Fur has been all-but-trivial for several years now. Hell, Maya Complete comes with fur presets. Or maybe it's Maya Unlimited. I forget. Silly names. Either Complete isn't, or Unlimited is. I can never keep them straight.
The grandparent's point still stands. We've seen 3D renderings of animals, including furry animals, that are good enough to stand up to moderately close inspection. We have never seen a 3D rendering of a human face that could pass even the most cursory glance.
The comparison at hand is between iDVD, which comes with an Apple-branded DVD burner, and DVDit LE, which is the software that came with the other computer or DVD burner or whatever. In other words, it's a completely valid comparison.
If you want to compare non-bundled DVD authoring packages for Windows with non-bundled DVD authoring packages for the Mac, then we have to pull out DVD Studio Pro... and believe me, you don't want that. The comparison would not be flattering.
...apparently intended to spur compatible hardware development.
Huh? This technote isn't "apparently intended" to do anything. It's just part of Apple's normal documentation. Every time a newproduct comes out, Apple releases a technotedocumentingthatproduct.
In fact, technotes just like this one are available for every Apple product going back to the original Mac Classic.
No way there's an iMac in a classroom of a small school.
Schools do not buy Macs at list price. Apple has extraordinarily aggressive incentive programs for schools that want to buy Macs; 80% off the retail price of the machines is not that unusual.
I don't see Apple as a life form. It can die tomorrow and I would not mourn. It's a godless, soulless entity as are all businesses. I just like the tech involved.
Have you ever heard the story of the goose that laid the golden egg? Here's a hint: Apple's the goose.
If Apple were to have ceased to exist as a company in, say, 1988, all the great things that they've created since then never would have existed.
If you like the golden eggs, then you'd better not roast the goose. It would make you a fine dinner, but it wouldn't be the wisest move in the long run.
Slow news day? Hardly. Get thee over to the news site of your choice, flip on the tee vee, or check my journal. Big things are happening in the world, and Slashdot's main page is evidently not the place to learn about or discuss them.
You can take away my crystal clear 0% lag CRT when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
First find me a crystal-clear CRT, and we'll talk.
CRT's are fuzzy. There are more-fuzzy CRT's and less-fuzzy CRT's, but they're all fuzzy. It's the nature of the beast.
Right now, on the other hand, I'm staring at an array of 1.7 million perfectly square pixels, flicker-free at 60 Hz and with a pixel response time of less than 16 milliseconds.
You need to recognize the distinction between government-conducted research and government-funded private research.
That said, though, running a research effort is nothing like running a utility. If you want a glimpse into how the government would run the Internet, look at Amtrak. In other words, badly.
US downloaders feel that file trading activities are benign. Only 9% thought that file trading was wrong.
Why should this be either surprising or "stirring?" The people who think downloading music is wrong don't do it.
Here's what we really need to know: of all the people who have access to pirated music, how many don't download it, and why? Undoubtedly there are going to be many people who don't do it because they don't listen to music very much, or because they don't have time, or other pragmatic reasons. Some, however, don't do it because it's wrong. That's the fraction I'm interested in.
Articles that simply conclude that most people who do X think X is okay just aren't all that interesting.
I think most/.'ers would agree market forces haven't been much good at weeding out what stinks from what what's good when it comes to OSes, actually, among other things (or is Windows really soooo much "better" than Linux, Mac OS, Be, etc.?).
The problem is that the open market has a different idea of what's good and what's bad than you do. In the most basic terms, the market's idea of what's good is defined by what people want to buy. If people want to buy it, it's good, and if they don't, it's bad. If more people want to buy X rather than Y, then X is better than Y.
If you want to get into the question of why more people want Windows than Linux or whatever, that's a whole other conversation.
You say "suicide pact" without offering any meaning or definition.
Suicide pact: an agreement made among two or more parties that will result in the death of all involved. Seemed to me that the meaning would be obvious.
Is it suicidal to want to know that the government is doing its job?
It might be. For example, let's say the government has established a network of civil defense shelters and whatnot to help save lives in the event of a large-scale chemical attack on our cities. Some wise guy invokes the Freedom of Information Act and discloses the fact that the shelters in Cleveland, Boise, and Orlando aren't scheduled to be completed for another year. The next day, a UAV flies over Boise and unloads a metric assload of aerosolized VX nerve agent. Thousands die.
Have you ever heard the expression, "Loose lips sink ships?" Sometimes it can be true.
Unaccountability is the not-too-secret wet-dream of conservatives and big business.
I find it astounding that you can accuse me of fear-mongering and then jump from a slight increase in operational security of civilian government agencies straight to words like "unaccountable" and "opaque." Positively astounding.
You're making it out to be an all-or-nothing proposition. That's called a false dichotomy. We're not talking about abolishing the Constitution and establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. We're talking about slightly altering the existing balance between security and liberty.
Just for sake of argument, let's say today we have 90% liberty and 50% security. Of course, these things can't be quantified, but this is just to make the point. We're not talking about going to 0% liberty and 100% security; we're talking about going to 88% liberty and 75% security. In other words, we're talking about a significant increase in security in exchange for a sacrifice of liberty that the vast majority of Americans will never even notice. After all, when's the last time you went to the records building to pull the blueprints for the local power plant?
Which is more important, liberty or security? Men far wiser than we have been debating that question for generations. The closest thing we have to an answer is, "Neither. Or maybe both. It depends."
Fortunately, while we know of no single right answer to that dilemma, we do know of several that are wrong. And blindly repeating that old saw is one of the wrong ones.
For the fallacy inherent in that oft-quoted aphorism* is that though there can be security without liberty-- totalitarian dictatorships are notably secure-- there can be no liberty without security.
But if you want to take, for sake of argument, the quote attributed to Franklin at face value, at least get it right. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." We're not talking about a little temporary safety. We're talking about permanent security on a grand scale, directly affecting hundreds of millions of people.
It is wise to be cognizant of your liberties and to defend them when they are challenged.. But it is the acme of foolishness to deny that we must sometimes give up a little temporary liberty to obtain essential safety.
-- * In point of fact, it appears that Benjamin Franklin never wrote nor said it. The line appears in the 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania, a work which was published anonymously. The work has been attributed to Franklin, but there seems to be no evidence that it was actually his work.
Do people really go through the mall counterclockwise?
I think people in the United States at least generally circulate to the right, or counterclockwise. The reason has to do with traffic. In the US, we drive on the right side of the road, so oncoming traffic is on our left. So when we walk through a store, we walk on the right side, so that the displays and whatnot are on our left.
I qualify this by saying "in the United States" because I noticed once in Australia that it's just the opposite. I had to go to a mall in Sydney one time to pick up a new battery for my laptop, and I noticed that traffic generally circulated clockwise there. I haven't paid attention in any of the other Commonwealth countries, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same.
Of course, it might have just been the Coriolis affect.;-)
...if he could step back and realize the kind of people Apple is marketing towards (at the very minimum, a group of people who appreciate good design) then he would know that those people who aren't afraid of a Unix-based operating system sure as hell aren't going to be afraid of a glass staircase.
Two thirds of Apple's core market is made up of the very young and the very old. Most of Apple's target customers have never even heard the word "UNIX." Generally speaking, Apple isn't marketing toward people who appreciate good design on a conscious level. They're marketing toward regular people. Regular people appreciate good design, but don't dwell on it. This tactic has the beneficial side-effect of appealing to fetishists, too.
...and the few coffee cups at the checkout counter...
Actually, Apple's impulse items are iPods and the like, not coffee cups. It works, too. I was at an Apple store last fall to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for a new laptop, and when I got to the register I saw a stack of iPods sitting there. I decided, right there on the spot, to get one for myself and one for my girlfriend.
Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.
I don't know any anti-MS Mac zealots. I know tons of anti-MS Linux zealots, but the Mac users I know just prefer their Macs. When the time comes to run Microsoft software, or the occasional Windows program, they're happy to do it.
The Mac community isn't really a good place to find zealotry... unless you count the zealots from other communities who make the trip over here to mock and insult Mac users. We just ignore those people.
Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects.
When you hear hoofprints, think horses, not zebras. Not everything is best explained by a conspiracy theory.
No, it's not. It's a terrible start. He linked to one article that spread doom-and-gloom with virtually no facts to back it up. Mountain out of a molehill. Hardly shocking.
Um. You do realize that words written in all caps are not actually spelled with all capital letters, right? The name of the company is Weta, not WETA. It's named after a giant bug native to New Zealand, a bug called a weta.
I don't know why the all-caps spelling, WETA, got all popular all of a sudden. The name of the company is Weta.
A weta is a giant honkin' bug, indigenous to New Zealand. It looks like this. Wetas can grow to be up to six inches long, and weigh as much as a small bird.
Why, exactly, it was decided to name a special effects workshop after a giant bug is left as an exercise for the reader.
Slashdot Mirror
Fur has been all-but-trivial for several years now. Hell, Maya Complete comes with fur presets. Or maybe it's Maya Unlimited. I forget. Silly names. Either Complete isn't, or Unlimited is. I can never keep them straight.
The grandparent's point still stands. We've seen 3D renderings of animals, including furry animals, that are good enough to stand up to moderately close inspection. We have never seen a 3D rendering of a human face that could pass even the most cursory glance.
The comparison at hand is between iDVD, which comes with an Apple-branded DVD burner, and DVDit LE, which is the software that came with the other computer or DVD burner or whatever. In other words, it's a completely valid comparison.
If you want to compare non-bundled DVD authoring packages for Windows with non-bundled DVD authoring packages for the Mac, then we have to pull out DVD Studio Pro... and believe me, you don't want that. The comparison would not be flattering.
...apparently intended to spur compatible hardware development.
Huh? This technote isn't "apparently intended" to do anything. It's just part of Apple's normal documentation. Every time a new product comes out, Apple releases a technote documenting that product.
In fact, technotes just like this one are available for every Apple product going back to the original Mac Classic.
No way there's an iMac in a classroom of a small school.
Schools do not buy Macs at list price. Apple has extraordinarily aggressive incentive programs for schools that want to buy Macs; 80% off the retail price of the machines is not that unusual.
Details may vary overseas.
I don't see Apple as a life form. It can die tomorrow and I would not mourn. It's a godless, soulless entity as are all businesses. I just like the tech involved.
Have you ever heard the story of the goose that laid the golden egg? Here's a hint: Apple's the goose.
If Apple were to have ceased to exist as a company in, say, 1988, all the great things that they've created since then never would have existed.
If you like the golden eggs, then you'd better not roast the goose. It would make you a fine dinner, but it wouldn't be the wisest move in the long run.
If somebody else will pay for it, I'll volunteer to run it. ;-)
Slow news day? Hardly. Get thee over to the news site of your choice, flip on the tee vee, or check my journal. Big things are happening in the world, and Slashdot's main page is evidently not the place to learn about or discuss them.
You can take away my crystal clear 0% lag CRT when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
First find me a crystal-clear CRT, and we'll talk.
CRT's are fuzzy. There are more-fuzzy CRT's and less-fuzzy CRT's, but they're all fuzzy. It's the nature of the beast.
Right now, on the other hand, I'm staring at an array of 1.7 million perfectly square pixels, flicker-free at 60 Hz and with a pixel response time of less than 16 milliseconds.
You need to recognize the distinction between government-conducted research and government-funded private research.
That said, though, running a research effort is nothing like running a utility. If you want a glimpse into how the government would run the Internet, look at Amtrak. In other words, badly.
In my opinion, Apple's best move would've been in licensing themselves. It may have killed Apple ultimately...
Then how would it have been the best move? Best for whom?
Here's what we really need to know: of all the people who have access to pirated music, how many don't download it, and why? Undoubtedly there are going to be many people who don't do it because they don't listen to music very much, or because they don't have time, or other pragmatic reasons. Some, however, don't do it because it's wrong. That's the fraction I'm interested in.
Articles that simply conclude that most people who do X think X is okay just aren't all that interesting.
"I" beg to differ.
Quotation marks are not used to show emphasis. You're right up there with that sign at the bodega that reads "No" Parking.
I think most /.'ers would agree market forces haven't been much good at weeding out what stinks from what what's good when it comes to OSes, actually, among other things (or is Windows really soooo much "better" than Linux, Mac OS, Be, etc.?).
The problem is that the open market has a different idea of what's good and what's bad than you do. In the most basic terms, the market's idea of what's good is defined by what people want to buy. If people want to buy it, it's good, and if they don't, it's bad. If more people want to buy X rather than Y, then X is better than Y.
If you want to get into the question of why more people want Windows than Linux or whatever, that's a whole other conversation.
You say "suicide pact" without offering any meaning or definition.
Suicide pact: an agreement made among two or more parties that will result in the death of all involved. Seemed to me that the meaning would be obvious.
Is it suicidal to want to know that the government is doing its job?
It might be. For example, let's say the government has established a network of civil defense shelters and whatnot to help save lives in the event of a large-scale chemical attack on our cities. Some wise guy invokes the Freedom of Information Act and discloses the fact that the shelters in Cleveland, Boise, and Orlando aren't scheduled to be completed for another year. The next day, a UAV flies over Boise and unloads a metric assload of aerosolized VX nerve agent. Thousands die.
Have you ever heard the expression, "Loose lips sink ships?" Sometimes it can be true.
Unaccountability is the not-too-secret wet-dream of conservatives and big business.
I find it astounding that you can accuse me of fear-mongering and then jump from a slight increase in operational security of civilian government agencies straight to words like "unaccountable" and "opaque." Positively astounding.
You're making it out to be an all-or-nothing proposition. That's called a false dichotomy. We're not talking about abolishing the Constitution and establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. We're talking about slightly altering the existing balance between security and liberty.
Just for sake of argument, let's say today we have 90% liberty and 50% security. Of course, these things can't be quantified, but this is just to make the point. We're not talking about going to 0% liberty and 100% security; we're talking about going to 88% liberty and 75% security. In other words, we're talking about a significant increase in security in exchange for a sacrifice of liberty that the vast majority of Americans will never even notice. After all, when's the last time you went to the records building to pull the blueprints for the local power plant?
Which is more important, liberty or security? Men far wiser than we have been debating that question for generations. The closest thing we have to an answer is, "Neither. Or maybe both. It depends."
Fortunately, while we know of no single right answer to that dilemma, we do know of several that are wrong. And blindly repeating that old saw is one of the wrong ones.
For the fallacy inherent in that oft-quoted aphorism* is that though there can be security without liberty-- totalitarian dictatorships are notably secure-- there can be no liberty without security.
But if you want to take, for sake of argument, the quote attributed to Franklin at face value, at least get it right. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." We're not talking about a little temporary safety. We're talking about permanent security on a grand scale, directly affecting hundreds of millions of people.
It is wise to be cognizant of your liberties and to defend them when they are challenged.. But it is the acme of foolishness to deny that we must sometimes give up a little temporary liberty to obtain essential safety.
--
* In point of fact, it appears that Benjamin Franklin never wrote nor said it. The line appears in the 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania, a work which was published anonymously. The work has been attributed to Franklin, but there seems to be no evidence that it was actually his work.
Civil liberties are the bedrocks of our society; however, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Discuss.
Nigger \Nig"ger\, n.
A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation.
Niggardly \Nig"gard*ly\, a.
Meanly covetous or avarcious in dealing with others; stingy;
niggard.
Only thing worse than a bigot is an illiterate bigot.
Do people really go through the mall counterclockwise?
;-)
I think people in the United States at least generally circulate to the right, or counterclockwise. The reason has to do with traffic. In the US, we drive on the right side of the road, so oncoming traffic is on our left. So when we walk through a store, we walk on the right side, so that the displays and whatnot are on our left.
I qualify this by saying "in the United States" because I noticed once in Australia that it's just the opposite. I had to go to a mall in Sydney one time to pick up a new battery for my laptop, and I noticed that traffic generally circulated clockwise there. I haven't paid attention in any of the other Commonwealth countries, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same.
Of course, it might have just been the Coriolis affect.
Two thirds of Apple's core market is made up of the very young and the very old. Most of Apple's target customers have never even heard the word "UNIX." Generally speaking, Apple isn't marketing toward people who appreciate good design on a conscious level. They're marketing toward regular people. Regular people appreciate good design, but don't dwell on it. This tactic has the beneficial side-effect of appealing to fetishists, too.
Actually, Apple's impulse items are iPods and the like, not coffee cups. It works, too. I was at an Apple store last fall to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for a new laptop, and when I got to the register I saw a stack of iPods sitting there. I decided, right there on the spot, to get one for myself and one for my girlfriend.
Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.
I don't know any anti-MS Mac zealots. I know tons of anti-MS Linux zealots, but the Mac users I know just prefer their Macs. When the time comes to run Microsoft software, or the occasional Windows program, they're happy to do it.
The Mac community isn't really a good place to find zealotry... unless you count the zealots from other communities who make the trip over here to mock and insult Mac users. We just ignore those people.
Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects.
When you hear hoofprints, think horses, not zebras. Not everything is best explained by a conspiracy theory.
No, it's not. It's a terrible start. He linked to one article that spread doom-and-gloom with virtually no facts to back it up. Mountain out of a molehill. Hardly shocking.
Um. You do realize that words written in all caps are not actually spelled with all capital letters, right? The name of the company is Weta, not WETA. It's named after a giant bug native to New Zealand, a bug called a weta.
I don't know why the all-caps spelling, WETA, got all popular all of a sudden. The name of the company is Weta.
A weta is a giant honkin' bug, indigenous to New Zealand. It looks like this. Wetas can grow to be up to six inches long, and weigh as much as a small bird.
Why, exactly, it was decided to name a special effects workshop after a giant bug is left as an exercise for the reader.
Congratulations! You spotted one shot. Now go back and look for the 30+ shots you never even knew were there.