You might not want to live on the moon. Your kids might not want to live on the moon. But if the human race doesn't get some skills in living away from this little blue bubble, we're not going to be able to:
Explore other worlds
Leave Earth behind when it gets too polluted/overpopulated/asteroid-impact-affected etc.
We will need to be able to live away from the Earth at some point in the future. It's going to cost money sometime, but we have the technology to give it a try now. To learn from our mistakes and do better next time.
It shouldn't matter what country does it. However, if we're going down the "but that's my tax dollar" path, I'd rather my tax dollars went towards space exploration rather than some stupid war in Iraq.
I don't get how a # can be called a pound. What do you guys call £ then?
When I was at school in Australia using Apple IIes, there was a little switch underneath the keyboard that flicked something in the hardware. All the # signs changed to £ signs, or vice-versa. No processing power required, just a quick hardware switch. I'm guessing that some kid asked a teacher "what's that funny symbol before the numbers?" when viewing a spreadsheet, but the switch had been flicked and the names got confused.
"It's a pound symbol." says Teacher. Same damn reason that clueless computer users call desktop wallpaper/background screen savers. Oh, the theory's probably bogus, because Australians have never confused a pound and a hash.
(Um, there's probably an opening for a smart-arse comment or two there.)
I remember, years ago, when I went along to the AIMIA awards with a friend, on the Gold Coast in Australia. The two of us wandered slowly around the space in white paint-protection suits (very high tech) with Powerbooks running PixelToy mounted to our chests. People could speak into the screens and see the psychedelic screen change. Fun, and hanging out in the green room with the other weirdos was a laugh.
Oh, and someone else gave me money to develop an early version of this thing identikit into what you can see today. All done with QuickTime VR object movies. Full experience from the main page at funwithstuff.com.
Seriously, though, the US could do worse than differentiate its different bills more clearly. Almost every other country makes it clearer (different sizes, very different colours) which can make it tricky for tourists. Australian notes (plastic, bright colours) are great, purely because they go through the wash and come out the other side. But I don't have to count large piles of the slippery things...
So I'm Not crazy The TV has been whining at me for all these years;)
No, you're not crazy, but I'm spreading misinformation. It's not ~30K, it's ~15K. In UK/Australia/most of world, that's 625 vertical lines * 25 frames/second = 15625 Hz. In the US/Canada/Japan, it's 525 * 30 frames/second = 15750 Hz. So more people should be able to hear that whine, but I guess tune out from it. Sorry about the math mixup.
Well, you've got a couple of good points there, but not every preview is of the first 30 seconds. Bjork's track Joga, for example, has a sample starting at about 3.35.
Also, why is "Protection" the song not featured for download from the "Protection" album by the same name? That's the very best song on the whole disk, and it isn't there at all. Even if it were, the preview would do no good for it, either, because for this song, Tracey doesn't start singing until:41, which is 11 seconds past your preview clip.
I'm guessing Protection (the track) isn't available because the label wouldn't allow it. Further, maybe Apple staff decided that if the label wasn't going to give them the whole album, they damn well weren't going to put the effort into picking the best 30 seconds of each track.
Another example: only 11 of REM's albums are there (no Reveal, no Automatic for the People, no Monster). The labels are holding back to see how it all works before giving away the gems.
BTW, the previews aren't full 128k quality, if that was a concern.
Dammit dammit dammit. Well, you can do the listening tests if you like, but I'm talking out of my arse. The listening tests are OK, and I'm not crazy. But the samples (duh) aren't @ 128k, they can't be, they don't sound anywhere near as good as the real thing. Re-encoding (which I couldn't do before, because I had to restart to get QuickTime 6.2 going, yada yada etc.) in AAC gives just lovely audio. As good as the higher bitrate MP3.
Very nice, well done Apple, I take back all the bad things I said. Roll on. Lovely. Etc. Sorry to waste your time. Nothing to see here.
Noooooooo! I've just spent a half hour or so doing comparative listening tests with my 192 CBR and 192 VBR MP3s versus CDs and the 30 second 128 AAC samples. And AAC @ 128k doesn't cut it. It's better than MP3 at the same bit rate, but sounds muddy and loses punch. I'm not an audio engineer, but I'm using a decent pair of headphones (Sennheiser HD200s) and I haven't lost my hearing yet (can still hear the whine a TV makes (~30KHz).
Test at home! If you have the Bjork song Joga, play that from CD or high quality MP3 (>200kbit), from around 3.30, roughly where Apple's 30 second sample starts. At about 3.54, the background noise ramps up quickly, a rich white noise. That should be there in the last few seconds of the Apple sample, but it's been muddied almost completely out. It's there in the MP3. Other subtleties lost too.
Same deal with They Might Be Giants's Birdhouse in Your Soul and Subliminal. Missing spark and punch. It's just too low a bitrate. I'm sure you can't tell the difference on regular computer speakers, but any decent pair of headphones (like those that people use with their iPods) should show it up straight away.
This is a shame, but fixable (192k please!). Right now, I can't use the thing, because I'm on the wrong side of the pond. But at 128k, I wouldn't touch it anyway.
Oh. Not every album. Too long? Too short? Too precious a title? Through the hordes of 504 errors, I've found one, Bob Dylan's Live 1966, that is available by song only.
Which makes it a crap deal, since you don't usually want just a few live tracks - you want the whole damn concert. Check out the weird numbering, too - tracks 1 through 7, then 1 through 8. Are they really trying to replicate the vinyl, or what? I can hear the hiss...
If you select an album from the iTunes Music store, there's a button next to the price, $9.99, that says "Buy Album". For example, I did a search for "they might" and four albums popped up in the top bar, with plenty of songs below. Each album has the same price and the same "Buy Album" button, except for a Jeff Foxworthy "partial album". Maybe, as a comedy album, it's less than 10 tracks?
Of course, the thing isn't working for me now (only a few links from the home page seem to work) and it's US-only anyway, so I'm doubly stuffed. They need to throw more bandwidth at the site to fix it, and more lawyers at the legals to get it international, now. And not at the usual +30% for UK prices, either. Hey, Apple UK, VAT is only 17.5%, and we know how to use a calculator.
$0.99US for one song?! Shit, these are going to be crappy 128kbit/s tracks, even! That's an awfully high price to pay for substandard music quality.
They're not 128k MP3s, they're 128k AACs. Apple claims it's better than MP3. Now, I haven't done any listening tests, but I'm sure someone out there has. Anyone? But yeah, I'd prefer a higher bitrate too. Let's bug them. Of course, I'm in the UK and don't have access yet. Bugger.
Not to mention the DRM restrictions that Apple is imposing. I thought we had decided that Apple wasn't going to do DRM? It sure looked like it, but then here we are, looking at Apple supporting and using DRM in one of its premiere applications. Do you feel betrayed yet?
Not yet. They couldn't have gotten the record deals without the DRM. If it's got to be in there, I think they got the compromise about right. Easy local sharing between Macs on the same network. Copies of songs on three different Macs with movable licences. They're trying to do the right thing, to the degree that they realistically can. Commercially, it can't be a free-for-all with the RIAA involved.
OK. So Apple doesn't offer a webcast, or the one that's out there is broken. I feel kinda dirty watching this, but if you're quick, you can catch it at:
Actually, no brand is reliably reliable these days. I know two people who've had Sony multi-CD changers crap out on them shortly after warranty expiration. My Canon camcorder's screen is dead for the second after three or four years of use, but it's otherwise been great. And some Macs I've had have been trouble free, and others have had problems (under warranty).
But 10 years from now? Almost nothing you own will still work. Gadgets just don't work for as long, because the manufacturers don't want them to. They earn more money when you have to buy a new box. Therefore, they incorporate new standards, new features, and poor reliability. We could have cars today with (ceramic etc.) engine parts that don't wear out. But then fewer cars would be sold and supported, so no deal.
Plus, the discs, tapes, memory sticks and flash cards you use now will be unreadable in 2013 gadgets. And none of us will care very much. Miss cassettes?
Incidentally, some of the Sony-only technologies are going to be most susceptible to this problem. Nobody else makes MicroMV tapes (or supports them for editing) and few do anything with Digital8. Stick with the most standard standards of the day for the best chance to keep your stuff readable.
A few points. First, there's been a deal running for many, many months where you can get MS Office for US$300 off retail if you buy it with a new Mac. About £125 + VAT. Plus, there are other deals, so you don't have to buy full price: £200 is easy to find.
Second, consumer Macs come with Appleworks for free. It reads and writes Word/Excel out of the box, and should be fine for most users. Every Mac comes with a styled text editor (tabs, fonts, colours etc.) anyway.
Third, the rumour sites are predicting an Apple-branded office suite.
Fourth, Word is not the only game in town for word processing, and not everyone needs Excel/Powerpoint. Nisus make a great WP, including macros, a programming language, and styled GREP with/without GUI. Out soon for Mac OS X.
Fifth, there are two or three open source Office clones coming to the Mac. X11 versions here now, give them a few months to get the Aqua versions out and stable.
Hey, I've only seen Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer. Miscellaneous choice in a film festival many moons ago. However, as I don't really have any wish to see any more cyborgs grotesquely violating women or grinding drills into skulls, I think I'll skip #1.
On the other hand, that same festival brought me to Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) some years on, so all is forgiven.
This isn't even recent "news". The linked article is from November last year, more than five months ago, and it was linked then by a few sites. Nope, this is about marketing and Premiere vs Final Cut Pro. Final Cut is everywhere at industry exhibitions, it won an Emmy, and handles HD at a fraction of the cost of Avid. Premiere hasn't moved much in several years.
Don't get me wrong, After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator are lovely programs. Premiere isn't as good. And since Final Cut doesn't run on a PC, Adobe have a better chance of flogging Premiere to PC users. If Adobe gets more video designers/editors on PCs, they'll sell more boxes of Premiere.
Meanwhile, it's a bummer that my Mac isn't as fast as the lastest PC, but it's not universally slower. Most PowerMacs (or even a current iMac) offer real-time previews of three-way color correction, fades, transitions etc. without rendering in Final Cut. And roll on the PPC 970.
This old review at Dan's Data talks about a similar tuner/decoder that outputs VGA signals, but you'll need a monitor that can handle the output. None of this namby-pamby downscaling, but full-fat 1080i HDTV. When someone's transmitting something worth watching, that is. And right about now, it's not looking very interesting.
Anyway, the review's fun, with plenty of acronyms, pics of back-panel ports, and serial port update instructions. Enjoy.
For more info on all sorts of techy Mac OS X stuff, just read www.macosxhints.com, where this hint came from. All free and sensible, with daily updates.
Current stories include:
Hiding information from nmap
Accessing the 6BONE with OS X 10.2
Automate screen captures via Grab and GUI Scripting
Large image previews in column view
Hear new Mail messages announced by customized voices
Network proxies and internet access via AirPort
Cocktail - A collection of mini-utilties in one app
Restore Aqua look and feel in NetBeans 3.4 with Java 1.4.1
Temporarily silence the startup sound
Another USB to network printer conversion
The short answer is nationalized airlines means regulated pilot salaries. This means worse pilots since it lessens the incentives for skilled people to become pilots. This same arguement can be used to show how nationalized health care will ruin US healthcare. We'll end up with worse doctors since the best people will choose other professions.
You're defending the US healthcare system? Where they check your credit rating before your pulse?
My best guess: the best doctors are the ones who want to help people, or who are talented at the job. Not the ones who are in it for the money. Too much money in a profession just attracts greedy people. Sure, some of them will become very competent doctors, pilots, company directors, etc., but there isn't a magical class of people who are going to be really good at anything they try.
(Of course, since this is Slashdot, I'm just going to be dismissed as some bleeding-heart lefty. Whatever.)
Slashdot Mirror
You might not want to live on the moon. Your kids might not want to live on the moon. But if the human race doesn't get some skills in living away from this little blue bubble, we're not going to be able to:
We will need to be able to live away from the Earth at some point in the future. It's going to cost money sometime, but we have the technology to give it a try now. To learn from our mistakes and do better next time.
It shouldn't matter what country does it. However, if we're going down the "but that's my tax dollar" path, I'd rather my tax dollars went towards space exploration rather than some stupid war in Iraq.
1.) People who use "arse" instead of "ass" are idiots.
No, we're just not American. In Australia, where they made the Matrix and its sequels, most people say "arse". Ditto the UK.
I don't get how a # can be called a pound. What do you guys call £ then?
When I was at school in Australia using Apple IIes, there was a little switch underneath the keyboard that flicked something in the hardware. All the # signs changed to £ signs, or vice-versa. No processing power required, just a quick hardware switch. I'm guessing that some kid asked a teacher "what's that funny symbol before the numbers?" when viewing a spreadsheet, but the switch had been flicked and the names got confused.
"It's a pound symbol." says Teacher. Same damn reason that clueless computer users call desktop wallpaper/background screen savers. Oh, the theory's probably bogus, because Australians have never confused a pound and a hash.
(Um, there's probably an opening for a smart-arse comment or two there.)
I remember, years ago, when I went along to the AIMIA awards with a friend, on the Gold Coast in Australia. The two of us wandered slowly around the space in white paint-protection suits (very high tech) with Powerbooks running PixelToy mounted to our chests. People could speak into the screens and see the psychedelic screen change. Fun, and hanging out in the green room with the other weirdos was a laugh.
Oh, and someone else gave me money to develop an early version of this thing identikit into what you can see today. All done with QuickTime VR object movies. Full experience from the main page at funwithstuff.com.
Does that mean they'll be producing a new Deception Dollar?
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/
Seriously, though, the US could do worse than differentiate its different bills more clearly. Almost every other country makes it clearer (different sizes, very different colours) which can make it tricky for tourists. Australian notes (plastic, bright colours) are great, purely because they go through the wash and come out the other side. But I don't have to count large piles of the slippery things...
Lemonade stand! the winning formula, if I remember correctly, was 111 cups, 6 bags of sugar, and a heatwave!
Now why did I just post that?
So I'm Not crazy The TV has been whining at me for all these years ;)
No, you're not crazy, but I'm spreading misinformation. It's not ~30K, it's ~15K. In UK/Australia/most of world, that's 625 vertical lines * 25 frames/second = 15625 Hz. In the US/Canada/Japan, it's 525 * 30 frames/second = 15750 Hz. So more people should be able to hear that whine, but I guess tune out from it. Sorry about the math mixup.
Well, you've got a couple of good points there, but not every preview is of the first 30 seconds. Bjork's track Joga, for example, has a sample starting at about 3.35.
:41, which is 11 seconds past your preview clip.
Also, why is "Protection" the song not featured for download from the "Protection" album by the same name? That's the very best song on the whole disk, and it isn't there at all. Even if it were, the preview would do no good for it, either, because for this song, Tracey doesn't start singing until
I'm guessing Protection (the track) isn't available because the label wouldn't allow it. Further, maybe Apple staff decided that if the label wasn't going to give them the whole album, they damn well weren't going to put the effort into picking the best 30 seconds of each track.
Another example: only 11 of REM's albums are there (no Reveal, no Automatic for the People, no Monster). The labels are holding back to see how it all works before giving away the gems.
BTW, the previews aren't full 128k quality, if that was a concern.
Dammit dammit dammit. Well, you can do the listening tests if you like, but I'm talking out of my arse. The listening tests are OK, and I'm not crazy. But the samples (duh) aren't @ 128k, they can't be, they don't sound anywhere near as good as the real thing. Re-encoding (which I couldn't do before, because I had to restart to get QuickTime 6.2 going, yada yada etc.) in AAC gives just lovely audio. As good as the higher bitrate MP3.
Very nice, well done Apple, I take back all the bad things I said. Roll on. Lovely. Etc. Sorry to waste your time. Nothing to see here.
Noooooooo! I've just spent a half hour or so doing comparative listening tests with my 192 CBR and 192 VBR MP3s versus CDs and the 30 second 128 AAC samples. And AAC @ 128k doesn't cut it. It's better than MP3 at the same bit rate, but sounds muddy and loses punch. I'm not an audio engineer, but I'm using a decent pair of headphones (Sennheiser HD200s) and I haven't lost my hearing yet (can still hear the whine a TV makes (~30KHz).
Test at home! If you have the Bjork song Joga, play that from CD or high quality MP3 (>200kbit), from around 3.30, roughly where Apple's 30 second sample starts. At about 3.54, the background noise ramps up quickly, a rich white noise. That should be there in the last few seconds of the Apple sample, but it's been muddied almost completely out. It's there in the MP3. Other subtleties lost too.
Same deal with They Might Be Giants's Birdhouse in Your Soul and Subliminal. Missing spark and punch. It's just too low a bitrate. I'm sure you can't tell the difference on regular computer speakers, but any decent pair of headphones (like those that people use with their iPods) should show it up straight away.
This is a shame, but fixable (192k please!). Right now, I can't use the thing, because I'm on the wrong side of the pond. But at 128k, I wouldn't touch it anyway.
Oh. Not every album. Too long? Too short? Too precious a title? Through the hordes of 504 errors, I've found one, Bob Dylan's Live 1966, that is available by song only.
Which makes it a crap deal, since you don't usually want just a few live tracks - you want the whole damn concert. Check out the weird numbering, too - tracks 1 through 7, then 1 through 8. Are they really trying to replicate the vinyl, or what? I can hear the hiss...
If you select an album from the iTunes Music store, there's a button next to the price, $9.99, that says "Buy Album". For example, I did a search for "they might" and four albums popped up in the top bar, with plenty of songs below. Each album has the same price and the same "Buy Album" button, except for a Jeff Foxworthy "partial album". Maybe, as a comedy album, it's less than 10 tracks?
Of course, the thing isn't working for me now (only a few links from the home page seem to work) and it's US-only anyway, so I'm doubly stuffed. They need to throw more bandwidth at the site to fix it, and more lawyers at the legals to get it international, now. And not at the usual +30% for UK prices, either. Hey, Apple UK, VAT is only 17.5%, and we know how to use a calculator.
$0.99US for one song?! Shit, these are going to be crappy 128kbit/s tracks, even! That's an awfully high price to pay for substandard music quality.
They're not 128k MP3s, they're 128k AACs. Apple claims it's better than MP3. Now, I haven't done any listening tests, but I'm sure someone out there has. Anyone? But yeah, I'd prefer a higher bitrate too. Let's bug them. Of course, I'm in the UK and don't have access yet. Bugger.
Not to mention the DRM restrictions that Apple is imposing. I thought we had decided that Apple wasn't going to do DRM? It sure looked like it, but then here we are, looking at Apple supporting and using DRM in one of its premiere applications. Do you feel betrayed yet?
Not yet. They couldn't have gotten the record deals without the DRM. If it's got to be in there, I think they got the compromise about right. Easy local sharing between Macs on the same network. Copies of songs on three different Macs with movable licences. They're trying to do the right thing, to the degree that they realistically can. Commercially, it can't be a free-for-all with the RIAA involved.
They MAY actually allow you to buy "an album" at a time for some discount at some future date...
They do right now. $9.99/album.
http://www.msnbc.com/m/lv/default.asp
I know, I know, it's wrong. But the details sound cool, anyway. Here's the quick summary:
Buy tracks for 99c/track or $9.99/album.
Unlimited backups, iPod transfers, and 10 burns per unique playlist.
Each song to up to three macs (yep, DRM)
Everything is AAC @ 128k - claimed to be better than MP3 @ same bitrate.
Free 30 second previews.
Built-in to iTunes.
Anyone else see Mike Myers staring at a dark spot, saying "anomolie-molie-molie-molie-molie"?
Oh. It's just me. As you were.
Actually, no brand is reliably reliable these days. I know two people who've had Sony multi-CD changers crap out on them shortly after warranty expiration. My Canon camcorder's screen is dead for the second after three or four years of use, but it's otherwise been great. And some Macs I've had have been trouble free, and others have had problems (under warranty).
But 10 years from now? Almost nothing you own will still work. Gadgets just don't work for as long, because the manufacturers don't want them to. They earn more money when you have to buy a new box. Therefore, they incorporate new standards, new features, and poor reliability. We could have cars today with (ceramic etc.) engine parts that don't wear out. But then fewer cars would be sold and supported, so no deal.
Plus, the discs, tapes, memory sticks and flash cards you use now will be unreadable in 2013 gadgets. And none of us will care very much. Miss cassettes?
Incidentally, some of the Sony-only technologies are going to be most susceptible to this problem. Nobody else makes MicroMV tapes (or supports them for editing) and few do anything with Digital8. Stick with the most standard standards of the day for the best chance to keep your stuff readable.
A few points. First, there's been a deal running for many, many months where you can get MS Office for US$300 off retail if you buy it with a new Mac. About £125 + VAT. Plus, there are other deals, so you don't have to buy full price: £200 is easy to find.
Second, consumer Macs come with Appleworks for free. It reads and writes Word/Excel out of the box, and should be fine for most users. Every Mac comes with a styled text editor (tabs, fonts, colours etc.) anyway.
Third, the rumour sites are predicting an Apple-branded office suite.
Fourth, Word is not the only game in town for word processing, and not everyone needs Excel/Powerpoint. Nisus make a great WP, including macros, a programming language, and styled GREP with/without GUI. Out soon for Mac OS X.
Fifth, there are two or three open source Office clones coming to the Mac. X11 versions here now, give them a few months to get the Aqua versions out and stable.
So no, we don't all buy Office.
Hey - try this:
The Onion AV Club's Films That Time Forgot (FTTF)
Just what you're looking for. (Not that any moderator's going to find this post after the flood that this story has spawned, but anyway...)
- Run Lola Run
and add:Silent Running
The Princess Bride
- Electric Dreams
Be great if there was actually a way to get hold of any old movie on DVD. There's no reason for titles to be "out of print" these days, is there?The General (Buster Keaton)
Groundhog Day
Hey, I've only seen Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer. Miscellaneous choice in a film festival many moons ago. However, as I don't really have any wish to see any more cyborgs grotesquely violating women or grinding drills into skulls, I think I'll skip #1.
On the other hand, that same festival brought me to Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) some years on, so all is forgiven.
This isn't even recent "news". The linked article is from November last year, more than five months ago, and it was linked then by a few sites. Nope, this is about marketing and Premiere vs Final Cut Pro. Final Cut is everywhere at industry exhibitions, it won an Emmy, and handles HD at a fraction of the cost of Avid. Premiere hasn't moved much in several years.
Don't get me wrong, After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator are lovely programs. Premiere isn't as good. And since Final Cut doesn't run on a PC, Adobe have a better chance of flogging Premiere to PC users. If Adobe gets more video designers/editors on PCs, they'll sell more boxes of Premiere.
Meanwhile, it's a bummer that my Mac isn't as fast as the lastest PC, but it's not universally slower. Most PowerMacs (or even a current iMac) offer real-time previews of three-way color correction, fades, transitions etc. without rendering in Final Cut. And roll on the PPC 970.
This old review at Dan's Data talks about a similar tuner/decoder that outputs VGA signals, but you'll need a monitor that can handle the output. None of this namby-pamby downscaling, but full-fat 1080i HDTV. When someone's transmitting something worth watching, that is. And right about now, it's not looking very interesting.
Anyway, the review's fun, with plenty of acronyms, pics of back-panel ports, and serial port update instructions. Enjoy.
For more info on all sorts of techy Mac OS X stuff, just read www.macosxhints.com, where this hint came from. All free and sensible, with daily updates.
Current stories include:
Hiding information from nmap
Accessing the 6BONE with OS X 10.2
Automate screen captures via Grab and GUI Scripting
Large image previews in column view
Hear new Mail messages announced by customized voices
Network proxies and internet access via AirPort
Cocktail - A collection of mini-utilties in one app
Restore Aqua look and feel in NetBeans 3.4 with Java 1.4.1
Temporarily silence the startup sound
Another USB to network printer conversion
The short answer is nationalized airlines means regulated pilot salaries. This means worse pilots since it lessens the incentives for skilled people to become pilots. This same arguement can be used to show how nationalized health care will ruin US healthcare. We'll end up with worse doctors since the best people will choose other professions.
You're defending the US healthcare system? Where they check your credit rating before your pulse?
My best guess: the best doctors are the ones who want to help people, or who are talented at the job. Not the ones who are in it for the money. Too much money in a profession just attracts greedy people. Sure, some of them will become very competent doctors, pilots, company directors, etc., but there isn't a magical class of people who are going to be really good at anything they try.
(Of course, since this is Slashdot, I'm just going to be dismissed as some bleeding-heart lefty. Whatever.)