They have hard shells with special pocketed inserts for all of your goodies. I use my for my laptop and its accessories. Plus the straps and back of the bag are very comfortable. And they fit nicely under the seat in most airplanes.
The upcoming Silent Hill Movie doesn't have a single hair of Boll on it, and that's got me hoping.
It's actually got some pretty strong talent behind it. The script's been refined by Roger Avary (who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs among others). It's being directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), who can create pretty amazing atmospheres. And the original Silent Hill sound designer/composer Akira Yamaoka is doing the music. Not to mention starring Sean Bean (Boromir in LotR) and Radha Mitchell (Mary Barrie in Finding Neverland).
Apparently Avary and Gans spent hours playing the game together while coming up with the visuals and finer plot points, and even the special effects guys are saying it's like nothing they've worked on before.
So yeah, enough of my rampant fanboyism. This one has all the marks of breaking this horrible cycle.
I'm not just trying to flame or be a know-it-all, part of this issue is adoption of ogg for personal audio.
Support is one of the main reasons why my music isn't in a format like Ogg Vorbis. I know the whole argument of "If more people used it they'd support it!" but that's putting the chicken before the egg, so to speak. Vorbis is very good, but LAME encoded VBR mp3 is very good and portable to boot.
My advice would be to re-encode to mp3. It's a car, so you're not going to have some kind of audiophile experience, and if they were high enough quality vorbis files, encoding them as high bandwidth mp3s shouldn't hurt the sound too much.
(if you RTFA, this is more about award screener piracy than consumer piracy, but since that's the way many comments have already gone...)
Everybody wants to provide a service, not a product. I can understand why this idea is still floating around.
Providing a product incurs hard costs while providing a service (rental) provides what is, for the most part, a hard cost free revenue stream whose profits are dictated more by what the market can psychologically bear than the price of materials. (I don't consider manufacturing the DVDs a "hard cost" per se, as they're made for pennies and sell for massive profit and the rental places basically operate under license.) Now, this can come back and bite you in the ass because you can't compete on special upstream advantages (just look how netflix changed blockbuster's entire business). But the only significant "dirty" part of the movie rental revenue stream is maintenance/replacement of stock (employees and shelves), which this eliminates, although in the most jackassed way possible. And people will often want to watch a movie more than once, etc. and it eliminates a major market for rental locations, selling pre-owned DVDs, which is 100% profit.
In short, it's a bad, shortsighted, stopgap between physical media and a well-protected method of video on demand that I hope never catches on.
Realize that our current government is headed by aspiring nationalistic theocrats, and the "War on Terror" and the "War on Porn" don't seem like such disparate goals.
These guys are exactly what you're talking about. They stock your CD, process transactions, and send the CDs out for a small fee per disc. They also sign you up for digital distribution. My band's only sold 20 CDs but we're on iTunes.:D
...for making game's cooler... ...past the shipping titles intentions... ...if you're games have Lua capabilities... ...and add-on's that you can download for free...
I don't fear this at all. This is MS scrambling because they missed the boat.
They're getting in bed with an established but lagging company. Look what's happened with the iPod. This is basically MS doing the same thing w/ the web. One could say AOL is the new iRiver.
Okay, I don't mean to be a dickhead. Lord knows people have trashed this thing enough. But as a web/graphic designer looking at the site, I feel I have to comment...
First, if you're going to have the "gigantic photograph" style of web design, for god's sake don't scale your photos up. It looks terrible, blurry, and amateurish.
Second, if you're also going to do the "lines" thing, for everyone's sake pick a program that can do decent antialiasing. Your lines looks like a pixel orgy on my LCD.
Third, as I know both of these elements seem to add up to "audiophile" site material (look at the Linn Audio site), which is obviously what you're going for, but even Linn knows not to make a site that requires 1024x768 maximized to view, especially since your software is Mac only. On the Imac I'm currently using, your "My Account" link looks like "My Ac".
Fourth, how about some real info on the product? I had to go through a few different scenes of your flash tour in order to find out that it could pull music from Mac and PC. Even if the playlist software is only for mac.
Fifth, on the Sonata Shots, please PLEASE at least blur the text you've overlayed on top to make it look like it's really part of the LCD. It's such an obvious photoshop job it's not funny.
Sixth, the icons you're using for the technical sheets for the thing are fuzzy and barely visible in the overall design. On top of that, putting the mouse over them doesn't reveal any kind of title or tooltip that would let a user know what they do. Really, just put the text somewhere, or at least make them a similar contrast to the text so we know they're important. They just look like more useless decoration.
And last, the "different colors for different buttons" thing usually points to a color scheme for the different parts of the site or at least some kind of relevance. It's a nice visual cue. But on your site the colors are just random. Nothing makes sense. They even repeat nonsensically between different sections.
The whole site reeks of imitation without understanding.
Honestly, do what you're going to do. Make your product. I wish you success. But spend some money on a decent graphics person if you're going for the high end like this. Especially if your product is mac only for the software side....and I'd start putting "Mac only" at the top of every page, or you're going to be getting a lot of returns.
"As you can see, your honor, according to a ranking system on the pirate file-sharing network, the accused had a high rank for carrying real, pirated files."
This is why I never used things like the box model "hack" or any other browser bug-dependent CSS for cross browser compatibility. It's begging to have the site start blowing up in users' faces as soon as a new browser is released.
Even the terrible implementation of CSS in IE6 is usable enough to make sites to standard. Sure it requires a bit of cheesiness, but I'd rather do that than *depend* on their browser continuing to not only have bugs, but to react to those bugs the same in every new release.
Why would anyone put two URLs under a single link? Isn't it the point of a link to be an abstracted method of invoking a URL, with link text for context? You're not supposed to *see* the URL.
This method just pops up a bunch of confusing as hell URLs whenever you mouse over a link without any kind of description. What about the massively cryptic URLs that e-commerce sites create. How am I supposed to pick from a list of those?
I think this entire idea is based on bad assumptions.
(Not to mention that the fancy gradient feature on the list of choices darkens some of the links to near unreadability.)
I'm so tired of audio gimmicks involving surround sound. The *reason* they have 13.1 surround in theatres is because they're HUGE. This would be ridiculous to install in a home system.
Even worse, if 13.1 came to the home market I bet you'd see the already depressing trend of shoddily made, terrible sounding, cheap (or expensive if you count bose) surround systems turn into even more terrible sounding surround systems because the materials cost-cutting has to accomodate more speakers and the toaster-grade electronics have to handle more channels.
Look, I know this is OT, but I see this so often it's starting to cause me physical pain.
To top things off, these are only the cases that we're aware of, which begs the question of how many security breaches have gone unnoticed, or unannounced.
The circumstances may "raise" or "prompt" a question, but it doesn't "beg" a question. "Begging the question" is a logically fallacious practice in which one assumes one's conclusion, making a circular logic. (eg. claiming the Bible is the inerrant word of God because it says so) It has nothing to do with speculation.
Apparently golf pros (Tiger Woods being one) are having their eyes recalibrated to 20/10 and better using Lasik. Some are attributing Woods' latest successes to it. Heard it on NPR.
I just hope that, in the end, they can do away with the hamhanded security kludges like the Local Machine Lockdown and its contingent fixes like the ridiculous "Mark of the Web" and such.
It's one thing to try to secure your browser. It's another to become a paranoia caricature.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.boblbee.com/
They have hard shells with special pocketed inserts for all of your goodies. I use my for my laptop and its accessories. Plus the straps and back of the bag are very comfortable. And they fit nicely under the seat in most airplanes.
This is approximately the one I have. I think they discontinued my particular finish.
The upcoming Silent Hill Movie doesn't have a single hair of Boll on it, and that's got me hoping.
It's actually got some pretty strong talent behind it. The script's been refined by Roger Avary (who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs among others). It's being directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), who can create pretty amazing atmospheres. And the original Silent Hill sound designer/composer Akira Yamaoka is doing the music. Not to mention starring Sean Bean (Boromir in LotR) and Radha Mitchell (Mary Barrie in Finding Neverland).
Apparently Avary and Gans spent hours playing the game together while coming up with the visuals and finer plot points, and even the special effects guys are saying it's like nothing they've worked on before.
So yeah, enough of my rampant fanboyism. This one has all the marks of breaking this horrible cycle.
I'm not just trying to flame or be a know-it-all, part of this issue is adoption of ogg for personal audio.
Support is one of the main reasons why my music isn't in a format like Ogg Vorbis. I know the whole argument of "If more people used it they'd support it!" but that's putting the chicken before the egg, so to speak. Vorbis is very good, but LAME encoded VBR mp3 is very good and portable to boot.
My advice would be to re-encode to mp3. It's a car, so you're not going to have some kind of audiophile experience, and if they were high enough quality vorbis files, encoding them as high bandwidth mp3s shouldn't hurt the sound too much.
(if you RTFA, this is more about award screener piracy than consumer piracy, but since that's the way many comments have already gone...)
Everybody wants to provide a service, not a product. I can understand why this idea is still floating around.
Providing a product incurs hard costs while providing a service (rental) provides what is, for the most part, a hard cost free revenue stream whose profits are dictated more by what the market can psychologically bear than the price of materials. (I don't consider manufacturing the DVDs a "hard cost" per se, as they're made for pennies and sell for massive profit and the rental places basically operate under license.) Now, this can come back and bite you in the ass because you can't compete on special upstream advantages (just look how netflix changed blockbuster's entire business). But the only significant "dirty" part of the movie rental revenue stream is maintenance/replacement of stock (employees and shelves), which this eliminates, although in the most jackassed way possible. And people will often want to watch a movie more than once, etc. and it eliminates a major market for rental locations, selling pre-owned DVDs, which is 100% profit.
In short, it's a bad, shortsighted, stopgap between physical media and a well-protected method of video on demand that I hope never catches on.
one word: porn
That's three words.
Realize that our current government is headed by aspiring nationalistic theocrats, and the "War on Terror" and the "War on Porn" don't seem like such disparate goals.
CDBaby
:D
These guys are exactly what you're talking about. They stock your CD, process transactions, and send the CDs out for a small fee per disc. They also sign you up for digital distribution. My band's only sold 20 CDs but we're on iTunes.
...for making game's cooler...
...past the shipping titles intentions...
...if you're games have Lua capabilities...
...and add-on's that you can download for free...
...and that's just the first two paragraphs...
...who's editing that site?
...with web.config files in ASP.NET. And that can run on IIS 5.
As an IIS/ASP dev, I was ecstatic over this. Hearing it's to be expanded to complete system-wide control has my special parts all abuzz.
I don't fear this at all. This is MS scrambling because they missed the boat.
They're getting in bed with an established but lagging company. Look what's happened with the iPod. This is basically MS doing the same thing w/ the web. One could say AOL is the new iRiver.
Just a wild guess, but the exception information will probably contain the software version.
It's a shell game at this point. eDonkey will be in BitTorrent's shoes soon enough.
That Matrix movie is just a bunch of green and black pixels anyway!
Okay, I don't mean to be a dickhead. Lord knows people have trashed this thing enough. But as a web/graphic designer looking at the site, I feel I have to comment...
...and I'd start putting "Mac only" at the top of every page, or you're going to be getting a lot of returns.
First, if you're going to have the "gigantic photograph" style of web design, for god's sake don't scale your photos up. It looks terrible, blurry, and amateurish.
Second, if you're also going to do the "lines" thing, for everyone's sake pick a program that can do decent antialiasing. Your lines looks like a pixel orgy on my LCD.
Third, as I know both of these elements seem to add up to "audiophile" site material (look at the Linn Audio site), which is obviously what you're going for, but even Linn knows not to make a site that requires 1024x768 maximized to view, especially since your software is Mac only. On the Imac I'm currently using, your "My Account" link looks like "My Ac".
Fourth, how about some real info on the product? I had to go through a few different scenes of your flash tour in order to find out that it could pull music from Mac and PC. Even if the playlist software is only for mac.
Fifth, on the Sonata Shots, please PLEASE at least blur the text you've overlayed on top to make it look like it's really part of the LCD. It's such an obvious photoshop job it's not funny.
Sixth, the icons you're using for the technical sheets for the thing are fuzzy and barely visible in the overall design. On top of that, putting the mouse over them doesn't reveal any kind of title or tooltip that would let a user know what they do. Really, just put the text somewhere, or at least make them a similar contrast to the text so we know they're important. They just look like more useless decoration.
And last, the "different colors for different buttons" thing usually points to a color scheme for the different parts of the site or at least some kind of relevance. It's a nice visual cue. But on your site the colors are just random. Nothing makes sense. They even repeat nonsensically between different sections.
The whole site reeks of imitation without understanding.
Honestly, do what you're going to do. Make your product. I wish you success. But spend some money on a decent graphics person if you're going for the high end like this. Especially if your product is mac only for the software side.
"As you can see, your honor, according to a ranking system on the pirate file-sharing network, the accused had a high rank for carrying real, pirated files."
No, thank you.
This is why I never used things like the box model "hack" or any other browser bug-dependent CSS for cross browser compatibility. It's begging to have the site start blowing up in users' faces as soon as a new browser is released.
Even the terrible implementation of CSS in IE6 is usable enough to make sites to standard. Sure it requires a bit of cheesiness, but I'd rather do that than *depend* on their browser continuing to not only have bugs, but to react to those bugs the same in every new release.
There is a middle "standard".
Why would anyone put two URLs under a single link? Isn't it the point of a link to be an abstracted method of invoking a URL, with link text for context? You're not supposed to *see* the URL.
This method just pops up a bunch of confusing as hell URLs whenever you mouse over a link without any kind of description. What about the massively cryptic URLs that e-commerce sites create. How am I supposed to pick from a list of those?
I think this entire idea is based on bad assumptions.
(Not to mention that the fancy gradient feature on the list of choices darkens some of the links to near unreadability.)
Just in case nobody mentions it.
Older game that kicks the snot out of almost everything to come after it.
I'm so tired of audio gimmicks involving surround sound. The *reason* they have 13.1 surround in theatres is because they're HUGE. This would be ridiculous to install in a home system.
Even worse, if 13.1 came to the home market I bet you'd see the already depressing trend of shoddily made, terrible sounding, cheap (or expensive if you count bose) surround systems turn into even more terrible sounding surround systems because the materials cost-cutting has to accomodate more speakers and the toaster-grade electronics have to handle more channels.
*shudder*
...what's that?
Look, I know this is OT, but I see this so often it's starting to cause me physical pain.
To top things off, these are only the cases that we're aware of, which begs the question of how many security breaches have gone unnoticed, or unannounced.
The circumstances may "raise" or "prompt" a question, but it doesn't "beg" a question. "Begging the question" is a logically fallacious practice in which one assumes one's conclusion, making a circular logic. (eg. claiming the Bible is the inerrant word of God because it says so) It has nothing to do with speculation.
Apparently golf pros (Tiger Woods being one) are having their eyes recalibrated to 20/10 and better using Lasik. Some are attributing Woods' latest successes to it. Heard it on NPR.
Personally, I can't wait for the cyborgs.
I just hope that, in the end, they can do away with the hamhanded security kludges like the Local Machine Lockdown and its contingent fixes like the ridiculous "Mark of the Web" and such.
It's one thing to try to secure your browser. It's another to become a paranoia caricature.
That little "close" X is mere pixels away from a "visit firefox" button... :)
Seriously I hit it by accident all the time.
Because last time I heard, it was "daylite-saving" time. :)