Then there is a happy medium. I like to call it Macintosh OSX. Has the BSD core (which I like technically), blends opensource base with their easy to use interface (might be propitary, but so be it. Easy to use and works...I'll pay for that!), great programs like iLife.
From there I can use GIMP, Blender, and other OSS applications, or MS Office, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro all closed source applications. Either way I've found it to be a great balance.
Re:Blogs are both good and bad for journalism
on
Apple to Buy TiVo?
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· Score: 1
After CBS shakeups and other stuff, ever think that Big Media might want to use some of this stuff to show how "unreliable" blogs are and attempt to discredit them?
All of the small non-chain coffee shops' i've been too in the past year now offer free-wifi access. Why? Because its a miniumal expense. Your talking $100 in equipement and $100 a month for a business DSL/Cable connection or less. They put it in to attract customers like myself that buy a $3.00 cup of coffee 10 days a month or so. Everytime I'm in one there are business people meeting with clients, students surfing the net, and others just wanting to get out of the house. When I worked as a consultant, I did a lot of work from one of my favourite coffee shops. It was $2.00 for a bottomless cup and I'd spend about 4 hours a day. Most of the time I also bought lunch for about another $5 or a cookie. Add that up over 20 days a month and chances are they broke even on me alone. Everyone else that came in for a cup of coffee and to use the high speed internet became profit.
So this whole ad sharing plan doesn't appear to make any sense to me because the ease of delpoyment and low marginal cost of already providing the service is now manditory for coffee shops that want to have a steady clientel.
St. Louis Bread Company (Panera everywhere else) is nice for checking email and has become a favourite for morning breakfast. Their bakery is actually quite good and well noted for their begals. However, I've found their service does not allow for downloading large media files. Its great for surfing the net over lunch or since i am in consulting meeting clients for afternoon tea or a mid-morning brunch and even lunch.
However, try and download a quicktime movie.
There are only 2 local coffee shops (privately owned) with free Wifi around and most people don't know where they are. Bread Co. (What us St. Louisans refer to as St. Louis Bread Company or Penera) are every here in St. Louis and people know where they are.
Pricey, maybe, but if all you want is coffe and a little treat its about $3.50. I just spent $3.00 on my Cafe Mocha alone. So take your pick...
Idea isn't new. The article mentions TransHab, which was a module that was supposed to be tested on the ISS in 2010, but was scrubbed in 2001 or 2002. The concept has been around NASA for a while. Its just going to be his private enterprise that launches and tests the idea not NASA.
In many respects, NASA already laid a lot of the ground work for his idea.
I wish I had mod points for yah...but already posted elsewhere, but I think fundamentally your right.
To this day, more people have died chasing the sound barier than going into space. When Apollo 1 happened, they paused, had the funerals, and were back to work on monday trying to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
Today we think that going into space is routine and even mondane. I am sure people are going to die. I just sure hope it doesn't derail privately funded space concepts.
I had a research class once that explored the practicle and impracticle nescessities of going to Mars and an inflatable crew habitat was one of the ideas that actually made sense. Now I didn't read the article, but the Trashab system was supposed to have been a test module on the ISS. I think its been scrubbed now by NASA but was very interesting.
I do believe the idea was to fill the transhab's outer layer with water (from lunar ice) as it acts as a good radiation shield and should be found on the mooon.
Now micromedeorites do pose a hazard, but some of the more creative solutions have been automated robots that could sow and patch holes, etc.
I thought the Transhab idea was novel, but I think in our final report and conculsions we voted on constructing a LEO robotic space dock and then sending the ship up in modules to be constructed along with nuclear rocket for thrust and power. Remember also something about LOX fuel and ION propulsion powered by nuclear material, and Americanium research and Israel too.
By "branding" opensource will in fact change the meaning. I've spent enough time in Marketing Classes and the real world to know that branding is specially that: creating an assocated idea/item with a given phrase/logo. In the minds of the masses, for what branding is used for, Opensource will mean one of the licenses approved by OSI.
If you choose not to use one of their licenses, then your project may very well hold true to the concept of what opensource means today, and in years past, but to the masses: it will NOT be opensource by definition.
of our information driven world. Something like this was bound to happen eventually and highlights something that really needs to be brought back into the focus of public discource: just how much information should be readily available. Your credit score now is one of your most valuable assets and something you rarely heard about five or ten years ago. Now its mentioned every 30 seconds. Because of the ease of gaining this information, employers, and just about anyone can get your credit score even if legally the shouldn't be.
Next big issue is going to be medical records online. While having such information in once location could be of great benefit to doctors and hospitals around the world, there are also dangers as well, like your HMO, employers, or if your a public figure, the media getting their hands on otherwise private medical records.
Our picture is great too, but we weren't too happy with Dish. Here is why. We've had an HDTV with JVC 6000 receiver and Dish 500 since 2000. We got Showtime and HBO HD at the time along with the demo channel because that was all the HD content. Then one day *poof* HD was gone. Called up tech support, they didn't know why. About a year later we had the people out to realign the two dishes after we had a new roof and low a behold, there was a new module we had to get in order to recieve HD programming once again because Dish decided to change their system. Oh, and they wanted $100 for it too. This was on top of the some $600 we paid for the model 6000 in the first place. I was like, "excuse me, but your telling me that we have to buy a new part for something you did. sorry, but seems like you have to make that right." After about 10 minutes of complaining we got the module sent to us for free. Got our demo channel back immeadately and the first thing running was an ad about how the model 6000 reciever needed this model to get HD again. I was like, "yeah, thanks for telling this to us on a channel we couldn't get".
Our picture is also extremely clear, but after that, I've stopped recommending DISH. Plus our local feeds are not in HD. Don't know if laws and such have been passed to change this: note Dish channel 136 a few months back.
But on top of things, HDTV still has the problem of the fact there are stations in 1080i and others in 720p. My friends with digital cable and HD boxes are limited to 720p. The very fact that some are 720 other at 1080 is not a standard...and the FCC and geeks wonder why people aren't adopting the technology readily.
On cable systems, 720p is the standard that is broadcast. On Dish and DirectTV I'm not positive. We have Dishnetwork with HD package at the moment and it is set on 1080i, however from what I've heard that between signal degregation the most your really going to get is about 900 lines but more likely 700. I think (not positive) that most HD programming though is sent out in 720p. I know it is on most major sporting events, especially on FOX. Usually make and ad saying "Transmiting in best available 720p HD" or the alike. Discovery HD Theatre I'm not positive about.
So as I understand it, a Mac Mini should be powerful enough for playing back most HD content going over Cable today.
I've noticed this over the years, especially from the postgres fans and more recently firebird SQL. However, people should read what MySQL was designed for orginally (raw speed with SELECT) and what the project use is going to be.
MySQL is ideal for running a CMS or other website with slight or moderately changing content. Why? Because, from my experience, your running more SELECT queries than Update or INSERT commands. Plus the fact that there are way more web apps (especially OSS) that have been written in PERL/MySQL or PHP/MySQL.
I ran a browser-based online game that was orginally designed for php/MySQL simply because I could deploy on most hosting accounts with that combo the cheapest. After a while, MySQL would become easily corrupted and crashed because of high loads with many more Updates, Insert, and delete queries. As more people were playing and I was able to switch to self-managed dedicated servers I switched to PostgreSQL and rewrote the code base and it solved most of the problems, but if more than 400 users were online, the system would slow down considerably. Granted everything was run on a single OpenBSD box, but it was only costing me USD 65 a month to host and on a college budget that was about what I could afford with revenues from the game.
It still largely depends on what your objectives and type of project your going to be doing. If I were to develop some in house intranet system or the like, probably would consider a system like PostgreSQL. Same with an E-commerce site. But if its a blog site or other CMS powered system where there aren't tons of content added on a daily basis, chances are I am going to go with some MySQL based solution.
Something else to consider, especially in being in the consulting world, is on staff talent. If all your people are MSCE's then using any *iux-based solution isn't a good Idea because of the huge overhead costs in retraining or hiring new/additonal staff. If the people and systems are Solaris/SPARC-based, then find a solution for that situation. If a company is building an IT division or system from scratch, then its time to look at various *iux solution including Linux, *BSD, and Apple. Company I work for now is in video production. 99% of our systems are Macintosh. When it came time to build a 6TB SAN, we went with Xserve. More expensive than an x86/Linux or *BSD based system. Not when you start comparing solutions (including support agreements) from vendors like IBM. But on staff are 6 full-time Apple Nerds. We already had a couple small workgroup servers with 10.2 Server on them so training costs were not significate for us.
Right tool for the right job period. When I worked as a consultant for 2 years I learned real quick that being a zealot for one system over another doesn't work and there are many more factors involved in IT decision making and TCO decisions than just hardware and software. Learned very quick that hardware and software are much cheaper than labour and downtime.
Re:is this stupid?
on
EFF's Logfinder
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I have to agree. I don't do much system administration work outside of our data-storage network these days, but even then I want to see what employees are putting on the 6TB system. Why? We've found porn before, against company policy, warezed games, against company policy, personal files, etc. before. For most random logs, they are archived every month and backup to optical media every quarter. But the storage system is supposed to be used to store completed video projects for the past year. Nothing else. The front office and bean counters have their own servers just for accounting information etc.
Back when I was doing more web-based server admistration logs were my friends. We could tell people trying to find an open mail port, hacking attempts, DDOS attempts, etc..
The EFF is becomming more like the ACLU in many regaurds. Had a very good reason for formation, but at some point went off the deepend. Privacy on the net is non-existant. Never was there, but somewhere along the way someone thought that the Internet was going to be this great tool of anaminity and I want to know who thought up that bloody idea. Because it was and always will be flase.
If you were on the road deliviering powerpoint presentations, this thing would be a god send. Currently if we send someone to meet with a client they have to lug both their laptop.
While 800x600 might seem all that great to most of the geek crowd, its more than enough to show a powerpoint presentation in a confrence room or hotel meeting room wall.
The trade off of size versus performance here would be a no brainer if you travel.
I still have my HP48G that's 10 years old and just replaced the 3 AAA batteries for another couple years of life. It still works and does everything I need it to these days accept Modified Internal Rate of Return calculations. I have an HP business calculator for that. Funny thing about my business calculator was the Copyright on the manual was 1987. This model had been produced for almost 15 years when I bought it for business school in 2001. Its over 10 years old and saw much of its life beat to death in backpacks and brief cases. Yet it still goes on working. The best feature, besides all the good and well thought out features, is its ruggedness.
Still I prefer the 48G to my business calculator for most business needs because it can also graph stuff on the fly. For years I could take it into a meeting and do graphs and plots without the need of a laptop. Then could transfer everything to a PC after the meeting.
If HP comes out with a new graphing calculator one of these day's I'd buy it when my 48G finally dies.
I sat down and took one of those Red Hat Linux cert self-tests before and I can remember on question being where is the httpd.conf file found. I think I had selected that it was in/usr/local/ or something like that.
Anyway I remember getting the answer was wrong and that it was in the etc/long/ass/directory/that/only/redhat/uses/. I can remember my friend getting ready to take the test laughing at me because although I'd had about 8 years of dealing with apache on several different *iux platforms including Darwin, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, RH Linux, and Solaris.
I remember retorting to him: "The real answer to that is everytime you ssh into a system you type: whereis httpd.conf because it isn't ever in the same damn location."
Me setting down in front of multiple windows installs (we have 2kpro and XPpro at work, my dad has 98SE and everyone else that calls me at home for help seem to run ME) is about the same. I know what I'm looking for it just takes a couple seconds to remember what menu or setting it is on that version. Hell I can remember times of typing "ipconfig" and puzzled why nothing popped up at a dos prompt on 98 or typing winipcfg on 2000 and not getting anything before remember what system I was on.
That is one reason I switched to OSX about 3 years ago. There have been differences between 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3, too, but its not like going from RH 6 to 7,x to 8, then to 9 in about 16 months and nothing being the same.
Really, it was the "Hey we have a new OS every 6 months" period at RH that finally really made me give up on Linux in production enviroments and switch at home to Apple. At least with Apple I get my Unix and a few programs like Adobe and Dreamweaver that everyone else uses too.
It wasn't the whole space-plane thing that's such a bad idea as it was the pipedream of having a Single State to Orbit spaceplane. For years I've read and talked to areospace engineers that have ranted that launch costs could be reduced by at least 40% per pound by using a dual stage to orbit system like Rutan and Spacship One deploys. Have a large lifted that takes up the orbiter to 60 - 80k feet and then let the orbiter make the rest of the trip up into LEO. Then you have 2 100% reusable craft. Again, space planes aren't such a bad idea, its just that like many thing just have never been implemented correctly in the public sector.
Try pricing systems with 4 or 8 GB of ram and best video card at the time, 4x160GB hardrives or 2x250GB hardrives, Fibercards, and see what the price is. Some of the $12k machines may have included the 23"HD flatpanel and 17". I don't remember the exact details. But for the base Machine without monitors, I know we paid an average of about $7,000 a pop.
Depends where you are with the X-box. It was great during College. We'd hook up 3 or 4 on a floor or suite and play 8vs8 on halo for hours. Always a game going on. Had to take a break to study now and then, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Also don't forget Knights of the Old Republic which was XBox only.
Granted some titles, like the ghost recon series is best on computer and better on the PS2 than X-Box, but the ablity to play in multiplayer set-up was something lacking in the PS2.
Now that I am out in the work force I have a PS2 and own Need for Speed 2, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon Island Thunder and when Ghost Recon 2 hits the $20 bargin bin I'll buy that. Why? Well its me, my roomate, and maybe a friend over everyonce in a while. Never get more than 2 players.
We are in the video production business. We sent crews out with 1.0 Ghz G4 PB's with 2GB of ram we purchase about 2 years ago and they seem to handle the job still quite well. Oftentimes on smaller jobs, the project is almost completed by the time they are back in the office from flying.
Once back in the office we have several dual 1.25 Ghz G4 towers and a couple dual 2Ghz powermac g5's for final rendering. These machines were each between 6k and 12k.
One the road, battery life means more than horsepower and the powerbook strikes a reasonable balance over the G3 iBooks that were available when we purchased the PB's. From what I've read, the G5 chip (unless apple will pull the classic: different chip, same name game) sucks down juice like mad.
I'm going to pick a "welcome to reality" post and take the karma hit here, but...
98% of all users outside of slashdot doesn't even know wtf Ogg is. Goto any typical Best Buy, Circut City, etc. and ask people if they want an MP3 player or an Ogg Vorbis player. Better yet, ask them if they even know what Ogg Vorbis is. I am willing to bet that damn near 99.99999999999% want something that plays MP3's and make it an iPod or iShuttle. While this might be nice for OSS people that is what? 20% of the 2% that use Linux or *BSD for their home or office machine? From everything I've learned working and in college, that seems not to make any since. "Let's realease something in a format that maybe 1% of computer users even knows exist." That's just being a dumbass.
Here is another reality check: people do not mind paying a few dollars for a good product. The $30 I spent 2 years ago for QuickTime Pro has been the best software purchase I've made. Its definately the swiss army knife of video conversion and compression tools. Sure I could spend hours fucking around with different OSS apps and encodings, or I could spend 5 minutes in QuickTime Pro and move on to the next project while its rendering output. Which one is going to pay the bills around here?
I have been impressed by WMV's format from a technical sense, but the problem remains its for Windows only and it may or more often will not work on Macs let alone Linux. Quicktime will work on Windows and Mac without issues and most savvy Linux users have the ablity and files to get QuickTime to play under Linux. I know I could view quicktime files when I used linux and that was 5 years ago.
As far as codecs. I like Sorenson 3. Now that does lock it into Quicktime, but most of the movie trailers released are in Sorenson 3. While there will be those bitch about it not being open around here, it does a decent job with compression and quality. I'm not sure how well it does from QuickTime Pro compared to Cleaner. It's not an open format, but frankly I don't care so much whether it's opensource, but whether it works today.
Real Player is another option. I still haven't forgiven Real for packaging spyware with their free products back in the day (remember Gator and Bonzi Buddy), however if your going to offer in multiple formats (say like Amazon.com), it does make a decent second option and supports more platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
From there I can use GIMP, Blender, and other OSS applications, or MS Office, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro all closed source applications. Either way I've found it to be a great balance.
After CBS shakeups and other stuff, ever think that Big Media might want to use some of this stuff to show how "unreliable" blogs are and attempt to discredit them?
So this whole ad sharing plan doesn't appear to make any sense to me because the ease of delpoyment and low marginal cost of already providing the service is now manditory for coffee shops that want to have a steady clientel.
However, try and download a quicktime movie.
There are only 2 local coffee shops (privately owned) with free Wifi around and most people don't know where they are. Bread Co. (What us St. Louisans refer to as St. Louis Bread Company or Penera) are every here in St. Louis and people know where they are.
Pricey, maybe, but if all you want is coffe and a little treat its about $3.50. I just spent $3.00 on my Cafe Mocha alone. So take your pick...
In many respects, NASA already laid a lot of the ground work for his idea.
To this day, more people have died chasing the sound barier than going into space. When Apollo 1 happened, they paused, had the funerals, and were back to work on monday trying to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
Today we think that going into space is routine and even mondane. I am sure people are going to die. I just sure hope it doesn't derail privately funded space concepts.
I do believe the idea was to fill the transhab's outer layer with water (from lunar ice) as it acts as a good radiation shield and should be found on the mooon.
Now micromedeorites do pose a hazard, but some of the more creative solutions have been automated robots that could sow and patch holes, etc.
I thought the Transhab idea was novel, but I think in our final report and conculsions we voted on constructing a LEO robotic space dock and then sending the ship up in modules to be constructed along with nuclear rocket for thrust and power. Remember also something about LOX fuel and ION propulsion powered by nuclear material, and Americanium research and Israel too.
If you choose not to use one of their licenses, then your project may very well hold true to the concept of what opensource means today, and in years past, but to the masses: it will NOT be opensource by definition.
Next big issue is going to be medical records online. While having such information in once location could be of great benefit to doctors and hospitals around the world, there are also dangers as well, like your HMO, employers, or if your a public figure, the media getting their hands on otherwise private medical records.
Most today want it in ASCII text...one giant leap...backwards
Our picture is also extremely clear, but after that, I've stopped recommending DISH. Plus our local feeds are not in HD. Don't know if laws and such have been passed to change this: note Dish channel 136 a few months back.
But on top of things, HDTV still has the problem of the fact there are stations in 1080i and others in 720p. My friends with digital cable and HD boxes are limited to 720p. The very fact that some are 720 other at 1080 is not a standard...and the FCC and geeks wonder why people aren't adopting the technology readily.
And thoughtful constructive comments like this are why so many people adore Slashdot.
So as I understand it, a Mac Mini should be powerful enough for playing back most HD content going over Cable today.
MySQL is ideal for running a CMS or other website with slight or moderately changing content. Why? Because, from my experience, your running more SELECT queries than Update or INSERT commands. Plus the fact that there are way more web apps (especially OSS) that have been written in PERL/MySQL or PHP/MySQL.
I ran a browser-based online game that was orginally designed for php/MySQL simply because I could deploy on most hosting accounts with that combo the cheapest. After a while, MySQL would become easily corrupted and crashed because of high loads with many more Updates, Insert, and delete queries. As more people were playing and I was able to switch to self-managed dedicated servers I switched to PostgreSQL and rewrote the code base and it solved most of the problems, but if more than 400 users were online, the system would slow down considerably. Granted everything was run on a single OpenBSD box, but it was only costing me USD 65 a month to host and on a college budget that was about what I could afford with revenues from the game.
It still largely depends on what your objectives and type of project your going to be doing. If I were to develop some in house intranet system or the like, probably would consider a system like PostgreSQL. Same with an E-commerce site. But if its a blog site or other CMS powered system where there aren't tons of content added on a daily basis, chances are I am going to go with some MySQL based solution.
Something else to consider, especially in being in the consulting world, is on staff talent. If all your people are MSCE's then using any *iux-based solution isn't a good Idea because of the huge overhead costs in retraining or hiring new/additonal staff. If the people and systems are Solaris/SPARC-based, then find a solution for that situation. If a company is building an IT division or system from scratch, then its time to look at various *iux solution including Linux, *BSD, and Apple. Company I work for now is in video production. 99% of our systems are Macintosh. When it came time to build a 6TB SAN, we went with Xserve. More expensive than an x86/Linux or *BSD based system. Not when you start comparing solutions (including support agreements) from vendors like IBM. But on staff are 6 full-time Apple Nerds. We already had a couple small workgroup servers with 10.2 Server on them so training costs were not significate for us.
Right tool for the right job period. When I worked as a consultant for 2 years I learned real quick that being a zealot for one system over another doesn't work and there are many more factors involved in IT decision making and TCO decisions than just hardware and software. Learned very quick that hardware and software are much cheaper than labour and downtime.
Back when I was doing more web-based server admistration logs were my friends. We could tell people trying to find an open mail port, hacking attempts, DDOS attempts, etc..
The EFF is becomming more like the ACLU in many regaurds. Had a very good reason for formation, but at some point went off the deepend. Privacy on the net is non-existant. Never was there, but somewhere along the way someone thought that the Internet was going to be this great tool of anaminity and I want to know who thought up that bloody idea. Because it was and always will be flase.
While 800x600 might seem all that great to most of the geek crowd, its more than enough to show a powerpoint presentation in a confrence room or hotel meeting room wall.
The trade off of size versus performance here would be a no brainer if you travel.
Still I prefer the 48G to my business calculator for most business needs because it can also graph stuff on the fly. For years I could take it into a meeting and do graphs and plots without the need of a laptop. Then could transfer everything to a PC after the meeting.
If HP comes out with a new graphing calculator one of these day's I'd buy it when my 48G finally dies.
Personally I like the idea of having class "M" planets and everything else crap idea...
Anyway I remember getting the answer was wrong and that it was in the etc/long/ass/directory/that/only/redhat/uses/. I can remember my friend getting ready to take the test laughing at me because although I'd had about 8 years of dealing with apache on several different *iux platforms including Darwin, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, RH Linux, and Solaris.
I remember retorting to him: "The real answer to that is everytime you ssh into a system you type: whereis httpd.conf because it isn't ever in the same damn location."
Me setting down in front of multiple windows installs (we have 2kpro and XPpro at work, my dad has 98SE and everyone else that calls me at home for help seem to run ME) is about the same. I know what I'm looking for it just takes a couple seconds to remember what menu or setting it is on that version. Hell I can remember times of typing "ipconfig" and puzzled why nothing popped up at a dos prompt on 98 or typing winipcfg on 2000 and not getting anything before remember what system I was on.
That is one reason I switched to OSX about 3 years ago. There have been differences between 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3, too, but its not like going from RH 6 to 7,x to 8, then to 9 in about 16 months and nothing being the same.
Really, it was the "Hey we have a new OS every 6 months" period at RH that finally really made me give up on Linux in production enviroments and switch at home to Apple. At least with Apple I get my Unix and a few programs like Adobe and Dreamweaver that everyone else uses too.
It wasn't the whole space-plane thing that's such a bad idea as it was the pipedream of having a Single State to Orbit spaceplane. For years I've read and talked to areospace engineers that have ranted that launch costs could be reduced by at least 40% per pound by using a dual stage to orbit system like Rutan and Spacship One deploys. Have a large lifted that takes up the orbiter to 60 - 80k feet and then let the orbiter make the rest of the trip up into LEO. Then you have 2 100% reusable craft. Again, space planes aren't such a bad idea, its just that like many thing just have never been implemented correctly in the public sector.
Great for us running *iux (like OSX) and have a Unix Background...bad for the other 95% of computer users that run windows.
Try pricing systems with 4 or 8 GB of ram and best video card at the time, 4x160GB hardrives or 2x250GB hardrives, Fibercards, and see what the price is. Some of the $12k machines may have included the 23"HD flatpanel and 17". I don't remember the exact details. But for the base Machine without monitors, I know we paid an average of about $7,000 a pop.
Depends where you are with the X-box. It was great during College. We'd hook up 3 or 4 on a floor or suite and play 8vs8 on halo for hours. Always a game going on. Had to take a break to study now and then, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Also don't forget Knights of the Old Republic which was XBox only. Granted some titles, like the ghost recon series is best on computer and better on the PS2 than X-Box, but the ablity to play in multiplayer set-up was something lacking in the PS2. Now that I am out in the work force I have a PS2 and own Need for Speed 2, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon Island Thunder and when Ghost Recon 2 hits the $20 bargin bin I'll buy that. Why? Well its me, my roomate, and maybe a friend over everyonce in a while. Never get more than 2 players.
Once back in the office we have several dual 1.25 Ghz G4 towers and a couple dual 2Ghz powermac g5's for final rendering. These machines were each between 6k and 12k.
One the road, battery life means more than horsepower and the powerbook strikes a reasonable balance over the G3 iBooks that were available when we purchased the PB's. From what I've read, the G5 chip (unless apple will pull the classic: different chip, same name game) sucks down juice like mad.
98% of all users outside of slashdot doesn't even know wtf Ogg is. Goto any typical Best Buy, Circut City, etc. and ask people if they want an MP3 player or an Ogg Vorbis player. Better yet, ask them if they even know what Ogg Vorbis is. I am willing to bet that damn near 99.99999999999% want something that plays MP3's and make it an iPod or iShuttle. While this might be nice for OSS people that is what? 20% of the 2% that use Linux or *BSD for their home or office machine? From everything I've learned working and in college, that seems not to make any since. "Let's realease something in a format that maybe 1% of computer users even knows exist." That's just being a dumbass.
Here is another reality check: people do not mind paying a few dollars for a good product. The $30 I spent 2 years ago for QuickTime Pro has been the best software purchase I've made. Its definately the swiss army knife of video conversion and compression tools. Sure I could spend hours fucking around with different OSS apps and encodings, or I could spend 5 minutes in QuickTime Pro and move on to the next project while its rendering output. Which one is going to pay the bills around here?
I have been impressed by WMV's format from a technical sense, but the problem remains its for Windows only and it may or more often will not work on Macs let alone Linux. Quicktime will work on Windows and Mac without issues and most savvy Linux users have the ablity and files to get QuickTime to play under Linux. I know I could view quicktime files when I used linux and that was 5 years ago.
As far as codecs. I like Sorenson 3. Now that does lock it into Quicktime, but most of the movie trailers released are in Sorenson 3. While there will be those bitch about it not being open around here, it does a decent job with compression and quality. I'm not sure how well it does from QuickTime Pro compared to Cleaner. It's not an open format, but frankly I don't care so much whether it's opensource, but whether it works today.
Real Player is another option. I still haven't forgiven Real for packaging spyware with their free products back in the day (remember Gator and Bonzi Buddy), however if your going to offer in multiple formats (say like Amazon.com), it does make a decent second option and supports more platforms.