I'm of the opinion that Apple doesn't care a lick about corporate IT at first, it's going after the mass consumer market -- where the only real convergence device like this has been the ill-fated sidekick. Or did everyone miss the "my photos" and "youtube" buttons on the iPhone, not to mention the who iPod thing?
Once Mr. CEO buys one of his own, just because they're so fashionable, IT will have to figure out IMAP support overnight, regardless of how they're posturing right now, and vendor lock-in (Blackberry push server) will be effectively broken.
Just because a billion companies put in very specific email servers just to handle a single vendor's brand of mobile doesn't mean it's a good idea.
I'm inclined to agree that CMYK is becoming irrelevant in the midrange, quick-turnaround market that is often being output on toner-based digital presses. Most of those systems that I've come across prefer the source PDFs be in sRGB color space, even though they output in CMYK.
For higher-end stuff, though, CMYK + spot colors + aqueous + die cuts / embossing etc still are where it's at.
It's funny to me that the whole CMYK issue always comes up as one of the major Photoshop vs. Gimp bullet points, but it's really a matter of quality control on the output to me, personally, and that I guess I've just got higher standards for what I think is acceptable product. Maybe I'm a dinosaur (at the ripe age of 32). Time will tell. I know how to cut rubylith, make photostats and set type manually and I was there at the very very beginnings of true DTP (newspaper job at 16). Skills that aren't directly applicable anymore except for the metaphors they use in all the apps (red transparent overlay for masks, anyone?).
One of the side effects of a PDF based workflow is that increasingly the guys running (whatever) press you end up on aren't color geeks, they could give a crap about trapping and they certainly aren't fully trained in every major desktop app like yesteryear. Everyone only wants PDFs now and they're turning things around incredibly quickly (generally speaking). Getting fiddly or geeky with the color, trapping, coatings etc costs them money. I think that the market's baseline quality has dropped in exchange for lightning quick turnaround.
I think that puts even more responsibility back on the artist/agency to do a lot of the quality control that the press operators used to handle... they used to *know* if their curves were off. These days, a matchprint or Iris doesn't mean a thing because everyone's presses are utterly out of whack.
So, maybe I'm a craftsman, or maybe I'm a dinosaur, but to this day and while I'm still able, I'll overlay my seps, look at 'em with a lupe and attend every press check that the margin allows for. And I'll mix my rich blacks to 45/20/20/100 on coated stock if I want them to really pop, because the guys on the press sure as hell aren't going to do it for me anymore. And that requires CMYK in my app and color workflow that I trust.
--d
Re:A question for large print graphics designers..
on
The History of Photoshop
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· Score: 4, Insightful
CMYK matters if anything you work with is ending up in print. On a press. Period. It also matters if files you receive for electronic images come to you in CMYK format. Like if you receive images that have been used in a professional capacity and need to adapt them for web use. Let's not even talk about hexa- or septachrome workflows.
It's not rubbish, it's how the industry works if you want enough control over your image to come out at a professional standard.
If you can't tell the difference, by all means, send RGB files and let the press operator use their best discretion in the conversion. I hold my work to a higher standard, and that's one thing that separates the pros from everyone else. We apply custom curves to give crushed, rich blacks (30%ish cyan mixed with 100% black or it will look weap and thin), we order matchprints, we look at our separations and we attend press checks.
Photoshop's default compression for gif, jpg and png all suck if you use Save As-> after manually indexing. Their save for web option, however, results in wonderful results if the image is suitable for the format you're trying to achieve.
Look, I've used the gimp a ton. I've used PS Pro a ton. For *basic* work, where color, workflow and clunkiness don't matter, they work as advertised. I'm not debating that. Lots of people can use either of those programs until the end of time because it fits their needs. I'm not debating that. But, what if I need to copy and paste? X11 to OS X? No go. Rough, rough, rough edges man. Basic functionality is missing without even breaching the high-end deficiencies.
If you work with RAW images, CMYK, are doing pro level retouching/compositing involving channel ops, detailed masking, fine selections, variable feathers on a selection, adding arbitrary spot color channels, working with HDRI... I could go on until the end of time, point being GIMP and PS Pro aren't even vaguely suitable for the task and Photoshop is an absolute joy to work with.
I guess the point I'm making is if you think GIMP does everything you want it to do, and you don't mind navigating the clunky interface, then great. You don't need Photoshop. It fits your needs.
It most certainly comes nowhere close to fitting mine. Let's agree to disagree on that point.
Re:A question for large print graphics designers..
on
The History of Photoshop
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Well, good CMYK support and reliable color workflow are two of the biggies for anyone who does graphic editing / design comping on a professional level.
It handles type (CS2 and later) better than any competitor.
It allows vector-based postscript overlays.
It allows nearly unlimited undos (history palette)
It allows (CS3 and later) non-destructive filters applied on a per-layer basis.
Channel operations and masking are vastly superior to any competitor.
It works great on 8, 16 and 32 bit images in RGB or CMYK plus any RAW format variant you can throw at it.
It's functionally identical with an identical interface on Mac, Windows and SGI (remember them?).
It has brilliantly designed backward compatibility fallbacks written into the PSD format as they've appended to it over the years.
It has really amazing gif, png and jpg optimization routines built-in via save for web.
It's snappy, responsive and very thoughtfully laid out.
It runs natively on the Mac (instead of via X11), which happens to be where the majority of pro artists spend their time.
Bottom line is, it feels extremely organic to professional artists, has the best featureset, is installed on every freelance station you'll ever sit at, and it works straight out of the box with great documentation. It's the standard.
I check out Gimp, PaintshopPro or whatever about once a year to see how the most recent versions compare. They. Just. Don't. Not for real work, unless your time isn't worth anything.
I know that yes/no/maybe/haha weren't entirely useful as tags except for a quick laugh (not debating the inherent usefulness of tags at all, which I feel debatable).
itsatrap would be completely apropos here.
Just sayin'... the tagging system currently may as well be a checkbox list of categories. Not exactly user generated.
Oh, cmon, you know, as a card-carrying geek, that it's only a matter of time before they produce a 16-hour event (not counting 10 minutes per hour marketing in advance) entitled "Reign of the Psuedo-Basilisks", because... well, we've covered dragons, and gargoyles, and sharks with frikkin laser beams and....
Really, come to think of it, I should just go through the Monster Manual and write a treatment for each monster in alphabetical order for pitches.
Give me something productive to do until January so I don't obsess over Dylan lyrics. Healthy, really.
As someone who's worked at ad agencies who supported lots of different AT&T business units back before they figured out how to do the grand-reunification thing, I can tell you that the AT&T logo has been referred to as "The Death Star" by absolutely everyone in the company that I had the pleasure (or otherwise) of interacting with, up to the highest levels in management.
It's not just the lawyers. It's the marketing drones and management all the way up the chain.
The entire notion that MS paid for market research and determined that (wait for it...) BROWN would be a hot seller, and the entire initial marketing campaign would equate to "are you not cool enough for an iPod? admit it! come buy our decidedly uncool product for the exact same price!"... just mind boggling.
They're marketing and designing on Wal-Mart terms, but pricing to a premium. Something's gotta give in that equation.
I don't dispute that there are some ridiculously bright people over at MS, but I'd assert that they're the exception, not the norm these days within the corporate monolith.
I was just talking to a friend about this last night. Starting with the C&C 3 release, I've gotten into all the Relic stuff (Dawn of War/Winter Assault/Company of Heroes) and I'll be picking up Supreme Commander bundled with my new Geforce 8600 next week.
All of those games did some really unique stuff with the format, and I'm here to tell you that:
- Supply lines rock as a concept in tabletop gaming. Can't have a war of attrition without them. I wish CoH really made the loss of supplies more painful than it does, but the "all sectors must be connected and defended" thing to keep the supplies coming in is a really welcome advance.
- C&C 3... just fantastic. Awesome, brutal level design. I don't think I've ever played another RTS where I've had to restart levels so many times because I knew there was no way to win with my current strategy. And it came out of EA?!?!? Get those people promoted! Some people don't like the horribly over the top acting in the cutscenes, to me who played the originals, that's the kind of nostalgia I dig. Can't say enough great things about this one.
- CoH is basically a bunch of mods on top of the WH40k/Dawn of War engine... and Dawn of War was awesome, if a little short and easy-ish. They did really interesting things with minimizing the amount of time you had to spend managing your base, and I really liked how customizable the squads were.
Honestly, I'm just ridiculously happy that PC gaming is getting a kick in the pants now. I like my games complex and engrossing to the point that they'd be unwieldy on the console. That's not to say that I don't appreciate Prince of Persia or the new Zelda from time to time, but they just generally don't engage me as deeply as quality PC strategy or RPGs.
I'm still playing WC2 and Starcraft, and I imagine I'll still be playing multiplayer C&C 3 10 years from now. Just have to wait on my slowpoke friends to finish the campaigns so we can move on to some friendly competition.
They're not counting TiVoed viewers either in the ratings.
Nielsens are only interested in being a judge of how much advertising dollars are worth on a given show. That's what ratings actually are.
From their perspective, if you're not trapped watching the ads, you're not tuned in.
Ron Moore talks about this a little in the bonus podcast for the season... apparently BSG has a huge share of time-shifted, torrent and iTunes viewers, but they don't mean anything to the network as they're not worth ad dollars.
Bout time the industry started changing its model a little, methinks.
Reporting in on the quality of random videos I've bought from the iTMS:
(Bought about a year ago)
Battlestar Galactica season 2.0: 320x240 / pan & scan (eww) / 649kb/sec (iPod quality)
(Bought last week)
Battlestar Galactica season 3: 640x360 / true 16x9 / 1569kb/sec
The earlier videos I purchased from the store look like ass (shocking!) on my 42" 1080p HD plasma, while season 3 looks quite a bit better than the Comcast compressed-to-hell feed of the scifi channel upsampled to 1080p (surprise!).
The reviewer may have had crap source, or the plasma may have had absolute crap upsampling, but let's face it: you buy SD content and then complain it's not HD? I know Apple's got the reputation for distorting reality, but seriously, pass the crackpipe.
HD content is coming as soon as the content providers deem it worth their time and bandwidth. BSG and major network shows are the exception that are currently actually available in HD.
Apple's getting the infrastructure in place, and the AppleTV is meant for early adopters right now. First hint: no composite out. Second hint: it's DIRT cheap and wide open to crazy hacks which the mothership has been completely mum about (and silently supportive if rumors are to be believed).
I'm currently in the process of ripping my DVD collection to H.264 like I did with my CDs 10 years ago. Oh for the holy grail that would make them instantly HD, but that's not how it works. The AppleTV with a few minor hacks (or, I'm sure, version 2.0) will fit my needs *perfectly* for a media center.
Or as I mentioned in another thread, simply go to your display panel and crank the resolution to max.
Chances are really good that the "fuzziness" mentioned is a product of non-native resolution being pushed on the LCD, if I were to guess based on a couple clues in the question (Gateway, $300 for a "3D Card").
Yep, and I also realize that the person asking the question probably doesn't have his display resolution maxed and refresh tuned on the vga output, so the "fuzziness" is probably a non-native resolution issue.
One thing I've noticed at CompUSA and all the big box stores lately:
There used to be a section in all of the stores with "cheap" cables... the equivalent of radio shack generics.
Now, it's a wall of Belkin Premium and Monster, and the sub $140 HDMI cable (or sub $40 firewire, etc) is nowhere to be found. Even Radio Shack is starting to jump on the bandwagon. I mean, I know their house-brand audio & data cables are utter crap, so they're starting to carry midrange Monster stuff and double the price on their house brand stuff to reposition it.
This leaves Target as just about the only retail to even stock reasonably priced (GE Brand, usually) cables & adapters.
I mean, I get it that the big boxes use the big box items as quasi loss leaders, then OMGRAPE the consumer on accessories. However, I won't step foot in one of those stores for day-to-day impulse buys for cables or parts anymore just because the prices are so absurd.
There's something wrong when I can get parts & cables for a fraction of the cost of a big box AFTER paying for priority overnight. And I'm not talking generic $0.25/foot ethernet cables. I'm talking name-brand, quality stuff that retail just doesn't carry anymore because the margins just aren't high enough to offset their loss leaders.
Aside: If you want a laugh sometime, try informing Mr. Sales Drone that a digital signal is a digital signal. The $150 HDMI cable might be assembled better than the $12 one (debatably), but the signal quality is by definition identical. If it works, it works.
Then watch his head explode as he tries to convince you otherwise, while maneuvering you out of earshot of other customers.
Just try pricing a 15' HDMI or component cable some day.
Try pricing any old SATA cable or power supply. Or RAM.
Consumers are (hopefully) wising up to the racket. Hell, I've got my mom ordering off Newegg now.
I'm somewhere between a casual & heavy player. I raided a little bit on multiple servers, and burned out with the need to schedule my life around 40-man guild raids. I just can't justify playing for more than 6-7 hours in a week, and I had three lvl 60 characters at the time.
So, I put the game down as I'd seen everything I wanted to see, and accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish except for the last new pieces of epic purple lewt(TM) in my set.
Fast forward a year or so, and I bought the expansion, and I found that my needs (being halfway between "raider" and "casual") had been met absolutely perfectly.
The game is gorgeous, the new questlines and level progression from 60-70 doesn't feel anything like a grind, and the improvements to the game made over the last year as a whole, are astonishing.
Yeah, you can look at that flowchart about what it takes to get into the final, epic battle at Mt. Hyjal and it looks terrifying. But, with the exception of taking out Lady Vashj and Kael'thelas, you'll be doing all of that anyway while you're progressing through the content.
That's what people don't realize... you only have to visit each of those instances once (well, twice if you run Heroic versions for the Naaru trials), and you'll be hitting that content anyway as you continue down questlines in your 60s and past 70. The reputations with each faction aren't grinds anymore. You'll get the required rep just following quests and running instances a couple times (as opposed to running, say, ZG 300 times to get exalted so you can actually use the chestpiece you won).
The point is, there's a TON of stuff to do at level 70 now that doesn't require a raid, and raids are far less painful a proposition than they were in the Molten Core days.
Contrast that to pre-burning crusade. If you didn't run raids, you were either stuck in UBRS to rinse & repeat for loot, or stuck in 18 hour Alterac Valley BGs for loot.
Now, I can log in, run any one of 18 new high level, incredibly well-designed instances (requiring boss strategy normally reserved for old 40-man runs) in an hour, run TWO games of Alterac Valley in an hour, and actually make progress in both quests and reputations for the foreseeable future in a couple hours a week.
That flowchart shows you what it takes to "win"... ie get attuned to everything and raid the 'leet raid. For all but a few of the hardcore, getting there is the fun part. You're not supposed to "win"... because you run out of stuff to do!
There's a lot to do now post-70 that's a hell of a lot of fun if you don't raid, and there's a TON to do if you raid.
The best part is: the gear gap is really narrow now. Those who pvp or run dungeons occasionally for their gear won't be horribly outclassed in PvP anymore by people with full Tier 4/5 raided gear. It's a really, really small upgrade, but the raiders are more interested that the name's in purple and they look cool, so everyone wins.
For those who never got to high levels, the new Dranei and Blood Elf areas are great little alt sandboxes as well. The leveling seems a little faster than it used to be as well.
Take all that and add in some of the best art direction, game design and polish that you're likely to see in any game, and I think it's a fabulous expansion.
Right click the menu bar at the top of the screen and click "close" by mistake. Can't tell me you haven't done that.
To ma, pa, grandpa and most of the people I know the machine is now 100% useless because they can't launch an app or even shut down the machine properly.
For the rest of us that know how to boot into terminal mode and band-aid config files or run re-init scripts for the desktop then reboot (or relaunch Xorg) to get their menus back, Linux is ready.
The very things that make Linux appeal to the most hardcore of geeks (ie you can bend the entire system to your will and customize EVERYTHING if you're geek enough or willing to spend enough time) are the very things that make vanilla PC users try it once and never come back.
Apple would never let you turn off the dock or the finder by mistake. MS sees to it that a simple misclick or typeo doesn't remove the bleeding start menu.
Half of the world lives in fear that they're going to screw up their machines. Linux makes it entirely too easy to do. That's its nature.
That's just one example. There are quite a few more, but I assure you that Linux isn't ready for the real world, until the entire world has bearded geeks living directly next door.
I bought the motherboard in October of 2005 specifically because it was claimed to be Vista ready.
Don't think anyone's taking it back after 16 months, even if they would take back used hardware.
And what of genuine advantage? Will MS let me authorize a second motherboard within a week? I doubt it without a lot of hassle.
This is the reason people are talking about class action. The board is unfit for the purpose it was advertised. Complete and utter false advertising, and they're actually revising those claims now AFTER Vista has shipped and the products have been marketed as fit for the task for over a year.
There's no drivers for any nForce motherboard chipsets whatsoever.
Yeah, enough drivers to basically boot are loaded "in the box" with Vista, but little things like a sound drivers, RAID drivers and a gigabit LAN driver that works faster than 10 base T aren't available anywhere. Not even beta drivers are available.
At the same time they're touting their nForce 4 boards as "Vista Ready"... which is completely untrue. Today they changed the verbiage to "Vista Capable" which is softer, but still BS.
I think a distinction needs to be made between the PDI campus and Dreamworks proper -- Dreamworks actually has two separate CG animation houses. PDI/Dreamworks is the one that produces Shrek & Madagascar (halfway decent), while the other Dreamworks campus has been responsible for Antz, Shark Tale, Over the Hedge, and a multitude of other crapfests.
As an animator, the level of craftsmanship, timing & pacing in Madagascar was pretty noteworthy. They pushed the CG animated medium pretty far with huge amounts of squash & stretch, smears and exaggeration. Disclaimer: I know a couple of guys that work on the PDI campus.
That's not to say that I don't long for old school claymation and traditional 2D sometimes, but the end result is slowly becoming more about the artists involved than the tools they use if you've got a good crew and director.
I'm both happy and sad to see Aardman more away from Dreamworks, though. They'll get even less exposure in the US, but they won't have a big US corporate megalith to report to, watering down their unique style and humor.
9% baseline cpu utilization at idle on an Athlon X2 4200+ dual core, 663 mb used by kernel out of 2 gb. This is 2 days after the initial install (indexing isn't running), with no 3rd party drivers loaded as nVidia doesn't have RTM drivers for their "vista ready" nForce 4 chipsets yet. So no sound or gigabit lan for me just yet, and no the RC1/RC2/XP drivers won't load.
Windows desktop manager (dwm.exe) is responsible for 5-6% of the load by itself, explorer.exe generally eats up 2-3% even with no windows open.
It's more usable than RC1 was in terms of feeling sluggish, but resource utilization is still pretty darned high for gaming and rendering.
Don't think Vista's going to make it off of my sandbox machine until a service pack or three make it out the door. Just a hunch.
There's a difference between journalism and press releases that are copied and pasted as news, or polished by a "writer" and published in local newspapers or websites like this one to fill space.
They're what are referred to in the industry as advertorials, and they run the gamut from sleazy to benign, but don't be fooled for a moment that you're not looking at full on advertising. Client pays agency, agency writes article, agency broadcasts to PR newswire, Slashdot picks it up (among others).
Not sure what jealousy has to do with anything, it's an issue of trust in the media and making the distinction between journalism and paid flack.
Your eyes were bought by Supportsoft. If you don't have issues with that being framed as news, then please do us all a favor the next time there's an election and stay home.
(For my part, I'm still not convinced we're not dealing with a slashvertisement.) Um, the PR Newswire credit was all I needed to know it was a slashvertisement.
Yeah, I work with Ad/PR agencies. Anything on Newswire is bought, paid for then copied & pasted as "news" around the globe. That's the point.
Still doesn't explain why your machine is getting registered as needing the ATI drivers at boot (hint, it didn't come from the factory like that if you got it new).
Blame Apple all you want, but it won't help solve your problem. Nuking & paving WILL likely solve all the problems you're having unless it's a deep-seeded hardware thing, in which case you should nuke & pave to make sure so you can get the 'book back to the repair depot while you're still covered under warranty.
If you talk to Apple support or go to a genius bar, they'll send you a replacement machine after just a minute or two if you describe going thru the process I mentioned in detail.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm of the opinion that Apple doesn't care a lick about corporate IT at first, it's going after the mass consumer market -- where the only real convergence device like this has been the ill-fated sidekick. Or did everyone miss the "my photos" and "youtube" buttons on the iPhone, not to mention the who iPod thing?
Once Mr. CEO buys one of his own, just because they're so fashionable, IT will have to figure out IMAP support overnight, regardless of how they're posturing right now, and vendor lock-in (Blackberry push server) will be effectively broken.
Just because a billion companies put in very specific email servers just to handle a single vendor's brand of mobile doesn't mean it's a good idea.
--d
I'm inclined to agree that CMYK is becoming irrelevant in the midrange, quick-turnaround market that is often being output on toner-based digital presses. Most of those systems that I've come across prefer the source PDFs be in sRGB color space, even though they output in CMYK.
For higher-end stuff, though, CMYK + spot colors + aqueous + die cuts / embossing etc still are where it's at.
It's funny to me that the whole CMYK issue always comes up as one of the major Photoshop vs. Gimp bullet points, but it's really a matter of quality control on the output to me, personally, and that I guess I've just got higher standards for what I think is acceptable product. Maybe I'm a dinosaur (at the ripe age of 32). Time will tell. I know how to cut rubylith, make photostats and set type manually and I was there at the very very beginnings of true DTP (newspaper job at 16). Skills that aren't directly applicable anymore except for the metaphors they use in all the apps (red transparent overlay for masks, anyone?).
One of the side effects of a PDF based workflow is that increasingly the guys running (whatever) press you end up on aren't color geeks, they could give a crap about trapping and they certainly aren't fully trained in every major desktop app like yesteryear. Everyone only wants PDFs now and they're turning things around incredibly quickly (generally speaking). Getting fiddly or geeky with the color, trapping, coatings etc costs them money. I think that the market's baseline quality has dropped in exchange for lightning quick turnaround.
I think that puts even more responsibility back on the artist/agency to do a lot of the quality control that the press operators used to handle... they used to *know* if their curves were off. These days, a matchprint or Iris doesn't mean a thing because everyone's presses are utterly out of whack.
So, maybe I'm a craftsman, or maybe I'm a dinosaur, but to this day and while I'm still able, I'll overlay my seps, look at 'em with a lupe and attend every press check that the margin allows for. And I'll mix my rich blacks to 45/20/20/100 on coated stock if I want them to really pop, because the guys on the press sure as hell aren't going to do it for me anymore. And that requires CMYK in my app and color workflow that I trust.
--d
CMYK matters if anything you work with is ending up in print. On a press. Period. It also matters if files you receive for electronic images come to you in CMYK format. Like if you receive images that have been used in a professional capacity and need to adapt them for web use. Let's not even talk about hexa- or septachrome workflows.
It's not rubbish, it's how the industry works if you want enough control over your image to come out at a professional standard.
If you can't tell the difference, by all means, send RGB files and let the press operator use their best discretion in the conversion. I hold my work to a higher standard, and that's one thing that separates the pros from everyone else. We apply custom curves to give crushed, rich blacks (30%ish cyan mixed with 100% black or it will look weap and thin), we order matchprints, we look at our separations and we attend press checks.
Photoshop's default compression for gif, jpg and png all suck if you use Save As-> after manually indexing. Their save for web option, however, results in wonderful results if the image is suitable for the format you're trying to achieve.
Look, I've used the gimp a ton. I've used PS Pro a ton. For *basic* work, where color, workflow and clunkiness don't matter, they work as advertised. I'm not debating that. Lots of people can use either of those programs until the end of time because it fits their needs. I'm not debating that. But, what if I need to copy and paste? X11 to OS X? No go. Rough, rough, rough edges man. Basic functionality is missing without even breaching the high-end deficiencies.
If you work with RAW images, CMYK, are doing pro level retouching/compositing involving channel ops, detailed masking, fine selections, variable feathers on a selection, adding arbitrary spot color channels, working with HDRI... I could go on until the end of time, point being GIMP and PS Pro aren't even vaguely suitable for the task and Photoshop is an absolute joy to work with.
I guess the point I'm making is if you think GIMP does everything you want it to do, and you don't mind navigating the clunky interface, then great. You don't need Photoshop. It fits your needs.
It most certainly comes nowhere close to fitting mine. Let's agree to disagree on that point.
Well, good CMYK support and reliable color workflow are two of the biggies for anyone who does graphic editing / design comping on a professional level.
It handles type (CS2 and later) better than any competitor.
It allows vector-based postscript overlays.
It allows nearly unlimited undos (history palette)
It allows (CS3 and later) non-destructive filters applied on a per-layer basis.
Channel operations and masking are vastly superior to any competitor.
It works great on 8, 16 and 32 bit images in RGB or CMYK plus any RAW format variant you can throw at it.
It's functionally identical with an identical interface on Mac, Windows and SGI (remember them?).
It has brilliantly designed backward compatibility fallbacks written into the PSD format as they've appended to it over the years.
It has really amazing gif, png and jpg optimization routines built-in via save for web.
It's snappy, responsive and very thoughtfully laid out.
It runs natively on the Mac (instead of via X11), which happens to be where the majority of pro artists spend their time.
Bottom line is, it feels extremely organic to professional artists, has the best featureset, is installed on every freelance station you'll ever sit at, and it works straight out of the box with great documentation. It's the standard.
I check out Gimp, PaintshopPro or whatever about once a year to see how the most recent versions compare. They. Just. Don't. Not for real work, unless your time isn't worth anything.
I know that yes/no/maybe/haha weren't entirely useful as tags except for a quick laugh (not debating the inherent usefulness of tags at all, which I feel debatable).
itsatrap would be completely apropos here.
Just sayin'... the tagging system currently may as well be a checkbox list of categories. Not exactly user generated.
Oh, cmon, you know, as a card-carrying geek, that it's only a matter of time before they produce a 16-hour event (not counting 10 minutes per hour marketing in advance) entitled "Reign of the Psuedo-Basilisks", because... well, we've covered dragons, and gargoyles, and sharks with frikkin laser beams and....
Really, come to think of it, I should just go through the Monster Manual and write a treatment for each monster in alphabetical order for pitches.
Give me something productive to do until January so I don't obsess over Dylan lyrics. Healthy, really.
--d
Fun fact:
As someone who's worked at ad agencies who supported lots of different AT&T business units back before they figured out how to do the grand-reunification thing, I can tell you that the AT&T logo has been referred to as "The Death Star" by absolutely everyone in the company that I had the pleasure (or otherwise) of interacting with, up to the highest levels in management.
It's not just the lawyers. It's the marketing drones and management all the way up the chain.
The entire notion that MS paid for market research and determined that (wait for it...) BROWN would be a hot seller, and the entire initial marketing campaign would equate to "are you not cool enough for an iPod? admit it! come buy our decidedly uncool product for the exact same price!"... just mind boggling.
They're marketing and designing on Wal-Mart terms, but pricing to a premium. Something's gotta give in that equation.
I don't dispute that there are some ridiculously bright people over at MS, but I'd assert that they're the exception, not the norm these days within the corporate monolith.
I was just talking to a friend about this last night. Starting with the C&C 3 release, I've gotten into all the Relic stuff (Dawn of War/Winter Assault/Company of Heroes) and I'll be picking up Supreme Commander bundled with my new Geforce 8600 next week.
All of those games did some really unique stuff with the format, and I'm here to tell you that:
- Supply lines rock as a concept in tabletop gaming. Can't have a war of attrition without them. I wish CoH really made the loss of supplies more painful than it does, but the "all sectors must be connected and defended" thing to keep the supplies coming in is a really welcome advance.
- C&C 3... just fantastic. Awesome, brutal level design. I don't think I've ever played another RTS where I've had to restart levels so many times because I knew there was no way to win with my current strategy. And it came out of EA?!?!? Get those people promoted! Some people don't like the horribly over the top acting in the cutscenes, to me who played the originals, that's the kind of nostalgia I dig. Can't say enough great things about this one.
- CoH is basically a bunch of mods on top of the WH40k/Dawn of War engine... and Dawn of War was awesome, if a little short and easy-ish. They did really interesting things with minimizing the amount of time you had to spend managing your base, and I really liked how customizable the squads were.
Honestly, I'm just ridiculously happy that PC gaming is getting a kick in the pants now. I like my games complex and engrossing to the point that they'd be unwieldy on the console. That's not to say that I don't appreciate Prince of Persia or the new Zelda from time to time, but they just generally don't engage me as deeply as quality PC strategy or RPGs.
I'm still playing WC2 and Starcraft, and I imagine I'll still be playing multiplayer C&C 3 10 years from now. Just have to wait on my slowpoke friends to finish the campaigns so we can move on to some friendly competition.
No, they're not.
They're not counting TiVoed viewers either in the ratings.
Nielsens are only interested in being a judge of how much advertising dollars are worth on a given show. That's what ratings actually are.
From their perspective, if you're not trapped watching the ads, you're not tuned in.
Ron Moore talks about this a little in the bonus podcast for the season... apparently BSG has a huge share of time-shifted, torrent and iTunes viewers, but they don't mean anything to the network as they're not worth ad dollars.
Bout time the industry started changing its model a little, methinks.
Reporting in on the quality of random videos I've bought from the iTMS:
(Bought about a year ago)
Battlestar Galactica season 2.0: 320x240 / pan & scan (eww) / 649kb/sec (iPod quality)
(Bought last week)
Battlestar Galactica season 3: 640x360 / true 16x9 / 1569kb/sec
The earlier videos I purchased from the store look like ass (shocking!) on my 42" 1080p HD plasma, while season 3 looks quite a bit better than the Comcast compressed-to-hell feed of the scifi channel upsampled to 1080p (surprise!).
The reviewer may have had crap source, or the plasma may have had absolute crap upsampling, but let's face it: you buy SD content and then complain it's not HD? I know Apple's got the reputation for distorting reality, but seriously, pass the crackpipe.
HD content is coming as soon as the content providers deem it worth their time and bandwidth. BSG and major network shows are the exception that are currently actually available in HD.
Apple's getting the infrastructure in place, and the AppleTV is meant for early adopters right now. First hint: no composite out. Second hint: it's DIRT cheap and wide open to crazy hacks which the mothership has been completely mum about (and silently supportive if rumors are to be believed).
I'm currently in the process of ripping my DVD collection to H.264 like I did with my CDs 10 years ago. Oh for the holy grail that would make them instantly HD, but that's not how it works. The AppleTV with a few minor hacks (or, I'm sure, version 2.0) will fit my needs *perfectly* for a media center.
Or as I mentioned in another thread, simply go to your display panel and crank the resolution to max.
Chances are really good that the "fuzziness" mentioned is a product of non-native resolution being pushed on the LCD, if I were to guess based on a couple clues in the question (Gateway, $300 for a "3D Card").
Yep, and I also realize that the person asking the question probably doesn't have his display resolution maxed and refresh tuned on the vga output, so the "fuzziness" is probably a non-native resolution issue.
There's a ton of cards for $20-40 as noted by others in this thread, and there's an even cheaper option.
2 E16814999901
Get a VGA (male) to DVI (female) adapter for $3ish.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Moral of the story: don't look for parts at big box stores. You're paying 400% or more the suggested retail on any video card you look at.
Reminds me of a trip to CompUSA about 3 years ago.
HP Deskjet 3320 printer: $35 (including ink)
Cheapest 15' USB A->B cable: $45ish
One thing I've noticed at CompUSA and all the big box stores lately:
There used to be a section in all of the stores with "cheap" cables... the equivalent of radio shack generics.
Now, it's a wall of Belkin Premium and Monster, and the sub $140 HDMI cable (or sub $40 firewire, etc) is nowhere to be found. Even Radio Shack is starting to jump on the bandwagon. I mean, I know their house-brand audio & data cables are utter crap, so they're starting to carry midrange Monster stuff and double the price on their house brand stuff to reposition it.
This leaves Target as just about the only retail to even stock reasonably priced (GE Brand, usually) cables & adapters.
I mean, I get it that the big boxes use the big box items as quasi loss leaders, then OMGRAPE the consumer on accessories. However, I won't step foot in one of those stores for day-to-day impulse buys for cables or parts anymore just because the prices are so absurd.
There's something wrong when I can get parts & cables for a fraction of the cost of a big box AFTER paying for priority overnight. And I'm not talking generic $0.25/foot ethernet cables. I'm talking name-brand, quality stuff that retail just doesn't carry anymore because the margins just aren't high enough to offset their loss leaders.
Aside: If you want a laugh sometime, try informing Mr. Sales Drone that a digital signal is a digital signal. The $150 HDMI cable might be assembled better than the $12 one (debatably), but the signal quality is by definition identical. If it works, it works.
Then watch his head explode as he tries to convince you otherwise, while maneuvering you out of earshot of other customers.
Just try pricing a 15' HDMI or component cable some day.
Try pricing any old SATA cable or power supply. Or RAM.
Consumers are (hopefully) wising up to the racket. Hell, I've got my mom ordering off Newegg now.
I'm somewhere between a casual & heavy player. I raided a little bit on multiple servers, and burned out with the need to schedule my life around 40-man guild raids. I just can't justify playing for more than 6-7 hours in a week, and I had three lvl 60 characters at the time.
So, I put the game down as I'd seen everything I wanted to see, and accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish except for the last new pieces of epic purple lewt(TM) in my set.
Fast forward a year or so, and I bought the expansion, and I found that my needs (being halfway between "raider" and "casual") had been met absolutely perfectly.
The game is gorgeous, the new questlines and level progression from 60-70 doesn't feel anything like a grind, and the improvements to the game made over the last year as a whole, are astonishing.
Yeah, you can look at that flowchart about what it takes to get into the final, epic battle at Mt. Hyjal and it looks terrifying. But, with the exception of taking out Lady Vashj and Kael'thelas, you'll be doing all of that anyway while you're progressing through the content.
That's what people don't realize... you only have to visit each of those instances once (well, twice if you run Heroic versions for the Naaru trials), and you'll be hitting that content anyway as you continue down questlines in your 60s and past 70. The reputations with each faction aren't grinds anymore. You'll get the required rep just following quests and running instances a couple times (as opposed to running, say, ZG 300 times to get exalted so you can actually use the chestpiece you won).
The point is, there's a TON of stuff to do at level 70 now that doesn't require a raid, and raids are far less painful a proposition than they were in the Molten Core days.
Contrast that to pre-burning crusade. If you didn't run raids, you were either stuck in UBRS to rinse & repeat for loot, or stuck in 18 hour Alterac Valley BGs for loot.
Now, I can log in, run any one of 18 new high level, incredibly well-designed instances (requiring boss strategy normally reserved for old 40-man runs) in an hour, run TWO games of Alterac Valley in an hour, and actually make progress in both quests and reputations for the foreseeable future in a couple hours a week.
That flowchart shows you what it takes to "win"... ie get attuned to everything and raid the 'leet raid. For all but a few of the hardcore, getting there is the fun part. You're not supposed to "win"... because you run out of stuff to do!
There's a lot to do now post-70 that's a hell of a lot of fun if you don't raid, and there's a TON to do if you raid.
The best part is: the gear gap is really narrow now. Those who pvp or run dungeons occasionally for their gear won't be horribly outclassed in PvP anymore by people with full Tier 4/5 raided gear. It's a really, really small upgrade, but the raiders are more interested that the name's in purple and they look cool, so everyone wins.
For those who never got to high levels, the new Dranei and Blood Elf areas are great little alt sandboxes as well. The leveling seems a little faster than it used to be as well.
Take all that and add in some of the best art direction, game design and polish that you're likely to see in any game, and I think it's a fabulous expansion.
I disagree.
Right click the menu bar at the top of the screen and click "close" by mistake. Can't tell me you haven't done that.
To ma, pa, grandpa and most of the people I know the machine is now 100% useless because they can't launch an app or even shut down the machine properly.
For the rest of us that know how to boot into terminal mode and band-aid config files or run re-init scripts for the desktop then reboot (or relaunch Xorg) to get their menus back, Linux is ready.
The very things that make Linux appeal to the most hardcore of geeks (ie you can bend the entire system to your will and customize EVERYTHING if you're geek enough or willing to spend enough time) are the very things that make vanilla PC users try it once and never come back.
Apple would never let you turn off the dock or the finder by mistake. MS sees to it that a simple misclick or typeo doesn't remove the bleeding start menu.
Half of the world lives in fear that they're going to screw up their machines. Linux makes it entirely too easy to do. That's its nature.
That's just one example. There are quite a few more, but I assure you that Linux isn't ready for the real world, until the entire world has bearded geeks living directly next door.
I bought the motherboard in October of 2005 specifically because it was claimed to be Vista ready.
Don't think anyone's taking it back after 16 months, even if they would take back used hardware.
And what of genuine advantage? Will MS let me authorize a second motherboard within a week? I doubt it without a lot of hassle.
This is the reason people are talking about class action. The board is unfit for the purpose it was advertised. Complete and utter false advertising, and they're actually revising those claims now AFTER Vista has shipped and the products have been marketed as fit for the task for over a year.
Actually, the problem is bigger than that.
There's no drivers for any nForce motherboard chipsets whatsoever.
Yeah, enough drivers to basically boot are loaded "in the box" with Vista, but little things like a sound drivers, RAID drivers and a gigabit LAN driver that works faster than 10 base T aren't available anywhere. Not even beta drivers are available.
At the same time they're touting their nForce 4 boards as "Vista Ready"... which is completely untrue. Today they changed the verbiage to "Vista Capable" which is softer, but still BS.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce4_family.html
Don't tell me nVidia didn't have *years* to prepare for launch. Their public RC1 and RC2 drivers never even made it close to a stable state.
I think a distinction needs to be made between the PDI campus and Dreamworks proper -- Dreamworks actually has two separate CG animation houses. PDI/Dreamworks is the one that produces Shrek & Madagascar (halfway decent), while the other Dreamworks campus has been responsible for Antz, Shark Tale, Over the Hedge, and a multitude of other crapfests.
As an animator, the level of craftsmanship, timing & pacing in Madagascar was pretty noteworthy. They pushed the CG animated medium pretty far with huge amounts of squash & stretch, smears and exaggeration. Disclaimer: I know a couple of guys that work on the PDI campus.
That's not to say that I don't long for old school claymation and traditional 2D sometimes, but the end result is slowly becoming more about the artists involved than the tools they use if you've got a good crew and director.
I'm both happy and sad to see Aardman more away from Dreamworks, though. They'll get even less exposure in the US, but they won't have a big US corporate megalith to report to, watering down their unique style and humor.
Bare metal install of Win Vista Home Premium:
9% baseline cpu utilization at idle on an Athlon X2 4200+ dual core, 663 mb used by kernel out of 2 gb. This is 2 days after the initial install (indexing isn't running), with no 3rd party drivers loaded as nVidia doesn't have RTM drivers for their "vista ready" nForce 4 chipsets yet. So no sound or gigabit lan for me just yet, and no the RC1/RC2/XP drivers won't load.
Windows desktop manager (dwm.exe) is responsible for 5-6% of the load by itself, explorer.exe generally eats up 2-3% even with no windows open.
It's more usable than RC1 was in terms of feeling sluggish, but resource utilization is still pretty darned high for gaming and rendering.
Don't think Vista's going to make it off of my sandbox machine until a service pack or three make it out the door. Just a hunch.
There's a difference between journalism and press releases that are copied and pasted as news, or polished by a "writer" and published in local newspapers or websites like this one to fill space.
They're what are referred to in the industry as advertorials, and they run the gamut from sleazy to benign, but don't be fooled for a moment that you're not looking at full on advertising. Client pays agency, agency writes article, agency broadcasts to PR newswire, Slashdot picks it up (among others).
Not sure what jealousy has to do with anything, it's an issue of trust in the media and making the distinction between journalism and paid flack.
Your eyes were bought by Supportsoft. If you don't have issues with that being framed as news, then please do us all a favor the next time there's an election and stay home.
Yeah, I work with Ad/PR agencies. Anything on Newswire is bought, paid for then copied & pasted as "news" around the globe. That's the point.
Still doesn't explain why your machine is getting registered as needing the ATI drivers at boot (hint, it didn't come from the factory like that if you got it new).
Blame Apple all you want, but it won't help solve your problem. Nuking & paving WILL likely solve all the problems you're having unless it's a deep-seeded hardware thing, in which case you should nuke & pave to make sure so you can get the 'book back to the repair depot while you're still covered under warranty.
If you talk to Apple support or go to a genius bar, they'll send you a replacement machine after just a minute or two if you describe going thru the process I mentioned in detail.