Repeat after me: It's only a television show. It's only an opinion about a television show. I do not have to base my entire self image on defending it. ..
I was going to point out that the number of characters has nothing do with how well they're developed, but you made that point for me:
Granted, only a few of them made any forward movement.
And:
I don't know exactly where you got 'Dune' from that.
The prostitue (Inara?) mentioned that the red-headed woman was using body language, tones of voice, etc., to seduce people, and that she had learned these for the specific purpose of seducing. Straight from the bene gesserit training described by Herbert.
Anywho, it doesn't matter, as we're basically arguing over our favorite flavor if ice cream. I like chocolate, you like vanilla.
I have tried. Sci Fi channel was showing a Firefly marathon yesterday when I got home from work, so I tuned in. Don't understand WTF is going on with the 'cowboy in the future' thing - it adds nothing to the characters. It's anachronism for the sake of anachronism, which, for me, is lazy writing. Better to make them all futuristic and shit and put that energy into character development. Then there was a red-headed woman speaking in some awful version of Shakespearian English who turned out to be some sort of trained seductress (didn't catch the particulars as I lost interest). Felt to me like a cheap rip off of the Bene Gesserit from Dune.
A lot of the show feels like quirky characters for the sake of quirky characters, which is one of my met peeves, as it means the writer doesn't have the chops to develop fully fleshed out, believable characters. You mentioned BSG, and I'm a fan. Despite its penchant to veer towards melodrama, the characters are about the most fully rendered I have seen in any television sci fi series, and I watch it for that.
I am in partial agreement with you, though. If I had to choose between watching Deep Space: Nine or Firefly, give me Firefly any day. Actually, if the choice is between Deep Space: Nine and scooping my eyes out with a rusty spoon, leave me alone and come back with a seeing eye dog.
I just think that things which used to be the province of geeks -computers, teh interweb - are now in wide use. I knew that time was coming several years ago when I sat down on the subway next to two very well turned out SoHo women who were deep into a conversation about untangling SCSI chains. When your grandmother has a 3 GHz P4 and broadband, computers are no longer the province of geeks.
That said, Whedon has to be one of the most overrated writers, ever. IMO, YMMV, etc.
You seem to be suffering a bad case of reductio ad absurdum.
Will the iPod still exist in 20 years? Dunno. Will I still want to listen to some of these songs in 20 years? Undoubtedly. Therefore the best format I can have is one that doesn't have any restrictions on it and doesn't tie me to the fortunes of one particular corporation.
This can be said for almost any format. Good luck listening to those songs you bought on CD, cassette, 8 track or, possibly, record, in twenty years. All recording media eventually become obsolete, as evidence by the fact we're not all listening to 78 rpm records any more. Your CDs will one day be as useful as reel-to-reel.
Therefore the best format I can have is one that doesn't have any restrictions on it and doesn't tie me to the fortunes of one particular corporation.
No such technology exists, nor has it ever, and there are always restrictions.
You can fake CMYK support using layers, there's a plugin availiable
You do not fake anything when being paid $150/hr. Your provide an honest to God four color file( or more, if you have any necessary spots or varnishes) tagged with the proper ICC profile.
As for high end retouching, Rhythm & Hues are high end and they used cinepaint (Filmgimp) for numerous spots and features.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. There is a world of difference between color correcting for video and for print. Photoshop gives you access to multiple color spaces (Lab can be particularly useful), multiple forms of color correction (curves, Hue/Saturation/Brightness, Levels, etc.) of which you may need to use two or three on one image, and invaluable tools like the Channel Mixer which no other program has.
Adobe will do nothing, because, in all likelihood, there will be no exodus. No Joe or Jane Average computer user needs a 3.8 GHz P4 or a dual 2.7 GHz G5. From helping my less tech savvy friends, your average computer needs - email, web, music, checkbook, digital photos - can easily be met with a Mac Mini or its Intel/AMD-powered equivalent. This doesn't stop people from buying the top of the line, tho.
One of the things I do to make money is freelance tech support. It's mostly going into people's homes (with their permission and while they're home, of course. ..) and helping them with simple problems: my printer won't print, I want to share my broadband connection with two computers, install RAM/drives etc. Some of this is consulting when people upgrade their machines. One of these jobs which sticks in my mind was working with a guy who was a biomedical researcher and was upgrading his home machine. His only requirement was that the machine run the same Wintel versions of Word, Excel and Mozilla he runs in his office. With that one parameter, he had a wide range of options available to him, some under $1,000. He wasn't doing any power work with those programs, either.
What did he buy? The absolute top of the line AMD-powered machine of the time, packed with RAM. Far, far more machine than he needs, and far more machine than he will every probably need. He ended up spending twice what he needed to, for no particular reason other than to buy the top of the line offering. I understand that he is future-proofing himself in a way, but, as he will probably replace the machine in two or three years, it was a wasted gesture.
My point? Most purchasing decisions are not rational. People buy 150 mph sports cars they will never drive faster than 75 mph. They buy $4,000 computers when a $1,500 machine would more than handle the job. They buy $5,000 stereos for studio apartments. And they buy Photoshop when all they really need is a cheap or free program. It's just human nature.
I've always thought that GIMP was just as powerful as Photoshop. doesn't know WTF they're talking about.
When the GIMP has:
1) CMYK support;
2) Channel math;
3) Industry standard color engine and ICC profile support;
4) Channel mixer;
5) Equal control over color adjustment modes
and a bunch of other shit, then the GIMP will be as powerful as Photoshop. Until then, it's a silly statement to make. While 50% of the people who use Photoshop can very probably do the exact same things with the GIMP, for the 50% who really push Photoshop there is no substitute. And, as you climb higher on that curve to the people who are really stretching Photoshop on a daily basis (mainly very high level retouchers/digital artists) it is quite literally the only tool for the job.
This is one of those time I think open source cheerleading is not a good thing. Just because it's an open source digital image editing program doesn't mean it's the same thing as Adobe's flagship product.
I remember when the Walkman would make us all deaf. Then video games were going to destroy the hands of all the kids (Atari thumb!). Then cel phones were going to give you brain cancer. . .
This is the cultural equivalent of a Slashdot dupe, and I'm not sure how anyone can take Wired seriously as anything other than a source of hype.
Then Creative should give up, now, while there's still something left. I know for a fact that Steve keeps his litigators locked in a barren back room and only feeds them every third day. Makes 'em mean. . .
1) It costs me $10.25 to go see a move in Manhattan now - I can remember when it was $7. Seeing that most of the lame-ass Hollywood crap (the latest Star Wars included) will eventually come to HBO, I just wait and watch it at home;
2) The brain drain caused by the growth of the various indie movie scenes has finally come home to roost. Now, Hollywood has always, always been about money first and quality second, and 95% of what the major studios release has always been crap. However, because of the ready spread of relatively low-cost editing equipment and the growth of a robust indie film circuit, there is no longer any need to fight the inertia inherent in Hollywood to make a good movie. Now, an indie movie can get national and international distribution, plus DVD sales, without Hollywood and will be able to recoup its cost more easily than ten years ago. If you keep your movie below the $2.5 million level, you can have a successful career without having to deal with the studios.
Which is a long way of saying that a lot of the creativity has left the mainstream movie world and moved firmly into the indie scene.
If your gripe is with the way the information was presented, then we agree. IMO, there is nothing wrong with the free programs. It's just a matter of purpose: Illustrator is a professional tool, designed and used for specific purposes. Like Photoshop, it is overkill for a large part of the population.
I object to the separation of "High end vector drawing programs" and other "Programs" described as less expensive. This separation is completely artificial and serves to belittle a whole list of programs for no specific reason. They should all be in the same chart and the features can allow people to draw their own conclusions.
Absolutely not true. Illustrator, fr'example, has features which are useless unless you're using it for professional print work. It has Adobe's complex, powerful and somewhat maddening color engine, full support for ICC profiles, soft-proofing, moving back and forth between color spaces, mixing multi-ink colors, filter and plug-in support, sophisticated type controls and support, etc. These are the features which make it much, much more than a "vector drawing program". For someone who is making simple graphs/charts for personal use these features are overkill. For someone like me, who sometimes has to manually trap complex images, there is no substitute.
To PostScript, a letter/word/line is just another shape that can be put on the page. You'd need to break lines manually, control line spacing yourself, etc. Want it justified? Forget it.
Not so true anymore. Illustrator's text-handling capabilities have improved a lot over the last two versions. Space before, space after, justification, etc. I know some people who prefer to do almost all their work in Illustrator: brochures, gatefolds, etc.
I just replaced my five year old Powerbook with a G5, and my best friend is about to replace her seven year old G3 with a Mac mini. I have an ex-girlfriend who is still happily using her five year old iMac, and I do some work for a guy who is using a ten year old 8500 for daily use.
The Powerbook lasted me five years because I don't do any heavy lifting at home, and the at the odd times I needed to use Photoshop I was alright with the slow speed. For most people, the daily things the do with a computer - email, web, Word -are easily done on older hardware and older operating systems. I have set up people still using OS9 with Mozilla 1.2.1 and they're perfectly happy.
So, I agree that it will be a while before Intel Macs get a real foothold. I intend to hold onto my G5 until the second or third revision of Intel-based Powermacs (let others be the gineau pigs) which means this machine will be my primary machine for three or four years, and it will have a useful life long after that.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's an interesting point.
Repeat after me: It's only a television show. It's only an opinion about a television show. I do not have to base my entire self image on defending it. . .
And:
The prostitue (Inara?) mentioned that the red-headed woman was using body language, tones of voice, etc., to seduce people, and that she had learned these for the specific purpose of seducing. Straight from the bene gesserit training described by Herbert.
Anywho, it doesn't matter, as we're basically arguing over our favorite flavor if ice cream. I like chocolate, you like vanilla.
A lot of the show feels like quirky characters for the sake of quirky characters, which is one of my met peeves, as it means the writer doesn't have the chops to develop fully fleshed out, believable characters. You mentioned BSG, and I'm a fan. Despite its penchant to veer towards melodrama, the characters are about the most fully rendered I have seen in any television sci fi series, and I watch it for that.
I am in partial agreement with you, though. If I had to choose between watching Deep Space: Nine or Firefly, give me Firefly any day. Actually, if the choice is between Deep Space: Nine and scooping my eyes out with a rusty spoon, leave me alone and come back with a seeing eye dog.
Once again, YMMV, etc.
You speak the truth.
Don't really know. Couldn't watch more than five minutes of Firefly.
That said, Whedon has to be one of the most overrated writers, ever. IMO, YMMV, etc.
This can be said for almost any format. Good luck listening to those songs you bought on CD, cassette, 8 track or, possibly, record, in twenty years. All recording media eventually become obsolete, as evidence by the fact we're not all listening to 78 rpm records any more. Your CDs will one day be as useful as reel-to-reel.
No such technology exists, nor has it ever, and there are always restrictions.
Damn editors.
You do not fake anything when being paid $150/hr. Your provide an honest to God four color file( or more, if you have any necessary spots or varnishes) tagged with the proper ICC profile.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. There is a world of difference between color correcting for video and for print. Photoshop gives you access to multiple color spaces (Lab can be particularly useful), multiple forms of color correction (curves, Hue/Saturation/Brightness, Levels, etc.) of which you may need to use two or three on one image, and invaluable tools like the Channel Mixer which no other program has.
One of the things I do to make money is freelance tech support. It's mostly going into people's homes (with their permission and while they're home, of course. . .) and helping them with simple problems: my printer won't print, I want to share my broadband connection with two computers, install RAM/drives etc. Some of this is consulting when people upgrade their machines. One of these jobs which sticks in my mind was working with a guy who was a biomedical researcher and was upgrading his home machine. His only requirement was that the machine run the same Wintel versions of Word, Excel and Mozilla he runs in his office. With that one parameter, he had a wide range of options available to him, some under $1,000. He wasn't doing any power work with those programs, either.
What did he buy? The absolute top of the line AMD-powered machine of the time, packed with RAM. Far, far more machine than he needs, and far more machine than he will every probably need. He ended up spending twice what he needed to, for no particular reason other than to buy the top of the line offering. I understand that he is future-proofing himself in a way, but, as he will probably replace the machine in two or three years, it was a wasted gesture.
My point? Most purchasing decisions are not rational. People buy 150 mph sports cars they will never drive faster than 75 mph. They buy $4,000 computers when a $1,500 machine would more than handle the job. They buy $5,000 stereos for studio apartments. And they buy Photoshop when all they really need is a cheap or free program. It's just human nature.
If someone wanted to write a program to steal some of Adobe's thunder, and Illustrator killer would be much easier.
When the GIMP has:
1) CMYK support;
2) Channel math;
3) Industry standard color engine and ICC profile support;
4) Channel mixer;
5) Equal control over color adjustment modes
and a bunch of other shit, then the GIMP will be as powerful as Photoshop. Until then, it's a silly statement to make. While 50% of the people who use Photoshop can very probably do the exact same things with the GIMP, for the 50% who really push Photoshop there is no substitute. And, as you climb higher on that curve to the people who are really stretching Photoshop on a daily basis (mainly very high level retouchers/digital artists) it is quite literally the only tool for the job.
This is one of those time I think open source cheerleading is not a good thing. Just because it's an open source digital image editing program doesn't mean it's the same thing as Adobe's flagship product.
This is the cultural equivalent of a Slashdot dupe, and I'm not sure how anyone can take Wired seriously as anything other than a source of hype.
For the record, the 2G iPods have a Firewire connector, cause I definitely didn't solder one onto my 2G 10 gig.
As an aside, I think Apple will add Ogg support when more than the nine people who bitch about its absence on Slashdot use it.
Then Creative should give up, now, while there's still something left. I know for a fact that Steve keeps his litigators locked in a barren back room and only feeds them every third day. Makes 'em mean. . .
to manipulate images. Don't miss tomorrow's story: desktop publishing program used to fake documents!
2) The brain drain caused by the growth of the various indie movie scenes has finally come home to roost. Now, Hollywood has always, always been about money first and quality second, and 95% of what the major studios release has always been crap. However, because of the ready spread of relatively low-cost editing equipment and the growth of a robust indie film circuit, there is no longer any need to fight the inertia inherent in Hollywood to make a good movie. Now, an indie movie can get national and international distribution, plus DVD sales, without Hollywood and will be able to recoup its cost more easily than ten years ago. If you keep your movie below the $2.5 million level, you can have a successful career without having to deal with the studios.
Which is a long way of saying that a lot of the creativity has left the mainstream movie world and moved firmly into the indie scene.
Come on, modders: none of you has seen Dr. Strangelove?
If your gripe is with the way the information was presented, then we agree. IMO, there is nothing wrong with the free programs. It's just a matter of purpose: Illustrator is a professional tool, designed and used for specific purposes. Like Photoshop, it is overkill for a large part of the population.
Absolutely not true. Illustrator, fr'example, has features which are useless unless you're using it for professional print work. It has Adobe's complex, powerful and somewhat maddening color engine, full support for ICC profiles, soft-proofing, moving back and forth between color spaces, mixing multi-ink colors, filter and plug-in support, sophisticated type controls and support, etc. These are the features which make it much, much more than a "vector drawing program". For someone who is making simple graphs/charts for personal use these features are overkill. For someone like me, who sometimes has to manually trap complex images, there is no substitute.
You shoulda stopped there.
Not so true anymore. Illustrator's text-handling capabilities have improved a lot over the last two versions. Space before, space after, justification, etc. I know some people who prefer to do almost all their work in Illustrator: brochures, gatefolds, etc.
The Powerbook lasted me five years because I don't do any heavy lifting at home, and the at the odd times I needed to use Photoshop I was alright with the slow speed. For most people, the daily things the do with a computer - email, web, Word -are easily done on older hardware and older operating systems. I have set up people still using OS9 with Mozilla 1.2.1 and they're perfectly happy.
So, I agree that it will be a while before Intel Macs get a real foothold. I intend to hold onto my G5 until the second or third revision of Intel-based Powermacs (let others be the gineau pigs) which means this machine will be my primary machine for three or four years, and it will have a useful life long after that.
I have no problem with Apple's switch to x86. Just making a carburetor joke.