Spoken like someone who listens to hype and never actually used a JVC GR-HD1 or GR-HD10U (the "pro" version).
True, it doesn't support 1080i, but it isn't "higher res" since the pixels are interlaced. What goes on normally is that you are recording 540p twice the rate. In theory, you'd have more horizontal resolution (1920 horizontally instead of 1280) but the Sony is actually recording 960 so the JVC beats it there. In any case, if your resolution is higher, it means that you need to give quality back by using a tighter compression to fit on DV tape, which both have to do. I'd imagine that progressive would be better for sporting events because the frames when frozen don't produce artifacts.
Does the Sony support OSX? Really what you are saying is does Final Cut Pro support the Sony/JVC out-of-the-box. The answer is no, true. But with the JVC there are already 3 solutions you can purchase from third parties. The reality is Apple didn't support HDV at all in Final Cut Pro HD but it is obvious from their website that their next major release plans to correct that mistake.
Zeiss Lens. Now if it supported removable lenses and Canon SLR lenses like the Canon XL-1s then you would be saying something.
1CCD. Valid comment. This means that with the JVC you need more lighting. This is where the $ went into. Not a good place to put it IMO.
4x3 CCD. If you ever looked you'd realize that the JVC only uses the 16x9 portion of the 4x3 CCD. This means there is no anamorphic artifacts. It also means that it can handle standard 480p DV video with no problem and no artifacts. Also it means no rectangular pixel scaling like you get in the the Sony either. Sounds to me like JVC's choice is actually better.
What issues have I found with the JVC?
poor menu-driven interface (ever use a Canon XL-1s?).
the XLR inputs are unbalanced
zoom rocker is too twitchy
no LANC input to allow 3rd party zoom rocker
not good in low lighting
The Sony solves the least important of those four complaints. I, and many others, are probably hoping Sony did a better job of addressing these real deficiencies in the JVC instead of marketing BS. They could have turned it into a real shooters camera, but I feel given what they are hyping, they haven't.
The reason it might work for some and not for others is because Tiger doesn't install all the certificates from all the CAs that Panther does. You can transfer the certificates from Tiger to Panther by copy them from your "/System/Library/Keychains" of one install to the other. You can also add your own.
Unlike in the current versions of Safari, there appears to be no UI for adding certificates to sites as your browse them and the debug menu for doing lax checking is disabled. Methinks this is because the whole keychain system was rewritten with most of the changes appearing to make things much easier to use certificates in Tiger Server
No, they $15 million in their first two months (Or about $3/song... Heh.) and have been laying people off.
I actually think 5 million is quite respectable--compare it to the non-existent numbers from BuyMusic.com, for instance. I guess Apple's success has raised expectations too much.
Download "Simply Install - Pilot Install" (Mac and Windows PC). This freeware will bypass the hotsync (and thus iSync) and simply install software when you press the hotsync button.
iSync is terribly slow and also does a horrible job with zombies (for instance, if you delete an Address Book group and later have to do a reset sync, every contact from that book will suddenly be resurrected from the dead!). Also getting BT to connection share with your PDA or modem out with the cell phone is delving into esoterica so there are some rooms for improvement here.
However, it's here to stay. Nothing else is nearly so usable for various reasons--the pairing system is excellent.
I never claimed he made up the recording. I never claimed that Apple's $99 fee is reasonable (in fact, I think it's overpriced to encourage sales of AppleCare extensions and allow a 3rd party battery market). If you look at Apple's iPod strategy, you can see that allowing a 3rd party market helps them overcome some perceived weaknesses of their unit--recording capability and extending the battery life, for instance.
The Neistadt brothers definitely knew about the existence of the $99 battery replacement policy and were informed as to the AppleCare extensions. First, Apple called them to inform them after their web site went up (by their own admission). Second, the last link I gave documented someone else who politely informed them of it (and the reaction of the brothers). Third, they first publicized their website (to my knowledge) on iPodLounge.com, which seems to be the source of the stories. You'll notice both the links to 3rd party battery replacement services (which run cost about $20 if you don't want to do it yourself) and the Apple's battery replacement and warrantee extension policies are from that site. Is it unreasonable to assume that they might not have used in reference the very same website they used to first publicize their troll?
The chain of events, right down to domain name registration, is more sensible if you believe that the Apple $99 battery replacement (on the 14th) was the reason for the being finished, though they had probably started it much earlier.
First, since they know about the "Amateur Neurosurgery" (hardly), they may have read it on a forum such as iPod Lounge or iPoding. This implies they knew of services that will replace the battery for you for a small fee instead of you doing it yourself. The brothers conveniently forget to mention that because it would show how cheap they really are. Also the rumor mill knew of Apple supplied replacements and warrantee's for months.
Casey (22) is probably a smart person and probably knew of those rumors but went ahead anyway. When the "patient died on the table", he said how cries unfair it is he has to spend $400 on a high end replacement. How many slashdotters have $400 to blow on a second MP3 player. If I was so serious about how Apple is cheating me, I wouldn't go out and purchase the same product from the very same company I felt was screwing me over? I'd buy a Dell, Creative, Nomad, Rio, or whatever.
(Then again, if he and his brother Van (29) are indi-film artists that they claim to be and use iMovie, they got a lot more learning (and purchasing of hardware/software) ahead of them of which $400 is nothing. Unless they want to be making wedding videos all their life.)
Second the response from Apple Store is hearsay. I have no doubt that they were told that the only solution available at the time from Apple was to purchase a new one (good advice, because a repair would cost more). However, I question the language and whether or not Apple Store employees would have mentioned the existence of 3rd party suppliers. Heck, perhaps that is where they tried the "Amateur Neurosurgery".
I didn't see the entire movie, but depending on where the signs they spraypainted, it could be considered more than just "merry pranksters". I was under the impression that they stuck to the wallpaper type ads. If that is the case, it's perfectly okay. And shame on Apple for using those sort of ads.
Casey claims to have bought the iPod "early in 2002" shortly after the iPod came out. It's just as likely he bought the iPod off someone else who purchased it early in 2002. Besides, the iPod came out the previous year, by that ruler, everyone who has bought an iPod, purchased it "shortly after it came out". I recall the first batch of 1G iPods (5GB) had a battery problem that was noticed as soon as it came out. Apple honored replacements on those even after the warrantee expired (at the time, those were sold under a 90 day warrantee, now they are a year). Why? new battery technology meant the failure was high for a consumer electronic device and Apple had since improved the quality of battery.
Also, it is implied the movie spread in a grass roots manner "within days". Hardly! The website was finished on November 23rd, three days after the domain was registered (20th). It started with an announcement on November 23rd which was picked up by nearly every Mac news site on the 24th (and also by apple.Slashdot). This is hardly a grass roots thing.
Next, they implied that Apple changed the warrantee rules and batter replacement rules "days after the movie made the wrong". This is an egregious error. An Apple-supplied replacement program was announced on the November 14th and the AppleCare extension on the 21st, both before any movie was created. In fact, the chain of events is that Apple announced these solutions which spurred the brothers to register their domain name, finish their movie, and get as many people to download it before it became common knowledge of how immature they actually are.
That's funny, because it's hard to find any variance in prices of the Dell DJ you bought. Granted, there is a "sale price" listed on Dell's website which seems to be the only price you can get the knockoff at, unless you include bundling prices (which one can do similar through AppleStore for Education or various resellers). Any price savings Dell gives you is because they cut out the retail channel entirely--so much for their vaunted supply chain advantages. This is why nobody wants to carry their products, and goes double for the Dell DJ. That strategy worked well with computers, but it untested for iPods.
I noticed you bought Dell's spin on battery life. Let's get the facts straight. Looking at the spec sheet it is obvious that Dell went to some Taiwanese ODM with the 1st Generation iPod and a list of patents that they couldn't tread on (scroll wheel, software synchronization). By the time they were able to roll this off the assembly line, Apple had made the iPod significantly lighter and smaller and improved the quality of the battery. Dell had to send out their PR machine to tell you that you should buy their two-years behind design knock off because it has a longer battery life when the iPod has moved on to having a healthy 3rd party market for the 5% of people who need such a battery life.
So it seems you are playing "Dell's game" while avoiding Apple's game. Great, people like you will eventually cause Apple to lower prices and will lower the resale value of old iPods. Maybe I'll buy one then.
I would argue that Dell is "doing their best to control price" and seem to be doing better than Apple since I can get iPods sometimes 10% off, or use various gift certificates, or get them used or refurbished.
Which is how good economy works (supply and demand)--you could have just as easily bought a Creative or Rio. But don't fool yourself by rationalizing your purchase decision as somehow being against those Apple price-fixers. The only one fixing the price right now is the market. The iPod has never enjoyed a monopoly position by any metric other than the "Apple has a monopoly on iPods" one.
As long as iPods are perceived as cool (by more than just "geeks" like you imply-- look on television or see what musicians are carrying around), Apple will command a higher price. No surprise, Sony did that for years with the Walkman and Discman.
Nice attempt at revisionism. The true chain of events is:
Since long before this. 3rd party offers iPod battery replacements and replacement services (typically $50 for battery, $80 for battery + service). There were many rumors of an Apple-provided solution.
November 14th: Apple offers a battery replacement policy for $99.
November 20th: the brothers registered the domain name ipodsdirtysecret.com.
November 23rd: Brothers finish editing video claiming that the iPod battery is not replaceable and post it to the internet.
November 24th: Mac sites and Slashdot pick up the story
November 25th: The brothers promise to put a link to the battery replacement and AppleCare policy in exchange for bandwidth.
November 27th:.7 terabytes later and after not fulfilling their side of the promise, U Wisc pulls the mirror and the brothers give an interview to MacDirectory trying to find another person to dupe.
Since their attempt to "stick it to the Man" occurred after a program was in place. I just have to add that I can only hope for the time machine the "Man" obviously must have be able to put a warrantee in place in response to a video that didn't even exist yet.
What I haven't been able to place is:
What date the support messages were recorded and were they actual recordings?
What date the filming occurred?
If the brother's purchased a used out-of-warrantee iPod from someone.
What time the brothers fubar'd their iPod battery swap (too cheap to pay $30 I guess).
The last one shows they're not as tech savvy as they'd like to pretend as the swap is trivial but still obviously beyond their abilities.
The most damning part of the movie is that it is produced in iMovie. I guess this shows that when you give video editing capabilities to the rest of us, the rest of us start thinking we're all the next Spielberg.
Those hardware-only examples above are all post-Jobs. You're generally right: in fact, you missed the "all-in-one" design, inclusion of USB in the iMac, easy-open cases, the translucent plastics "fad", and the first to use WiFi. Recent smart decisions may include Serial ATA, DVI outs, PCI-X, Bluetooth, IEEE1394b, and 802.11g. These decisions and others are why the market rewards Mac users with a high resale value on eBay.
That's the advantage of being a monopolist. It is impossible to be "spread out thin" because you can extract rents on your monopoly to fund anti-competitive actions in other markets.
When a normal company lowers prices below cost, it's a "loss leader" but when a monopolist does it, it's "predatory pricing". Don't believe me? Take a look at the profit margin by division in their latest quarterlies and recall that Ma Bell at their height was restricted to 1% profit by the government.
Another advantage of a monopoly is the ability to abuse existing marketing arrangements and use product tying. This is illegal if it is used, but is very hard to distinguish from streamlining for efficiency.
For instance, if Apple bundles iTunes Music Store with iTunes with their OS, it's simple "vertical integration"; if a convicted monopolist like Microsoft bundles their service with Windows Media Player with their OS, it is a classic case of a monopoly exhibiting "vertical foreclosure" through bundling and exclusionary marketing. They can do this through their next release of Windows, through their Windows Update, or by putting pressure on downstream vendors such as OEMs (or through a number of other illegal strategems I haven't really thought of because I'm not Microsoft.)
(If the past is prologue then obviously Microsoft will deny these two claims until what is prologue is past.)
Microsoft should have some "freedom to innovate" but one must be careful when the innovation they plan on introduce is "taking someone else's idea and using a monopoly lever to create vertical foreclosure."
Microsoft should not be faulted for being late to the party. They should be faulted for how they choose to enter it.
No, VT did not do a lot of "assembly-level hacking" one man working two months did port a bunch of code and he did use the best compiler and LINPAK on the market (Professor Goto's libraries). If LANL didn't do the same or better, I'd be disappointed.
Also you keep harping on the fact that it was "self-assembled." But then you go on to compare it to a system not provided by IBM, HP, NEC, or Cray but one provided by Linux Networx. Perhaps if VA Tech had gone to them, Linux Networx might have beat out IBM's Opteron bid of $9-10 million. But could have they gotten as low as $4.2 million--the list price from Apple?
You're going to have to face the hard reality that the Opteron may be an integer demon but the IBM 970 has it beat handily in floating point. The Rpeak of the 2Ghz Opteron (2 Gflops/s) is 1/2 that of the 2Ghz 970 (4 Gflops/s). Even accounting for the fact that the Rpeak->Rmax dropoff might be larger for the 970, that's too much to make up. Also, Virginia Tech considered the Opteron, but found that at the performance they wanted (specifically floating point performance) the systems would have cost twice as much ($9-10 million instead of $4 million) which is why the correctly opted for the 970 and which is why they're #3 instead of #6.
And that's without using Altivec/VMX/Velocity, since that unit can't do double precision add-mults.
As for heat issues. The 2Ghz 970 uses 47 watts which puts it approximately 1/2 the heat of a Pentium 4 and significantly less than the Opteron. IBM will be selling 2x1.6Ghz 970's in a blade configuration early next year and I'm sure "heat" isn't the reason for the delay. The issue with G5s in a 1U rackmount is that they won't exist until 1Q 2004 and it came down to availability. If you did any reading on the subject, you'd find that Virginia Tech's first choice was actually 970 systems from IBM, but they wouldn't be available in time--same thing happenned to the Dell Itanium 2 bid (it could have also been cost, Dell was "exploring pricing options"). The IBM Opteron bid was too high as was the HP Itanium 2 bid so they opted for Apple after the announcement. Smart move, two months of coding and several hundred pizzas later they have the #3 supercomputer. Any compromize, NCSA's gigantic P4 cluster would have beat them out.
Now this system is the cheapest of the top 10. its cheaper than many it beat by a factor fo ten
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, it's more like a factor of two, not ten (it's a factor of 20-30 cheaper than #1 and #2 and some of the older members of the list, sure). The Mac system price cost $4.2 million educational list. However, #4-6 were built using the Pentium 4 Xeon, Itanium, and Opteron respectively. The systems cost for these would be around $9-10 million if they were built today.
Not that there isn't a lot to say Mac isn't "back". After all, of the four, it offers the highest flops/cpu, the second most flops/cycle (Rpeak is the same/cycle as Itanium but it's not as efficient so it's Rmax gets edged out), and the best price/performance (by a factor of 2 as noted above).
I hope when IBM introduces 970-based blades next year, a lot of Linux users take a serious look at it. With 90 nm next year and Power5-based GPUL's coming down the pike, Big Blue-based Linux compute nodes should be looking mighty impressive as the most bang for your Linux buck. I can't wait for Opteron and Itanium blades. Combined with the P4 Xeon blades they already have, you could have 4 different CPU families in the same BladeCenter!
Finally in the interest of full disclosure and to pre-empt the anti-Mac zealots, I should mention that the $4.2 million for the G5 machines is probably the education list price, because when you go to Apple Store, putting 2GB of RAM into 1100 2x2Ghz G5's will cost you $4.4 million (+ a little more for having some spare machines).
There is a lot of good points to note all around. The first is the G5 Terascale cluster at Virginia Tech at #3 (10.28 Tflops/s, 2200 CPU, Infiniband) is the first academic computer to break 10 teraflops/s. This extra performance was promised at Mac OS X Developer's conference last month. Not to sure if the price is a testament to Infiniband ($1.5 million cabling, cards, and routers) or the Macs ($4.2 million list).
Good thing too because in a surprise move the NCSA cluster made the list at #4 (9.82Tflops/s, 2500 CPU, Myrinet). This cluster is built using Dell's running Pentium 4 XEONs and Red Hat Linux! One subtle point to note is that they didn't get all the systems online in time (there should be 2900 CPUs, not 2500). I bet some programmer at PSC and an ex-Chief Scientist of SDSC is appreciating having a hand in edging out NCSA for #3--not to mention Apple beating Dell for #3.
The fastest Itanium cluster is at #5 (8.63 TFlops/s, 1936 CPU, Quadrics) which is looking like the odd man out boxed in by a PC based systems using Myrinet, the P4 Xeon above, and the most powerful Opteron system at #6 (8.05 Tflops/s, 2816 CPU, Myrinet). Another point of similarity:did I mention it's also using Linux?
And finally, It's easy to overlook #73, a single compute node of BlueGene/L (1.44 Tflops/s, 1024 CPU). Imagine 128 of these connected together and you have something that will easily take #1 when it's completed even if we handicap it 20-40%. As noted on SlashDot earlier, this will be running Linux.
SlashDot claimed that the next VirtualPC has removed Linux and *BSDs from the list of "supported OS" and this spokesman quoted on eWeek claims that you can still run Linux and *BSDs on Virtual PC though it is treated as another application (read: it's still unsupported).
Doesn't look like anything has changed to me. As long as the reference hardware that VirtualPC emulates is relatively sane, I'd think that you can that VirtualPC will still run Linux and the *BSDs. However it begs the question if VPC will still sell as a standalone, for instance. And if so, will it in the future?
Also this leaves open the possibility of Windows specific optimizations, features, etc. Heck, those things are done already long before MS bought them out. Note: I'm not claiming this is a bad thing.
What I don't like is the fact that Apple is the sole manufacturer of the hardware required to run the OS. Monopolies tend to create weird pricing and reduce innovation.
Hmm, I guess I've woken up in Bizzaro World where somehow there's a new definition of "monopoly" because the Macintosh platform certainly doesn't fit the legal nor economic definitions.
Whoa! That hurts. As one of the Powerbook owners at a Perl/PHP developer conference that was probably noticed by the original poster, I guess I should speak in my defense before people like you keep implying that I'm not an "intelligent user" and like to be treated like a "lobotomized primate."
Unfortunately I am guilty of being a "Macfanbot" by your definition--I've used Macs for personal use since 1985. However there is a logic error in your argument: you imply I've somehow stopped using Linux. How many of these Powerbook and iBook Perl/PHP coders deploy their stuff on Linux machines? How many of these people ran Windows-only for development or had a dual boot configuration on their notebook? How many of them have Linux desktops at home? I personally answer "yes" to all the above question and still have more Linux desktops in use than Mac ones.
The thing was, until Mac OS X, I never thought to use Macs for development. Sure I'd whip out something in MacPerl, but that isn't saying much. Now, it is different, I code from the same machine I make Keynote presentations on. From the compliments I get from my talks, I guess my platform choice hasn't hurt. Or are you saying that in order to be a card-carrying "intelligent user" I have to do all my presentations in "Pres2"?
Person bags on me for talking about $5.7 million list price paid vs educational list price paid.
Yeah, you're right it was a little dishonest. In particular the part where I claimed it was $5.7 million when the cost was $5.2 million and included the cards/routers/cabling which (in Q&A) amounted to $1.5 million.
The G5s cost to $4.2 million not to $5.7 million. I was wrong and deceptive and I apologize.
As for the quibble about list price vs. educational list I apologize for that too: I took this information from the part where he said that they paid full list price and later assumed that it was the educational list. I'm wrong, you can spec 1100 G5's at AppleStore (non-education) for $3.27 million. If you get the 2GB of RAM from AppleStore at a rip off price, you still come in at $4.4 million--still under the $5.7 million I said in my post and (way under the $8-$10 million quoted by IBM and HP for their Opteron and Itanium2 systems).
It's all useless though, it relies on an operating system with proprietary components, so the failure of one company can render the whole thing useless.
Terascale relies on the Darwin Kernel which is open-source, there is no evidence that any single component relies on the proprietary parts of the Mac OS X. The head of Terascale, who wrote the code that enables it, approached the Mac "reading the kernel manual first."
Like I said before, if you read between the lines, Terascale has nothing to do with Macs. It just happened that Apple was the only company that could deliver computers powerful enough for a cheap enough price in the window that Virginia Tech needed to make the Top500. That had nothing to do with Macs, or Apple, or Mac OS X--it had everything to do with price/performance (of the 970), opportunity (Infiniband, gap in the Fall Top500), and availability (of the G5). Let's not drag this down to a OS wars or platform wars. We are witnessing a sea change. Yes, there will still be Blue Gene/L and it's ilk (there are still Crays out there), but expect the Top500 list to be overrun with commodity desktop computer CPUs in the coming years.
To me, this represents a triumph of open source. Now lets pray that the patents applications don't prevent "the rest of us" from benefiting from it.
The g5 supercomputer mentioned on slashdot before never performed what it originally claimed.
What was the claim? The only bogus claims I heard regarding the Terascale (G5 cluster) were:
Ignorant people taking Rpeak and multiplying by the number of machines and,
Wired taking an accurate claim of the clusters performance on 128 CPUs and extrapolating it to 2200. In the article, the manager of the top500 noted that the G5 cluster might take #3 and contend for #2.
A whole bunch of FUD from people like you who have some reason to wish the people working on this project ill simply because they chose Macs to do it.
Then a New York Times report using old data reported 7.1 teraflops Rmax--enough to put it at #3 on the old list and #4 on the new--NYT forgot to mention that there have since been three new clusters that made the top 10, one of which slightly edged out the Terascale.
Of course, by the time that was reported, the figure was revised to 8.3 Tflops and now, officially reported (both on the current Top500 and by the head of Terascale) as 9.555 Tflops (60% efficiency) with the stipulation they could probably get 10% more. A pretty umapproachable #3 spot in the Fall500 and the first sub-$100 million dollar system to break the 10 teraflop mark.
Go look at the current benchmarks, where are the Pentium clusters that are above it? Where are the Itanium clusters above it? Where are the Athlon clusters above it? Oh, I'm sure there will be some (probably in the Spring2004 500), but where are they all right now? How much do the current ones on the list cost (answer: no less than $30 million). Sounds to me the wishful-thinking, poor-reporting Wired and the Mac zealots were closer to the truth than FUD-meisters and the anti-Mac zealots.
The most efficient top 10 supercomputer right now is also the most powerful: The NEC EarthSimulator at about 80%. I'd imagine we should expect a 60-80% efficiency from the big budget Blue Gene/L. And in my book there is nothing wrong with the current 60% efficency of Terascale--anyway it probably says a lot more about how good Infiniband is than it does about how good the Mac is.
But the writing is on the wall. There is nothing special about the the 970 (G5), Virginia Tech could have done the same thing with an Opteron or Itanium2--it would have taken more processors and cost twice as much: ~$10 million best offer for the systems as opposed to $5.7 million list price paid for the Macs (subtracting $1.5 million for the Infiniband cards, routers, and cabling).
The take home point is not that they did it with Macs or Mac OS X instead of (your favorite CPU) and Linux. The take home point is: these guys built a top 10 supercomputer in a fraction of the time (months as opposed to years) at a fraction of the cost (<$10 million as opposed to >$100 million).
Yes, like the Crays of the old days (and today) there will always be those who need something like Blue Gene/L and IBM is happy to supply them. But a whole new generation of supercomputers will be built on-demand and out of commodity PC hardware and a good set of software running on an OS that doesn't charge for all the CALs. Right now the 970 is easily the best performer for LinPak. So much so, they can pay educational list price which included such worthless features as an Apple-tooled case, overpriced RAM, gigabit cards, and Radeon graphics cards, firewire, usb2.0, digital audio, iTunes and other iApps, and a OpenGL based desktop. Since the 970 is made by IBM, I'd hazard a guess that IBM would be happy to supply these people too. Whether they choose to run Linux, MacOS X, or something else.
So everyone keeps telling me when they see Panther on my notebook. But I've been running Fink on 10.3 for quite a while now and can quickly show them this is not the case. > "..that far more software is available for Windows (true; "only" > 6,500 programs are available for Mac OS X).."
Just because there is no pkg download install of Fink for 10.3 doesn't mean that you can't. Do a netsearch.
I don't think the animation in fast user switching is gratuitous. If you can, it makes sense than simply flipping the desktop. In the former your eyes are given notice that a smooth transition (change) is taking place, in the latter you are jarred with a new desktop for no reason.
The login panel shakes when you mistype a password for the same reason.
BTW, if you don't have enough RAM for Quartz Extreme (old iBook or Powerbook), you aren't given the FUS 3-D cube transition. There are a couple cases where you don't get it no matter what (transitioning from screensavers?). Do so, and you'll understand that the 3-D cube is not gratuitous, it's clever.
If, on the other hand, by "gratuitous" you mean "it should have been a push transition or a reveal" then I can agree. I wish my girlfriend's PB500 had some sort of transition. Maybe someday there'd be a UI tweak to select it (like disabling the geenie effect of the Dock).
Well there is a danger. If short interest is too high, then that will make SCOX bullish because any uptick will cause a lot of people to move to cover their shorts causing it to go up more.
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like someone who listens to hype and never actually used a JVC GR-HD1 or GR-HD10U (the "pro" version).
True, it doesn't support 1080i, but it isn't "higher res" since the pixels are interlaced. What goes on normally is that you are recording 540p twice the rate. In theory, you'd have more horizontal resolution (1920 horizontally instead of 1280) but the Sony is actually recording 960 so the JVC beats it there. In any case, if your resolution is higher, it means that you need to give quality back by using a tighter compression to fit on DV tape, which both have to do. I'd imagine that progressive would be better for sporting events because the frames when frozen don't produce artifacts.
Does the Sony support OSX? Really what you are saying is does Final Cut Pro support the Sony/JVC out-of-the-box. The answer is no, true. But with the JVC there are already 3 solutions you can purchase from third parties. The reality is Apple didn't support HDV at all in Final Cut Pro HD but it is obvious from their website that their next major release plans to correct that mistake.
Zeiss Lens. Now if it supported removable lenses and Canon SLR lenses like the Canon XL-1s then you would be saying something.
1CCD. Valid comment. This means that with the JVC you need more lighting. This is where the $ went into. Not a good place to put it IMO.
4x3 CCD. If you ever looked you'd realize that the JVC only uses the 16x9 portion of the 4x3 CCD. This means there is no anamorphic artifacts. It also means that it can handle standard 480p DV video with no problem and no artifacts. Also it means no rectangular pixel scaling like you get in the the Sony either. Sounds to me like JVC's choice is actually better.
What issues have I found with the JVC?
The Sony solves the least important of those four complaints. I, and many others, are probably hoping Sony did a better job of addressing these real deficiencies in the JVC instead of marketing BS. They could have turned it into a real shooters camera, but I feel given what they are hyping, they haven't.
The reason it might work for some and not for others is because Tiger doesn't install all the certificates from all the CAs that Panther does. You can transfer the certificates from Tiger to Panther by copy them from your "/System/Library/Keychains" of one install to the other. You can also add your own.
Unlike in the current versions of Safari, there appears to be no UI for adding certificates to sites as your browse them and the debug menu for doing lax checking is disabled. Methinks this is because the whole keychain system was rewritten with most of the changes appearing to make things much easier to use certificates in Tiger Server
No, they $15 million in their first two months (Or about $3/song... Heh.) and have been laying people off.
I actually think 5 million is quite respectable--compare it to the non-existent numbers from BuyMusic.com, for instance. I guess Apple's success has raised expectations too much.
Technically those "two bits" are 2 16-bit samples. The two is a magic number in this case due to the Nyquist Sampling Theorem.
Now if we are talking about a 23Khz sound wave...
Download "Simply Install - Pilot Install" (Mac and Windows PC). This freeware will bypass the hotsync (and thus iSync) and simply install software when you press the hotsync button. iSync is terribly slow and also does a horrible job with zombies (for instance, if you delete an Address Book group and later have to do a reset sync, every contact from that book will suddenly be resurrected from the dead!). Also getting BT to connection share with your PDA or modem out with the cell phone is delving into esoterica so there are some rooms for improvement here. However, it's here to stay. Nothing else is nearly so usable for various reasons--the pairing system is excellent.
I never claimed he made up the recording. I never claimed that Apple's $99 fee is reasonable (in fact, I think it's overpriced to encourage sales of AppleCare extensions and allow a 3rd party battery market). If you look at Apple's iPod strategy, you can see that allowing a 3rd party market helps them overcome some perceived weaknesses of their unit--recording capability and extending the battery life, for instance.
The Neistadt brothers definitely knew about the existence of the $99 battery replacement policy and were informed as to the AppleCare extensions. First, Apple called them to inform them after their web site went up (by their own admission). Second, the last link I gave documented someone else who politely informed them of it (and the reaction of the brothers). Third, they first publicized their website (to my knowledge) on iPodLounge.com, which seems to be the source of the stories. You'll notice both the links to 3rd party battery replacement services (which run cost about $20 if you don't want to do it yourself) and the Apple's battery replacement and warrantee extension policies are from that site. Is it unreasonable to assume that they might not have used in reference the very same website they used to first publicize their troll?
The chain of events, right down to domain name registration, is more sensible if you believe that the Apple $99 battery replacement (on the 14th) was the reason for the being finished, though they had probably started it much earlier.
I read the article, and it is full of holes.
First, since they know about the "Amateur Neurosurgery" (hardly), they may have read it on a forum such as iPod Lounge or iPoding. This implies they knew of services that will replace the battery for you for a small fee instead of you doing it yourself. The brothers conveniently forget to mention that because it would show how cheap they really are. Also the rumor mill knew of Apple supplied replacements and warrantee's for months.
Casey (22) is probably a smart person and probably knew of those rumors but went ahead anyway. When the "patient died on the table", he said how cries unfair it is he has to spend $400 on a high end replacement. How many slashdotters have $400 to blow on a second MP3 player. If I was so serious about how Apple is cheating me, I wouldn't go out and purchase the same product from the very same company I felt was screwing me over? I'd buy a Dell, Creative, Nomad, Rio, or whatever.
(Then again, if he and his brother Van (29) are indi-film artists that they claim to be and use iMovie, they got a lot more learning (and purchasing of hardware/software) ahead of them of which $400 is nothing. Unless they want to be making wedding videos all their life.)
Second the response from Apple Store is hearsay. I have no doubt that they were told that the only solution available at the time from Apple was to purchase a new one (good advice, because a repair would cost more). However, I question the language and whether or not Apple Store employees would have mentioned the existence of 3rd party suppliers. Heck, perhaps that is where they tried the "Amateur Neurosurgery".
I didn't see the entire movie, but depending on where the signs they spraypainted, it could be considered more than just "merry pranksters". I was under the impression that they stuck to the wallpaper type ads. If that is the case, it's perfectly okay. And shame on Apple for using those sort of ads.
Casey claims to have bought the iPod "early in 2002" shortly after the iPod came out. It's just as likely he bought the iPod off someone else who purchased it early in 2002. Besides, the iPod came out the previous year, by that ruler, everyone who has bought an iPod, purchased it "shortly after it came out". I recall the first batch of 1G iPods (5GB) had a battery problem that was noticed as soon as it came out. Apple honored replacements on those even after the warrantee expired (at the time, those were sold under a 90 day warrantee, now they are a year). Why? new battery technology meant the failure was high for a consumer electronic device and Apple had since improved the quality of battery.
Also, it is implied the movie spread in a grass roots manner "within days". Hardly! The website was finished on November 23rd, three days after the domain was registered (20th). It started with an announcement on November 23rd which was picked up by nearly every Mac news site on the 24th (and also by apple.Slashdot). This is hardly a grass roots thing.
Next, they implied that Apple changed the warrantee rules and batter replacement rules "days after the movie made the wrong". This is an egregious error. An Apple-supplied replacement program was announced on the November 14th and the AppleCare extension on the 21st, both before any movie was created. In fact, the chain of events is that Apple announced these solutions which spurred the brothers to register their domain name, finish their movie, and get as many people to download it before it became common knowledge of how immature they actually are.
That's funny, because it's hard to find any variance in prices of the Dell DJ you bought. Granted, there is a "sale price" listed on Dell's website which seems to be the only price you can get the knockoff at, unless you include bundling prices (which one can do similar through AppleStore for Education or various resellers). Any price savings Dell gives you is because they cut out the retail channel entirely--so much for their vaunted supply chain advantages. This is why nobody wants to carry their products, and goes double for the Dell DJ. That strategy worked well with computers, but it untested for iPods.
I noticed you bought Dell's spin on battery life. Let's get the facts straight. Looking at the spec sheet it is obvious that Dell went to some Taiwanese ODM with the 1st Generation iPod and a list of patents that they couldn't tread on (scroll wheel, software synchronization). By the time they were able to roll this off the assembly line, Apple had made the iPod significantly lighter and smaller and improved the quality of the battery. Dell had to send out their PR machine to tell you that you should buy their two-years behind design knock off because it has a longer battery life when the iPod has moved on to having a healthy 3rd party market for the 5% of people who need such a battery life.
So it seems you are playing "Dell's game" while avoiding Apple's game. Great, people like you will eventually cause Apple to lower prices and will lower the resale value of old iPods. Maybe I'll buy one then.
I would argue that Dell is "doing their best to control price" and seem to be doing better than Apple since I can get iPods sometimes 10% off, or use various gift certificates, or get them used or refurbished.
Which is how good economy works (supply and demand)--you could have just as easily bought a Creative or Rio. But don't fool yourself by rationalizing your purchase decision as somehow being against those Apple price-fixers. The only one fixing the price right now is the market. The iPod has never enjoyed a monopoly position by any metric other than the "Apple has a monopoly on iPods" one.
As long as iPods are perceived as cool (by more than just "geeks" like you imply-- look on television or see what musicians are carrying around), Apple will command a higher price. No surprise, Sony did that for years with the Walkman and Discman.
Since their attempt to "stick it to the Man" occurred after a program was in place. I just have to add that I can only hope for the time machine the "Man" obviously must have be able to put a warrantee in place in response to a video that didn't even exist yet.
What I haven't been able to place is:- What date the support messages were recorded and were they actual recordings?
- What date the filming occurred?
- If the brother's purchased a used out-of-warrantee iPod from someone.
- What time the brothers fubar'd their iPod battery swap (too cheap to pay $30 I guess).
The last one shows they're not as tech savvy as they'd like to pretend as the swap is trivial but still obviously beyond their abilities. The most damning part of the movie is that it is produced in iMovie. I guess this shows that when you give video editing capabilities to the rest of us, the rest of us start thinking we're all the next Spielberg.They're not perfect:
Those hardware-only examples above are all post-Jobs. You're generally right: in fact, you missed the "all-in-one" design, inclusion of USB in the iMac, easy-open cases, the translucent plastics "fad", and the first to use WiFi. Recent smart decisions may include Serial ATA, DVI outs, PCI-X, Bluetooth, IEEE1394b, and 802.11g. These decisions and others are why the market rewards Mac users with a high resale value on eBay.
That's the advantage of being a monopolist. It is impossible to be "spread out thin" because you can extract rents on your monopoly to fund anti-competitive actions in other markets.
When a normal company lowers prices below cost, it's a "loss leader" but when a monopolist does it, it's "predatory pricing". Don't believe me? Take a look at the profit margin by division in their latest quarterlies and recall that Ma Bell at their height was restricted to 1% profit by the government.
Another advantage of a monopoly is the ability to abuse existing marketing arrangements and use product tying. This is illegal if it is used, but is very hard to distinguish from streamlining for efficiency.
For instance, if Apple bundles iTunes Music Store with iTunes with their OS, it's simple "vertical integration"; if a convicted monopolist like Microsoft bundles their service with Windows Media Player with their OS, it is a classic case of a monopoly exhibiting "vertical foreclosure" through bundling and exclusionary marketing. They can do this through their next release of Windows, through their Windows Update, or by putting pressure on downstream vendors such as OEMs (or through a number of other illegal strategems I haven't really thought of because I'm not Microsoft.)
(If the past is prologue then obviously Microsoft will deny these two claims until what is prologue is past.)
Microsoft should have some "freedom to innovate" but one must be careful when the innovation they plan on introduce is "taking someone else's idea and using a monopoly lever to create vertical foreclosure."
Microsoft should not be faulted for being late to the party. They should be faulted for how they choose to enter it.
No, VT did not do a lot of "assembly-level hacking" one man working two months did port a bunch of code and he did use the best compiler and LINPAK on the market (Professor Goto's libraries). If LANL didn't do the same or better, I'd be disappointed.
Also you keep harping on the fact that it was "self-assembled." But then you go on to compare it to a system not provided by IBM, HP, NEC, or Cray but one provided by Linux Networx. Perhaps if VA Tech had gone to them, Linux Networx might have beat out IBM's Opteron bid of $9-10 million. But could have they gotten as low as $4.2 million--the list price from Apple?
You're going to have to face the hard reality that the Opteron may be an integer demon but the IBM 970 has it beat handily in floating point. The Rpeak of the 2Ghz Opteron (2 Gflops/s) is 1/2 that of the 2Ghz 970 (4 Gflops/s). Even accounting for the fact that the Rpeak->Rmax dropoff might be larger for the 970, that's too much to make up. Also, Virginia Tech considered the Opteron, but found that at the performance they wanted (specifically floating point performance) the systems would have cost twice as much ($9-10 million instead of $4 million) which is why the correctly opted for the 970 and which is why they're #3 instead of #6.
And that's without using Altivec/VMX/Velocity, since that unit can't do double precision add-mults.
As for heat issues. The 2Ghz 970 uses 47 watts which puts it approximately 1/2 the heat of a Pentium 4 and significantly less than the Opteron. IBM will be selling 2x1.6Ghz 970's in a blade configuration early next year and I'm sure "heat" isn't the reason for the delay. The issue with G5s in a 1U rackmount is that they won't exist until 1Q 2004 and it came down to availability. If you did any reading on the subject, you'd find that Virginia Tech's first choice was actually 970 systems from IBM, but they wouldn't be available in time--same thing happenned to the Dell Itanium 2 bid (it could have also been cost, Dell was "exploring pricing options"). The IBM Opteron bid was too high as was the HP Itanium 2 bid so they opted for Apple after the announcement. Smart move, two months of coding and several hundred pizzas later they have the #3 supercomputer. Any compromize, NCSA's gigantic P4 cluster would have beat them out.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, it's more like a factor of two, not ten (it's a factor of 20-30 cheaper than #1 and #2 and some of the older members of the list, sure). The Mac system price cost $4.2 million educational list. However, #4-6 were built using the Pentium 4 Xeon, Itanium, and Opteron respectively. The systems cost for these would be around $9-10 million if they were built today.
Not that there isn't a lot to say Mac isn't "back". After all, of the four, it offers the highest flops/cpu, the second most flops/cycle (Rpeak is the same/cycle as Itanium but it's not as efficient so it's Rmax gets edged out), and the best price/performance (by a factor of 2 as noted above).
I hope when IBM introduces 970-based blades next year, a lot of Linux users take a serious look at it. With 90 nm next year and Power5-based GPUL's coming down the pike, Big Blue-based Linux compute nodes should be looking mighty impressive as the most bang for your Linux buck. I can't wait for Opteron and Itanium blades. Combined with the P4 Xeon blades they already have, you could have 4 different CPU families in the same BladeCenter!
I miffed some of my links in the parent post:
Here is the reference to the ex-SDSC scientist.
Here is the link showing that the Opteron cluster is using Linux Networx.
Finally in the interest of full disclosure and to pre-empt the anti-Mac zealots, I should mention that the $4.2 million for the G5 machines is probably the education list price, because when you go to Apple Store, putting 2GB of RAM into 1100 2x2Ghz G5's will cost you $4.4 million (+ a little more for having some spare machines).
Hmm, guess this means my submission a couple hours ago won't go through (dangit, Wired!)...
Here is the official press release and the list.
There is a lot of good points to note all around. The first is the G5 Terascale cluster at Virginia Tech at #3 (10.28 Tflops/s, 2200 CPU, Infiniband) is the first academic computer to break 10 teraflops/s. This extra performance was promised at Mac OS X Developer's conference last month. Not to sure if the price is a testament to Infiniband ($1.5 million cabling, cards, and routers) or the Macs ($4.2 million list).
Good thing too because in a surprise move the NCSA cluster made the list at #4 (9.82Tflops/s, 2500 CPU, Myrinet). This cluster is built using Dell's running Pentium 4 XEONs and Red Hat Linux! One subtle point to note is that they didn't get all the systems online in time (there should be 2900 CPUs, not 2500). I bet some programmer at PSC and an ex-Chief Scientist of SDSC is appreciating having a hand in edging out NCSA for #3--not to mention Apple beating Dell for #3.
The fastest Itanium cluster is at #5 (8.63 TFlops/s, 1936 CPU, Quadrics) which is looking like the odd man out boxed in by a PC based systems using Myrinet, the P4 Xeon above, and the most powerful Opteron system at #6 (8.05 Tflops/s, 2816 CPU, Myrinet). Another point of similarity:did I mention it's also using Linux?
And finally, It's easy to overlook #73, a single compute node of BlueGene/L (1.44 Tflops/s, 1024 CPU). Imagine 128 of these connected together and you have something that will easily take #1 when it's completed even if we handicap it 20-40%. As noted on SlashDot earlier, this will be running Linux.
SlashDot claimed that the next VirtualPC has removed Linux and *BSDs from the list of "supported OS" and this spokesman quoted on eWeek claims that you can still run Linux and *BSDs on Virtual PC though it is treated as another application (read: it's still unsupported).
Doesn't look like anything has changed to me. As long as the reference hardware that VirtualPC emulates is relatively sane, I'd think that you can that VirtualPC will still run Linux and the *BSDs. However it begs the question if VPC will still sell as a standalone, for instance. And if so, will it in the future?
Also this leaves open the possibility of Windows specific optimizations, features, etc. Heck, those things are done already long before MS bought them out. Note: I'm not claiming this is a bad thing.
This isn't confirmed and, in fact, McDonald's denies this rumor.
Besides, who is to say that downloadable music would replace CDs? We still have radio
Whoa! That hurts. As one of the Powerbook owners at a Perl/PHP developer conference that was probably noticed by the original poster, I guess I should speak in my defense before people like you keep implying that I'm not an "intelligent user" and like to be treated like a "lobotomized primate."
Unfortunately I am guilty of being a "Macfanbot" by your definition--I've used Macs for personal use since 1985. However there is a logic error in your argument: you imply I've somehow stopped using Linux. How many of these Powerbook and iBook Perl/PHP coders deploy their stuff on Linux machines? How many of these people ran Windows-only for development or had a dual boot configuration on their notebook? How many of them have Linux desktops at home? I personally answer "yes" to all the above question and still have more Linux desktops in use than Mac ones.
The thing was, until Mac OS X, I never thought to use Macs for development. Sure I'd whip out something in MacPerl, but that isn't saying much. Now, it is different, I code from the same machine I make Keynote presentations on. From the compliments I get from my talks, I guess my platform choice hasn't hurt. Or are you saying that in order to be a card-carrying "intelligent user" I have to do all my presentations in "Pres2"?
Yeah, you're right it was a little dishonest. In particular the part where I claimed it was $5.7 million when the cost was $5.2 million and included the cards/routers/cabling which (in Q&A) amounted to $1.5 million.
The G5s cost to $4.2 million not to $5.7 million. I was wrong and deceptive and I apologize.
As for the quibble about list price vs. educational list I apologize for that too: I took this information from the part where he said that they paid full list price and later assumed that it was the educational list. I'm wrong, you can spec 1100 G5's at AppleStore (non-education) for $3.27 million. If you get the 2GB of RAM from AppleStore at a rip off price, you still come in at $4.4 million--still under the $5.7 million I said in my post and (way under the $8-$10 million quoted by IBM and HP for their Opteron and Itanium2 systems).
A very good price indeed since it meant that you didn't have to "secretly explore pricing options" with Dell.
This, like the parent post, is off-topic.
Terascale relies on the Darwin Kernel which is open-source, there is no evidence that any single component relies on the proprietary parts of the Mac OS X. The head of Terascale, who wrote the code that enables it, approached the Mac "reading the kernel manual first."
Like I said before, if you read between the lines, Terascale has nothing to do with Macs. It just happened that Apple was the only company that could deliver computers powerful enough for a cheap enough price in the window that Virginia Tech needed to make the Top500. That had nothing to do with Macs, or Apple, or Mac OS X--it had everything to do with price/performance (of the 970), opportunity (Infiniband, gap in the Fall Top500), and availability (of the G5). Let's not drag this down to a OS wars or platform wars. We are witnessing a sea change. Yes, there will still be Blue Gene/L and it's ilk (there are still Crays out there), but expect the Top500 list to be overrun with commodity desktop computer CPUs in the coming years.
To me, this represents a triumph of open source. Now lets pray that the patents applications don't prevent "the rest of us" from benefiting from it.
You say:
What was the claim? The only bogus claims I heard regarding the Terascale (G5 cluster) were:
Then a New York Times report using old data reported 7.1 teraflops Rmax--enough to put it at #3 on the old list and #4 on the new--NYT forgot to mention that there have since been three new clusters that made the top 10, one of which slightly edged out the Terascale.
Of course, by the time that was reported, the figure was revised to 8.3 Tflops and now, officially reported (both on the current Top500 and by the head of Terascale) as 9.555 Tflops (60% efficiency) with the stipulation they could probably get 10% more. A pretty umapproachable #3 spot in the Fall500 and the first sub-$100 million dollar system to break the 10 teraflop mark.
Go look at the current benchmarks, where are the Pentium clusters that are above it? Where are the Itanium clusters above it? Where are the Athlon clusters above it? Oh, I'm sure there will be some (probably in the Spring2004 500), but where are they all right now? How much do the current ones on the list cost (answer: no less than $30 million). Sounds to me the wishful-thinking, poor-reporting Wired and the Mac zealots were closer to the truth than FUD-meisters and the anti-Mac zealots.
The most efficient top 10 supercomputer right now is also the most powerful: The NEC EarthSimulator at about 80%. I'd imagine we should expect a 60-80% efficiency from the big budget Blue Gene/L. And in my book there is nothing wrong with the current 60% efficency of Terascale--anyway it probably says a lot more about how good Infiniband is than it does about how good the Mac is.
But the writing is on the wall. There is nothing special about the the 970 (G5), Virginia Tech could have done the same thing with an Opteron or Itanium2--it would have taken more processors and cost twice as much: ~$10 million best offer for the systems as opposed to $5.7 million list price paid for the Macs (subtracting $1.5 million for the Infiniband cards, routers, and cabling).
The take home point is not that they did it with Macs or Mac OS X instead of (your favorite CPU) and Linux. The take home point is: these guys built a top 10 supercomputer in a fraction of the time (months as opposed to years) at a fraction of the cost (<$10 million as opposed to >$100 million).
Yes, like the Crays of the old days (and today) there will always be those who need something like Blue Gene/L and IBM is happy to supply them. But a whole new generation of supercomputers will be built on-demand and out of commodity PC hardware and a good set of software running on an OS that doesn't charge for all the CALs. Right now the 970 is easily the best performer for LinPak. So much so, they can pay educational list price which included such worthless features as an Apple-tooled case, overpriced RAM, gigabit cards, and Radeon graphics cards, firewire, usb2.0, digital audio, iTunes and other iApps, and a OpenGL based desktop. Since the 970 is made by IBM, I'd hazard a guess that IBM would be happy to supply these people too. Whether they choose to run Linux, MacOS X, or something else.
So everyone keeps telling me when they see Panther on my notebook. But I've been running Fink on 10.3 for quite a while now and can quickly show them this is not the case.
> "..that far more software is available for Windows (true; "only"
> 6,500 programs are available for Mac OS X).."
Just because there is no pkg download install of Fink for 10.3 doesn't mean that you can't. Do a netsearch.
Ahh, the beauty of open-source.
Take care,
I don't think the animation in fast user switching is gratuitous. If you can, it makes sense than simply flipping the desktop. In the former your eyes are given notice that a smooth transition (change) is taking place, in the latter you are jarred with a new desktop for no reason.
The login panel shakes when you mistype a password for the same reason.
BTW, if you don't have enough RAM for Quartz Extreme (old iBook or Powerbook), you aren't given the FUS 3-D cube transition. There are a couple cases where you don't get it no matter what (transitioning from screensavers?). Do so, and you'll understand that the 3-D cube is not gratuitous, it's clever.
If, on the other hand, by "gratuitous" you mean "it should have been a push transition or a reveal" then I can agree. I wish my girlfriend's PB500 had some sort of transition. Maybe someday there'd be a UI tweak to select it (like disabling the geenie effect of the Dock).
Well there is a danger. If short interest is too high, then that will make SCOX bullish because any uptick will cause a lot of people to move to cover their shorts causing it to go up more.
In any case: You can see that short interest has been steadily increasing but since trading volume is high it's still easy to cover the short.
However finding a broker willing to allow you to short SCOX may not be such an easy task.