Right now, people are clamoring for HD content, and these movies are really the first taste. There is a HUGE demand relative to the available supply.
I am utterly unsurprised at this pricing. It means we can expect retail prices about double DVD's for some time. The only good news there is that DVD prices will continue to fall as HD movies see increased competition and lower their prices.
This will continue until two things happen:
The HD format war is settled
There are enough movies available so that simply being Blue-Ray HD isn't worthy of attention.
This will allow volume effects to occur that allow for pricing reductions. Until then studio's will make more money from their "outdated" DVD sales pipeline than they could possibly generate from HD movies.
So, give it a year or so. When there are a few million PS3's out there with BD-ROM's and people use them for watching movies (like they do PS2) then prices will tumble.
Since I am in a predictive mood, I'll say that we'll get price breaks on per movie costs when we have two or more studios with 100+ titles released in HD format. We'll start to approach current DVD pricing when we have four or more studios with 1000+ titles available for purchase, and there are 200+ TV series for sale.
If you think that is unreasonable drop by a Best Buy and count the number of titles they have on display.
As an additional side effect, there will be a point when HD discs "take over" the market from SD video. WHen that happens DVD prices will tumble well below what we have seen VHS prices drop to- because DVD is much cheaper than VHS to replicate on a per disc basis. You can make a profit at retail on a $5 DVD, but you can't on a $5 VHS.
Unlike the RIAA which depends on you buying a pice of music you are going to listen to time and again, the film industry depends on you buying LOTS of content you use infrequently and continuing to buy more and more. As a result of this difference the film/video folk will drive prices down for older products to clear inventory so they can get new product out the door.
Remember that with time you'll be able to make a profit at retail on a $5 BD-ROM, so they have no qualms about dropping prices. They have already seen the value of volume sales.
This guy did something wrong. He should be punished.
I think the punishment being imposed is egregious. $5,000 fine, OK. I think the IBM bill of $20,350 is outrageous. There must be much much more going on than was presented to us to justify such a bill, so I think that's too much. Not that I dispute that he should pay- just how much.
Three months home detention seems fairly harsh, but it may be reasonable. Three years of what is essentially probation also seems harsh, but is conceivably reasonable.
Jail is unreasonable in this case. It is certainly unreasonable in addition to all the above penalties. Maybe if the sentence is suspended with mandatory probation.
What would I propose ? $5,000 fine. $5000 for the IBM services. (Thats two men for a week at $50/Hr with a little overtime) He should stay on house arrest 30 days fulfill two years probation. If he does that he should never go to jail. If he fails to hold up his end of that deal he should get up to 6 months in jail.
That and his probation officer should definitely be wearing the kid gloves.
The real menace this guy might pose is of erasing someone else's account again. That isn't a great threat to society. I doubt he will ever be hired for any position where he is focused on computer security ever again, and further he isn't likely to ever get any job requiring root/administrator access or any type of security clearance or bond.
Those penalties will go on long after any of the penalties being directly imposed by the court, and should be weighed carefully. They represent a disastrous circumstance. At best he will have to completely rebuild his life, at worst he may become completely unemployable.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Well the penalties here are far beyond the actual damages and inconvenience to Aventis or IBM. Tread carefully.
I don't disagree on any particular point, but what I found interesting is the notion that people were thinking, or at least trying to think, in a new way about we use our actual PC's.
Not the software- the actual machine. Aside from some of the Mac Mini and Media Center windows machines meant to integrate with the home entertainment centers, this is the most different design I've seen for decades. That is intrinsically interesting.
That says a great deal about the industry, and its lack of innovation. Remember how dumbstruck folk were by the Mac Mini ? Its a laptop without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. That is what is passing for "innovative."
I don't think the Bookshelf concept is a good design though... it seems far too susceptible to failure. The parts have to be snapped together properly and you need that bookshelf to restrain the system. Also, you still have a computer core, the cube, without which the entire system is nonfunctional- and it is undoubtedly the most complex part of the system. The parent is right- its too much looks and too little computer design.
I agree with the parent that we could have much more interesting things done with "advanced computer design." The only "advanced" idea I have right now is a return to passive backplanes, but for consumers. I also want to see more happen with Plan 9, and with computers that are explicitly designed to take advantage of its paradigms.
You people are not comparing like to like. You should be comparing the MacBook Pro to the Dell Precision M70, not Inspiron systems. The Precision's have features and build quality more in line with Apple's Powerbooks.
If your argument is that the Precision has lower spec's than the Inspiron, in other words that the Inspiron is a better bargain, then you are missing a huge part of the system purchase equation. Quality is worth money, and Dell knows it, even if some Slashdot posters don't.
Digressing for a moment and speaking to Dell's quality: The biggest problem with Dell computers is that purchasers don't understand that their cheap computers have cheap parts in them. Dell builds fine machines, and they cost more than what you get in the weekly mail advertisement. It is not fair to Dell that opinions of all their machines are based on the cheap consumer models. It is equally unfair to assume that Apple's computers are made like cheap Dell computers.
Starting with the $2499 Macbook Pro (1.83GHz) and the Base M70 at $2520. After making the systems match the Mac was $2997 and the Precision M70 was $3130.
Here's what I changed to make the systems match:
To the Dell M70 ADD:
1GB RAM, single DIMM
upgrade to 100GB 7200RPM disk
upgrade to DVD-RW
upgrade to Inter 802.11a/b/g adapter
Add Bluetooth adapter
Add Cardbus 1394 port
To the MacBook Pro ADD:
upgrade to 100GB 7200RPM disk
add a USB POTS modem
Now remember that the Macbook is newer technology.
The Core Duo will run about twice as fast as the best CPU option on the Precision.
The MacBook also has faster RAM.
Apple replaces the Cardbus slot with the new Express/34 slot.
The Mac has the new Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
The Mac has a slightly higher resolution screen, but I selected this Dell option to be the closest match- Dell offers much higher resolution screens.
The mac has a built in powered 6pin 1394a port, Dell has its 1394a 4-pin port on a card!
The Dell's advantages are:
The Quadro video card. The new x1600 video card is much faster, but if you need the high end OpenGL features (For say Maya or Lightwave) the Dell MAY have an edge.
The built in Modem. I haven't used a POTS modem in six years, so I would gladly trade this inconvenience. (I use 1394 all the time.)
About warranties- I don't know how best to compare the warranties, because I have never needed to use Applecare. Feature wise it seems fair however to include Applecare on the MacBook Pro to make it compare to the Precisions "Business Standard" warranty. Add $349 to the Mac.
Ladies and Gentlemen that is what it costs to build a high quality system.
For right now the MacBook Pro is Cheaper, Better and Faster than its peer from Dell. Macfans can gloat if they like, but I wouldn't. When Dell next updates the Precision laptops expect them to be cheaper and better than the MacBook Pro. When Apple follows that update with one of their own, expect prices to flip flop again- that's the computer industry.
The main point is that Mac's are comparable in price to PC's- when you compare like to like. They always have been, well at least since OS X came out.
Many people will not believe the evidence that I present for my belief - which I am well aware cannot be done in a scientifically rigorous fashion. That does not mean my belief is wrong.
If your evidence can not be supported in a scientifically rigorous fashion, then it is most likely not evidence at all.
As to whether or not your belief is wrong it depends on how you choose to evaluate wrong.
If you evaluate it solely on its truth value, then eventually you may be proven correct, but will never be proven incorrect. In other words the question will remain open.
If you evaluate wrongness as a logical process as well as a truth value, then your belief is in fact wrong because it is not logical. Put differently, it is not sufficient that your answer is correct- it is equally important that your methodology and reasoning are sound.
A mathematical example may clear up my meaning:
Solve the following. Show your work. 2^2=?
If you write, "2+2 = 4" your answer (4) is correct but the work (2+2) is wrong.
I think we would all agree that a student writing such a thing doesn't understand exponentiation. Of course I suppose that someone will bring up the *minor* detail that multiplication is a short-hand for repetitive addition... but I hope you understand my point.
I would argue that people presenting arguments for their personal beliefs like your arguments don't understand logic, faith or religion.
As for converting me, I am more than willing to be converted. Show me evidence that supports your proposition that god exists first. Until that time I shall continue my belief that your belief is unjustified and thus illogical.
I have to assume that your reading my post counter to my intent.
Your point would be cogent if I was attempting to prove that there is no god/deity/supreme/whatever.
I am not. I am not trying to convince anyone that god does not exist.
I am only saying that believing that god does exist is not rational. Put differently there is no rational basis for that belief.
The argument that there is no such thing as god is equally irrational.
The most accurate statement is that we have not encountered evidence to warrant belief in god.
Many people equate not believing with disbelief, but they are subtly different logical states.
Not believing is the act of assigning a value of 0 to a logical proposition of the form "p exists."
Disbelieving is the act of assigning a value of 1 to a proposition "~p exists" or "p does not exist."
However in certain circumstances the logical chain of
p xor q q therefore not p
is true, but this certainly not the case for the argument regarding theism. The first step there would read p xor ~p. It leads us right back to the notion of negative proof.
I am afraid that the question will remain open until evidence is accumulated supporting the existence of god. The same holds for the "supernatural", aliens and many other notions.
In other words the thesis that there exists god is not falsifiable. Which is another point in favor of the argument in the subject line: Science!=Religion.
So- you proceed from a false assumption, and more importantly and fundamentally a false understanding of logic and epistemology.
Your decision to believe in "god" is not rational. While I can't agree with the tenor of the grandparent post, the conclusion is correct. This belief is irrational.
Those that hold irrational beliefs are delusional. If you are delusional and lack insight into that failing you are psychotic.
That's a puerile application of those terms, but people who believe in anything for which there is no evidence, more commonly called "having faith", are at least mildly psychotic. Psychosis, while not an actual diagnosis, is evidentiary of serious mental illness.
So calling religious people who have faith in the existence of god "crazy" is justified. You might as well be standing there telling me you have faith that there are farting space monsters on the other side of the sun- secretly hidden from observation.
Both statements have the same logical value- 0.
The FIRST tenet of religion is FAITH. Faith is by definition ILLOGICAL and IRRATIONAL.
If you were unaware of this, then I urge you to reconsider your faith. I frame the question thus: "Do I wish to discard reason for madness ?"
Despite what many fools here seem to say, OS X is a valid and growing platform for 3D content creation.
Lightwave and Maya have both had native versions since the pre-OS X days, and while both were a bit slow out the gate with their OS X versions, both are current and feature complete.
I personally prefer LIghtwave, but I have yet to get a license of my own for an OS X ready version. Having used other workstations for both Maya and Lightwave I can say that they are both stable and fast.
As someone else pointed out Linux is gaining ground very fast in content creation and nowhere is it gaining faster than in 3D. I think this is because 3D users are the most technically minded of creative users, with the possible exception of Digital Compositors. (I'd argue that anyway.) Again Maya is leading the pack. Lightwave has a render client, but no modeling or layout.
As to Blender, I am never happy with it. The guys keep improving it and it is a good tool, but I see it as comparable to things like Truespace. You are definitely stepping up if you move to either LW or Maya.
I don't know modo, but I am trying it NOW. It seems quite promising.
Best of luck
Oh, and as to the aforementioned fools, please read my.sig
1: Wait till the next lightning storm. 2: Coat the male power connectors on the back of your current monitor with nonconductive paint. 3: Tell her the lightning took it out and you have to get a new one.
Won't work damn it, my girlfriend is an electrical engineer!
You might be farf better off spending your money on a license for Lightwave or Maya.
I use and prefer Lightwave, it also has a far better renderer than Maya included. In fact the renderer is the feature film league, and is routinely used on highly visible productions.
Both of these products are available for Windows and OS X.
Also, you can find a very large selcetion of models, textures tutorials and experienced help for these packages if you need them.
If you are going to be doing this regularly then I have to say, using a professional toolset is the very best choice, in the end it will save both time and money.
You have to have vibrations with very very low amplitude.
Ice skates and rollerblades have a natural vibration induced by imperfections in the surfaces you are skating on. (The same can be said of skiing I expect)On some poorly maintained ice surfaces you can get a mighty bumpy ride.
Hockey skates have recently (in the last 5-7 years) started including vibration reduction materials. As the level of vibration reduced the most noticeable effect at first is simply more comfort. That's why I bought into it, I had to be on my skates 8-12 hours a day.
As the vibrations were reduced to unnoticeable levels I started noticing improvements in my skating, and in the skating of my students and teammates. I always thought that practice had improved our balance, but it seems possible now that the equipment played an unintended role.
I'd love to see a study on this. Did we get an unintended benefit, or is it really just practice ? Some mix ? How much of each ?
I'd also like to see this, if it pans out, included as a feature in skates. The most serious injuries most hockey players, especially youth players, will endure come indirectly from inadequate balance. It would make my sport safer.
I am getting tired of seeing 13 year olds with the knees of 80 year olds after mulitiple surgeries.
and that means that they can choose to keep it "straight" or more like a traditional wing during straight and level flight as the aircraft accelerates through Mach 1.
They do this simply by controlling the deformation and setting it to the rest state of the surface...since this is a prototype of a very new technology it is fair to assume that aside from deforming the wing for control the actual shape of the wing is very traditional, as are its construction techniques.
This should give a reasonably predictable set of behaviors at transition.
Then again, IANAAE. I should perhaps be heeding my sig.
Seriously, why limit yourself to online only stuff.
Once you have a video you can send it to MTV, MTV2, (Where it will most likely be ignored...) stream it on the web, get it played at college TV stations and of course public access.
Don't forget your local news people...they can take a video you make and air a clip as part of a local interest piece.
Expect to spend at least $1000 USD for a basic video that meets US broadcast regulations. It is important that your end result meet broadcast standards, other wise you cut off distribution paths and will end up reshooting. If whoever you get to do the shoot can't tell you what both a waveform monitor and a vectorscope are and why you use them, then get someone else.
Don't expect miracles, a number of the videos you see on TV today are in the million dollar budget range...
What kind of video should you do ? I'd go for a performance video, AKA the "band shows up at yet another club and plays to a screaming wildly excited crowd" sort. Use the club's existing lighting set up and you'll get that grainy documentary look. You'll probably need a couple extra lights for some crowd scenes, many clubs have almost no lighting for the crowd.
The reason this sort of video is so cliche is that it is cheap to make and still manages to look acceptable. Also, if you have time, energy and possibly money invested in an interesting stage performance, that all gets shown off, spicing up the video for no real additional cost.
If you can, buddy up to some club owners and shoot mid day. Invite YOUR friends and fans. You want this sort of crowd as opposed to what you'll get at random some Friday night...it would suck to be booed off stage on your own video cause the crowd thought you were a rap group but you do rock music or whatever.
Without getting into the stratosphere price wise what are your options on this type of shoot ? Mostly its the addition of more cameras. This is difficult enough to manage and can easily send the budget too high if you get carried away. If the budget is there you could try integrating CG elements if they fit your band's style.
A good recent example is Janet Jackson's Live in Hawaii HBO special. ( I think that is on DVD now.) Now this is a whole concert, but you can break it easily into songs, all of which are suitable as music videos.
So, in yet another bit of self promotion...I make films and videos. Anybody need one in the Washington DC area ? Drop me a line.
Clearly you are unaware that 720x480 NTSC DV is NOT the ultimate framesize. For one the D1 digital standard is 720x486 for NTSC. Then there's PAL which is 720x576 D1. Of course since it is likely that a high speed camera like this will be used for either scientific or film work you have to consider higher framsizes as essential.
HD TV comes in a variety of flavors but it seems to me that 1920x1080 resolution is becoming the acquisition standard. Frames can be downconverted to D1 or any other HD resolution from this size. This is one possibility, and it seemed to work well for Star Wars EP2.
Film is another beast entirely. It holds a LOT more frame resolution than HD, but even in the most lavish productions we rarely get to see more than 4k resolution. (That is ~4000 pixels by whatever height your aspect ratio requires, typically near 2000 pixels.)
Next for the vast majority of professional uses video is UNCOMPRESSED. Nobody would ever dare use 100:1 compression for any project. DV uses 5:1 compression and that is BARELY acceptable in a LOT of circumstances.
Next color depth. DV is 4:1:1. This is the rough equivalent to 17bit color. Most video is 4:2:2 which is roughly like 24 bit color. Rarely do people deal with 4:4:4 video, but that is roughly like 32bit color. Video for film projects like Star Wars are most often handled during post at 4:4:4, but then by the time we see them they are 4:2:2 again. Film follows a similiar path through production.
Now you may thing that DVD is just great, but from a production standpoint material originated a DVD style MPEG-2 is next to useless for production. The MPEG-2 being considered for acquisition is very different in both data rate and IBP frame composition than what you have on DVD.
With that little smidgen of knowledge I think you'll find that the parent posts criticisms are ALMOST entirely unfounded.
I say almost because nobody uses SVGA for video capture. They either use a D1 or HD framesize and rate. SVGA is thus meaningless, except mathematically in that it is close the mean of available resolutions.
So...what we have here is another Slashdot post by someone who knows little or nothing about the topic they are discussing getting rated informative by others whom also know little or nothing about the topic.
I really wish you people would just keep your fingers still when you don't know what you are talking about. Disinformation (regardless of actual intent) is worse than no information.
I use IDE disks for video editing, and if I don't have appropiate data rates I get errors. So I am very meticulous. I do a mix of uncompressed video and DV25 work. Uncompressed video requires 23Mbytes/sec (NTSC) DV25 only requires 3.5 Mbytes a second, per stream. Frequently in editing or compositing I will use up to 9 data streams.
My IDE drives can all sustain over 19.5 Mbytes/sec for reads in single configuration.
I benchmark my sytems with Matrox Disk Benchmark provided with Matrox video editing equipment. Matrox Disk Benchmark writes random data to the disk Typically the generated data set runs very large, usually in the tens of Gigabytes. With such large data sets any cache is completely negated, be they OS or hardware.
I ran a 16.5GB test for my reply, and just for giggles kept an instance of Winamp running as well as playing two separate full resolution NTSC video streams and surfing the web while the test ran.
Here are the results for a Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax D540X 4G160J8 drive in a single configuration. The test platform is a dual Pentium 3 750 with 512MB RAM and Windows 2000 service pack 2. At the time of the test the drive had 53.22GBytes of 152.66 Gbytes free. Data is in MB/sec. The three measured values are: minimum/average/peak.
Single Write 8.43/30.28/39.96
Single Read 19.56/27.12/39.96
Dual Read 8.43/11.89/16.87
I expect that the number that should interest you most is the average (middle number), though for my application the minimum data rate is critical.
Aside from defragmenting drives regularly I do no special maintenance.
I am not going to go through every point MSFT has on that page, but what I hope to show is that they are not changing their strategy, just their tactics to carry out the strategy.
It used to be that MSFT FUD was a set of bald faced lies, apparently the hope was that no one would check them out at all. Well people did, found out they were lies and went to Linux.
All of the new MSFT FUD is now more subtle, and appears to have supporting material in some cases. Now you can even check this stuff out, and if you are not very knowledgeable about software you can be fooled.
Point 1
Sum up as "Linux/Samba is not really compatible with Windows networking."
In fact Linux, and Samba do support almost all features of CIFS. When Samba has been incompatible it is because MSFT changed their implementation. For this matter, Win95 and Win98 are incompatible with W2K CIFS networking.
Point 2
Sum up as "Linux is not fully compatible with Active Directory"
True enough, but Linux is compatible to the extent that Active Directory is compatible with LDAP. In truth, MSFT is the one failing to comply with existing standards...neat how they twist this one around.
Point 5
Sum up as "IIS 5 is faster than Linux for SpecWeb99"
This is just FUD. The link they point to seems to agree with their assertion but how about this link instead. It sure seems to tell a different story on identically configured hardware.
Point 11
Sum up as "Windows has reliable drivers that are signed by MSFT, Linux doesn't"
Windows has NEVER had reliable drivers. Not all the best drivers are signed by MSFT if at all.
The situation is only somewhat better than Windows for Linux to be fair. First off most drivers are delivered with an MD5 checksum, which is good enough for most uses. Secondly you get the source most of the time. Finally, since when has NASA written drivers for MSFT ? (Thanks to Don Becker, NASA GSFC.)
Point 16
My favorite..."The GPL is nasty and dangerous and can force you to give away all your secrets."
First off the GPL is easy to understand, and very consistent. You get quite a lot for a simple price, "our changes to the code are to be made public with your codes binary release."
MSFT has a problem with this because they are in the business of keeping code secret, not open sharing of ideas. Frankly that is OK, and can be a fair way to do business, despite what many OSS evangelists will tell you. What it fails to be however is an advantage to the consumer of the final product.
Furtherless IEEE 1394b can run at 800Mbytes/sec over Cat 5 for up to 100m. Seems like you'll be able to just swap out your RJ-45 connectors for firewire ones and get to business.
As far as being saturated by a single fast disk...well do you have a single disk that can sustain 50Mbytes per second ? IEEE1394a can really transfer data very close to its theoretical limits in my experience. I've seen it shovel around 40+MBytes/sec so, I wouldn't write it off so fast. You need an IDE RAID 0 array to manage that.
I want to thank you for posting your note about Jimmy.
He inspired me, for whatever that is worth, and when I read the article I was VERY worried about him. I trusted your message about him enough to set my mind at ease.
I am sorry that some of those people (/. readers) are jerks to you. I frankly liked your portrayal of Wesley...it was awkward, but that was the point right...that Wesley was brilliant but awkward ? That they (ST Fans in this case) bear you so much ill will for playing the role is an indication of THEIR shallowness, their lack of understanding of film making and their cruelty.
That they would remain so after you passed on relatively good news to a generally concerned crowd in this forum is more appalling to me.
Along with the server rooms for the movies no doubt...
You need 36GB an hour for D-Cinema level quality. You'd need 4 double sided dual layer DVD's (DVD-18) just to play a single movie. How you planning to pass them around ? Oh yeah, that is the wavelet compressed version.
Maybe you want to invest in the D5HD VTR's being used by the TI demo team ? That gets you uncompressed quality, for about $130 a tape, that runs about 20 minutes.
This is the wave of the future, in that you are right, but the future is a bit further off than you might think. The storage will arrive sooner or later, but Hollywood is already pressing for a higher res version of HD for Dcinema...something with 4000x2000 resolution or thereabouts.
Hollywood is happy to deliver the best images possible to your home, but they want to make sure you have a reason to go to the theatre too.
How about this ? It is a Powerpoint (SORRY!!) presentation given by the Texas Instruments people at the 2001 Dcinema conference at NIST. Unfortunately it was out of date even back then, and is asssuredly more so now. For example, the 1920x1080 DLP Cinema was brand spanking new then. I was told that TI had the demo unit at only one location (other than the TI lab) before the NIST conference.
About the projector you mention, the Kiniton E, I don't know projectors by make and model (I should...) In any case, I have seen some projectors with a feature like the one you mention, it may have been the same. (Did I mention I MAKE films, seen a lot of projectors...) The thing is though that you still have to mechanically move the film. You can't eliminate jitter and weave in a mechanical system. Remember my yammering about how much the frame gets magnified ? Even small errors get magnified dramatically.
Jitter in a DLP system comes from external sources, i.e. the table shaking etc. (Should I point out that a film projector is more likely to make a table shake...Uh, guess I just did.)
There is a huge difference between litte jitter and NO jitter. There is no weave either. When you spend an hour or two watching DLP and then watch even well maintained quality projectors with trained projectionists...there is a difference. You really don't want to go back. That is just my opinion.
First off most NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) members will admit if pressed that they are not in the movie business at all, it is incidental.
They are in the concessions business. They sell sugared water with carbonation, and exploded corn kernels with butter flavored oil.
Nonetheless there are very strong economic reasons to use digital projection. For one it allows a theatre owner to be far more flexible in what they show and how many screens they show a film on. They can dynamically allocate theaters to meet demand in a digital world.
The DLP projectors are designed to be more reliable than film projectors, and to have fewer operator adjustments. They look better for longer without intervention. There are no prints to manage logistics for and to deal with shipping. etc etc.
OH, yeah, they LOOK BETTER to boot. Once you see one, that may be the end of your film projection days.
NATO members are very eager to get these advantages.
However as you can imagine the candy and soda business can't afford to bear wasted overhead. They can't invest in a DLP system on a fiber network to a, exabyte server room and have it be supplanted quickly.
What NATO members are waiting for is two things:
The technology to settle down
Standards to emerge and stabilize
Once these things are in place, there will be a RACE to get DLP projectors out to your local multiplex.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now, people are clamoring for HD content, and these movies are really the first taste. There is a HUGE demand relative to the available supply.
I am utterly unsurprised at this pricing. It means we can expect retail prices about double DVD's for some time. The only good news there is that DVD prices will continue to fall as HD movies see increased competition and lower their prices.
This will continue until two things happen:
This will allow volume effects to occur that allow for pricing reductions. Until then studio's will make more money from their "outdated" DVD sales pipeline than they could possibly generate from HD movies.
So, give it a year or so. When there are a few million PS3's out there with BD-ROM's and people use them for watching movies (like they do PS2) then prices will tumble.
Since I am in a predictive mood, I'll say that we'll get price breaks on per movie costs when we have two or more studios with 100+ titles released in HD format. We'll start to approach current DVD pricing when we have four or more studios with 1000+ titles available for purchase, and there are 200+ TV series for sale.
If you think that is unreasonable drop by a Best Buy and count the number of titles they have on display.
As an additional side effect, there will be a point when HD discs "take over" the market from SD video. WHen that happens DVD prices will tumble well below what we have seen VHS prices drop to- because DVD is much cheaper than VHS to replicate on a per disc basis. You can make a profit at retail on a $5 DVD, but you can't on a $5 VHS.
Unlike the RIAA which depends on you buying a pice of music you are going to listen to time and again, the film industry depends on you buying LOTS of content you use infrequently and continuing to buy more and more. As a result of this difference the film/video folk will drive prices down for older products to clear inventory so they can get new product out the door.
Remember that with time you'll be able to make a profit at retail on a $5 BD-ROM, so they have no qualms about dropping prices. They have already seen the value of volume sales.
This guy did something wrong. He should be punished.
I think the punishment being imposed is egregious. $5,000 fine, OK. I think the IBM bill of $20,350 is outrageous. There must be much much more going on than was presented to us to justify such a bill, so I think that's too much. Not that I dispute that he should pay- just how much.
Three months home detention seems fairly harsh, but it may be reasonable. Three years of what is essentially probation also seems harsh, but is conceivably reasonable.
Jail is unreasonable in this case. It is certainly unreasonable in addition to all the above penalties. Maybe if the sentence is suspended with mandatory probation.
What would I propose ? $5,000 fine. $5000 for the IBM services. (Thats two men for a week at $50/Hr with a little overtime) He should stay on house arrest 30 days fulfill two years probation. If he does that he should never go to jail. If he fails to hold up his end of that deal he should get up to 6 months in jail.
That and his probation officer should definitely be wearing the kid gloves.
The real menace this guy might pose is of erasing someone else's account again. That isn't a great threat to society. I doubt he will ever be hired for any position where he is focused on computer security ever again, and further he isn't likely to ever get any job requiring root/administrator access or any type of security clearance or bond.
Those penalties will go on long after any of the penalties being directly imposed by the court, and should be weighed carefully. They represent a disastrous circumstance. At best he will have to completely rebuild his life, at worst he may become completely unemployable.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Well the penalties here are far beyond the actual damages and inconvenience to Aventis or IBM. Tread carefully.
I don't disagree on any particular point, but what I found interesting is the notion that people were thinking, or at least trying to think, in a new way about we use our actual PC's.
Not the software- the actual machine. Aside from some of the Mac Mini and Media Center windows machines meant to integrate with the home entertainment centers, this is the most different design I've seen for decades. That is intrinsically interesting.
That says a great deal about the industry, and its lack of innovation. Remember how dumbstruck folk were by the Mac Mini ? Its a laptop without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. That is what is passing for "innovative."
I don't think the Bookshelf concept is a good design though... it seems far too susceptible to failure. The parts have to be snapped together properly and you need that bookshelf to restrain the system. Also, you still have a computer core, the cube, without which the entire system is nonfunctional- and it is undoubtedly the most complex part of the system. The parent is right- its too much looks and too little computer design.
I agree with the parent that we could have much more interesting things done with "advanced computer design." The only "advanced" idea I have right now is a return to passive backplanes, but for consumers. I also want to see more happen with Plan 9, and with computers that are explicitly designed to take advantage of its paradigms.
If your argument is that the Precision has lower spec's than the Inspiron, in other words that the Inspiron is a better bargain, then you are missing a huge part of the system purchase equation. Quality is worth money, and Dell knows it, even if some Slashdot posters don't.
Digressing for a moment and speaking to Dell's quality: The biggest problem with Dell computers is that purchasers don't understand that their cheap computers have cheap parts in them. Dell builds fine machines, and they cost more than what you get in the weekly mail advertisement. It is not fair to Dell that opinions of all their machines are based on the cheap consumer models. It is equally unfair to assume that Apple's computers are made like cheap Dell computers.
Starting with the $2499 Macbook Pro (1.83GHz) and the Base M70 at $2520. After making the systems match the Mac was $2997 and the Precision M70 was $3130.
Here's what I changed to make the systems match:
To the Dell M70 ADD:
To the MacBook Pro ADD:
Now remember that the Macbook is newer technology.
The Dell's advantages are:
About warranties- I don't know how best to compare the warranties, because I have never needed to use Applecare. Feature wise it seems fair however to include Applecare on the MacBook Pro to make it compare to the Precisions "Business Standard" warranty. Add $349 to the Mac.
Ladies and Gentlemen that is what it costs to build a high quality system.
For right now the MacBook Pro is Cheaper, Better and Faster than its peer from Dell. Macfans can gloat if they like, but I wouldn't. When Dell next updates the Precision laptops expect them to be cheaper and better than the MacBook Pro. When Apple follows that update with one of their own, expect prices to flip flop again- that's the computer industry.
The main point is that Mac's are comparable in price to PC's- when you compare like to like. They always have been, well at least since OS X came out.
Panasonic is selling a new DVCPRO HD camcorder, starting at about $5500 USD
AG-HVX200
You can record DVCPRO HD to a Direct To Edit (DTE) hard disk.
Cineporter CP-2
Many people will not believe the evidence that I present for my belief - which I am well aware cannot be done in a scientifically rigorous fashion. That does not mean my belief is wrong.
If your evidence can not be supported in a scientifically rigorous fashion, then it is most likely not evidence at all.
As to whether or not your belief is wrong it depends on how you choose to evaluate wrong.
If you evaluate it solely on its truth value, then eventually you may be proven correct, but will never be proven incorrect. In other words the question will remain open.
If you evaluate wrongness as a logical process as well as a truth value, then your belief is in fact wrong because it is not logical. Put differently, it is not sufficient that your answer is correct- it is equally important that your methodology and reasoning are sound.
A mathematical example may clear up my meaning:
Solve the following. Show your work. 2^2=?
If you write, "2+2 = 4" your answer (4) is correct but the work (2+2) is wrong.
I think we would all agree that a student writing such a thing doesn't understand exponentiation. Of course I suppose that someone will bring up the *minor* detail that multiplication is a short-hand for repetitive addition... but I hope you understand my point.
I would argue that people presenting arguments for their personal beliefs like your arguments don't understand logic, faith or religion.
As for converting me, I am more than willing to be converted. Show me evidence that supports your proposition that god exists first. Until that time I shall continue my belief that your belief is unjustified and thus illogical.
I have to assume that your reading my post counter to my intent.
Your point would be cogent if I was attempting to prove that there is no god/deity/supreme/whatever.
I am not. I am not trying to convince anyone that god does not exist.
I am only saying that believing that god does exist is not rational. Put differently there is no rational basis for that belief.
The argument that there is no such thing as god is equally irrational.
The most accurate statement is that we have not encountered evidence to warrant belief in god.
Many people equate not believing with disbelief, but they are subtly different logical states.
Not believing is the act of assigning a value of 0 to a logical proposition of the form "p exists."
Disbelieving is the act of assigning a value of 1 to a proposition "~p exists" or "p does not exist."
However in certain circumstances the logical chain of
p xor q
q
therefore not p
is true, but this certainly not the case for the argument regarding theism. The first step there would read p xor ~p. It leads us right back to the notion of negative proof.
I am afraid that the question will remain open until evidence is accumulated supporting the existence of god. The same holds for the "supernatural", aliens and many other notions.
In other words the thesis that there exists god is not falsifiable. Which is another point in favor of the argument in the subject line: Science!=Religion.
You can't prove there isn't a God, and I can't prove there is a God.
i cal_fallacy)
It's technically falacy to make the assumption either way that he does or does not exist.
Uh- no.
Whomever makes the positive assertion (i.e. something exists) has the burden of proof.
In this case the people who claim there is a god/deity/supreme/whatever have to prove their assertion.
It is not the responsibility of the challenger to prove their assertion, in other words to prove that god/deity/supreme/whatever does not exist.
Any attempt to place this burden on the challenger is itself a logical fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(log
So- you proceed from a false assumption, and more importantly and fundamentally a false understanding of logic and epistemology.
Your decision to believe in "god" is not rational. While I can't agree with the tenor of the grandparent post, the conclusion is correct. This belief is irrational.
Those that hold irrational beliefs are delusional. If you are delusional and lack insight into that failing you are psychotic.
That's a puerile application of those terms, but people who believe in anything for which there is no evidence, more commonly called "having faith", are at least mildly psychotic. Psychosis, while not an actual diagnosis, is evidentiary of serious mental illness.
So calling religious people who have faith in the existence of god "crazy" is justified. You might as well be standing there telling me you have faith that there are farting space monsters on the other side of the sun- secretly hidden from observation.
Both statements have the same logical value- 0.
The FIRST tenet of religion is FAITH. Faith is by definition ILLOGICAL and IRRATIONAL.
If you were unaware of this, then I urge you to reconsider your faith. I frame the question thus: "Do I wish to discard reason for madness ?"
Despite what many fools here seem to say, OS X is a valid and growing platform for 3D content creation.
.sig
Lightwave and Maya have both had native versions since the pre-OS X days, and while both were a bit slow out the gate with their OS X versions, both are current and feature complete.
I personally prefer LIghtwave, but I have yet to get a license of my own for an OS X ready version. Having used other workstations for both Maya and Lightwave I can say that they are both stable and fast.
As someone else pointed out Linux is gaining ground very fast in content creation and nowhere is it gaining faster than in 3D. I think this is because 3D users are the most technically minded of creative users, with the possible exception of Digital Compositors. (I'd argue that anyway.) Again Maya is leading the pack. Lightwave has a render client, but no modeling or layout.
As to Blender, I am never happy with it. The guys keep improving it and it is a good tool, but I see it as comparable to things like Truespace. You are definitely stepping up if you move to either LW or Maya.
I don't know modo, but I am trying it NOW. It seems quite promising.
Best of luck
Oh, and as to the aforementioned fools, please read my
1: Wait till the next lightning storm.
2: Coat the male power connectors on the back of your current monitor with nonconductive paint.
3: Tell her the lightning took it out and you have to get a new one.
Won't work damn it, my girlfriend is an electrical engineer!
July 16 2004.
Here is the official site.
Come on now...the theory I linked to is just as valid!
You might be farf better off spending your money on a license for Lightwave or Maya.
I use and prefer Lightwave, it also has a far better renderer than Maya included. In fact the renderer is the feature film league, and is routinely used on highly visible productions.
Both of these products are available for Windows and OS X.
Also, you can find a very large selcetion of models, textures tutorials and experienced help for these packages if you need them.
If you are going to be doing this regularly then I have to say, using a professional toolset is the very best choice, in the end it will save both time and money.
Lightwave info
Tron was the film that started out the entire film/CGI thing.
Get the recent DVD edition and watch all the documentary stuff. Get the Cinefex issue.
You have to have vibrations with very very low amplitude.
Ice skates and rollerblades have a natural vibration induced by imperfections in the surfaces you are skating on. (The same can be said of skiing I expect)On some poorly maintained ice surfaces you can get a mighty bumpy ride.
Hockey skates have recently (in the last 5-7 years) started including vibration reduction materials. As the level of vibration reduced the most noticeable effect at first is simply more comfort. That's why I bought into it, I had to be on my skates 8-12 hours a day.
As the vibrations were reduced to unnoticeable levels I started noticing improvements in my skating, and in the skating of my students and teammates. I always thought that practice had improved our balance, but it seems possible now that the equipment played an unintended role.
I'd love to see a study on this. Did we get an unintended benefit, or is it really just practice ? Some mix ? How much of each ?
I'd also like to see this, if it pans out, included as a feature in skates. The most serious injuries most hockey players, especially youth players, will endure come indirectly from inadequate balance. It would make my sport safer.
I am getting tired of seeing 13 year olds with the knees of 80 year olds after mulitiple surgeries.
and that means that they can choose to keep it "straight" or more like a traditional wing during straight and level flight as the aircraft accelerates through Mach 1.
They do this simply by controlling the deformation and setting it to the rest state of the surface...since this is a prototype of a very new technology it is fair to assume that aside from deforming the wing for control the actual shape of the wing is very traditional, as are its construction techniques.
This should give a reasonably predictable set of behaviors at transition.
Then again, IANAAE. I should perhaps be heeding my sig.
...have a self financed music video made.
Seriously, why limit yourself to online only stuff.
Once you have a video you can send it to MTV, MTV2, (Where it will most likely be ignored...) stream it on the web, get it played at college TV stations and of course public access.
Don't forget your local news people...they can take a video you make and air a clip as part of a local interest piece.
Expect to spend at least $1000 USD for a basic video that meets US broadcast regulations. It is important that your end result meet broadcast standards, other wise you cut off distribution paths and will end up reshooting. If whoever you get to do the shoot can't tell you what both a waveform monitor and a vectorscope are and why you use them, then get someone else.
Don't expect miracles, a number of the videos you see on TV today are in the million dollar budget range...
What kind of video should you do ? I'd go for a performance video, AKA the "band shows up at yet another club and plays to a screaming wildly excited crowd" sort. Use the club's existing lighting set up and you'll get that grainy documentary look. You'll probably need a couple extra lights for some crowd scenes, many clubs have almost no lighting for the crowd.
The reason this sort of video is so cliche is that it is cheap to make and still manages to look acceptable. Also, if you have time, energy and possibly money invested in an interesting stage performance, that all gets shown off, spicing up the video for no real additional cost.
If you can, buddy up to some club owners and shoot mid day. Invite YOUR friends and fans. You want this sort of crowd as opposed to what you'll get at random some Friday night...it would suck to be booed off stage on your own video cause the crowd thought you were a rap group but you do rock music or whatever.
Without getting into the stratosphere price wise what are your options on this type of shoot ? Mostly its the addition of more cameras. This is difficult enough to manage and can easily send the budget too high if you get carried away. If the budget is there you could try integrating CG elements if they fit your band's style.
A good recent example is Janet Jackson's Live in Hawaii HBO special. ( I think that is on DVD now.) Now this is a whole concert, but you can break it easily into songs, all of which are suitable as music videos.
So, in yet another bit of self promotion...I make films and videos. Anybody need one in the Washington DC area ? Drop me a line.
Clearly you are unaware that 720x480 NTSC DV is NOT the ultimate framesize. For one the D1 digital standard is 720x486 for NTSC. Then there's PAL which is 720x576 D1. Of course since it is likely that a high speed camera like this will be used for either scientific or film work you have to consider higher framsizes as essential.
HD TV comes in a variety of flavors but it seems to me that 1920x1080 resolution is becoming the acquisition standard. Frames can be downconverted to D1 or any other HD resolution from this size. This is one possibility, and it seemed to work well for Star Wars EP2.
Film is another beast entirely. It holds a LOT more frame resolution than HD, but even in the most lavish productions we rarely get to see more than 4k resolution. (That is ~4000 pixels by whatever height your aspect ratio requires, typically near 2000 pixels.)
Next for the vast majority of professional uses video is UNCOMPRESSED. Nobody would ever dare use 100:1 compression for any project. DV uses 5:1 compression and that is BARELY acceptable in a LOT of circumstances.
Next color depth. DV is 4:1:1. This is the rough equivalent to 17bit color. Most video is 4:2:2 which is roughly like 24 bit color. Rarely do people deal with 4:4:4 video, but that is roughly like 32bit color. Video for film projects like Star Wars are most often handled during post at 4:4:4, but then by the time we see them they are 4:2:2 again. Film follows a similiar path through production.
Now you may thing that DVD is just great, but from a production standpoint material originated a DVD style MPEG-2 is next to useless for production. The MPEG-2 being considered for acquisition is very different in both data rate and IBP frame composition than what you have on DVD.
With that little smidgen of knowledge I think you'll find that the parent posts criticisms are ALMOST entirely unfounded.
I say almost because nobody uses SVGA for video capture. They either use a D1 or HD framesize and rate. SVGA is thus meaningless, except mathematically in that it is close the mean of available resolutions.
So...what we have here is another Slashdot post by someone who knows little or nothing about the topic they are discussing getting rated informative by others whom also know little or nothing about the topic.
I really wish you people would just keep your fingers still when you don't know what you are talking about. Disinformation (regardless of actual intent) is worse than no information.
I use IDE disks for video editing, and if I don't have appropiate data rates I get errors. So I am very meticulous. I do a mix of uncompressed video and DV25 work. Uncompressed video requires 23Mbytes/sec (NTSC) DV25 only requires 3.5 Mbytes a second, per stream. Frequently in editing or compositing I will use up to 9 data streams.
My IDE drives can all sustain over 19.5 Mbytes/sec for reads in single configuration.
I benchmark my sytems with Matrox Disk Benchmark provided with Matrox video editing equipment. Matrox Disk Benchmark writes random data to the disk Typically the generated data set runs very large, usually in the tens of Gigabytes. With such large data sets any cache is completely negated, be they OS or hardware.
I ran a 16.5GB test for my reply, and just for giggles kept an instance of Winamp running as well as playing two separate full resolution NTSC video streams and surfing the web while the test ran.
Here are the results for a Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax D540X 4G160J8 drive in a single configuration. The test platform is a dual Pentium 3 750 with 512MB RAM and Windows 2000 service pack 2. At the time of the test the drive had 53.22GBytes of 152.66 Gbytes free. Data is in MB/sec. The three measured values are: minimum/average/peak.
Single Write
8.43/30.28/39.96
Single Read
19.56/27.12/39.96
Dual Read
8.43/11.89/16.87
I expect that the number that should interest you most is the average (middle number), though for my application the minimum data rate is critical.
Aside from defragmenting drives regularly I do no special maintenance.
I hope this information is of utility.
I am not going to go through every point MSFT has on that page, but what I hope to show is that they are not changing their strategy, just their tactics to carry out the strategy.
It used to be that MSFT FUD was a set of bald faced lies, apparently the hope was that no one would check them out at all. Well people did, found out they were lies and went to Linux.
All of the new MSFT FUD is now more subtle, and appears to have supporting material in some cases. Now you can even check this stuff out, and if you are not very knowledgeable about software you can be fooled.
Point 1
Sum up as "Linux/Samba is not really compatible with Windows networking."
In fact Linux, and Samba do support almost all features of CIFS. When Samba has been incompatible it is because MSFT changed their implementation. For this matter, Win95 and Win98 are incompatible with W2K CIFS networking.
Point 2
Sum up as "Linux is not fully compatible with Active Directory"
True enough, but Linux is compatible to the extent that Active Directory is compatible with LDAP. In truth, MSFT is the one failing to comply with existing standards...neat how they twist this one around.
Point 5
Sum up as "IIS 5 is faster than Linux for SpecWeb99"
This is just FUD. The link they point to seems to agree with their assertion but how about this link instead. It sure seems to tell a different story on identically configured hardware.
Point 11
Sum up as "Windows has reliable drivers that are signed by MSFT, Linux doesn't"
Windows has NEVER had reliable drivers. Not all the best drivers are signed by MSFT if at all.
The situation is only somewhat better than Windows for Linux to be fair. First off most drivers are delivered with an MD5 checksum, which is good enough for most uses. Secondly you get the source most of the time. Finally, since when has NASA written drivers for MSFT ? (Thanks to Don Becker, NASA GSFC.)
Point 16
My favorite..."The GPL is nasty and dangerous and can force you to give away all your secrets."
First off the GPL is easy to understand, and very consistent. You get quite a lot for a simple price, "our changes to the code are to be made public with your codes binary release."
MSFT has a problem with this because they are in the business of keeping code secret, not open sharing of ideas. Frankly that is OK, and can be a fair way to do business, despite what many OSS evangelists will tell you. What it fails to be however is an advantage to the consumer of the final product.
IEEE 1394b supports bandwidth up to 3.2Gbps. TI has introduced a 1394b controller chipset.
Furtherless IEEE 1394b can run at 800Mbytes/sec over Cat 5 for up to 100m. Seems like you'll be able to just swap out your RJ-45 connectors for firewire ones and get to business.
As far as being saturated by a single fast disk...well do you have a single disk that can sustain 50Mbytes per second ? IEEE1394a can really transfer data very close to its theoretical limits in my experience. I've seen it shovel around 40+MBytes/sec so, I wouldn't write it off so fast. You need an IDE RAID 0 array to manage that.
Further, Apple is apparently considering rolling out 1394b as standard in the next round of desktops, and possibly the laptops too. (No link for the latter...)
CleverNickName is Wil Wheaton, the actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation.
See either his User info or his web site (links in comment above.)
I want to thank you for posting your note about Jimmy.
He inspired me, for whatever that is worth, and when I read the article I was VERY worried about him. I trusted your message about him enough to set my mind at ease.
I am sorry that some of those people (/. readers) are jerks to you. I frankly liked your portrayal of Wesley...it was awkward, but that was the point right...that Wesley was brilliant but awkward ? That they (ST Fans in this case) bear you so much ill will for playing the role is an indication of THEIR shallowness, their lack of understanding of film making and their cruelty.
That they would remain so after you passed on relatively good news to a generally concerned crowd in this forum is more appalling to me.
You need 36GB an hour for D-Cinema level quality. You'd need 4 double sided dual layer DVD's (DVD-18) just to play a single movie. How you planning to pass them around ? Oh yeah, that is the wavelet compressed version.
Maybe you want to invest in the D5HD VTR's being used by the TI demo team ? That gets you uncompressed quality, for about $130 a tape, that runs about 20 minutes.
This is the wave of the future, in that you are right, but the future is a bit further off than you might think. The storage will arrive sooner or later, but Hollywood is already pressing for a higher res version of HD for Dcinema...something with 4000x2000 resolution or thereabouts.
Hollywood is happy to deliver the best images possible to your home, but they want to make sure you have a reason to go to the theatre too.
How about this ? It is a Powerpoint (SORRY!!) presentation given by the Texas Instruments people at the 2001 Dcinema conference at NIST. Unfortunately it was out of date even back then, and is asssuredly more so now. For example, the 1920x1080 DLP Cinema was brand spanking new then. I was told that TI had the demo unit at only one location (other than the TI lab) before the NIST conference.
About the projector you mention, the Kiniton E, I don't know projectors by make and model (I should...) In any case, I have seen some projectors with a feature like the one you mention, it may have been the same. (Did I mention I MAKE films, seen a lot of projectors...) The thing is though that you still have to mechanically move the film. You can't eliminate jitter and weave in a mechanical system. Remember my yammering about how much the frame gets magnified ? Even small errors get magnified dramatically.
Jitter in a DLP system comes from external sources, i.e. the table shaking etc. (Should I point out that a film projector is more likely to make a table shake...Uh, guess I just did.)
There is a huge difference between litte jitter and NO jitter. There is no weave either. When you spend an hour or two watching DLP and then watch even well maintained quality projectors with trained projectionists...there is a difference. You really don't want to go back. That is just my opinion.
First off most NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) members will admit if pressed that they are not in the movie business at all, it is incidental.
They are in the concessions business. They sell sugared water with carbonation, and exploded corn kernels with butter flavored oil.
Nonetheless there are very strong economic reasons to use digital projection. For one it allows a theatre owner to be far more flexible in what they show and how many screens they show a film on. They can dynamically allocate theaters to meet demand in a digital world.
The DLP projectors are designed to be more reliable than film projectors, and to have fewer operator adjustments. They look better for longer without intervention. There are no prints to manage logistics for and to deal with shipping. etc etc.
OH, yeah, they LOOK BETTER to boot. Once you see one, that may be the end of your film projection days.
NATO members are very eager to get these advantages.
However as you can imagine the candy and soda business can't afford to bear wasted overhead. They can't invest in a DLP system on a fiber network to a, exabyte server room and have it be supplanted quickly.
What NATO members are waiting for is two things:
The technology to settle down
Standards to emerge and stabilize
Once these things are in place, there will be a RACE to get DLP projectors out to your local multiplex.