Sounds to me like how my screen looks when the VGA cable gets knocked a little out of whack with the video card. It might be a short in the monitor cable as well.
Don't think I've ever seen an LCD panel drift in color unless it was a cabling issue. CRTs, on the other hand, generally either drift to red or green as they die in my experience.
There's lots of software-based gamma/color correction fixes that you can apply to the monitor depending on your OS. The 'advanced' display driver panel should have some color/gamma adjustments if you've got an nVidia or ATI card under Win, and there's a big ass "calibrate" button on your display preference pane on the Mac that'll let you get stuff back in whack.
If you're running any Adobe apps under Win or Mac OS 9, there's the Adobe Gamma control panel -- which I personally used when I had an old CRT that decided to go pink and dark on me.
When you start talking calibration hardware, on the other hand, you're starting to talk about stuff like the Gretag-Macbeth EyeOne series or a Spider, which are probably more pricey than the new LCD you've got your eye on.
As a person who's played EQ1 (and the first 3 expansions for it), DAoC, SWG and a few other obscure MMO's, I can say in all honesty that World of Warcraft is as close to a "casual gaming" experience as I've seen.
First off, the 24/7 gameplay (PvP or loot farming I assume you're talking about) and raid griding are endgame passtimes. I mean, you could (in theory) kill 500 spawns of the exact same Murloc camp to get from levels 20-30, but WoW gives you a much more enjoyable progression through the levels. I hate to get cliche, it's the journey (discovery & progression) not the destination (endgame raids & PvP ladders) -- Quests lead you through the world and can get repetitive, but you never feel like you're forced to mindlessly grind. At least nowhere near as much as any of the games I listed above.
You only "have" to do those raids or grind reputation 24/7 if competing with hardcore players is your goal in the game. That's a small, small subset of the market though. They're the loudest, but the smallest, if the subscription numbers mean anything.
In the other games I mentioned (excepting SWG), grinding a single mob until it stops giving you adequate experience then moving on to the next is necessary so you can get to the "real" point of those games. The focus is on the endgame, hardcore aspect. That's not to say that "bring me 20 duskbat pelts" doesn't get repetitive as all hell, but fedex and bounty quests are designed to introduce you to the lore and guide your exploration of the world.
SWG didn't have a point *at all* and no real progression besides profession grinding. It was a giant social sandbox. More akin to Second Life or Sims Online than a D&D-style RPG. It could be argued that it was a "true" RPG where the roleplaying took center stage, though, I'm not sure the majority of the playerbase would call it fun. I sure as hell didn't!
I'm half tempted to start a testy little essay of my own about how the games Brad's designed represent the flaws that all others in the market have been striving to overcome.
His design philosophy seems to take delight in a survival-of-the-fittest gaming approach. Call it MMO Darwinism: only those that are willing to live in these worlds 24x7 are entitled to any rewards at all, and the majority of content post-launch is tailored to the hardcore/uber-guild. If you don't like it, tough... it's the Vision, you see. Most of his fans are the "hardcore" element, and his games are designed catering almost exclusively to them, although they're a tiny fraction of the market. They like the fact that the hardcore heart of the games are exclusionary by design.
Loot from hardcore camps is required to move on to the next tier of challenges, so he's forcing player generated content (camping/kill stealing/griefing in this case) to fill the hole where compelling story and *GAMEPLAY* should be.
Brad's games in general are rat mazes -- social engineering experiments, as opposed to the *game* that is WoW.
Honestly, I'm a gray area between a casual and hardcore player. I go on hardcore PvP binges (yeah, WoW is a sandbox, but a fun one), but after my Everquest and DAoC experiences, I'm sick of guild drama and therefore guildless, so I miss out on the very top dungeon raids in WoW unless on a rare occasion I get asked to fill a slot for a no-show in another guild. It doesn't feel like work, and when it does I get resentful and stop playing for a while.
If I want to solo, WoW lets me. If I have a quest to kill Bob the Evil, no one is going to take Bob the Evil's head from me after he's dead (he'll drop a head for everyone in the group that needs it) If I want to invest 5 hours in a raid, WoW lets me -- and no one else is camping Rend when I get in his room. It feels like a game. I can log on, have fun for an hour... always accomplish something toward a goal... and log out. I don't *need* an enormous time investment or a social support umbrella in order to enjoy the experience. Matter of fact, before the end game, WoW rewards me for taking time off (rest XP).
Instancing in moderation, like WoW, is a perfect mix of MMO social interaction and immersiveness.
I mean, seriously, if I have to fight to keep a spot killing a single skeleton in the northeast corner in the third room of the Dungeon of Doom over and over and over again, sitting on my ass for 5 minutes between each spawn, it's not exactly epic, immersive or story-driven, is it?
Actually, for the first 8 or so years of DVD distribution, Warner was the company that just didn't get it. In a major way.
Almost all of their DVD releases were full-screen interlaced pan & scan, PCM audio, completely devoid of special features and usually comparable in quality to the VHS versions they were shipping. They weren't even worth $10, IMO.
Of course, this proved to be a Lucasfilm-worthy ploy as they released non-shitty (everything being relative) "Extra, Extra Special Editions" of their films with extra, extra special features like dolby digital, letterboxing and progressive bitrate in the last year or two.
Suffice it to say I won't be getting my new copies of A Christmas Story or Purple Rain (two of the worst first edition Warner DVDs off the top of my head)) until the HD-DVD debate is over with.
I believe Whedon has referred to the Enterprise-D as a "Floating Sheraton in Space"
I think it made me spit coffee out of my nose when I read that, and I'm a die hard trekkie as well.
There's something to be said for how much more interesting drama you can get when all of the main characters don't share the same ideals, though. The only thing keeping them together is that they're misfits and have no place in a society who has some rules that they don't believe in.
In addition to running the series in order, SciFi has promoted the living hell out of the thing, and shown the unaired eps. Wish they'd have shown then in glorious 16:9 like the DVD set, but you can't have everything.
Made browncoats out of my wife, myself and our closest friends who had social lives during the Friday nights that it allegedly aired on originally.
All that said, we were in line for the first showing after work this evening and it didn't disappoint -- although there was a LOT of talk afterward. Can't get into that without venturing into spoiler territory, which I *urge* everyone to avoid the living hell out of if you're emotionally invested in the show.
From some reading I did earlier this week, IIRC, the series was mostly Lightwave, but they transitioned their assets to a Maya/Mental Ray environment due to having to render at 4k resolution and staffing issues. Most feature Maya pipelines that I know of currently use Shake as the compositing tool.
There's a rather nice article detailing all of the behind the scenes stuff here however, reg is required and I can't be bothered to dig out my password to confirm the previous paragraph.
I believe I remember seeing a big Avid logo in the credits, but then again I know Joss is a Mac guy, so it could have been Final Cut Pro -- really anything works just fine for offline edits. I'm sure lots of different platforms were used depending on the stage in production.
I doubt this will be a particularly popular view on the situation, but here's how I see it:
- People with the Intel transition kits are under NDA
- The VAST majority of people installing Tiger on off-the-shelf Intel hardware are doing it using pirated copies
- Installing OS X on said Intel hardware is against the clickwrap license
- Instructing people how to obtain said pirated goods and then specifically do something that's against both NDA and license agreements is quite far over the top.
There's a lot of sites out there that are posting Torrent links and how-to videos that are basically forcing Apple's hand in this matter.
What the hell do you expect Apple to do? Not defend their IP when sites get that far out of line? The way the legal system works, Apple *has* to respond, even if they don't want to.
Anyone who doesn't think that the Intel compiles of OS X over the last 5 years hasn't been running on off-the-shelf boxes in Cupertino is seriously naïve. Of course Apple knew it was possible to do this.
Paranoia was the greatest RPG I've ever experienced for actual role playing.
The GM is basically encouraged to disregard any and all dice roles, rules, etc in favor of making the story more interesting, or at least to be a serious dick to a deserving player.
All of the players are pitted against each other. Everyone has something to hide, and you're usually put on a completely impossible mission (not D&D Tomb of Horrors-style impossible -- completely, absurdly, unattainable goals), given get out of jail free cards (clones) to do incredibly stupid, but funny, things, and you're rewarded for being the sneakiest member of the bunch. Although the last man standing rarely stays standing very long.
Mechanics aren't the point of the game. Having fun trying to one-up the guys you're playing with is.
This is the game where you're supposed to do all of those things that make a red faced DM open up the heavens with lightning bolts in a D&D game.
All of those one-liners, all of those stupid things (but why can't I pick the dragon's pockets? so what if it doesn't have pockets?)... they're all the focus of this game.
The hosting provider I use for the vast majority of my clients and my personal site just added a greylist/graytrap system into place, and it works amazingly well so far.
Three months and a total of 15 *total* spam messages have made it to my mail over that time period, which Spamassasin flagged and then Apple Mail's filtering dealt with accordingly. This is as opposed to about 750 per day on my two main accounts previously.
The beauty of greylists is that false positives are virtually unheardof (I support about 150 users and haven't had a single report in this time) because the entire nature of a greylist means that if the mail comes from a legitimate email server, it will try to send the message again in a couple of minutes at which point it becomes a trusted host.
Of course, open relays are still a problem in this scenario, but that's what the other layers of filtering (bayes etc) are for. Add the new ClamAV distro into the mix and email is bearable again with no need to constantly train my bayes filter.
I used one of these at a client's location on a Mac SE circa 1991.
Basically, it had a glass mirrored mousepad with a grid of points and lines on it.
As I recall, accuracy with absolutely terrible (you had to move quite far for movement to be recognized at all), ergonomics were painful, and you had to hold the mouse exactly vertical on the pad for it to track correctly.
These were a "gee-whiz" luxury item at the time that unscrupulous computer dealers would sell as a mark-up item when the Mac SE's mouse was about a thousand times nicer and easier to use.
Speaking for the Maya users out there, I'm curious if the sensors / clicking mechanism will freak out if I option+LMB+RMB to dolly in the viewport.
I really love the idea of a scroll ball, though. And I do love how Apple mice feel, always have since the Mac SE. But my Logitech MX 310 is the best freaking Maya mouse I've found and comes closest to that elusive Mac mouse "weight" and comfort. Curious to see how the mightymouse compares... credit card out.
He does very little talking about the actual game. In fact, I'm not even sure you could call it a review.
To summarize the not-entirely-incomprehensible nuggets:
Some J-pop singer replaced herself, but just isn't the same and that makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.
The producer catered to the masses by producing a more polished, yet less quirky version of the original. This makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.
Blacking out stars and extinguishing life makes the reviewer sad, yet happy, which incidentally reminds him of how he felt when he heard some obscure piece of J-pop for the fiftieth time and actually understood the song's underlying theme.
I'm thinking TFA was originally written in crayon on a padded wall somewhere and transcribed without any heed for punctuation or paragraph structure.
My wife started playing DAoC with me a few years ago and she enjoyed the exploration and questing aspects, but didn't care for the PvP portion of it (which was my biggest draw).
These days, she's a monkey on crack for WoW. Avatars can be scantily clad if you go for that, but generally they're not. She spends half of her time playing as a big fat bear collecting herbs for alchemy and making money, or stealthing around exploring without any character advancement at all.
At first, I thought the battlegrounds in WoW were going to be very similar to DAoC -- but my wife begs to differ. She's become one of the best flag carriers on our primary server (Shadow Moon/Alliance). The difference is that there are very specific roles (including non-combat) that need to be filled in Warsong and Alterac, and she's all over it. Strategy and cooperation are absolutely required, with an occasional side order of zerging -- as opposed to the exact opposite in DAoC.
I think that's one of the major differences between men and women's interaction with games -- my wife usually wants to be entertained intellectually (most of the time), but my adrenaline rush and need to WIN trump my intellectual needs (most of the time).
That's not to say that I haven't gotten her to embrace my Red == Dead philosophy (she actually quite enjoys a good gank these days), or that I didn't play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time exclusively for the puzzles. It's just that those go against our usual normal tastes.
Regardless, she won't touch The Sims or any shooter, but well designed RPGs, puzzle games like PoP, and the occasional Gauntlet clone like the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series get her undivided attention, and mine as well.
I'd imagine the trouble with the video resolution under Windows is the lack of a 'real' driver for the Intel chipset based card. According to TFA, they were guessing what chipset, etc, it was running -- and with the DVI connection, I'm shocked they even got it up to 1600x1200 without the proper driver.
I'm another that followed my caffeine addiction to an absurd conclusion.
Over the last few years I've gathered an extremely large collection of super low tech, and a few high tech pieces of coffee roasting and preparation equipment.
I also have a passion for cooking, and I've started learning techniques from all over the world.
My wife is only tolerant of the coffee geekery, but she's utterly devoted to my amateur chef pursuits.
There's also something extremely meditative I find about fishing. Gear, technique, patience. Much like chess -- easy to learn, lifetime to master sort of thing.
I don't seek out low-tech diversions on purpose -- in fact, there are incredibly high tech tools to use in each of these fields. It's just in some of them, the low tech ways are the best ways of accomplishing things -- plus I feel there's more of *me* in the end result, which is a bit more rewarding.
I still do all of my art in Photoshop and Maya, though. Low tech is great for some things (a grill, for instance), but undo is better!
I work as the tech director for a medium sized ad agency, and I can tell you that Quark is dead, they just don't know it yet.
There are very few companies I despise with the special brand of hate that I reserve for Quark. Microsoft doesn't even come close to their ranking on my hate scale.
My agency spent about fifty grand on v5-v6 upgrades, only to find that serial numbers didn't come in the box -- you had to call India.
Well, about eighty hours on the phone to India later, I was informed that they couldn't find any but two of our prior copies as eligible upgrades, so it looked like we were shit out of luck with the other $47k we bought. Have a nice day, can we help you with anything else?
These are legit copies with audit trails back to version 2 that Quark's horrid outsourced phone drones couldn't find in their system, so we're fucked. End of story.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I now have to use cracks on legitimately purchased software, and Quark isn't getting a cent of my money ever again.
Sure, Xpress 3.3.2 was a good program. That was the last solid release of their software, and it was practically ten years ago.
Just now -- almost five years after the beginning stages of OS X -- are the dinosaurs of the printing industry beginning to accept Quark 6 files. You thought it was bad enough to have to run Xpress 5 in classic for two years? Try backsaving every file you send out for the next two.
We're still getting Quark 3 files from freelancers from time to time. Ten years later.
Which brings up a point: the switch from Xpress to Indesign isn't going to happen overnight -- we're in the beginning stages of it. It's going to take a full ten years or so for all traces of it to disappear from the publishing environment. Pagemaker still hasn't disappeared, QED.
Well, Spotlight does (and doesn't) search everything on your machine.
Clicking the little maginifying glass or pressing Command-Spacebar will bring up a search that seems to only work with your home folder contents.
However, hitting the old school command-F brings up a much more customizable Spotlight search -- you can even narrow down to just wanting the/etc/ folder to be a potential target in there -- similar to the way Panther and Sherlock used to do it.
It does network volume searches from here as well.
Slight correction -- for your $1000ish contribution, Apple will ship you an OS X on x86 development kit and a development box.
What people without developer accounts don't realize is that you've got to give the development box back as of December 31, 2006 according to the terms of the agreement, and you're under NDA with a welded hood.
To reiterate, you're not buying -- you're borrowing the hardware.
It's a good deal for honest to bob developers. Not such a great deal for those who use a dev account to get access to new toys, and I think that's meant to be the point.
Apple has been using Intel chips in Macs for years -- ethernet controllers are one example I can pull off the top of my head.
Using intel chips on the mainboard vs. switching to Intel processors is a completely different ballgame, however. With the current state of affairs, I don't think switching to Intel CPUs would offer any price *or* performance improvement over the multi core G5s or AMD chips these days, if Apple were to even think about transitioning to an x86 architecture.
Might be 'arm and a leg' prices, but looking into the 23" aluminum cased Cinema Display in front of me, I can honestly say that it's worth every penny of the $2k I spent for it, and the nicest monitor I've ever worked on (with the exception of the Apple 30").
Most people who buy LCDs these days couldn't give a shit about accurate color. I'm not one of those people, and I'm a very very happy guy with spot on color fidelity and non-tired eyes at the end of the day.
On my first demo of it, I created a desktop 'droplet' icon that allows account execs at my shop to drop a job order or update document on an icon, it creates a new email, summarizes the file in the body, attaches the file, sends it to the appropriate people with the correct job number in the subject line, and files it in the sent mail archive specific to which client the job number refers to.
I did this in three minutes flat on the first day I played with it.
There's a ton of reliance still on using shell script glue if you're doing super complex stuff, but once more actions (like applescript dictionaries) are available for common apps right in the automator window, people are going to start creating some amazing stuff.
A lot of people will make this into a religious debate -- which I'm guilty of from time to time -- but it's really just a matter of personal taste.
I have Macs and Win boxes in both my home and work offices. I've got a Debian box at home as well.
There are very specific tasks that work better on the PC in my opinion. For me, those tasks are games and Maya. This is coming from an artist's perspective primarily, a coder's perspective second and gamer's third.
Everything else, I use my Macs for because they just 'feel' right. It feels like I'm drawing with my left hand to use Photoshop under Windows with an identical interface and mostly identical key commands. Mouse acceleration curves feel funky, and I loathe -- nay -- LOATHE the fact that the majority of apps I use have to have a second desktop behind them (that gray background you get when 'maximized'). I like seeing my desktop. I like having a palette monitor that's got my email client in the non-palette space. I like the Mac's implementation of drag & drop. I like the lack of reliance on the second mouse button to do everyday tasks.
Quark Xpress 6+ is flaky on any platform at any speed, however type is significantly more manageable and supported on the Mac.
BBEdit is reason enough to buy a Mac, all by itself if you're a coder. It's rocked my world for years (network-wide find & replace from circa '95 -- maybe earlier) and just keeps getting better.
Don't even get me started about Windows and CMYK support, professional level color management, search functionality ("find" was practically instant across all drives and servers BEFORE spotlight -- now we have instant filename, content and context-sensitive metadata). Coupled with 45 minutes on my 3ghz P4 to search just my frigging C: and D: drives.
Once you get yourself immersed in the Mac, it fits like a tailored suit -- there's an astounding amount of tiny bits of polish and subtle features that have been cloned to the Win side by someone who didn't understand the meaning of elegance or subtlety (see the Longhorn 'Glass' demo that's surfacing for a prime example).
Anyhow, at home I choose my relatively slow 17" flat panel iMac G4 over my screaming and fully loaded gaming and Maya PC for almost every task because I'm more productive and happier. YMMV.
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Sounds to me like how my screen looks when the VGA cable gets knocked a little out of whack with the video card. It might be a short in the monitor cable as well.
Don't think I've ever seen an LCD panel drift in color unless it was a cabling issue. CRTs, on the other hand, generally either drift to red or green as they die in my experience.
There's lots of software-based gamma/color correction fixes that you can apply to the monitor depending on your OS. The 'advanced' display driver panel should have some color/gamma adjustments if you've got an nVidia or ATI card under Win, and there's a big ass "calibrate" button on your display preference pane on the Mac that'll let you get stuff back in whack.
If you're running any Adobe apps under Win or Mac OS 9, there's the Adobe Gamma control panel -- which I personally used when I had an old CRT that decided to go pink and dark on me.
When you start talking calibration hardware, on the other hand, you're starting to talk about stuff like the Gretag-Macbeth EyeOne series or a Spider, which are probably more pricey than the new LCD you've got your eye on.
As a person who's played EQ1 (and the first 3 expansions for it), DAoC, SWG and a few other obscure MMO's, I can say in all honesty that World of Warcraft is as close to a "casual gaming" experience as I've seen.
First off, the 24/7 gameplay (PvP or loot farming I assume you're talking about) and raid griding are endgame passtimes. I mean, you could (in theory) kill 500 spawns of the exact same Murloc camp to get from levels 20-30, but WoW gives you a much more enjoyable progression through the levels. I hate to get cliche, it's the journey (discovery & progression) not the destination (endgame raids & PvP ladders) -- Quests lead you through the world and can get repetitive, but you never feel like you're forced to mindlessly grind. At least nowhere near as much as any of the games I listed above.
You only "have" to do those raids or grind reputation 24/7 if competing with hardcore players is your goal in the game. That's a small, small subset of the market though. They're the loudest, but the smallest, if the subscription numbers mean anything.
In the other games I mentioned (excepting SWG), grinding a single mob until it stops giving you adequate experience then moving on to the next is necessary so you can get to the "real" point of those games. The focus is on the endgame, hardcore aspect. That's not to say that "bring me 20 duskbat pelts" doesn't get repetitive as all hell, but fedex and bounty quests are designed to introduce you to the lore and guide your exploration of the world.
SWG didn't have a point *at all* and no real progression besides profession grinding. It was a giant social sandbox. More akin to Second Life or Sims Online than a D&D-style RPG. It could be argued that it was a "true" RPG where the roleplaying took center stage, though, I'm not sure the majority of the playerbase would call it fun. I sure as hell didn't!
I'm half tempted to start a testy little essay of my own about how the games Brad's designed represent the flaws that all others in the market have been striving to overcome.
His design philosophy seems to take delight in a survival-of-the-fittest gaming approach. Call it MMO Darwinism: only those that are willing to live in these worlds 24x7 are entitled to any rewards at all, and the majority of content post-launch is tailored to the hardcore/uber-guild. If you don't like it, tough... it's the Vision, you see. Most of his fans are the "hardcore" element, and his games are designed catering almost exclusively to them, although they're a tiny fraction of the market. They like the fact that the hardcore heart of the games are exclusionary by design.
Loot from hardcore camps is required to move on to the next tier of challenges, so he's forcing player generated content (camping/kill stealing/griefing in this case) to fill the hole where compelling story and *GAMEPLAY* should be.
Brad's games in general are rat mazes -- social engineering experiments, as opposed to the *game* that is WoW.
Honestly, I'm a gray area between a casual and hardcore player. I go on hardcore PvP binges (yeah, WoW is a sandbox, but a fun one), but after my Everquest and DAoC experiences, I'm sick of guild drama and therefore guildless, so I miss out on the very top dungeon raids in WoW unless on a rare occasion I get asked to fill a slot for a no-show in another guild. It doesn't feel like work, and when it does I get resentful and stop playing for a while.
If I want to solo, WoW lets me. If I have a quest to kill Bob the Evil, no one is going to take Bob the Evil's head from me after he's dead (he'll drop a head for everyone in the group that needs it) If I want to invest 5 hours in a raid, WoW lets me -- and no one else is camping Rend when I get in his room. It feels like a game. I can log on, have fun for an hour... always accomplish something toward a goal... and log out. I don't *need* an enormous time investment or a social support umbrella in order to enjoy the experience. Matter of fact, before the end game, WoW rewards me for taking time off (rest XP).
Instancing in moderation, like WoW, is a perfect mix of MMO social interaction and immersiveness.
I mean, seriously, if I have to fight to keep a spot killing a single skeleton in the northeast corner in the third room of the Dungeon of Doom over and over and over again, sitting on my ass for 5 minutes between each spawn, it's not exactly epic, immersive or story-driven, is it?
Actually, for the first 8 or so years of DVD distribution, Warner was the company that just didn't get it. In a major way.
Almost all of their DVD releases were full-screen interlaced pan & scan, PCM audio, completely devoid of special features and usually comparable in quality to the VHS versions they were shipping. They weren't even worth $10, IMO.
Of course, this proved to be a Lucasfilm-worthy ploy as they released non-shitty (everything being relative) "Extra, Extra Special Editions" of their films with extra, extra special features like dolby digital, letterboxing and progressive bitrate in the last year or two.
Suffice it to say I won't be getting my new copies of A Christmas Story or Purple Rain (two of the worst first edition Warner DVDs off the top of my head)) until the HD-DVD debate is over with.
I believe Whedon has referred to the Enterprise-D as a "Floating Sheraton in Space"
I think it made me spit coffee out of my nose when I read that, and I'm a die hard trekkie as well.
There's something to be said for how much more interesting drama you can get when all of the main characters don't share the same ideals, though. The only thing keeping them together is that they're misfits and have no place in a society who has some rules that they don't believe in.
In addition to running the series in order, SciFi has promoted the living hell out of the thing, and shown the unaired eps. Wish they'd have shown then in glorious 16:9 like the DVD set, but you can't have everything.
Made browncoats out of my wife, myself and our closest friends who had social lives during the Friday nights that it allegedly aired on originally.
All that said, we were in line for the first showing after work this evening and it didn't disappoint -- although there was a LOT of talk afterward. Can't get into that without venturing into spoiler territory, which I *urge* everyone to avoid the living hell out of if you're emotionally invested in the show.
From some reading I did earlier this week, IIRC, the series was mostly Lightwave, but they transitioned their assets to a Maya/Mental Ray environment due to having to render at 4k resolution and staffing issues. Most feature Maya pipelines that I know of currently use Shake as the compositing tool.
There's a rather nice article detailing all of the behind the scenes stuff here however, reg is required and I can't be bothered to dig out my password to confirm the previous paragraph.
I believe I remember seeing a big Avid logo in the credits, but then again I know Joss is a Mac guy, so it could have been Final Cut Pro -- really anything works just fine for offline edits. I'm sure lots of different platforms were used depending on the stage in production.
I doubt this will be a particularly popular view on the situation, but here's how I see it:
- People with the Intel transition kits are under NDA
- The VAST majority of people installing Tiger on off-the-shelf Intel hardware are doing it using pirated copies
- Installing OS X on said Intel hardware is against the clickwrap license
- Instructing people how to obtain said pirated goods and then specifically do something that's against both NDA and license agreements is quite far over the top.
There's a lot of sites out there that are posting Torrent links and how-to videos that are basically forcing Apple's hand in this matter.
What the hell do you expect Apple to do? Not defend their IP when sites get that far out of line? The way the legal system works, Apple *has* to respond, even if they don't want to.
Anyone who doesn't think that the Intel compiles of OS X over the last 5 years hasn't been running on off-the-shelf boxes in Cupertino is seriously naïve. Of course Apple knew it was possible to do this.
Paranoia was the greatest RPG I've ever experienced for actual role playing.
The GM is basically encouraged to disregard any and all dice roles, rules, etc in favor of making the story more interesting, or at least to be a serious dick to a deserving player.
All of the players are pitted against each other. Everyone has something to hide, and you're usually put on a completely impossible mission (not D&D Tomb of Horrors-style impossible -- completely, absurdly, unattainable goals), given get out of jail free cards (clones) to do incredibly stupid, but funny, things, and you're rewarded for being the sneakiest member of the bunch. Although the last man standing rarely stays standing very long.
Mechanics aren't the point of the game. Having fun trying to one-up the guys you're playing with is.
This is the game where you're supposed to do all of those things that make a red faced DM open up the heavens with lightning bolts in a D&D game.
All of those one-liners, all of those stupid things (but why can't I pick the dragon's pockets? so what if it doesn't have pockets?)... they're all the focus of this game.
Grand times.
The hosting provider I use for the vast majority of my clients and my personal site just added a greylist/graytrap system into place, and it works amazingly well so far.
Three months and a total of 15 *total* spam messages have made it to my mail over that time period, which Spamassasin flagged and then Apple Mail's filtering dealt with accordingly. This is as opposed to about 750 per day on my two main accounts previously.
The beauty of greylists is that false positives are virtually unheardof (I support about 150 users and haven't had a single report in this time) because the entire nature of a greylist means that if the mail comes from a legitimate email server, it will try to send the message again in a couple of minutes at which point it becomes a trusted host.
Of course, open relays are still a problem in this scenario, but that's what the other layers of filtering (bayes etc) are for. Add the new ClamAV distro into the mix and email is bearable again with no need to constantly train my bayes filter.
I used one of these at a client's location on a Mac SE circa 1991.
Basically, it had a glass mirrored mousepad with a grid of points and lines on it.
As I recall, accuracy with absolutely terrible (you had to move quite far for movement to be recognized at all), ergonomics were painful, and you had to hold the mouse exactly vertical on the pad for it to track correctly.
These were a "gee-whiz" luxury item at the time that unscrupulous computer dealers would sell as a mark-up item when the Mac SE's mouse was about a thousand times nicer and easier to use.
Speaking for the Maya users out there, I'm curious if the sensors / clicking mechanism will freak out if I option+LMB+RMB to dolly in the viewport.
I really love the idea of a scroll ball, though. And I do love how Apple mice feel, always have since the Mac SE. But my Logitech MX 310 is the best freaking Maya mouse I've found and comes closest to that elusive Mac mouse "weight" and comfort. Curious to see how the mightymouse compares... credit card out.
He does very little talking about the actual game. In fact, I'm not even sure you could call it a review.
To summarize the not-entirely-incomprehensible nuggets:
Some J-pop singer replaced herself, but just isn't the same and that makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.
The producer catered to the masses by producing a more polished, yet less quirky version of the original. This makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.
Blacking out stars and extinguishing life makes the reviewer sad, yet happy, which incidentally reminds him of how he felt when he heard some obscure piece of J-pop for the fiftieth time and actually understood the song's underlying theme.
I'm thinking TFA was originally written in crayon on a padded wall somewhere and transcribed without any heed for punctuation or paragraph structure.
My wife started playing DAoC with me a few years ago and she enjoyed the exploration and questing aspects, but didn't care for the PvP portion of it (which was my biggest draw).
These days, she's a monkey on crack for WoW. Avatars can be scantily clad if you go for that, but generally they're not. She spends half of her time playing as a big fat bear collecting herbs for alchemy and making money, or stealthing around exploring without any character advancement at all.
At first, I thought the battlegrounds in WoW were going to be very similar to DAoC -- but my wife begs to differ. She's become one of the best flag carriers on our primary server (Shadow Moon/Alliance). The difference is that there are very specific roles (including non-combat) that need to be filled in Warsong and Alterac, and she's all over it. Strategy and cooperation are absolutely required, with an occasional side order of zerging -- as opposed to the exact opposite in DAoC.
I think that's one of the major differences between men and women's interaction with games -- my wife usually wants to be entertained intellectually (most of the time), but my adrenaline rush and need to WIN trump my intellectual needs (most of the time).
That's not to say that I haven't gotten her to embrace my Red == Dead philosophy (she actually quite enjoys a good gank these days), or that I didn't play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time exclusively for the puzzles. It's just that those go against our usual normal tastes.
Regardless, she won't touch The Sims or any shooter, but well designed RPGs, puzzle games like PoP, and the occasional Gauntlet clone like the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series get her undivided attention, and mine as well.
I'd imagine the trouble with the video resolution under Windows is the lack of a 'real' driver for the Intel chipset based card. According to TFA, they were guessing what chipset, etc, it was running -- and with the DVI connection, I'm shocked they even got it up to 1600x1200 without the proper driver.
I'm another that followed my caffeine addiction to an absurd conclusion.
Over the last few years I've gathered an extremely large collection of super low tech, and a few high tech pieces of coffee roasting and preparation equipment.
I also have a passion for cooking, and I've started learning techniques from all over the world.
My wife is only tolerant of the coffee geekery, but she's utterly devoted to my amateur chef pursuits.
There's also something extremely meditative I find about fishing. Gear, technique, patience. Much like chess -- easy to learn, lifetime to master sort of thing.
I don't seek out low-tech diversions on purpose -- in fact, there are incredibly high tech tools to use in each of these fields. It's just in some of them, the low tech ways are the best ways of accomplishing things -- plus I feel there's more of *me* in the end result, which is a bit more rewarding.
I still do all of my art in Photoshop and Maya, though. Low tech is great for some things (a grill, for instance), but undo is better!
I prefer a little red tint to my scenes:
In Soviet Russia, Lakes on Naboo Hold You!
I work as the tech director for a medium sized ad agency, and I can tell you that Quark is dead, they just don't know it yet.
There are very few companies I despise with the special brand of hate that I reserve for Quark. Microsoft doesn't even come close to their ranking on my hate scale.
My agency spent about fifty grand on v5-v6 upgrades, only to find that serial numbers didn't come in the box -- you had to call India.
Well, about eighty hours on the phone to India later, I was informed that they couldn't find any but two of our prior copies as eligible upgrades, so it looked like we were shit out of luck with the other $47k we bought. Have a nice day, can we help you with anything else?
These are legit copies with audit trails back to version 2 that Quark's horrid outsourced phone drones couldn't find in their system, so we're fucked. End of story.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I now have to use cracks on legitimately purchased software, and Quark isn't getting a cent of my money ever again.
Sure, Xpress 3.3.2 was a good program. That was the last solid release of their software, and it was practically ten years ago.
Just now -- almost five years after the beginning stages of OS X -- are the dinosaurs of the printing industry beginning to accept Quark 6 files. You thought it was bad enough to have to run Xpress 5 in classic for two years? Try backsaving every file you send out for the next two.
We're still getting Quark 3 files from freelancers from time to time. Ten years later.
Which brings up a point: the switch from Xpress to Indesign isn't going to happen overnight -- we're in the beginning stages of it. It's going to take a full ten years or so for all traces of it to disappear from the publishing environment. Pagemaker still hasn't disappeared, QED.
Well, Spotlight does (and doesn't) search everything on your machine.
/etc/ folder to be a potential target in there -- similar to the way Panther and Sherlock used to do it.
Clicking the little maginifying glass or pressing Command-Spacebar will bring up a search that seems to only work with your home folder contents.
However, hitting the old school command-F brings up a much more customizable Spotlight search -- you can even narrow down to just wanting the
It does network volume searches from here as well.
Slight correction -- for your $1000ish contribution, Apple will ship you an OS X on x86 development kit and a development box.
What people without developer accounts don't realize is that you've got to give the development box back as of December 31, 2006 according to the terms of the agreement, and you're under NDA with a welded hood.
To reiterate, you're not buying -- you're borrowing the hardware.
It's a good deal for honest to bob developers. Not such a great deal for those who use a dev account to get access to new toys, and I think that's meant to be the point.
Apple has been using Intel chips in Macs for years -- ethernet controllers are one example I can pull off the top of my head.
Using intel chips on the mainboard vs. switching to Intel processors is a completely different ballgame, however. With the current state of affairs, I don't think switching to Intel CPUs would offer any price *or* performance improvement over the multi core G5s or AMD chips these days, if Apple were to even think about transitioning to an x86 architecture.
Speaking as someone who uses Pith Helmet in Safari, no.
Flash, 'troll bridge' or layer ads on the site = ad block, no exceptions.
Might be 'arm and a leg' prices, but looking into the 23" aluminum cased Cinema Display in front of me, I can honestly say that it's worth every penny of the $2k I spent for it, and the nicest monitor I've ever worked on (with the exception of the Apple 30").
Most people who buy LCDs these days couldn't give a shit about accurate color. I'm not one of those people, and I'm a very very happy guy with spot on color fidelity and non-tired eyes at the end of the day.
Automator is *really* cool for a 1.0 app.
On my first demo of it, I created a desktop 'droplet' icon that allows account execs at my shop to drop a job order or update document on an icon, it creates a new email, summarizes the file in the body, attaches the file, sends it to the appropriate people with the correct job number in the subject line, and files it in the sent mail archive specific to which client the job number refers to.
I did this in three minutes flat on the first day I played with it.
There's a ton of reliance still on using shell script glue if you're doing super complex stuff, but once more actions (like applescript dictionaries) are available for common apps right in the automator window, people are going to start creating some amazing stuff.
A lot of people will make this into a religious debate -- which I'm guilty of from time to time -- but it's really just a matter of personal taste.
I have Macs and Win boxes in both my home and work offices. I've got a Debian box at home as well.
There are very specific tasks that work better on the PC in my opinion. For me, those tasks are games and Maya. This is coming from an artist's perspective primarily, a coder's perspective second and gamer's third.
Everything else, I use my Macs for because they just 'feel' right. It feels like I'm drawing with my left hand to use Photoshop under Windows with an identical interface and mostly identical key commands. Mouse acceleration curves feel funky, and I loathe -- nay -- LOATHE the fact that the majority of apps I use have to have a second desktop behind them (that gray background you get when 'maximized'). I like seeing my desktop. I like having a palette monitor that's got my email client in the non-palette space. I like the Mac's implementation of drag & drop. I like the lack of reliance on the second mouse button to do everyday tasks.
Quark Xpress 6+ is flaky on any platform at any speed, however type is significantly more manageable and supported on the Mac.
BBEdit is reason enough to buy a Mac, all by itself if you're a coder. It's rocked my world for years (network-wide find & replace from circa '95 -- maybe earlier) and just keeps getting better.
Don't even get me started about Windows and CMYK support, professional level color management, search functionality ("find" was practically instant across all drives and servers BEFORE spotlight -- now we have instant filename, content and context-sensitive metadata). Coupled with 45 minutes on my 3ghz P4 to search just my frigging C: and D: drives.
Once you get yourself immersed in the Mac, it fits like a tailored suit -- there's an astounding amount of tiny bits of polish and subtle features that have been cloned to the Win side by someone who didn't understand the meaning of elegance or subtlety (see the Longhorn 'Glass' demo that's surfacing for a prime example).
Anyhow, at home I choose my relatively slow 17" flat panel iMac G4 over my screaming and fully loaded gaming and Maya PC for almost every task because I'm more productive and happier. YMMV.