.. for work. I do a lot of reading, emailing, and PHP coding. Frankly, this thing'd be easier on the eyes *and* it'd take up a lot less desk space than what I have now. $1,600 seems a little pricey for it, though. I could get a comparable laptop for that, plus I wouldn't need a UPS for it.
"``This would not authorize someone taking their digital content and sharing it with a million of their best friends,'' Lofgren said in an interview Tuesday. Instead of creating new rights for consumers, she said, her bill would ensure that ``the rights they have in the analog world, they have in digital.''"
This seems pretty simple, straight-forward, and succinct.
"``If this bill were to pass, it would render ineffective, worthless and useless any protection measure we would have in place to protect a $100 million movie,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the Lofgren bill. ``You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it.''"
Hopefully he'll get labeled as a guy who hates fair-use rights with a passion so nobody'll take him seriously. If that happens, he shot himself in the foot with that comment.
I think Hollywood has the idea that if one can copy a DVD, they're just going to give it away bla blah blah. I don't think they've considered that their own talent pool makes good use of copying technology i.e. ripping.
I'll give you an example: I know some peeps who are learning to do 3D rendering and animation. One test of their skills is to see how convincing they can recreate a scene from a movie. For example: Star Trek First Contact. That movie had some scenes shot using studio models of the Enterprise and other ships. One of these guys had a nice mesh of the Enterprise, then he wanted to perfectly recreate the lighting used on the studio model in the movie.
What he did was he bought a copy of the First Contact DVD, then he did a few screen-grabs on his PC. He had very clean pictures to use as reference. Using these images, he started figuring out where the studio lights were placed, and what effects he needed to achieve to minimize the differences. He gained some serious experience in learning how to realistically light a CG model to imitate a 3D model.
Is this an important skill in Hollywood? Oh most definitely! It is a frequent thing to cut from motion control model rigs to CG models. The better the lighting on the mesh, the less startling it is to go from model to CG. (Lost in Space comes to mind...)
This guy was legitimately copying from DVD to improve his talent, and Hollywood may one day hire him for it. However, if Hollywood had their way, he'd have no way to take screen grabs or download the video to his computer for further study. I don't think they have any idea how much damage they may end up doing to the next generation of their talent pool.
...games are blurry on the PS2 is because the system has a bottleneck, 4 megs of VRAM. In order to have more RAM for textures etc, they halve the vertical resolution and then interpolate the image.
"n August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops... "
Assuming they're running RedHat, where are they going to keep their 135,000 system discs?
"3G doesn't seem useful on a tiny cell display like that. Browse the web? The most text you could fit is 32 columns by 7 rows or so. My Palm Vx is 160x160 and I don't like reading text on that. This is even smaller."
That's a bad thing? I have an Ericsson T68i, and I've played on the web a bit with it. That tiny screen means that the sites you go to have to get do to bidness. (At least the ones supported by it...)
Go to a news page? You get a logo, and a one-line summaries of the interesting news stories. Click one, and you get the story.
Go to a news page on the web? You get a 'portal' like site where you have to hunt around to find what you're looking for, banner ads, popups, and if you don't have Flash installed you're likely to be pestered by it.
I'm not saying I'd prefer to read the news on my cell phone, but if I could get to the point that fast on my computer those dudes'd save me a lot of time.
Oh, and as for video, it'd work fine. You can watch video just fine at 160 by 120. Just to give you an example: I once took an episode of Quantum Leap, captured it, compressed it down to 160 by 120 @ 7fps and a really low bitrate so that it'd fit on a 64-meg flash card. I then played it on my PocketPC while on a flight to LA. Guess what? Not only did the episode translate just fine, but the guy next to me wouldn't stop looking over my shoulder.
It's not the type of thing you throw on your big-screen, but on a portable device it works just dandy at that resolution.
"I know a lot of artists; I sort of move in a circle of friends who are all artists of one kind or another. Know how many of them like tweaking their Macs? None."
I'm not sure I agree with that. I had an artist friend that was always monopolizing the Mac in art class. Much to our dismay, he set the system font to a font he created by hand. Unfortunately, I don't know many people with Macs so I can't really comment on more than that one guy. [i]"One example doesn't reflect the whole world"[/i]. The thing is, his art was his passion. He found an avenue to express himself on that machine and he did. I know quite a few non-Mac artists that have done all kinds of fun graphic stuff to their computers. (i.e. customized Winamp Skins, etc...)
Am I right and you're wrong? No, I'm not saying that. In composing this post I realized that there may be a difference between your artists and mine: Are your Mac friends using Macs where they work? If so, I'd say there's a big difference.
The computer you use for work benefits from not being messed with too much. You never know when you'll get a new computer and have to start over. You never know when somebody else will want to use your computer. And you [i]certainly[/i] never know when a tweak could corrupt and endanger your machine.
Apple may have a point. If they're smart, though, they'll leave the door open so that people who want to sweep in and do their tweaks can do so easily. I've done lots of UI tweaking on my machine (heh it's fun watching other people use my computer) and the benefits have been enormous. I'd hate to have my workflow disrupted.
Get the facts [nationalcenter.org] before you indulge in the usual childish knee-jerk Slashbotliberal head-in-the-sand retreat from reality. The liberals are liquidating the working poor of the United States by forcing affordable cars to be horrifically unsafe. Your average affluent white liberal elitist can afford a good, safe SUV to keep his children alive, but not the poor family across town. No, that poor family can't afford anything but an "economy car" -- death on wheels! That poor family has a three times greater chance of having their children exterminated in a collision with that fat, elite, liberal SUV when that drunken tenured professor of multicultural folkdancing comes driving home from a faculty cocktail party full of good liquor paid for with your tax dollars!
Yet again, the liberals show their true, cannibalistic colors.
I know this is off-topic, but it is an amusing read. heh.
It's good news for open source, iddn't it? If one can't use their fair use rights on the closed source format, it gives open sourcers a goal to work towards.
"Likewise, I've seen people use their contacts in the mod community to get better jobs."
Speaking as a 3D Artist, I can happily say that GMAX is a good thing if the industry decides to support it.
Right now, I work in LW. I may want to get a job in the game industry in the next couple of years. If so, I need a tool that's fairly close to the game. The neat thing about GMAX is that Discreet is trying to push it as a model format that other games can import. Should this take off (if it isn't already, haven't checked recently) then I'd be able to download this tool and start cranking away at models.
Eventually, tools like this would probably be used in-house at the studio developing the game. I tell you what: That's the biggest fear I have about getting a new job. Knowing LW is fine and all, but I'll have to adapt to their tools, whatever they may be. The more access I have to those tools already, the more valuable I am.
I guess the short version of what I'm saying is: Mods give the gaming public an avenue to increase their employment value at the companies making the games. They're creating their own talent pool!
"Agreed! Essentially all the players (real, quicktime, you name it) play MPEGs, so why do the sites publish in a smattering of proprietary formats when they could just stick one MPEG out there?"
The answer is simple: Copy restriction. I've downloaded Quicktime trailers before, only to find that I couldn't even take a [i]screenshot[/i] from them. Pity. One of the movies was fimled next door to my house. I wanted to show my friends that, but thanks to QT's copy protection, I was unable to do that. (bye bye fair use...)
Is it right? No. But you have your answer. They think that the release of the trailer will spell death to the industry if people *gasp* can open it in Premiere.
"Well, obviously, if you haven't heard of it, there's no way it could possibly exist."
Hahahahahaah! So let me get this straight, you're trying to insult me for asking a question? Heh. I take it you don't know the answer, then. Hahaha what a dork.
"I'm a ChickenHawk, and I only eat chickens!!" Hee hee that's what you sound like!
Slashdot Mirror
Would the G4 iMac be as power conscience?
(At home our circuit's a little overloaded, printing on my laser printer can sometimes trip it.. A low power-PC would be nice, heh.)
.. for work. I do a lot of reading, emailing, and PHP coding. Frankly, this thing'd be easier on the eyes *and* it'd take up a lot less desk space than what I have now. $1,600 seems a little pricey for it, though. I could get a comparable laptop for that, plus I wouldn't need a UPS for it.
This'd be a killer item at half the price.
"No amount of VRAM is gonna fix the bottleneck in the Xbox's game development cycle. Troll."
When did I mention XBOX? I'm a GameCube zealot, not an XBOX zealot.
This seems pretty simple, straight-forward, and succinct.
Hopefully he'll get labeled as a guy who hates fair-use rights with a passion so nobody'll take him seriously. If that happens, he shot himself in the foot with that comment.
I think Hollywood has the idea that if one can copy a DVD, they're just going to give it away bla blah blah. I don't think they've considered that their own talent pool makes good use of copying technology i.e. ripping.
I'll give you an example: I know some peeps who are learning to do 3D rendering and animation. One test of their skills is to see how convincing they can recreate a scene from a movie. For example: Star Trek First Contact. That movie had some scenes shot using studio models of the Enterprise and other ships. One of these guys had a nice mesh of the Enterprise, then he wanted to perfectly recreate the lighting used on the studio model in the movie.
What he did was he bought a copy of the First Contact DVD, then he did a few screen-grabs on his PC. He had very clean pictures to use as reference. Using these images, he started figuring out where the studio lights were placed, and what effects he needed to achieve to minimize the differences. He gained some serious experience in learning how to realistically light a CG model to imitate a 3D model.
Is this an important skill in Hollywood? Oh most definitely! It is a frequent thing to cut from motion control model rigs to CG models. The better the lighting on the mesh, the less startling it is to go from model to CG. (Lost in Space comes to mind...)
This guy was legitimately copying from DVD to improve his talent, and Hollywood may one day hire him for it. However, if Hollywood had their way, he'd have no way to take screen grabs or download the video to his computer for further study. I don't think they have any idea how much damage they may end up doing to the next generation of their talent pool.
... It's true, the Super Nintendo had basic support for gestures. It's documented in the manual: "Starting the Game, 1.) flip off the power switch..."
My unit was defective, though...
"True. The best way to improve your picture is to sell the playstation and buy a xbox."
No no no, that's not even CLOSE to what I was saying. The best way to improve your picture is to sell the Playstation 2 and buy a GameCube!! Duh!
...games are blurry on the PS2 is because the system has a bottleneck, 4 megs of VRAM. In order to have more RAM for textures etc, they halve the vertical resolution and then interpolate the image.
:P
No connector's gonna fix that.
"n August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops... "
Assuming they're running RedHat, where are they going to keep their 135,000 system discs?
"This little flame war brought to you by a couple of DUMSHITS"
I assume you mean the two guys trying to offend me. Heh.
"Try next time, dumbutt. This isn't VB."
Try 'dumb butt' next time, dumb butt.
"lol. it's great watching somebody make a fool of himself, eh?"
Try capitalizing the first word of every sentence, dumbbutt.
"3G doesn't seem useful on a tiny cell display like that. Browse the web? The most text you could fit is 32 columns by 7 rows or so. My Palm Vx is 160x160 and I don't like reading text on that. This is even smaller."
That's a bad thing? I have an Ericsson T68i, and I've played on the web a bit with it. That tiny screen means that the sites you go to have to get do to bidness. (At least the ones supported by it...)
Go to a news page? You get a logo, and a one-line summaries of the interesting news stories. Click one, and you get the story.
Go to a news page on the web? You get a 'portal' like site where you have to hunt around to find what you're looking for, banner ads, popups, and if you don't have Flash installed you're likely to be pestered by it.
I'm not saying I'd prefer to read the news on my cell phone, but if I could get to the point that fast on my computer those dudes'd save me a lot of time.
Oh, and as for video, it'd work fine. You can watch video just fine at 160 by 120. Just to give you an example: I once took an episode of Quantum Leap, captured it, compressed it down to 160 by 120 @ 7fps and a really low bitrate so that it'd fit on a 64-meg flash card. I then played it on my PocketPC while on a flight to LA. Guess what? Not only did the episode translate just fine, but the guy next to me wouldn't stop looking over my shoulder.
It's not the type of thing you throw on your big-screen, but on a portable device it works just dandy at that resolution.
"I know a lot of artists; I sort of move in a circle of friends who are all artists of one kind or another. Know how many of them like tweaking their Macs? None."
I'm not sure I agree with that. I had an artist friend that was always monopolizing the Mac in art class. Much to our dismay, he set the system font to a font he created by hand. Unfortunately, I don't know many people with Macs so I can't really comment on more than that one guy. [i]"One example doesn't reflect the whole world"[/i]. The thing is, his art was his passion. He found an avenue to express himself on that machine and he did. I know quite a few non-Mac artists that have done all kinds of fun graphic stuff to their computers. (i.e. customized Winamp Skins, etc...)
Am I right and you're wrong? No, I'm not saying that. In composing this post I realized that there may be a difference between your artists and mine: Are your Mac friends using Macs where they work? If so, I'd say there's a big difference.
The computer you use for work benefits from not being messed with too much. You never know when you'll get a new computer and have to start over. You never know when somebody else will want to use your computer. And you [i]certainly[/i] never know when a tweak could corrupt and endanger your machine.
Apple may have a point. If they're smart, though, they'll leave the door open so that people who want to sweep in and do their tweaks can do so easily. I've done lots of UI tweaking on my machine (heh it's fun watching other people use my computer) and the benefits have been enormous. I'd hate to have my workflow disrupted.
"Perhaps your prospective employer will teach you the difference between a spell checker and a grammar checker."
Was that was supposed to be an insult? Heh. Gee, you've wounded me deeply.
I know this is off-topic, but it is an amusing read. heh.
"GMAX and MayaPLE are great though. Between those and milkshape, anyone can do 3D modelling now."
Does Maya PLE allow one to save meshes, or save them into a game format? Or did you refer to Maya as an educational tool?
It's good news for open source, iddn't it? If one can't use their fair use rights on the closed source format, it gives open sourcers a goal to work towards.
"Likewise, I've seen people use their contacts in the mod community to get better jobs."
Speaking as a 3D Artist, I can happily say that GMAX is a good thing if the industry decides to support it.
Right now, I work in LW. I may want to get a job in the game industry in the next couple of years. If so, I need a tool that's fairly close to the game. The neat thing about GMAX is that Discreet is trying to push it as a model format that other games can import. Should this take off (if it isn't already, haven't checked recently) then I'd be able to download this tool and start cranking away at models.
Eventually, tools like this would probably be used in-house at the studio developing the game. I tell you what: That's the biggest fear I have about getting a new job. Knowing LW is fine and all, but I'll have to adapt to their tools, whatever they may be. The more access I have to those tools already, the more valuable I am.
I guess the short version of what I'm saying is: Mods give the gaming public an avenue to increase their employment value at the companies making the games. They're creating their own talent pool!
"Uhhh ... standardize? That would make game programming like .... WORK!"
Uhhh... what? Ya mind putting a little more meat on your point, or are ya just redundantly ranting about the need for game patches?
"Agreed! Essentially all the players (real, quicktime, you name it) play MPEGs, so why do the sites publish in a smattering of proprietary formats when they could just stick one MPEG out there?"
The answer is simple: Copy restriction. I've downloaded Quicktime trailers before, only to find that I couldn't even take a [i]screenshot[/i] from them. Pity. One of the movies was fimled next door to my house. I wanted to show my friends that, but thanks to QT's copy protection, I was unable to do that. (bye bye fair use...)
Is it right? No. But you have your answer. They think that the release of the trailer will spell death to the industry if people *gasp* can open it in Premiere.
"Hindsight being 20/20. What is the #1 thing you would change about the internet if you could go back to the early days?"
Grr he better not say "I wish that it didn't expose porn to minors". My dad hid his stash a litte too well.
When I apply at ILM, my resume's gonna say: "Once bull's eye'd a target 2 meters wide without the aid of a computer."
You can buy a bunch of them here.
"Well, obviously, if you haven't heard of it, there's no way it could possibly exist."
Hahahahahaah! So let me get this straight, you're trying to insult me for asking a question? Heh. I take it you don't know the answer, then. Hahaha what a dork.
"I'm a ChickenHawk, and I only eat chickens!!" Hee hee that's what you sound like!