Video quality is an issue, but I have a 1.5mbps DSL connection at home, and a full-length movie takes three hours to download (at least) from the iTMS. Until we get faster connections / download speeds I don't see a major place for higher resolution content.
Another issue to contend with is file size. One hour of iTMS video is currently about half a gig. Do I really want to double that? Do I really want an entire season of 24 to take up 24GB on my HD? On my 42" plasma iTMS video looks better than standard cable, but not as quite good as DVD (mine upconverts) and not as good as HD cable.
One issue in its favor, however, is the lack of commercials. Between watching iTMS shows and season box-sets on DVD, even fast-forwarding over commercials on DVR recorded shows is becoming painful. And heaven forbid I have to watch a show in real time.
Like it or not, we're still firmly in the land of trade-offs, and as such there's always going to be someone who's unhappy with them.
How many want to? Now, how many need to? And how many should?
Most production cars and SUVs are in the 6-10 second range as far as 0-60 acceleration is concerned. 3.5 is overkill. 5-6 would feel "fast" to the average consumer, and let them concentrate on efficiency.
"..doesn't mean that "noone" wants to. Open you [sic] eyes."
Especially if the salesperon is one of those people who subconsciously raise their voice while talking on the phone. About half of the people who talk on a cell phone talk above a normal conversational level, apparently thinking they have to shout when the person is so far away they can't see them.
BTW, if you're reading this that means that the odds are 50/50 that YOU are one of those people. Ask your friends.
"The real problem is ISP's overselling their bandwidth for years..."
No, the real problem is that ISPs started throttling p2p users who were consuming all of the available bandwidth and the "geniuses" who just had to have free tunes and movies and software said, "Well, we'll just encrypt all our traffic. That'll show 'em!"
Yeah, that showed them alright. Now everyone is paying for the parasites...
When content authors can replicate food, clothing, housing, and transportation I'd then consider the "content wants to be free" mantra worth considering. Until then, content authors need to be paid too, just like "normal" people.
"... when I spent most of my disposable income on music when I was a teenager."
Pobably bought a lot of pizzas too, but try going into Pizza Hut and telling 'em that because of that you're now entitled to a free one.
And "personally", when someone starts telling me that they're "entitled" to this or or that I tune them out, as it's obvious that they're parasitic to the system and have nothing further to contribute.
You're pointing to the fact that a mini hasn't gone from CD to C2D as proof as a lack of "updates", but the pro going from quad-core to eight-core isn't? Why is one processor upgrade a "rev" and the other not?
And take, for example, the MBP. It already has C2D, iSight, DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW, 802.11n, FW800, magsafe, express-card, multi-touch trackpads... just what new technology is it missing that, if added, would be an "upgrade"?
Didn't say solar wasn't useful, I simply took exception to the "grid as storage cell" metaphor, since it can't store power.
And it's more useful in the south and west than in, say, the pacific northwest or upper midwest where it tends to be cloudy a significant portion of the year during the winter when you also want power for heat. Don't get me wrong, be great to have it where it can help, but even cheap solar isn't a panacea...
Look up "pumped storage" yourself. Now read it. Once you've done so, you'll realize that you need a very specific set of circumstances (hydro source close by, sufficient gradients, etc.) in order for it to work. Not very helpful if, say, you're in the middle of Kansas. And you have pretty strict limitations as to how far you can transmit power before line losses eat you alive. That's why we don't plop fifty nuclear reactors in the middle of Nevada to power all of the US. By the time the power got from there to the east coast you couldn't run a flashlight on it (exaggeration, but not far from the truth). And as far as sending power to Europe...
In short, and as I said, the grid currently DOESN'T work like a battery, and it will take quite a bit of engineering, on an industrial scale, for it to do so.
So much, in fact, that instead of trying to it so you'd probably be much better off building "home" or local fuel cells and systems to produce/burn hydrogren, dump your excess solar power there, and take yourself or your community off the grid completely. Much easier problem to solve.
Look at how, for example, Norway is building local hydrogen generation stations along their "hydrogen highway". Don't waste energy trucking or pumping fuel from one place to another. Just produce it where it's needed in the first place.
"Enough to drop 10 grand on a pair of speakers in many cases."
Having dealt with that world, I can tell you that for every guy who drops 10 grand on a pair of speakers because he can hear the difference there are three more "audiophiles" who can't, but do so anyway just because they claim they can, or want bragging rights, or who've been told that those imperceptible differences can in fact be perceived, and so they're "worth it".
BTW, your analogy is flawed. It's more like you're admiring the pristine view of your backyard through your crystal-clear window... not noticing that the blades of grass have been cloned and now come in only thirty-four different shapes. From inside your house, looking out your window, the difference is below your level of perception.
It makes the case that the ENCODER is much more important to sound quality than the bitrate. To quote, "In any case, doubling the bitrate from 128 kbps to 256 kbps won't make music sound twice as good, because the smaller file already has the most important information."
That probably goes doubly when you go from 256 kbps with a good encoder to "lossless", as 99.999% of that data is already represented. Again, to quote, "So, as you compare higher and higher bitrates, sound quality becomes harder to distinguish--the musical equivalent of diminishing returns."
And as I said earlier, I'd gladly trade off some probably imperceptible bit of sound quality for disk space. Especially since they've yet to cram a TB or so into the notebook I use on a daily basis.
"In essence you have turned the grid into a storage cell."
The "grid" doesn't work that way, and it most definitely doesn't have "storage cells". At the moment, any power you put back into the grid that's unused is, in effect, lost. Now, maybe they could take that excess power and use it to produce hydrogen, which they store and then burn during the nght to produce power until more sunlight comes along.
But that's future tech that we can't do yet on an industrial scale... and which is going to require a boatload of refits at nearly every power plant in existence.
That's no good unless you have to quickly catch them as they fall AND orient and place them correctly. I mean, we need to maintain some level of skill. Can't make building Linux kernels so easy that ANYONE can do it... (grin)
"As soon as I can get the same quality for less money..."
Personally, I doubt you could do a blind test and do better than 50-50 picking 256 AAC vs. uncompressed CDs. Especially since most players are used in gyms, cars, walking, etc., where ambient noise rules and non-monitor quality headphones and/or speakers are the norm.
And as far as that goes, some of us would prefer not to blow half a gig or more per CD on completely uncompressed music. Besides, if you're using a flash-based player, you're going to have to down-sample it anyway to get enough music to "fit'.
But since they're not catering to your perceived need for "quality", all of your rationalizations are good to go...
Actually, the last time I moved from a Powerbook to a MacBook Pro I used Tiger's Migration Assistant. After the copy finished (about 2 hours) almost everything (applications, preferences, backgrounds, altered command keys, control panel changes, accounts, folder layouts, etc.) was there. I had to reinstall Dreamweaver and Photoshop since their registration mechanisms detected the new hardware and "broke", but other than that I was impressed to no end.
Contrast that to the last new Windows machine (XP) I bought, when I had to move everything by hand, reset everything by hand, and spent about a week reinstalling each and every application I used... by hand.
"The only thing holding you back now is your own workplace achievements."
Actually, if he studied and only got so-so grades, then it sounds like his achievements were holding him back then as well. Funny how he didn't mention the guys who studied harder AND got excellent grades AND in turn got great jobs. Guess they also "cheated" by working harder...
You can't actually see all those frames. They actually aren't even being shown.
A guy a work a few years back came in all excited because he'd been tweaking a sorting algorithm and it was now like a 1,000x faster than before. He then went from highly excited to greatly embarrased when I gently pointed out that, yes, it was a lot faster... but the results were no longer sorted.
Let's see, a Telsa gets about 135mpg (equivalent), 250 miles per charge, has a top end of over 130mph, and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. It's also about $90,000 at the moment, but 0-60 in 4 seconds is well into high-end Ferrari/Porsche/Lotus land. Point being that "fuel efficient" and "excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed" don't preclude one another.
It's also scheduled to go into production in about four months. Hmmm. Wonder why they haven't already won the prize?
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Video quality is an issue, but I have a 1.5mbps DSL connection at home, and a full-length movie takes three hours to download (at least) from the iTMS. Until we get faster connections / download speeds I don't see a major place for higher resolution content.
Another issue to contend with is file size. One hour of iTMS video is currently about half a gig. Do I really want to double that? Do I really want an entire season of 24 to take up 24GB on my HD? On my 42" plasma iTMS video looks better than standard cable, but not as quite good as DVD (mine upconverts) and not as good as HD cable.
One issue in its favor, however, is the lack of commercials. Between watching iTMS shows and season box-sets on DVD, even fast-forwarding over commercials on DVR recorded shows is becoming painful. And heaven forbid I have to watch a show in real time.
Like it or not, we're still firmly in the land of trade-offs, and as such there's always going to be someone who's unhappy with them.
"The more realistic the simulation, the more concerned we should be about the impact on the impressionable."
So today's youth are going to be desensitized towards killing cross-dimensional alien monsters or the walking dead? And this is a bad thing?
How many want to? Now, how many need to? And how many should?
Most production cars and SUVs are in the 6-10 second range as far as 0-60 acceleration is concerned. 3.5 is overkill. 5-6 would feel "fast" to the average consumer, and let them concentrate on efficiency.
"..doesn't mean that "noone" wants to. Open you [sic] eyes."
Hope that was intentional...
I was about to say the same thing.
Plus the amount of energy needed to transport it to all of the coal-fired power plants.
Especially if the salesperon is one of those people who subconsciously raise their voice while talking on the phone. About half of the people who talk on a cell phone talk above a normal conversational level, apparently thinking they have to shout when the person is so far away they can't see them.
BTW, if you're reading this that means that the odds are 50/50 that YOU are one of those people. Ask your friends.
"The real problem is ISP's overselling their bandwidth for years..."
No, the real problem is that ISPs started throttling p2p users who were consuming all of the available bandwidth and the "geniuses" who just had to have free tunes and movies and software said, "Well, we'll just encrypt all our traffic. That'll show 'em!"
Yeah, that showed them alright. Now everyone is paying for the parasites...
Wow. They got a computer than ran OS X to run OS X.
What I want to know is when is it going to run Ubuntu... (grin)
When content authors can replicate food, clothing, housing, and transportation I'd then consider the "content wants to be free" mantra worth considering. Until then, content authors need to be paid too, just like "normal" people.
The 1680x1050 screen in mine is just fine, thank you.
"... when I spent most of my disposable income on music when I was a teenager."
Pobably bought a lot of pizzas too, but try going into Pizza Hut and telling 'em that because of that you're now entitled to a free one.
And "personally", when someone starts telling me that they're "entitled" to this or or that I tune them out, as it's obvious that they're parasitic to the system and have nothing further to contribute.
Have a nice day.
You're pointing to the fact that a mini hasn't gone from CD to C2D as proof as a lack of "updates", but the pro going from quad-core to eight-core isn't? Why is one processor upgrade a "rev" and the other not?
Besides, they did ship a new "Mac" recently. Haven't you heard? (grin)
And take, for example, the MBP. It already has C2D, iSight, DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW, 802.11n, FW800, magsafe, express-card, multi-touch trackpads... just what new technology is it missing that, if added, would be an "upgrade"?
Didn't say solar wasn't useful, I simply took exception to the "grid as storage cell" metaphor, since it can't store power.
And it's more useful in the south and west than in, say, the pacific northwest or upper midwest where it tends to be cloudy a significant portion of the year during the winter when you also want power for heat. Don't get me wrong, be great to have it where it can help, but even cheap solar isn't a panacea...
Look up "pumped storage" yourself. Now read it. Once you've done so, you'll realize that you need a very specific set of circumstances (hydro source close by, sufficient gradients, etc.) in order for it to work. Not very helpful if, say, you're in the middle of Kansas. And you have pretty strict limitations as to how far you can transmit power before line losses eat you alive. That's why we don't plop fifty nuclear reactors in the middle of Nevada to power all of the US. By the time the power got from there to the east coast you couldn't run a flashlight on it (exaggeration, but not far from the truth). And as far as sending power to Europe...
In short, and as I said, the grid currently DOESN'T work like a battery, and it will take quite a bit of engineering, on an industrial scale, for it to do so.
So much, in fact, that instead of trying to it so you'd probably be much better off building "home" or local fuel cells and systems to produce/burn hydrogren, dump your excess solar power there, and take yourself or your community off the grid completely. Much easier problem to solve.
Look at how, for example, Norway is building local hydrogen generation stations along their "hydrogen highway". Don't waste energy trucking or pumping fuel from one place to another. Just produce it where it's needed in the first place.
"Enough to drop 10 grand on a pair of speakers in many cases."
Having dealt with that world, I can tell you that for every guy who drops 10 grand on a pair of speakers because he can hear the difference there are three more "audiophiles" who can't, but do so anyway just because they claim they can, or want bragging rights, or who've been told that those imperceptible differences can in fact be perceived, and so they're "worth it".
BTW, your analogy is flawed. It's more like you're admiring the pristine view of your backyard through your crystal-clear window... not noticing that the blades of grass have been cloned and now come in only thirty-four different shapes. From inside your house, looking out your window, the difference is below your level of perception.
This probably has a bearing on the situation. Are iTunes' Premium Downloads Worth It?
It makes the case that the ENCODER is much more important to sound quality than the bitrate. To quote, "In any case, doubling the bitrate from 128 kbps to 256 kbps won't make music sound twice as good, because the smaller file already has the most important information."
That probably goes doubly when you go from 256 kbps with a good encoder to "lossless", as 99.999% of that data is already represented. Again, to quote, "So, as you compare higher and higher bitrates, sound quality becomes harder to distinguish--the musical equivalent of diminishing returns."
And as I said earlier, I'd gladly trade off some probably imperceptible bit of sound quality for disk space. Especially since they've yet to cram a TB or so into the notebook I use on a daily basis.
"In essence you have turned the grid into a storage cell."
The "grid" doesn't work that way, and it most definitely doesn't have "storage cells". At the moment, any power you put back into the grid that's unused is, in effect, lost. Now, maybe they could take that excess power and use it to produce hydrogen, which they store and then burn during the nght to produce power until more sunlight comes along.
But that's future tech that we can't do yet on an industrial scale... and which is going to require a boatload of refits at nearly every power plant in existence.
"Who do they sell all this power to when half the buildings in their market are putting power back into the grid ..."
Recharging all of those new-fangled electirc cars that are sitting in the garage overnight when, IIRC, solar doesn't work so well.... (grin)
Seriously, until they come up with a good way to STORE power generated by solar it's only half a solution.
That's no good unless you have to quickly catch them as they fall AND orient and place them correctly. I mean, we need to maintain some level of skill. Can't make building Linux kernels so easy that ANYONE can do it... (grin)
"As soon as I can get the same quality for less money..."
Personally, I doubt you could do a blind test and do better than 50-50 picking 256 AAC vs. uncompressed CDs. Especially since most players are used in gyms, cars, walking, etc., where ambient noise rules and non-monitor quality headphones and/or speakers are the norm.
And as far as that goes, some of us would prefer not to blow half a gig or more per CD on completely uncompressed music. Besides, if you're using a flash-based player, you're going to have to down-sample it anyway to get enough music to "fit'.
But since they're not catering to your perceived need for "quality", all of your rationalizations are good to go...
Actually, the last time I moved from a Powerbook to a MacBook Pro I used Tiger's Migration Assistant. After the copy finished (about 2 hours) almost everything (applications, preferences, backgrounds, altered command keys, control panel changes, accounts, folder layouts, etc.) was there. I had to reinstall Dreamweaver and Photoshop since their registration mechanisms detected the new hardware and "broke", but other than that I was impressed to no end.
Contrast that to the last new Windows machine (XP) I bought, when I had to move everything by hand, reset everything by hand, and spent about a week reinstalling each and every application I used... by hand.
"The only thing holding you back now is your own workplace achievements."
Actually, if he studied and only got so-so grades, then it sounds like his achievements were holding him back then as well. Funny how he didn't mention the guys who studied harder AND got excellent grades AND in turn got great jobs. Guess they also "cheated" by working harder...
Yeah, because there are no historians or professors or authors or curators who're known to be experts on the subject...
You can't actually see all those frames. They actually aren't even being shown.
A guy a work a few years back came in all excited because he'd been tweaking a sorting algorithm and it was now like a 1,000x faster than before. He then went from highly excited to greatly embarrased when I gently pointed out that, yes, it was a lot faster... but the results were no longer sorted.
" fuel efficient = excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed "
Let's see, a Telsa gets about 135mpg (equivalent), 250 miles per charge, has a top end of over 130mph, and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. It's also about $90,000 at the moment, but 0-60 in 4 seconds is well into high-end Ferrari/Porsche/Lotus land. Point being that "fuel efficient" and "excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed" don't preclude one another.
It's also scheduled to go into production in about four months. Hmmm. Wonder why they haven't already won the prize?
That's just proper gearing. Getting up to 60 fast still doesn't mean you need a car that will do 120mph...