+RW have problems with a lot of players (especially old ones, but also some recent models). There is a nice list of formats and players here:
VCD Help DVD players compatibility list
Also, most "consumer" DVD authoring programs are crap. Be ready to pay at least an extra 1000 dollars / euros on software if you want to be able to do any interesting stuff like multiple audio tracks, animated menus, etc..
To do the MPEG-2 encoding, I use TMPGEnc (slow but has the best quality, IMO). I wrote a small guide that you can find here.
RMN
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Personally I can't stand PKD. Some of his ideas are interesting, but I don't like the style of writing. I think he might be medically insane.
Heinlein is competent, but all his books seem to follow more or less the same patterns (the hero is usually filthy rich, there's always some battle in court, etc.). Somewhat like Hollywood cinema, they're always extraordinary stories about extraordinary people. Personally I prefer extraordinary stories about ordinary people.
Silverberg has one good book (The Labyrinth) and the rest (the ones I've read, at least) are painfully bad.
Another author I like is John Varley. He usually has interesting, original ideas, and writes quite well. But in some of his books I have a feeling he just got lost and couldn't come up with an ending that made any sense.
Lem is definitely one of my favourite authors, and I'd recommend him to anyone who likes SF (and most people who don't as well). Memoirs is not a good place to start, though. Most of his books are much "lighter" and easier to read. I wouldn't recommend Memoirs (or His Master's Voice, or even Solaris) to someone who doesn't know any of his work.
Fiasco is a more or less conventional novel, where Lem's usual cynicism is woven into the story in a way that won't put off the casual readers.
Futurological Congress, Star Diaries and Memoirs of a Space Traveler are very funny books, and a good introduction to Lem's habit of creating new words to give a shape to new concepts. The same applies to a lot of his short stories. The Invasion from Aldebaran is brilliant.
Return from the Stars is (like Solaris) more about people than it is about the world, and will probably appeal to people who don't like SF, as well as to those who do.
Here are links to a couple of sites dedicated to Lem's work:
http://www.k26.com/solaris
http://www.cyberiad.info/english/main.htm
RMN
~~~
Well, I usually buy Memorex because I get it terribly cheap from an importer. But I've used Princo, Mitsai (both CD-R and CD-RW), Mitsumi, Sony, Verbatim and a couple of weird brands and, except for one disc that was obvioulsy damaged (I noticed it before burning but decided to try it anyway), all have worked fine.
:-)
A couple of months ago there was a slight mix-up with the importer and they sent me 300 discs (I had asked for 30), so now I think I have enough Memorexes to last me for the next 5 or 6 years.
Here's a nice article about different kinds of CD-R media.
RMN
~~~
Same here (Plexwriter 10/12/32A).
The great thing about Plextors insn't the reading, though, it's the writing. I've never seen a CD burned in a Plextor fail anywhere. Which is more than I can say for a lot of other drives I've tried (Philips, HP, Sony, etc.), regardless of the CD-R brand.
Here's a table comparing the BLER (block error) ratio of several CD writers:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/cdrw5/
RMN
~~~
When the headlines and the photos take up more space than the article itself, something is clearly not quite right.
When I go there I'm always half-expecting to see a half-naked girl holding a CPU (ATHLON 2300+ HOTTER THAN HOT - WE PROVE HOW AMD'S NEW CPU CAN SET FIRE TO YOUR HOUSE - DOWNLOAD OUR 745 MB VIDEO).
P.S. - To your list of reliable sites I'd add Anandtech. Yes, the articles are 20 pages long and each page only has about 5 sentences, but they are usually objective and well-written.
RMN
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RayZ used Ultimatte, I think. They also had a simple keyer like most compositing programs (even Premiere has one), but Apple wouldn't buy them for that.
:-)
DFusion's keyer is quite good, although I often get lost in the middle of all those sliders.
RMN
~~~
> Without Shake or Nothing Real, is there software available on
> the Mac that even allows you even consider Apple?
Discreet Combustion and Pinnacle Commotion, for example, run on Macs. So does Shake (there was a Mac version before Apple bought Nothing Real). Do does After Effects (not high-end, but not as low-end as it used to be, either).
Making a Mac version of RayZ or any other program (or optimising an existing version) is a great thing. Competition drives prices down and quality up. But killing existing versions, especially the versions that run on the fastest, cheapest platforms (x86), only makes the software less competitive for existing users and less attractive to (potential) future users.
The rest of your points are valid, which is why I say: show me read-world benchmarks. Stop arguing about Altivec and SSE2 and x86-64 and compare software that exists, running on systems that exist.
For example, Pentium 4s are much faster than Athlons in Lightwave, but slower in 3D Studio MAX. So if you're going to be using Lightwave a lot, a Petnium 4 may be a better deal, even if it is more expensive than an Athlon. On the other hand, if you use MAX a lot, Athlons are probably a better deal.
So maybe in some applications a Mac is faster or cheaper than a PC. But the way to find that out is to compare both versions (and in most cases, they already exist). It's not to kill a product that a lot of people have bought and probably depend on. If you've just invested on 50 x86 Linux render nodes, how would it make you feel to hear that the program you use is going to become Mac-only...? Or even that Linux will continue to be supported, but all new versions are going to be Mac-only?
I've written this before: I can understand that Mac users feel happy because of some new program, or new optimisations (even if they don't use that specific program, some innovations might make their way into software they do use). But I cannot understand why they seem to feel so happy just because the other versions (Windows, Linux, Irix) are getting the axe.
RMN
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> And Microsoft has not done this for years?!
Just because I say I understand why Microsoft behaves the way it does, that doesn't mean I agree with Microsoft's way of doing business.
But if Apple (or IBM, or Intel, or whoever) behave the same way, I will also dislike it. It's not who does it, it's what they do and how they do it.
RMN
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You don't seem to understand what more speed means. I doesn't mean more free time. It means more options.
What's important is not rendering a sequence in half the time. It's having enough time to render two slightly different sequences, and picking the one that works best.
So I have no doubt that with a system that's five times as fast, ILM artists will do a better job. Perhaps not five times better (how do you measure quality anyway?), but definitely better.
Nothing is ever finished until the deadline. But on a slow system, it's not finished because it's not finished. On a fast system, it's not finished because you still have time to improve it.
RMN
~~~
And on code that takes advantage of SSE2 you can see a huge improvement on Pentium 4s over Athlons. And so on, and so on.
But new code doesn't grow on trees. Someone has to write it. And even if there's someone around to write it (which often there isn't, especially in closed-source software), a lot of operations don't benefit the least bit from the Altivec, or SSE2, or 3DNow!, or MMX.
There's no point in speculating about code that doesn't exist and optimisations that cannot be made. Vector operations are useful in very specific situations, they're not a magic powder that you can sprinkle over any program to make it faster.
You can only compare things that actually exist, in their current form.
Intel wrote a Pentium 4 optimisation pack for 3D Studio MAX and it turned out that some of those optimisations also helped Athlon systems. But it did make the Pentium 4 more competitive (actually faster, in certain operations). And that's a healthy attitude: show what you product can do and take on the competition. AMD is free to do the same thing, but they probably won't (at least until the Hammer is released).
But Apple's attitude is simply to kill the other versions so they have no competition (and naturally this gives them even less incentive to improve the Mac version). I can see what's in it for Apple (just as I can understand why Microsoft behaves the way it does), but I definitely can't see what's in it for the end users.
Anyway, as I wrote before, I don't use RayZ, (I'm a Discreet / Eyeon kind of guy) so this doesn't really bother me. I just wish Apple would give Intel and AMD a run for their money in the hardware side of things instead of going "the Microsoft Way". Even if they didn't manage to be faster, at least they'd drive prices down.
> Actually, check out the latest Gartner group study on the total cost of
> ownership between Macs and PC's. They found that Macs are about
> 36% cheaper to run than PC's.
Do you have a link to that?
RMN
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>> So next you're going to say I can't compare a 1.8 GHz Athlon with a 2.53
>> GHz Pentium because the Athlon has a lower clock speed...?
> Nope. Never even implied that.
You said:
>> They tested software (After Effects) that does not take advantage
>> of dual processors on a dual G4 of slower individual processor speed.
How could they have tested it on a system of higher (or the same) processor speed (I presume you meant clock speed) if they don't make G4s any faster than 1 GHz...?
> Adobe hasn't been that helpful to Apple is quite a while.
Why should they be "helpful" to Apple when Apple has become one of their main competitors in Mac software?
It's up to Adobe's customers to pressure them to improve their software. If there's room for improvement, and if the clients let Adobe know that those improvements will increase their sales, Adobe will surely invest more time and money optimising their programs.
> The tests invariably come out the way the review wants them to.
Well, I've seen thousands of tests that pitch Pentiums against Athlons and ATI against NVidia and so on, and they all seem to agree on the results (within 10%). The article I linked to was a reasonably fair comparison between a Dual G4 and an Athlon MP workstion (although it wasn't the fastest Athlon available at the time, and although they halved the amount of RAM in the Athlon, and although the G4 was more epxensive).
But you say that test is no good because After Effects doesn't use the second G4 CPU properly (but do you know if it uses the second Athlon CPU properly?).
So I ask you: what program do you suggest one should use to compare both plaftorms? Lightwave? Combustion? Both are quite well optimised for SMP workstations, so they should be a good test, right?
I didn't find any data for Combustion, but here's a page with a ton of Lightwave benchmarks:
http://www.blanos.com/Benchmark/
> "Strangely enough"?? It was used to support my
> statement that the second processor is barely
> used by After Effects. It had nothing to do
> with other platforms.
Yes, but it's strange that in that article they say "After Effects runs slower on the G4 than on the Athlon because it's not properly optimised", and then they mention a series of programs that (they say) are optimised for the G4 and... don't compare them to the same programs on an Athlon (or Xeon). Don't you find that a bit strange...? How hard would it have been to run the Combustion benchmarks on a PC?
> Your message was nothing but an Apple-bashing.
No offence, but I really couldn't care less about Apple. I don't sell PCs or Macs, and I'll use whichever hardware and software get the job done better (be it PC, Mac, SGI, etc., and Linux, Irix, Windows, MacOS, etc.). Here's my original message again:
If you "do 3D" (or compositing) professionally you will be using the platform that lets you meet deadlines.
True or false? Does a frame rendered on a Mac look any different from the same frame rendered by the same program on a PC or SGI? If the resulting quality is the same, the difference boils down to speed.
And the G4 is definitely not it.
True or false? Aren't the fastest G4s slower than the fastest Xeons / Athlons? Try this with any program that runs on both platforms. The 1 GHz G4 may be able to keep up with a 1.7 GHz P4. But it cannot keep up with a P4 running at 2.5 GHz.
Unless the G5 manages to at least keep up with the Pentium 4 / Athlon / Hammer, Apple doesn't really stand much of a chance in the high-end.
The P4 is likely to scale up to 3 GHz until the end of the year. Athlons are likely to scale up to 2 GHz at least. AMD's new CPU (Hammer / Opteron) will be released early next year, and will work in up to 8-way SMP (that's eight CPUs in a single workstation). It will be rated at around 3400+ (about 1.5 times faster than the Athlon XP 2000+). Will a 1 GHz G4 be able to compete with these CPUs? I think not. Apple needs a fast G5.
If they continue to support Linux render nodes it's not because they like Linux, it's because that's the only way people will buy the (slower, more expensive) Apple workstations.
Who do people buy Linux render nodes? Because they're faster than the Windows versions? Not really (sometimes they are, but we're talking less than 5%). They buy them because they're cheaper. You only need to pay for the hardware; no "Microsoft tax". No-one is going to make a render farm of Macs. Even if they weren't slower than the x86 systems, it would simply be too expensive. If Apple killed the Linux versions, they wouldn't sell the software at all, except possibly to very small companies and home users. This way they manage to sell 3 or 4 Mac workstations plus 20 or 50 licenses for Linux render nodes.
Again: my message was on-topic and accurate. I work in the field, I know what I'm talking about. I don't care if you're sentimentally attached to Apple or Microsoft or Intel or AMD or SGI or Transmeta or Linux or whatever. That may influence home users, but it doesn't influence the high-end industry. It's all about "bang for the buck". And right now, bang for the buck means Athlons and Linux.
RMN
~~~
Exactly. I'm glad you understood my point: you can't compare anything with a 1.5 GHz G4 for the simple reason that it doesn't exist. So instead they compared the fastest G4 with a mid-range Athlon (with a similar price). In fact, they even crippled the Athlon by taking half its memory.
Who cares if an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 (that I have in my good ol' Atari ST) is faster than an 8 MHz Pentium 4? They don't make 2.5 GHz 68000s.
The G4 runs at 1 GHz. The Pentium 4 will soon be running at 3 GHz (currently at 2.53). Even if it's only half as fast per clock cycle, in the end it's still faster. You cand disqualify it on the basis that "it runs too fast and it's not fair".
It's not a matter of MHz; I don't care if a CPU runs at 1 MHz or at 10 GHz. It's a matter of how fast it gets the job done. And right now, the fastest Athlons and Pentiums get pretty much any job done faster than the fastest G4.
There are plenty of good reasons to buy a Mac. But raw speed is not one of them.
Will the G5 change that? Maybe. Personally, I doubt it, but competition is always a good thing.
RMN
~~~
So next you're going to say I can't compare a 1.8 GHz Athlon with a 2.53 GHz Pentium because the Athlon has a lower clock speed...?
You can only compare products that exist. After Effects is one of (if not the) most common compositing program in Windows and Mac platforms. The Dual G4 used in the test was the fastest Mac that existed at the time (it still is, I think). Also, both systems were similarly priced ($2564 for the PC, $2870 for the Mac). They even removed some of the PC's memory to make it match the G4.
It's about as fair as it gets. In fact, I think they should have used a faster PC (that did exist), even if it was a more expensive.
Now, I find it rather odd that Affter Effects (mady by Adobe, which is traditionally an Apple partner) is so poorly optimised for the Mac, and so well optimised for the PC. If this is the case, then people running AE on the Mac should probably drop Adobe a note.
Can you post a link to any other independent test (ie, not made by Apple or a PC manufacturer) where the same program is shown running on two top (PC & Mac) workstations? Say, Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave, Combustion, etc...?
That link you posted compares single G4s to dual G4s, but (strangely enough) not to dual Athlon MPs or Xeons.
And my message has everything to do with the subject. Selling cheap software my be important for the low-end market, but for the high-end (professional) market, what counts is deadlines. And that boils down to render speed. Why would anyone buy 50 G4 render nodes when they can get the same speed with 30 Athlon MPs or Xeons...? And if their budget is enough for 50 G4s, then they can probably buy 70 Athlons and finish the jobs even faster. Rendering faster doesn't just mean you can meet the deadlines; it often means you can do two versions of each project, and keep your clients happy.
RMN
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