Not meant to be a troll, but one solution is 'Don't have kids.'
My generation (generation X), is finding that one (of very few) workable solutions these days, along with a lot of anti-consumer attitudes to help save the little money you have. Cooking at home, moving out of the major cities, getting roommates, shopping at thrift stores, getting that Civic instead of the SUV...
It's having an impact - marriage rates are dropping, divorce is way up, the average marriage here in California now lasts 5 years and fewer children are being born.
Yeah, well I happen to think that anyone who makes money from graphic portrayal of violence in any form - no matter how it is 'couched', as 'entertainment' or otherwise - is a scumbag who deserves neither my hard earned cash, nor my attention.
I'm afraid that statement pegs you. You don't like the product, don't buy it for yourself or your kids. Grand Theft Auto sold tens of millions of copies, and people enjoyed it. Creating a game for a market does not make you a scumbag.
That's really the point - I like those sorts of games. I can enjoy Grand Theft Auto in the exact same way I can enjoy kickboxing, watching Scarface, Total Recall or Saving Private Ryan.
The point here is that the media is stepping over the line with their 'think of the children!' media spin (think: Id Software's 'Doom' caused Columbine), and parents (like yourself) that love their kids to death have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to their safety.
Raise your kid however you see fit, and realize that the media scares us into watching by demonizing the 'shocking topic du jour'. When the topic comes around to 'Are video games killing our children?'... no... they're not.
Yeah, that's why I download music at work. Fills time just as well as surfing Slashdot, you get that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, not to mention 'wow free music!'
I use two monitors at work, and it speeds things up about 20-30% - especially for applications with lots of palletes or windows (Photoshop, Flash, Premiere, After Effects).
Here's a company that makes a few three-panel LCD displays that looks incredible:
if you're making $10 an hour and it takes you more than 2 hours to download an album, then they've won.
Nah - I mean, I make about $30 an hour, and I'm here at work, and it's really boring, but I have to be here anyway right? Might as well download music.
Well hell, why not just buy the cds retail ($14), rip the cd to mp3, and then sell the used cd (in near-mint condition) on ebay ($10).
I assume that's completely legal - you bought the cd, you're not sharing anything, and you've paid $4 for your copy of the cd (which is about what it's worth).
Everything will be there however, including the heavy (ab)use of stencil buffers. That and high polygon count is what makes Doom 3 look so good.
Actually, the lighting is about half the equation (which is quite good - true stenciled shadows and per-pixel lighting effects ). The other half is normal mapping . The modelers for Doom 3 created creatures for the game in the 1-2 million polygon range, and crunch that detail down into an RBG map used to offset a much lower resolution mesh.
It's similar to a bump map (grayscale relief), only it has three components - the RGB values correspond to XYZ offsets, allowing you to cram a lot of the million-poly detail back into a 2-5 thousand polygon mesh.
Not to be confused with true displacement (true displacement is what's used to turn a flat plane into a terrain mesh) - in Doom 3 no polygons are being shifted, which is why in the screenshots the edges of the critters still look blocky.
I have a hard time believing some inner-city welfare mom watching Oprah while screaming across the room at her kid to stop pouring Cherrios onto his brother is performing 'The ultimate creative act'.
Not that I have kids of course, I don't know what I'm missing.:)
Mod parent up. If you can't afford something, you find other ways of getting the content.
Seeing as libraries don't usually have new releases, I like to charge a few books from Borders/Barnes and Noble, read them over a few weeks, and then return them (you have up to 30 days on purchases).
Are they going to crack down on people that do that too? There's always some way to skirt a system if you have to.
I knew a girl that was incredibly hooked on snake.
Ah, good times.
D
Re:mac vs linux vs windows vs etc.
on
Platform Evangelism
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Like i said, when Linux is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting the product to suit you, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn to code, it's really quite simple. Write the drivers you need, and don't expect others to do it for you or expect a piece of software or hardware to just miraculously adapt to your needs. Using a computer isn't like just turning on a television. Really sometimes I wonder, and think people should be licensed to own a computer before complaining.
Like I said, when your television is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting your television to turn on when you hit the power button, and somehow display shows that you enjoy, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn a little electrical engineering, it's really quite simple. Build a VCR out of parts, don't just expect to buy one and have it miraculously work. Using a television isn't like using a hammer. Really, sometimes I think people should be licensed to view a television before complaining.
Yeah, mod me down. I've got a useless comment quota to meet.:)
I had to go to industrial-music.com, and then musica.co.uk to order the lastest Feindflug album. It took almost three weeks to ship.
These services just do not account for eccentric listening tastes... but neither does Amazon or Kazaa for that matter.
Given that, I'm inclined to believe that eventually we'll be buying music direct from artists' websites. Put in the search for your favorite obscure industrial-noise stomping band, go to their website, preview a 96kbps mp3, and then buy the tracks you like.
If you like Feindflug, check out Converter, Noisex, Imminent Starvation, Wumpscut, Accessory and Numb.:)
"Ah well...who needs to eat? I'll write anyway, and let my readers have it for free."
Yeah, that's about the size of it. As a fine artist, I end up doing art for myself, to show my friends etc. There's virtually no way to support yourself as a fine artist, and soon it may be the same for recording artists.
To support myself, I usually resort to 'applied' arts - graphic design, illustration, web design and other less-creative but more in-demand work.
Go figure, if nobody will pay me to do what I love, it's not really a viable profession.
Our overpaid, spoiled population has unreastic expectations about marriage and life, and they'll continue to be miserable, materialistics wretches until the day they drop dead while choking on a cheeseburger.
This is spot-on. Moreover -
It seems to be that relationships, whether sanctified or not, break down when there are expectations. Marriage, by it's very nature, formalizes expectations.
In my opinion, being a recording artist is going to be closer to being a visual artist. There are tons of similarities - you usually have a single talented 'artist' that creates for the joy of creating, and little if any support structure to get the 'art' out there. Most people have very selective tastes in what they like, and collect a little bit to decorate their life with.
Fine artists have a hell of a time supporting themselves making gallery art, and they typically have to get a 'commercial' style job to pay the bills - graphic design, web design or equivalent. I see this happening with recording artists soon too - the bottom is dropping out, and recording artists will have a very difficult time supporting themselves, and will have to find other means to pay the bills (tunes for commercials maybe - I hear Moby sold every track on his last album to corporations before it went gold), and make their own music on their own time.
In the future you'll have very few Picassos and Monets, and very few rock stars. The content these people create will be viewable (listenable) for free, and you'll have to find other means to pay the bills.
D
Sad, pathetic, losers unite - www.zerosexlife.com
Maybe stating this is unnecessary, but I've been a graphic designer for six years, and I've always used PCs. In the half dozen workplaces I've worked in in LA and NYC, we used PCs. My current design department coworkers use PCs, and the printers we deal with use PCs.
Maybe Adobe isn't abandoning the Mac platform, maybe they're just realizing most people (and most designers) use PCs, and are adjusting priorities accordingly.
This is a little cross-pollinated. HDRI isn't used in photography, traditional or digital. You're referring to image formats with higher bit-depth.
High Dynamic Range is used in 3d rendering to more accurately simulate lighting (especially skylighting). You take multiple exposures of a scene (at 8-bit) and composite those together to form a HDR image, which is used by high-end rendering software to project onto a 3d scene to create very soft, realistic lighting.
Yeah, the whole 'It's already free' thing, not to mention this:
"The new service would only be available to users of Apple's Macintosh line computers and iPod portable music players, who have been largely overlooked by the legitimate online music services."
Honestly, I wonder if this really 'waters down' their trademark.
In this era of clamoring for eyeballs, media whoring and 'there's no such thing as bad publicity', you would think that a company product that replaces the generic would be the pinnacle of marketing.
Wouldn't Nike be be happy as a clam if 'Nikes' came to mean 'shoes'?
Slashdot Mirror
Not meant to be a troll, but one solution is 'Don't have kids.'
My generation (generation X), is finding that one (of very few) workable solutions these days, along with a lot of anti-consumer attitudes to help save the little money you have. Cooking at home, moving out of the major cities, getting roommates, shopping at thrift stores, getting that Civic instead of the SUV...
It's having an impact - marriage rates are dropping, divorce is way up, the average marriage here in California now lasts 5 years and fewer children are being born.
Violent video games do have an effect on the young.
Ugh... need... proof... statistics... conjecture... slashdot... overpowering senses... opinions... everywhere... I feel myself... getting more stupid...
End transmission.
Yeah, well I happen to think that anyone who makes money from graphic portrayal of violence in any form - no matter how it is 'couched', as 'entertainment' or otherwise - is a scumbag who deserves neither my hard earned cash, nor my attention.
I'm afraid that statement pegs you. You don't like the product, don't buy it for yourself or your kids. Grand Theft Auto sold tens of millions of copies, and people enjoyed it. Creating a game for a market does not make you a scumbag.
That's really the point - I like those sorts of games. I can enjoy Grand Theft Auto in the exact same way I can enjoy kickboxing, watching Scarface, Total Recall or Saving Private Ryan.
The point here is that the media is stepping over the line with their 'think of the children!' media spin (think: Id Software's 'Doom' caused Columbine), and parents (like yourself) that love their kids to death have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to their safety.
Raise your kid however you see fit, and realize that the media scares us into watching by demonizing the 'shocking topic du jour'. When the topic comes around to 'Are video games killing our children?'... no... they're not.
Yeah, that's why I download music at work. Fills time just as well as surfing Slashdot, you get that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, not to mention 'wow free music!'
PS - Morality is stupid.
D
I use two monitors at work, and it speeds things up about 20-30% - especially for applications with lots of palletes or windows (Photoshop, Flash, Premiere, After Effects).
Here's a company that makes a few three-panel LCD displays that looks incredible:
http://www.panoramtech.com/products/desktop.html
Enjoy -
if you're making $10 an hour and it takes you more than 2 hours to download an album, then they've won.
Nah - I mean, I make about $30 an hour, and I'm here at work, and it's really boring, but I have to be here anyway right? Might as well download music.
If you were making $5.00 on each cd sold instead of $0.50, that tour starts looking a little more manageable.
D
Well hell, why not just buy the cds retail ($14), rip the cd to mp3, and then sell the used cd (in near-mint condition) on ebay ($10).
I assume that's completely legal - you bought the cd, you're not sharing anything, and you've paid $4 for your copy of the cd (which is about what it's worth).
Everything will be there however, including the heavy (ab)use of stencil buffers. That and high polygon count is what makes Doom 3 look so good.
Actually, the lighting is about half the equation (which is quite good - true stenciled shadows and per-pixel lighting effects ). The other half is normal mapping . The modelers for Doom 3 created creatures for the game in the 1-2 million polygon range, and crunch that detail down into an RBG map used to offset a much lower resolution mesh. It's similar to a bump map (grayscale relief), only it has three components - the RGB values correspond to XYZ offsets, allowing you to cram a lot of the million-poly detail back into a 2-5 thousand polygon mesh.
Not to be confused with true displacement (true displacement is what's used to turn a flat plane into a terrain mesh) - in Doom 3 no polygons are being shifted, which is why in the screenshots the edges of the critters still look blocky.
I have a hard time believing some inner-city welfare mom watching Oprah while screaming across the room at her kid to stop pouring Cherrios onto his brother is performing 'The ultimate creative act'.
Not that I have kids of course, I don't know what I'm missing.
Moderation totals: -1 Excessive Sarcasm
Mod parent up. If you can't afford something, you find other ways of getting the content.
Seeing as libraries don't usually have new releases, I like to charge a few books from Borders/Barnes and Noble, read them over a few weeks, and then return them (you have up to 30 days on purchases).
Are they going to crack down on people that do that too? There's always some way to skirt a system if you have to.
I knew a girl that was incredibly hooked on snake.
Ah, good times.
D
Like i said, when Linux is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting the product to suit you, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn to code, it's really quite simple. Write the drivers you need, and don't expect others to do it for you or expect a piece of software or hardware to just miraculously adapt to your needs. Using a computer isn't like just turning on a television. Really sometimes I wonder, and think people should be licensed to own a computer before complaining.
Like I said, when your television is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting your television to turn on when you hit the power button, and somehow display shows that you enjoy, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn a little electrical engineering, it's really quite simple. Build a VCR out of parts, don't just expect to buy one and have it miraculously work. Using a television isn't like using a hammer. Really, sometimes I think people should be licensed to view a television before complaining.
Yeah, mod me down. I've got a useless comment quota to meet.
I had to go to industrial-music.com, and then musica.co.uk to order the lastest Feindflug album. It took almost three weeks to ship.
These services just do not account for eccentric listening tastes... but neither does Amazon or Kazaa for that matter.
Given that, I'm inclined to believe that eventually we'll be buying music direct from artists' websites. Put in the search for your favorite obscure industrial-noise stomping band, go to their website, preview a 96kbps mp3, and then buy the tracks you like.
If you like Feindflug, check out Converter, Noisex, Imminent Starvation, Wumpscut, Accessory and Numb.
D
Anyone want to bet on how long it will take for someone to make an AAC to MP3 converter?
"Ah well...who needs to eat? I'll write anyway, and let my readers have it for free."
Yeah, that's about the size of it. As a fine artist, I end up doing art for myself, to show my friends etc. There's virtually no way to support yourself as a fine artist, and soon it may be the same for recording artists.
To support myself, I usually resort to 'applied' arts - graphic design, illustration, web design and other less-creative but more in-demand work.
Go figure, if nobody will pay me to do what I love, it's not really a viable profession.
Our overpaid, spoiled population has unreastic expectations about marriage and life, and they'll continue to be miserable, materialistics wretches until the day they drop dead while choking on a cheeseburger.
This is spot-on. Moreover -
It seems to be that relationships, whether sanctified or not, break down when there are expectations. Marriage, by it's very nature, formalizes expectations.
D
Please refrain from using 'goatse.cx' and 'itching' in the same sentence.
Thank you,
Management
Sorry, the coal-stealing analogy is a little off.
In my opinion, being a recording artist is going to be closer to being a visual artist. There are tons of similarities - you usually have a single talented 'artist' that creates for the joy of creating, and little if any support structure to get the 'art' out there. Most people have very selective tastes in what they like, and collect a little bit to decorate their life with.
Fine artists have a hell of a time supporting themselves making gallery art, and they typically have to get a 'commercial' style job to pay the bills - graphic design, web design or equivalent. I see this happening with recording artists soon too - the bottom is dropping out, and recording artists will have a very difficult time supporting themselves, and will have to find other means to pay the bills (tunes for commercials maybe - I hear Moby sold every track on his last album to corporations before it went gold), and make their own music on their own time.
In the future you'll have very few Picassos and Monets, and very few rock stars. The content these people create will be viewable (listenable) for free, and you'll have to find other means to pay the bills.
D
Sad, pathetic, losers unite - www.zerosexlife.com
1. Graphics designers switch to PCs.
Maybe stating this is unnecessary, but I've been a graphic designer for six years, and I've always used PCs. In the half dozen workplaces I've worked in in LA and NYC, we used PCs. My current design department coworkers use PCs, and the printers we deal with use PCs.
Maybe Adobe isn't abandoning the Mac platform, maybe they're just realizing most people (and most designers) use PCs, and are adjusting priorities accordingly.
D
Ooh - Henson-brand talking puppets. Now I can briefly ignore the fact that we're bombing a country into a sheet of glass.
Sarcasm only partially implied.
This is a little cross-pollinated. HDRI isn't used in photography, traditional or digital. You're referring to image formats with higher bit-depth.
High Dynamic Range is used in 3d rendering to more accurately simulate lighting (especially skylighting). You take multiple exposures of a scene (at 8-bit) and composite those together to form a HDR image, which is used by high-end rendering software to project onto a 3d scene to create very soft, realistic lighting.
For anyone that's interested:
HDRI Primer
D
www.zerosexlife.com
The download is the better buy, if (like most bands) there are two or three good songs, and the rest is filler.
Then I've saved $9.00. Blank cds are dirt cheap, and I don't remember the last time I actually read through liner notes.
Yeah, the whole 'It's already free' thing, not to mention this:
"The new service would only be available to users of Apple's Macintosh line computers and iPod portable music players, who have been largely overlooked by the legitimate online music services."
There goes 88% of the desktop market.
Honestly, I wonder if this really 'waters down' their trademark.
In this era of clamoring for eyeballs, media whoring and 'there's no such thing as bad publicity', you would think that a company product that replaces the generic would be the pinnacle of marketing.
Wouldn't Nike be be happy as a clam if 'Nikes' came to mean 'shoes'?