I do video production, and was an early adopter of HDV 4 years ago, and bought an internal sony BRD burner in Dec. 2006. I do small production runs for other small videographers in the area that have HDV cameras & editing now, but don't have enough customers wanting XYZ in Bluray to justify the $800 for the drive right now.
Last spring I had a request from a client to support HD-DVD as well. They had some upcoming weddings where the folks wanted it in HD-DVD. Well I recalled seeing an LG external HD-DVD burner in the fall of 2006 for $1300. DVD Studio Pro supports HD-DVD, so I went out last April to get an External HD-DVD drive. The BlueRay internals had already halved from the price I paid. I figured the same thing with HD-DVD...but wait a minute, I couln't find one.
I saw several blogs/articles about the same internal HD-DVD burner by Toshiba that never shipped. A consumer/pro-sumer grade burner for HD-DVD doesn't exist outside a few Toshiba laptops that I've found. That told me a lot right there.
Field Production. Especially when you have to lug 30lbs of camera gear in the field. Frankly, the MBP is more capable for the role, but people who are one man shops may have a different opinion.
(For the record, I do about 90% of my work on my MBP these days. Only break out the Quadcore for lightwave and Shake projects.
What kills the Air is the lack of a media drive. I mean, for $300 you can get a MacBook Pro with a Superdrive and max it out with 4GB of Ram. (I just did this a couple weeks ago, entry level MBP from MacMall $1800, 2GB Ram from Crucial $98 with shipping.) And you get a real video card (granted only 128MB of video Ram, but so far no problems with FCS 2 or Shake).
They only folks who might like the air are the ones who live in airports and hotels. I traveled with the 12.1" Powerbooks a few years back and that thing was an absolute God send compared to the 14" iBook it replaced. Believe me, that extra 4 pounds adds up when you have to lug it around everywhere. Also the 12'1 computer fit nicely on an airplane tray table.
Still, I owned a Sony Viao that was driveless back around 2000. It was annoying when you went off, forgot the external CD-Rom dive at home, and needed to load something.
Unless you are in the video production world. I use firewire on a daily basis between cameras and external Hard drives to capture and output video. (90% of the HD work I do is still shipped to customers on an external drive).
Ironically though, when I first started using firewire, it was hard to find 4 (dubbed i.link and found mostly on PCs & lots of devices at the time) - 6 pin cables (found on Macs). Now it's the otherway around. I can find 6 - 6 pin cables, but the 4 - 6 pins are harder to find a customer electronics stores.
I do own several external HDD's that can go either way (USB2 or Firewire) and still the firewire drives transfer large chunks of data much faster than USB2. Same with capture from external sources such an external HDD or camera.
Firewire for interface devices like mouses, keyboards, etc. doesn't make a lot of sense. There's not that much data being transferred.
So king of the world depends on which mountain you stand.
Finished their cycle and were 100% Mac when I left including the front office. When machines were not in use, they automatically loaded and processed jobs from the render queue either for Screamernet (lightwave), QMaster (Shake/FCP), or Xgrid (A number of other applications, including later versions of Shake and Terragen).
In our case, it was a matter of the more CPU cycles the better.
This whole 'blogger=journalist' movement is ridiculous and quite insulting to actual career journalists. I don't know how it's like in the US but here in France you need a license to call yourself a journalist (Disclaimer : my father was a French journalist), so if you want to be called that that's what you've gotta obtain. And don't get me started with the FUD some of you would like to give me about having the government/an organisation to decide who's a journalist, because here any journalist from the most Marxist to the most neo-fascist has their license.
Why? The simple answer is because the First Amendment sees Freedom of the Press as both a personal and institutional right. It is an extension of the Freedom of Speech, which is something that Europe still lacks. The right of anyone to fairly criticize the government, business, etc. is at the very core of the American Ideal. After all, the likes of Voltaire and many others had to publish under pen names or posthumously because of the censorship of their day. The notion that the government can censor material still exists in Europe. Culturally, It's been there for generations, that those in authority could censor what is/was said. However, it was from Europe's own critics of this system from which the Founders of the United States drew their inspiration. Part of that was the right of every man to fairly write/say what they wanted without having to gain "approval" from anyone else, much less the government.
When I was living in Germany, I had a few debates about this subject with my German friends, in particular around the banning of Mein Kampf and the editing/removal of some of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Here in the US, I can walk into any bookstore and buy a copy without having to have special permission from the government. My German friends would point out how the post WW-II government wanted to prevent a resurgance of National Socialism. Basically the argument boiled down to the "Greater good of the community" argument.
We approached the topic from two completely different mindsets. And I have to think that at least culturally/historically it has to do with the United States being founded on principles far different that what existed in Europe at the time. (Again the Ideals part). The idea that government should be accountable to it's people, instead of a nobility/noble class.
The United States was founded on the idea that everyone has the right to voice their opinion. Doesn't mean anyone has to listen, but we have the right to say/write it and others to read it. The founding fathers of the US realized that without the ability to express views openly, the democratic process would fail. Now we can argue idealism vs. reality, but that freedom
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Gouveuneur Morris were all involved in journalism to one degree or another, but how many would you consider to be "Professional Journalists?" Not many, and it could be argued that they were the Bloggers of their day. They all penned articles and often under a variety of pen names.
I suggest looking at Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns. It's an interesting read on how Journalism began in this country and why it differs from elsewhere in the world.
And universal health care just means that government becomes the bad guy instead of private business. Need to get a mole removed, please wait 2 years and we'll get to you eventually Need an organ transplant, but over the age of 64, tough luck. You are no longer a "productive worker" who can provide economic value to society. While some of my European friends will taught the advantages of being able to walk into a clinic for cold/minor illness as a great benefit, yet two have them have now flown to "Medical Spas" in India for minor elective surgery because the waiting list in their country was well over a year. (In one case, the condition was causing my friend quite a bit of pain, but not enough to be debilitating.) I wonder how well that would work in the United States since the block of voters most likely to vote are over 60.
So pick your evil.
That's not to say there are somethings in the medical industry that need to changed. Such as a 1 price policy. Charging an insurance company $16,000 for a procedure and then charing Joe Public $45,000 for the same procedure because they don't have insurance should be against the law. It should be Procedure X costs $Y. If your insurance covers $y, good for you, but if they don't, you know exactly how much the procedure costs. Even better, hospitals should be required to public ally publish this information. They should have a nice PDF link on the front page of their websites to a file that lists all prices for all procedures.
This is why I don't early adopt Apple products. I always wait for gen 2 of new apple XYZ. Let's look at the past with things like DVD-RAM disks, which never caught on. There was the first gen iPods with the battery issue. The first generation snowwhite iBooks with the logic board issue (which I had one, but it was a timing issue. I need a new laptop and was getting ready to leave the country for 6 months). The original Aluminium powerbooks also had a couple issues (I can't remember what they were off hand), but the bottomline is you don't buy new apple hardware unless you want to spend the extra money to be their public beta testers.
That's why I didn't go out and buy an iPhone. (Actually I still don't own an iPod, but the touch is looking interesting.) I've just wrote a blog article about not recommending the Air to my consulting clients because the MacBook offers a bit more for a bit less and the MacBook Pro offers a bit more for $100 more. ($50 if you look at the current MacMall specials.) That's why I spent about $8k on the last generation PowerMac G5 Quadcore a couple years ago.
Want a Mac preloaded with XP pro in a dual boot? MacMall offers that.
Want to know what annoys me?
Offering cool tools in "Beta" or "preview releases" and then stripping them out the real release. (Can you say the GUI for Xgrid).
Offering cool tools for free, then charging for them later. (See.Mac and iLife)
Taking Anti-virus out of.Mac (I may would pay for the service it still had anti-virus included) I know this is a mac-boy rant that there aren't any, but that won't be the case forever
Apples tendancy to nickel and dime. (QT Pro, then having to fork over more for Mpeg2 playback) Not offering new OS upgrades to clients who buy a machine weeks before the announcements. (Happened with me and 10.2. I put off buying a MBP for three months with Lepord
Selling Shake for $3k and then reducing the price to $500 6 months after I bought it (yeah, my luck, but still)
Over charging for Ram. I have 8GB in my Quadcore. I bought all of it from Crucial after market for 1/3rd what Apple wanted. Same thing with my MBP. It came with 2GB. Apple wanted $700 for another 2GB. Crucial wanted $100. Guess who got my business
Overall, I like my Macs. Granted, I earn my living with FCP and Shake. I switched from Linux in 2002 to Mac because I wanted a system that just works. And the Mac line up has saved me a lot of time not having to deal with crashes, virus of the week, or dependency hell that comes with Linux for the desktop.
I do a lot of consulting with other videographers since I'm more of geek than an artist. Like everything, you need to be a savvy consumer, know where Apple rips you and how to get around it to get the best price.
And with Clinton/Gore before that, Bush 41st/Quail before that, Reagan/Bush before that and the same thing will go on with whomever is elected this year. Teleco's have been spying on communications for the government since the telegraph days. There's an interesting book called "The History of Ease dropping" written back in the 1950's/60's (I can't remember which) that details the early days up till the 1930's when the FBI et. al were required to get a judge to sign a wiretap. Even then it still went on without judicial approval. Especially with the amount of power Hoover had with the FBI.
Teleco's and intelligence collection goes hand-in-hand world wide and it's largely controlled by faceless Beurocrats and operatives who will be there no matter who is elected.
Diddo. And you still can't. There was an LG external in the fall of 2006 (about october) that I saw for sale. It was an external. It was about $1300 at the time.
The Toshiba drive was the SD-H903A. Now there are some Toshiba laptops that are supposed to come with HD-DVD burners, but as far as being able to buy them out right...
I work with a couple videographers editing things like Weddings, etc. in HD. It allows one man shops to film 2 - 3 weddings in a weekend and not get too backed up in production. They continue to handle the regular DV stuff, ship the HDV to me. It's not glam work, but at $850 a pop, it pays the bills. (I do on average 2 - 3 videos a week).
I had one client who had money and was into the latest and greatest. He wanted a video done about his life and wanted in Blu-Ray. And he paid enough to make it worth while.
I don't do a lot of work on Commercials. There's now a major player in the area who has a full HDV set up with the $25k cameras and complete studio including booms and dollies. I still rent out my FX-1 to a few trusted clients. (I end up editing the HDV they shoot anyway, so if I edit it, free equipment rental).
I make a comfortable living working when and how I want while also working on a Masters degree. So I can't complain.
In 2006 I bought a Blu-Ray burner. Video editing/post production is my primary source of income and I already had the HD cameras and editing software and have been using it since 2003. In fact, I'm the only person in my area doing HD work for commercials, etc.. I get hired by other larger production companies who weren't able to, or not ready to take the HD plunge. I had a client who finally wanted work in Blu-Ray last year. So I bought the burner and offered small scale production runs to other videographers in the area who were now shooting and editing in HD, but had no way of getting it to their end users.
I remember looking at HD-DVD burners around the same time. It was about $600 for the Blu-Ray internal drive and it was about $1200 for an external firewire HD-DVD burner. Late spring/early summer 2007 I went to look at getting an HD-DVD burner as wedding season started. I figured the price of HD-DVD burners had dropped to the point where I could make a buck by offering the same service to others still not wanting to invest a $1000 in a burner, but still needed HD-DVD work. I could purchase the blank media at staples (both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), which is saying something because it's a rural college town, not a big city.
So I went out shopping online and found HD-DVD drives for computers, but I couldn't find a single burner. I went to a couple specialist companies that sell high end editing equipment, and they didn't have any Pro-sumer grade HD-DVD burners (they had the high end stuff). Come to find out, the low-end/consumer/prosumer grade HD-DVD burners simply didn't exist. They weren't available.
That told me something right there. When people asked what format to buy this past christmas, I still said, "I think digital downloads is going to be the way HD-content is delivered to TV's. Whether that's Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon/Cable/Tivo/Sat. I don't know. My advice is to wait. But if you have to buy one, go Blu-Ray. I can burn Blu-Ray discs, I can't even find an HD-DVD burner.
There are some nice things on HD these days. My Dad got on the HD real early in 2000. Back then the digital switchover was going to be in 2006 and all the other TV's in the house were 20+ years old and in varying stages of decay. Plus with my mother having just passed away, he wanted 1 good TV. So he bought a 65" HD projection TV and dish system with HD receiver, and a sony DVD/surround sound combo system.
At first there was just Showtime and HBO HD, and the first time watching movies in HD was amazing. It was sharper and clearer than a DVD. Now there are plenty of things on HD that he likes to watch, like National Geographic, Discovery HD, Science HD, and sports in HD.
Now I have just a 32" flat panel 720p HDTV. I use a mac mini hooked up to the DVI port as another computer/media center. Cable is provided by my condo complex, but no HD.
Frankly, I watch Mythbusters and Stargate Atlantis on a regular basis. All the other shows I like I am forced to download or wait for DVD. (What A&E/BBC America does to Spooks/MI-5 is horrible. It's like missing 1/3 of the episode) I do watch the HD channels when I go to visit him over the holidays and such.
I still do most of my Pro work in Lightwave, but I've been following blender's development the past 10 years and it's an impressive piece of software. Something else I've been following has been Blender People, kind of a poor man's Massive. (Massive is the AI engine used in LoTR's for the battle scenes and is about $20k per seat the last time I checked)
Is it quite as advanced as Massive, no, but I did some test renders a few years ago on a spare BSD box I had and it worked pretty well with a 1000 "Actors". It took a few hours to calculate out the frames and even more to render, but the results are acceptable. I believe the developer has a few demo videos available.
Blender's not perfect, the particle engine is in need of a massive overhaul and volumetric lighting is needed. While model import has gotten better, it's still not perfect. For some strange reason, the earlier 2.41 and 2.3.x versions handled lightwave models a bit better than the latest releases.
I've toyed with Cinelerra before, but I had some issues with capture cards, etc.. Jahshaka is coming along.
I'm not running out and replacing FCP/Shake/Lightwave any time soon. Mainly because I already have those apps and know how to use them. And the folks I do work for are running on the same set-ups (usually minus Shake.)
Even on the low cost side, FXhome's suite has some nice features for the $150 price point of Effects lab pro. Also, their compositing application is far more forgiving than a lot of the higher priced professional tools. So if someone shoots a greenscreen shot without proper lighting, I can go in with Composite lab (or VisionLab Studio) and do the composite a lot quicker than in Shake sometimes. (Especially if it's DV footage).
Even iLife is pretty powerful these days. Probably for 90% of the editing I do, I could get buy with iMovie (things like Weddings), or even Final Cut Express.
Okay, I know the spelling rules have changed, and changed back since I got my German Major a few years ago, but It always sounded like Por-Sh-a to me. Also, it changes slightly depending on what part of Germany you're in. But I always heard the folks around Hamburg, where I lived and worked for a couple years, say Por-Sh-a.
Then again, I'm not a linguist, and there maybe a sound that my untrained ears doesn't detect. (Quite likely as I have some hearing damage from the numerous ear infections as a kid). A
The Studios (TM), meaning those who control production and distribution are becoming obsolete. Production studios (What you mean) aren't. However, there are facilities that you can rent out for several thousand dollars per day/month that have all the equipment. All you have to provide are the actors. Hell, "The Studios(TM)" even rent out spaces from such facilities anymore.
I think Sin City only had most of the actors on stage for 1 or 2 days. I forget the total amount of time they actual shot principle photography. But I IIRC it was just a few days. If you have a tight script and good director and spend a few months planning in advanced...
Hiring a good PR/Advertising firm and going to digital downloads may be the future.
I set my dad up with the browser when it came out until he finally replaced his PC with a Mac. It served him a couple years and he was able to surf most pages okay and then use the IE engine on webpages that required it.
I'm not sure what AOL as company is really going to do. Most people have figured out that they don't need AOL to get on the internet and have moved on to broadband solutions. My father used Netscape dial up until he got his Mac and switched to a Phone/DSL/Sat. TV bundle last year.
However, there are a great number of us who don't have a boarders near by. We do have a Barnes and Noble, but it lacks the CD/DVD section that you find in other stores. All it has is book and a small cafe. There is the CD store in the mall, but their prices are jacked up and then Best Buy, which doesn't stock a lot of classical music.
iTunes, however, offers most of the tracks I want and with no waiting. Usually I can't get them any cheaper from Amazon. Plus there are a lot of times i don't want the whole album. I want 1 or 2 tracks. For $2 I can download and have it right there. For another $.50 (for the CD) I can burn to a CD-R and play it in my car.
iTunes was the first with an easy to use interface, pricing that made sense, and a flexible enough DRM that balances out what the studios wanted and fair use.
That's not quite the case with the video downloads. I bought season 3 of Battlestar Galactica last year because we didn't get SciFi at the time through the condo's cable plan. I backed them up to data DVD's when I switched to a new machine (and for archival purposes), but I can't go over to iDVD (or even DVD Studio Pro) and burn a playable DVD
Personally I like unified pricing. One of the reasons why I use Dish network is that they'll play hardball with the content providers over price. If CBS suddenly wants 30% more to air 7 channels that I probably don't watch anyway, Dish yanks the networks until the CBS folks come down on their price. I'd like to see Al la carte pricing since I could get by with about 20 cable channels that I actually watch.
I use it for personal stuff. I did a quick presentation and sent someone yesterday just to try it out. While I found it to be a nice application, it doesn't have all the features of Keynote or Powerpoint that are sometimes useful.
I use Gmail, but as some others have stated, it seems to be getting slower and slower to load with all the features they've crammed into it.
Now I have found Google apps useful if someone sends me an excel file that needs to be converted to a CSV and uploaded to a database. I can do that without having to load Excel or even download the file to my computer. I can do everything right in the browser.
However, I have to always be online to use it. Sometimes I'm somewhere, like Barnes and Noble, where wifi isn't free. Same thing with my hotel the other night. They were having internet issues. If I had to rely on Google Apps I would have been screwed as I needed to make some last minute changes to a presentation.
I find it a useful repository for documents, etc. that I may need access to on another machine, but it's not going to replace MS Office and iWork anytime soon for me.
And it's about egos as well as controls. The music industry is used to having control over distrobution, what songs are promoted through radio play, how things get marketed, etc.. Before, the equipment to mass replicate CD's (Replication not duplication, there's a difference) was out of the reach of most. But with the internet, everything changed.
It took a technology company, with Jobs' inroads in the entertainment industry, to create a system that worked for online digital distribution. The record companies let Apple take the gamble with the hardware/software/infrastructure costs with very little risk to them. And it was successful.
Now that the record companies see that internet distribution can work, they are now back into the game of trying to regain control. Apple has been pretty tough on flat rate pricing. The record companies want to dictate price. So now we're back to egos clashing.
Not that letting Apple have a monopoly is good thing, but frankly I never minded the DRM. There is a huge "All DRM is evil" crowd here. Now there were some ways folks proposed DRM was evil, but I'm not against the concept per sue.(Rootkits come to mind), but Apple's system seem to me to be a fair balance.
I can put it on an iPod, if I owned one, a couple PC's at my house or use one as a server and stream to other machines and the.99 per track was fair. $1.29 for no DRM, if it was worth the extra money I'd pay it. To me it' not. As far as losses/lossy goes, I can't tell a difference. I'm no audiophile either, but I have enough hearing damage from loud music as it is...
I switched to Mac 6 years ago when 10.2 was released. The reasons being I could never get my Windows Desktop totally stable (Not even under 2Kpro), Linux was missing half the device drivers (sound card never worked) and lacked general software support.
I saw OSX with a Unix core, commercial application like Office and Adobe, and said screw it and bought an iBook. i got the stablity of Unix with the commerical software support that Linux lacked. Further more it just works. After I graduated from college and went out into the real world I quickly understood the value of my time. I need things that work. Yes, Apple costs more up front, but the amount of time it saves me not having to tweak this, find some missing dependency that, is well worth the extra cost.
Last year my Dad was needing a new computer. I got him the 17" iMac with the ATI video card (instead of the integrated graphics) and one year later, the number of support calls I've gotten?
1: He had one question about setting up Mail with his new DSL provider. (And I have to admit, I even had to call their tech support because they had some screwy config)
I set up and went back home. He had no problems getting Turbo Tax to install and use it. Now he had some initial questions the first couple days on how to use tabbed browsing and why he needed FireFox for some sites.
I remember last year I was looking at getting another Sony HDC1 HDV camcorder for my business. I liked them better because they used HDV tape and had a standard mini-jack for mic input instead of Sony Propitiatory interface crap. The only way to find one was on Ebay.
I ended up winning the auction at around $800 (IIRC). Most of these cameras were going on Ebay for around $900 for onces that were "refurbished" with half the parts missing and $1200 used in good condition. (Not bad considering I paid about $1700 for mine brand new).
At anyrate the auction was reported from someone in Oregon and they said they accepted paypal. After the auction I got instructions to send the money western union...to Romania. And this wasn't their bid pay service (or whatever they call it. I did use it once for a pair of goalie skates, worked out well).
That was a huge red flag (no pun intended) that something was wrong. A seller that was supposed to be in Oregan, said they accepted paypal, but wanted the money sent to Romania? The next day I got a message from Ebay saying the seller's account had been compromised and that the auction had been cancelled.
A couple days later I got a nasty message from the Romanian threatening to leave bad feedback. So they got the operation down to a science.
When dealing with online transactions you have to use common sense. No paypal or merchant/credit card service: no deal. I have one credit card, with a $750 limit, that I only use for online transactions. Anything goes funky, I report it, out $50 and cut up the card. (And I've had it happen once).
Slashdot Mirror
Last spring I had a request from a client to support HD-DVD as well. They had some upcoming weddings where the folks wanted it in HD-DVD. Well I recalled seeing an LG external HD-DVD burner in the fall of 2006 for $1300. DVD Studio Pro supports HD-DVD, so I went out last April to get an External HD-DVD drive. The BlueRay internals had already halved from the price I paid. I figured the same thing with HD-DVD...but wait a minute, I couln't find one.
I saw several blogs/articles about the same internal HD-DVD burner by Toshiba that never shipped. A consumer/pro-sumer grade burner for HD-DVD doesn't exist outside a few Toshiba laptops that I've found. That told me a lot right there.
Field Production. Especially when you have to lug 30lbs of camera gear in the field. Frankly, the MBP is more capable for the role, but people who are one man shops may have a different opinion. (For the record, I do about 90% of my work on my MBP these days. Only break out the Quadcore for lightwave and Shake projects.
Actually, the president will be elected in 2008. Won't take office till 2009.
They only folks who might like the air are the ones who live in airports and hotels. I traveled with the 12.1" Powerbooks a few years back and that thing was an absolute God send compared to the 14" iBook it replaced. Believe me, that extra 4 pounds adds up when you have to lug it around everywhere. Also the 12'1 computer fit nicely on an airplane tray table.
Still, I owned a Sony Viao that was driveless back around 2000. It was annoying when you went off, forgot the external CD-Rom dive at home, and needed to load something.
Ironically though, when I first started using firewire, it was hard to find 4 (dubbed i.link and found mostly on PCs & lots of devices at the time) - 6 pin cables (found on Macs). Now it's the otherway around. I can find 6 - 6 pin cables, but the 4 - 6 pins are harder to find a customer electronics stores.
I do own several external HDD's that can go either way (USB2 or Firewire) and still the firewire drives transfer large chunks of data much faster than USB2. Same with capture from external sources such an external HDD or camera.
Firewire for interface devices like mouses, keyboards, etc. doesn't make a lot of sense. There's not that much data being transferred.
So king of the world depends on which mountain you stand.
Finished their cycle and were 100% Mac when I left including the front office. When machines were not in use, they automatically loaded and processed jobs from the render queue either for Screamernet (lightwave), QMaster (Shake/FCP), or Xgrid (A number of other applications, including later versions of Shake and Terragen). In our case, it was a matter of the more CPU cycles the better.
Why? The simple answer is because the First Amendment sees Freedom of the Press as both a personal and institutional right. It is an extension of the Freedom of Speech, which is something that Europe still lacks. The right of anyone to fairly criticize the government, business, etc. is at the very core of the American Ideal. After all, the likes of Voltaire and many others had to publish under pen names or posthumously because of the censorship of their day. The notion that the government can censor material still exists in Europe. Culturally, It's been there for generations, that those in authority could censor what is/was said. However, it was from Europe's own critics of this system from which the Founders of the United States drew their inspiration. Part of that was the right of every man to fairly write/say what they wanted without having to gain "approval" from anyone else, much less the government.
When I was living in Germany, I had a few debates about this subject with my German friends, in particular around the banning of Mein Kampf and the editing/removal of some of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Here in the US, I can walk into any bookstore and buy a copy without having to have special permission from the government. My German friends would point out how the post WW-II government wanted to prevent a resurgance of National Socialism. Basically the argument boiled down to the "Greater good of the community" argument.
We approached the topic from two completely different mindsets. And I have to think that at least culturally/historically it has to do with the United States being founded on principles far different that what existed in Europe at the time. (Again the Ideals part). The idea that government should be accountable to it's people, instead of a nobility/noble class.
The United States was founded on the idea that everyone has the right to voice their opinion. Doesn't mean anyone has to listen, but we have the right to say/write it and others to read it. The founding fathers of the US realized that without the ability to express views openly, the democratic process would fail. Now we can argue idealism vs. reality, but that freedom
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/rightsof/press.htm
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Gouveuneur Morris were all involved in journalism to one degree or another, but how many would you consider to be "Professional Journalists?" Not many, and it could be argued that they were the Bloggers of their day. They all penned articles and often under a variety of pen names.
I suggest looking at Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns. It's an interesting read on how Journalism began in this country and why it differs from elsewhere in the world.
And universal health care just means that government becomes the bad guy instead of private business. Need to get a mole removed, please wait 2 years and we'll get to you eventually Need an organ transplant, but over the age of 64, tough luck. You are no longer a "productive worker" who can provide economic value to society. While some of my European friends will taught the advantages of being able to walk into a clinic for cold/minor illness as a great benefit, yet two have them have now flown to "Medical Spas" in India for minor elective surgery because the waiting list in their country was well over a year. (In one case, the condition was causing my friend quite a bit of pain, but not enough to be debilitating.) I wonder how well that would work in the United States since the block of voters most likely to vote are over 60.
So pick your evil.
That's not to say there are somethings in the medical industry that need to changed. Such as a 1 price policy. Charging an insurance company $16,000 for a procedure and then charing Joe Public $45,000 for the same procedure because they don't have insurance should be against the law. It should be Procedure X costs $Y. If your insurance covers $y, good for you, but if they don't, you know exactly how much the procedure costs. Even better, hospitals should be required to public ally publish this information. They should have a nice PDF link on the front page of their websites to a file that lists all prices for all procedures.
...not only plays dice, but sometimes throws them where we can't see?
Or Does God use the same random number generator that XP does?
I probably should have stopped after the first comment...
That's why I didn't go out and buy an iPhone. (Actually I still don't own an iPod, but the touch is looking interesting.) I've just wrote a blog article about not recommending the Air to my consulting clients because the MacBook offers a bit more for a bit less and the MacBook Pro offers a bit more for $100 more. ($50 if you look at the current MacMall specials.) That's why I spent about $8k on the last generation PowerMac G5 Quadcore a couple years ago.
Want a Mac preloaded with XP pro in a dual boot? MacMall offers that.
Want to know what annoys me?
Overall, I like my Macs. Granted, I earn my living with FCP and Shake. I switched from Linux in 2002 to Mac because I wanted a system that just works. And the Mac line up has saved me a lot of time not having to deal with crashes, virus of the week, or dependency hell that comes with Linux for the desktop.
I do a lot of consulting with other videographers since I'm more of geek than an artist. Like everything, you need to be a savvy consumer, know where Apple rips you and how to get around it to get the best price.
Teleco's and intelligence collection goes hand-in-hand world wide and it's largely controlled by faceless Beurocrats and operatives who will be there no matter who is elected.
The Toshiba drive was the SD-H903A. Now there are some Toshiba laptops that are supposed to come with HD-DVD burners, but as far as being able to buy them out right...
http://www.cdfreaks.com/devices/HD-DVD/Toshiba/SD-H903A.html
Take a look at the above link. I'm not the only one.
I had one client who had money and was into the latest and greatest. He wanted a video done about his life and wanted in Blu-Ray. And he paid enough to make it worth while.
I don't do a lot of work on Commercials. There's now a major player in the area who has a full HDV set up with the $25k cameras and complete studio including booms and dollies. I still rent out my FX-1 to a few trusted clients. (I end up editing the HDV they shoot anyway, so if I edit it, free equipment rental).
I make a comfortable living working when and how I want while also working on a Masters degree. So I can't complain.
I remember looking at HD-DVD burners around the same time. It was about $600 for the Blu-Ray internal drive and it was about $1200 for an external firewire HD-DVD burner. Late spring/early summer 2007 I went to look at getting an HD-DVD burner as wedding season started. I figured the price of HD-DVD burners had dropped to the point where I could make a buck by offering the same service to others still not wanting to invest a $1000 in a burner, but still needed HD-DVD work. I could purchase the blank media at staples (both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), which is saying something because it's a rural college town, not a big city.
So I went out shopping online and found HD-DVD drives for computers, but I couldn't find a single burner. I went to a couple specialist companies that sell high end editing equipment, and they didn't have any Pro-sumer grade HD-DVD burners (they had the high end stuff). Come to find out, the low-end/consumer/prosumer grade HD-DVD burners simply didn't exist. They weren't available.
That told me something right there. When people asked what format to buy this past christmas, I still said, "I think digital downloads is going to be the way HD-content is delivered to TV's. Whether that's Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon/Cable/Tivo/Sat. I don't know. My advice is to wait. But if you have to buy one, go Blu-Ray. I can burn Blu-Ray discs, I can't even find an HD-DVD burner.
At first there was just Showtime and HBO HD, and the first time watching movies in HD was amazing. It was sharper and clearer than a DVD. Now there are plenty of things on HD that he likes to watch, like National Geographic, Discovery HD, Science HD, and sports in HD.
Now I have just a 32" flat panel 720p HDTV. I use a mac mini hooked up to the DVI port as another computer/media center. Cable is provided by my condo complex, but no HD.
Frankly, I watch Mythbusters and Stargate Atlantis on a regular basis. All the other shows I like I am forced to download or wait for DVD. (What A&E/BBC America does to Spooks/MI-5 is horrible. It's like missing 1/3 of the episode) I do watch the HD channels when I go to visit him over the holidays and such.
http://www.harkyman.com/bp.html
Is it quite as advanced as Massive, no, but I did some test renders a few years ago on a spare BSD box I had and it worked pretty well with a 1000 "Actors". It took a few hours to calculate out the frames and even more to render, but the results are acceptable. I believe the developer has a few demo videos available.
Blender's not perfect, the particle engine is in need of a massive overhaul and volumetric lighting is needed. While model import has gotten better, it's still not perfect. For some strange reason, the earlier 2.41 and 2.3.x versions handled lightwave models a bit better than the latest releases.
I've toyed with Cinelerra before, but I had some issues with capture cards, etc.. Jahshaka is coming along.
I'm not running out and replacing FCP/Shake/Lightwave any time soon. Mainly because I already have those apps and know how to use them. And the folks I do work for are running on the same set-ups (usually minus Shake.)
Even on the low cost side, FXhome's suite has some nice features for the $150 price point of Effects lab pro. Also, their compositing application is far more forgiving than a lot of the higher priced professional tools. So if someone shoots a greenscreen shot without proper lighting, I can go in with Composite lab (or VisionLab Studio) and do the composite a lot quicker than in Shake sometimes. (Especially if it's DV footage).
Even iLife is pretty powerful these days. Probably for 90% of the editing I do, I could get buy with iMovie (things like Weddings), or even Final Cut Express.
Or listen to this guy:
http://german.about.com/library/media/sound/words_a.mp3
Sounds like Por-sha to me.
Then again, I'm not a linguist, and there maybe a sound that my untrained ears doesn't detect. (Quite likely as I have some hearing damage from the numerous ear infections as a kid). A
Chuck Norris came along and bent the ruby rails into loops!
I think Sin City only had most of the actors on stage for 1 or 2 days. I forget the total amount of time they actual shot principle photography. But I IIRC it was just a few days. If you have a tight script and good director and spend a few months planning in advanced...
Hiring a good PR/Advertising firm and going to digital downloads may be the future.
I'm not sure what AOL as company is really going to do. Most people have figured out that they don't need AOL to get on the internet and have moved on to broadband solutions. My father used Netscape dial up until he got his Mac and switched to a Phone/DSL/Sat. TV bundle last year.
iTunes, however, offers most of the tracks I want and with no waiting. Usually I can't get them any cheaper from Amazon. Plus there are a lot of times i don't want the whole album. I want 1 or 2 tracks. For $2 I can download and have it right there. For another $.50 (for the CD) I can burn to a CD-R and play it in my car.
iTunes was the first with an easy to use interface, pricing that made sense, and a flexible enough DRM that balances out what the studios wanted and fair use.
That's not quite the case with the video downloads. I bought season 3 of Battlestar Galactica last year because we didn't get SciFi at the time through the condo's cable plan. I backed them up to data DVD's when I switched to a new machine (and for archival purposes), but I can't go over to iDVD (or even DVD Studio Pro) and burn a playable DVD
Personally I like unified pricing. One of the reasons why I use Dish network is that they'll play hardball with the content providers over price. If CBS suddenly wants 30% more to air 7 channels that I probably don't watch anyway, Dish yanks the networks until the CBS folks come down on their price. I'd like to see Al la carte pricing since I could get by with about 20 cable channels that I actually watch.
I use Gmail, but as some others have stated, it seems to be getting slower and slower to load with all the features they've crammed into it.
Now I have found Google apps useful if someone sends me an excel file that needs to be converted to a CSV and uploaded to a database. I can do that without having to load Excel or even download the file to my computer. I can do everything right in the browser.
However, I have to always be online to use it. Sometimes I'm somewhere, like Barnes and Noble, where wifi isn't free. Same thing with my hotel the other night. They were having internet issues. If I had to rely on Google Apps I would have been screwed as I needed to make some last minute changes to a presentation.
I find it a useful repository for documents, etc. that I may need access to on another machine, but it's not going to replace MS Office and iWork anytime soon for me.
It took a technology company, with Jobs' inroads in the entertainment industry, to create a system that worked for online digital distribution. The record companies let Apple take the gamble with the hardware/software/infrastructure costs with very little risk to them. And it was successful.
Now that the record companies see that internet distribution can work, they are now back into the game of trying to regain control. Apple has been pretty tough on flat rate pricing. The record companies want to dictate price. So now we're back to egos clashing.
Not that letting Apple have a monopoly is good thing, but frankly I never minded the DRM. There is a huge "All DRM is evil" crowd here. Now there were some ways folks proposed DRM was evil, but I'm not against the concept per sue.(Rootkits come to mind), but Apple's system seem to me to be a fair balance.
I can put it on an iPod, if I owned one, a couple PC's at my house or use one as a server and stream to other machines and the .99 per track was fair. $1.29 for no DRM, if it was worth the extra money I'd pay it. To me it' not. As far as losses/lossy goes, I can't tell a difference. I'm no audiophile either, but I have enough hearing damage from loud music as it is...
I saw OSX with a Unix core, commercial application like Office and Adobe, and said screw it and bought an iBook. i got the stablity of Unix with the commerical software support that Linux lacked. Further more it just works. After I graduated from college and went out into the real world I quickly understood the value of my time. I need things that work. Yes, Apple costs more up front, but the amount of time it saves me not having to tweak this, find some missing dependency that, is well worth the extra cost.
Last year my Dad was needing a new computer. I got him the 17" iMac with the ATI video card (instead of the integrated graphics) and one year later, the number of support calls I've gotten?
1: He had one question about setting up Mail with his new DSL provider. (And I have to admit, I even had to call their tech support because they had some screwy config)
I set up and went back home. He had no problems getting Turbo Tax to install and use it. Now he had some initial questions the first couple days on how to use tabbed browsing and why he needed FireFox for some sites.
I ended up winning the auction at around $800 (IIRC). Most of these cameras were going on Ebay for around $900 for onces that were "refurbished" with half the parts missing and $1200 used in good condition. (Not bad considering I paid about $1700 for mine brand new).
At anyrate the auction was reported from someone in Oregon and they said they accepted paypal. After the auction I got instructions to send the money western union...to Romania. And this wasn't their bid pay service (or whatever they call it. I did use it once for a pair of goalie skates, worked out well).
That was a huge red flag (no pun intended) that something was wrong. A seller that was supposed to be in Oregan, said they accepted paypal, but wanted the money sent to Romania? The next day I got a message from Ebay saying the seller's account had been compromised and that the auction had been cancelled.
A couple days later I got a nasty message from the Romanian threatening to leave bad feedback. So they got the operation down to a science.
When dealing with online transactions you have to use common sense. No paypal or merchant/credit card service: no deal. I have one credit card, with a $750 limit, that I only use for online transactions. Anything goes funky, I report it, out $50 and cut up the card. (And I've had it happen once).