They HAD a very small and wonderful little laptop - I'm using one right now - a 12" G4 iBook.
The differences between the MacBook and MacBook Pro are very few and certainly not worth the $. The MacBook has drifted upward in abilities, and they stopped making the 12" machine - hence, there is nowhere for them to go. They have to re-invent what they've abandoned. As TFA says, three once was a small and venerable machine many years ago, and the 12" G4 iBook was the last of that "inertia".
Now their strategy has abandoned low end small machines. Ooops. So now we'll see one. This comes as no surprise. They have nowhere to go. Frankly, I am looking forward to this, because my G4 iBook is getting a bit long in the tooth...
Jeepers - when a third of the country thinks that Jesus is comin' and thinks that Bush is doing a good job, and believes in creationism, and is deeply skeptical of science and is only interested in technology insofar as it brings them mindless entertainment and can be operated by a 3 year old, WHERE exactly are americans on this? These obese delusional twits don't have the mental torque to pull their heads out of their own butts, muchless spend a dollar and buy a clue that they have been done a gross disservice by their leaders and edumication system, leaving them to be the passive retarded feeders they are, suckling off the teat of resources their corporate masters have ripped out of the third world so they can sit back and drink themselves into a stupour as they glotz the idiot box and drive their SUVs to church and/or Walmart, as if there's a real difference between the two.
The question isn't what is holding us back - the question is why aren't things worse, and what can we do to amplify the good? The sheeple rotting in the suburbs will die off soon enough when the gas gives out. Then it will simply be a matter of "is there enough bandwidth" for those who remain to get anything done.
This may read like Flamebait, but it isn't - I'm just angry. This country had great potential until the robber-barons showed up and gutted the place. I've been barking about this for YEARS, and all I ever get is the glazed over countenance of the self-satisfied fear driven dopes that haven't got the creative spirit normally granted a fence post.
There are often radical differences in translations which can lead to serious doctrinal differences. Part of the split between Protestant and Catholic has to do with the interpretation of various passages. You're coming from the perspective of an unbeliever to whom such fine distinctions don't matter. They do to Christians.
That's because they're superstitious IDIOTS. Just like the Muslims. IDIOTS.
I think Lethem's article is very good, and it reminds me of Sokal's hoax on Social Text. The articles have completely different purposes and diametrically opposed philosophies, but they share a similarity - using the tools of their target to expose their target.
With Sokal, he used the language of post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas in order to demonstrate how ludicrous post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas really is.
Here, Lethem is using/abusing the practice of attribution to demonstrate the destructiveness of copyright in the realm of ideas, and the inherent inter-relatedness of ideas in creative arts.
In this way, he is similar to John Brockman who wrote a book that was composed of a paragraph on each page, and each paragraph was usually a composite of several statements from other people's writings (often Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Weiner, TS Eliot, et al) That Brockman is now a literary agent for scientists only brings the whole thing to a big circle.
OK you South Korean Hackers... What say we let the Dear Leader north of your border come down and show you a little something about responsibility...hmmmm???
it's patentless. No one owns it, so no one with money to pay the press is going to bother to pony up the green to get the wheels turning.
Now, if it was brand new, and cured an imaginary illness, then we'd be inundated with advertising on its behalf, as the plutocrats running the drug industry would be spending every dime they could to make as much money as fast as they could to recoup the losses of development and to line their own greedy pockets.
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history.
There lived a strange race of people...the Druids.
No one knows who they were, or what they were doing...
but their legacy remains...
hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge...
Stonehenge,
where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge
Where a man is a man
and the children dance to the pipes of Pan
Stonehenge
Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face
Stonehenge
Where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky
And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will show you how
up until very recently I was an assistant prof at a University. The pressure comes from several directions. Often times, the students think that they need to learn how to push buttons to get ahead in the world. I tell such students the following: If you want to learn how to push buttons and think that is what you are here in college for, do the following:
1. Quit school
2. use the money you were going to spend on school (to pick a number out of the air, $3000 a semester x 8 semesters = $24,000) and spend that money on buying the fastest damn computer you can get your hands on, use your student discount which will be valid for the next 8 weeks to buy the software you want to learn, and then spend a pile of money on "how to" books.
3. use those books to learn how to do what you want to do.
4. Put together a kick ass portfolio, intern at the best company you can find nearby, and LEARN.
Do that, and you will learn all the button pushing you need to know. Remember, your portfolio speaks better than you do.
Now, if you want to LEARN SOMETHING, like CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS, and a REASON to do what you do, giving your life things like MEANING AND DIRECTION, then shut up, sit down and pay attention.
We will now learn our first three words in Turkish.
Outside of Fox News, the only time you see a 'conservative talking head' is if they are a guest. CNN, MSNBC news, CBS, etc all lean to the left of American Politics.
Lean to the left? There are people on those networks who "lean to the left" (Olberman, for example) but the networks themselves are actually run by the same bunch of corporate plutocrats as FOX or any of the rest. And there is nothing "leftist" about them.
But, HAD YOU PAID ATTENTION, the question wasn't "one little bullet hole" you trolling fuckwit. The post was talking about anyone on a plane be ing armed, which is to say EVERYONE on a plane being armed. Which is plainly retarded.
And yes, "one little bullet hole" at 550mph at 35,000 could EASILY bring down a plane, especially if that "one little bullet" happens to sever a major hydraulic line AND cause a catastrophic decompression. If the bullet wizzed past your face and went through the wall next to your head, your face would be instantly sucked through it, making the hole bigger, and then you and who ever is sitting next to your would be blown out of the plane to fall to your deaths. In the meantime all hell would break lose and people would quickly die from apoxia:
So: plane is beset by hijackers - I don't see people calm i ntheir seats. I see LOTs of activity, cutting the survival time in half. At 35,000 feet that would be in the neighbourhood of 12 seconds.
Then how did bombers survive with, forget bullet holes, holes from ack ack (anti aircraft) guns riddled in the fuselage during WWII?
1. They didn't fly at 35,000 feet. They were lucky to fly (fully loaded) at 20,000 ft
2. They didn't fly at 550 mph, they flew, fully loaded, around 250mph.
The atmosphere at 35k is a fraction of what it is at 20k.
The difference in speed between a loaded B17 and a 767 is that of a full strength tornado.
I can see why we would want to prevent explosives, but I fail to see why banning guns actually helps us. If the passangers aboard the planes on 9/11 had guns, the attacks could not have happened. The presence of guns by average citizens is often a deterent to certain types of crime
You. Are. An. Idiot.
guns? On a PLANE? Great - blow some holes in the fuselage flying 940 kmph at 35,000 feet and see how long people live. Even assuming the bullets don't happen to sever anything important to the basic airworthiness of the plane (which they very easily could), the decompression itself would fuck up the plane big time and kill a bunch of people, if not bring the plane itself down. And as the terrists (at least the ones who didn't get sucked through the holes out into the stratosphere, or didn't pass out from lack of oxygen) would be storming the cockpit, what are you going to do? Shoot at the cockpit and kill the pilot? Brilliant! Good move, ACE.
Simply: Guns do NOT belong on a plane or a spacecraft. Ever.
RS
Why this is important news - education market!
on
Premiere Back on Mac
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The one thing Adobe has done is completely embed themselves in arts education. It's at the point now where cancerous organisations like Art Institute International are little more than sock puppets for Adobe's software - and it works the other way as well, AII is Adobe's single largest customer.
The consequences have been enormous - dumps like AII "train" people to use software that "the industry" uses, and the industry uses that software because that's what they learned in school, and they learned it in school because back in the early 1990s, Adobe (and Apple) did one helluva job embedding themselves in every art and design school they could find.
Macromedia tried to do the same thing, but they didn't have the range of products: they had an image editor for a while, xRes, but it was such a buggy piece of shite, and Macromedia had done such a crap job of getting into schools, that MM decided the thing to do was to switch enemies. Adobe used to be their hated target - they saw the Internet as the next big thing and dumped their graphics orientation for the Web. With a proper panoply of tools (Dreamweaver, Flash) they got their web software into schools, and ceded the graphics market to Adobe.
Fundamentally, people use what they know, and what they know is what they learn, and that's why Quark Xpress, possibly one of the single most over-rated pieces of software EVER, still has a deep hold in the printing industry. Quark 2 was WAY better than Pagemaker aka, RAGEmaker, and Quark 3 completely blew Pagemaker out of the water. Here is where Adobe's Education strategy started to pay off... Pagemaker was a dud, and the first rev of InDesign was putrid. However, they quickly fixed InDesign, and it is now an extremely competitive product to Quark. Combined with Quark's dramatic expense for minor upgrades, InDesign is now making massive inroads into Quark turf - and the kids coming out of design "schools" have experience using it and know it as a decent product. They use what they know...
Now: this brings us to Premiere...
Adobe and Apple were on the skids when Apple cooked up FCP and iMovie. There was zero incentive for Adobe to continue developing Premiere o nthe Mac, and they stopped doing so. That, at the time, Premiere was a buggy piece of shit was not that much of an issue - the Top End was AVID at $150k for a decent set up, and then there was the rest of us... FCP (originally developed by Macromedia and sold to Apple when MM changed their focus to the Web) came in and sawed AVID off at the knees. The lead programmer for FCP was the guy who had developed Premiere for Adobe - Randy Ubillos. With massive infusions of cash from Apple (Jobs didn't care - he saw FCP as a way to sell hardware...) So, Adobe saw this all as one big Bitch Slap. Adobe's response? The Education Angle... people will use what they know, and what they know is what they learn in school...
If Apple was going to eat Premiere's lunch, then Adobe was going to de-emphasise the Apple platform, and crush FCP from without. How? After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator on the Mac is OK - Adobe defeated MM there. But Premiere ? Windows. Encore? Windows. Soundbooth? Just a repackaging of CoolEdit Pro - Windows only. And sell ALL of that software to Art Schools at a cut rate price...
Translation: an end run around Apple - a reverse Bitch Slap.
Problem: It didn't really work. In the Windows World, AVID hadn't surrendered. They used their Cash Cow (Digidesign) to help drag their ailing video editing systems along until they could get a new strategy going. AVID cooked up a pile of new software, all of it superior to Premiere et al. Cost competitive? No, but the UI was extremely similar from the low end to the high end, and with increased integration from AVID into ProTools, there was no way that Adobe could possibly compete with AVID. AVID provided an entry -> pro environment, and was deeply embedded in the industry - recording studios use ProTools, and Hollywoo
People who believe Robots have rights are the people who believe that Erica Kane is real, and chide Susan Lucci in public for being such a selfish bitch.
The funny thing is - when you KNOW someone is trying to drop your airplanes out of the air - and this isn't being paranoid - that big hole in the ground in New York supports the claim, then taking precautions to try and identify problem passengers BEFORE the plane takes off seems only prudent doesn't it?
However: there are a vast number of different targets, all of them VASTLY more devastating if attacked than the shitbags on 9/11.
Example? Try the water pipes that basically provide H2O for LA. 4 giant pipes that roll right over the mountains by the Grapevine south of Bakersfield. All you would have to do is blow those up in two places, and LA and the surrounding basin would essentially cease to exist as a city. Thousands would die of thirst, especially if it was blown up in midAugust.
Another? The LNG tanks in Brooklyn. Several heavily armed people clear the way for several dumptrucks loaded with fertiliser bombs. The LNG Tanks would set each other off, going off with a blast about 1/4 the size of Hiroshima (IIRC). Casualities in the hundreds of thousands.
another: similar tanks in Elizabeth NJ. Fewer dead, but completely devastating in terms of economics and political theatre - definite fear mongering potential.
Another? Put a huge bomb on a train going under the Hudson. It would sever the NE corridor, kill hundreds, perhaps more if properly timed, and basically devastate the NE USA.
Another? Suicidal Armed personnel shoot and cut their way into the Microsoft campus in Redmond, followed by semis filled with fertiliser bombs. Boom. Thousands die. MS collapses and the world computer industry is thrown into complete disarray for years. Linux and OSX would take up the slack, but it would take a long time for that to happen...
Another? And Another? There are threats everywhere. To cover all possible forms of devastating attack would reduce this country to a state of paranoid infantile catatonia.
As for any claims by other posters about our "fascist" government. Go look up the term "fascist."
I have, many times. And I use it all the time to describe the deteriorating situation here in the States.
Since the Mac won't be able to play the protected content either without the protected video/audio paths and heavy handed DRM, your time is coming too as I'm sure that the "media platform" won't want to miss out on HD.
Well, it already DOES HD. iMovie HD is part of the $79 iLife suite. FinalCut Pro also (finally) handles HD.
With contemporary processors, editing video is trivial, and getting a system that Just Does That, is also trivial (compared to the cost of software and outboard hardware). Example: I have an old Amiga that has a crusty TBC card in it that will strip macrovision and other DRM noise out of the signal. And I use it for exactly that purpose when (in the rare instance) I need it, or if the signal from the tape needs Time Base Correction. The Amiga? Old, useless, hopelessly slow. But the TBC works like a charm.
Another example: I have a hobby of type design, and LOVE Fontographer (FOG). For years, Macromedia shafted FOG. In the process, Fontlab sprang up and became a dominant tool. However, the UI of fontLab is for shite - FOG is WAY better - fontlab isn't even close, and: FOG is way cheaper. so, for many years I kept a crusty old G3 running OS 9.x just so I could run FOG when I wanted to. I got the G3 for FREE (it's only worth like $30 - it's a 350 mHz G3...) so, I was good to go. I would design the font in FOG and then kick out a PS font, open it in Fontlab in OSX and then output as I deemed necessary.
Well, just before Adobe bought MM, FOG was sold to Fontlab. Fontlab upgraded FOG for OSX and so now I don't need the G3. It sits here under my desk collecting dust...
My point is, the cost of a CPU box is trivial, esp. in terms of legacy gear. As long as the motherboard doesn't fry, and you can get a HD it can address, you're basically good to go. The same goes for video. I have a G5 that runs FCP HD. When FCP requires Intel, and is encumbered by the kind of DRM you and the article describe, then that FCP machine will get set to "permanent legacy" status. It will sit and rot under my desk until a suitable alternative comes about...
or switch to Linux.
Unfortunately, while Linux is great for network/server stuff, and fine for office type work, it truly sucks for doing video. Driver hell, incompatibilities, lack of abilities in the software, etc. And when you get into that realm the Linux Geek saying "well, build your own video editor" is ludicrous. That kind of software is extremely complex, and far beyond even average programmer abilities. And with the constantly changing standards and the increasing complexity of those standards, you're not going to get anything out of a volunteer army that's worth using.
That said, I do have an old Linux box across the room. I use it for tinkering mostly - it's a "project machine". It runs openOffice. Yay.
Let's see... we can piss away trillions on protecting and projecting the interests of the American Ruling Class by way of a global imperial army, and get the ancillary secondary benefits of spiffy medical tech, OR, we could simply spend trillions on helping people lead better healthier lives and develop the technology to do so, directly. By dismantling the military we can dispense with its farcical false consciousness, and the money now spent murdering people can be used to directly benefit people and make the world a demonstrably nicer place.
But, no, the planet is full of violent assholes, bent on taking over the world, and then there are their opponents: the rest of the world.
Oh that's right - people actually think/dream/delude themselves that they're going to be rich some day, so we wouldn't want any kind of economic justice now would we....
Slashdot Mirror
The differences between the MacBook and MacBook Pro are very few and certainly not worth the $. The MacBook has drifted upward in abilities, and they stopped making the 12" machine - hence, there is nowhere for them to go. They have to re-invent what they've abandoned. As TFA says, three once was a small and venerable machine many years ago, and the 12" G4 iBook was the last of that "inertia".
Now their strategy has abandoned low end small machines. Ooops. So now we'll see one. This comes as no surprise. They have nowhere to go. Frankly, I am looking forward to this, because my G4 iBook is getting a bit long in the tooth...
RS
The question isn't what is holding us back - the question is why aren't things worse, and what can we do to amplify the good? The sheeple rotting in the suburbs will die off soon enough when the gas gives out. Then it will simply be a matter of "is there enough bandwidth" for those who remain to get anything done.
This may read like Flamebait, but it isn't - I'm just angry. This country had great potential until the robber-barons showed up and gutted the place. I've been barking about this for YEARS, and all I ever get is the glazed over countenance of the self-satisfied fear driven dopes that haven't got the creative spirit normally granted a fence post.
RS
That's because they're superstitious IDIOTS. Just like the Muslims. IDIOTS.
RS
With Sokal, he used the language of post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas in order to demonstrate how ludicrous post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas really is.
Here, Lethem is using/abusing the practice of attribution to demonstrate the destructiveness of copyright in the realm of ideas, and the inherent inter-relatedness of ideas in creative arts.
In this way, he is similar to John Brockman who wrote a book that was composed of a paragraph on each page, and each paragraph was usually a composite of several statements from other people's writings (often Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Weiner, TS Eliot, et al) That Brockman is now a literary agent for scientists only brings the whole thing to a big circle.
RS
Jeepers, it seems everyday, there's some BIG reminder that this civilisation is freakin' toast.
If it isn't oil depletion, it's global warming. If it isn't that, it's seed banks. If it isn't seed banks, it's 5 minutes to midnight...
I said, "Hey MISTER CONDUCTOR! WHERE ARE WE GOING TO???"
He said,
"I don't know. I'm just following the tracks..."
RS
Not unless I can get there first and make popcorn out of the lot of it! RS \
Gads - some people have no sense of humour.
RS
Stupid little freaks.
RS
Now, if it was brand new, and cured an imaginary illness, then we'd be inundated with advertising on its behalf, as the plutocrats running the drug industry would be spending every dime they could to make as much money as fast as they could to recoup the losses of development and to line their own greedy pockets.
I don't see why this is even a question.
RS
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history.
There lived a strange race of people...the Druids.
No one knows who they were, or what they were doing...
but their legacy remains...
hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge...
Stonehenge,
where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge
Where a man is a man
and the children dance to the pipes of Pan
Stonehenge
Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face
Stonehenge
Where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky
And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will show you how
RS
It makes for really cheap entertainment.
RS
1. Quit school
2. use the money you were going to spend on school (to pick a number out of the air, $3000 a semester x 8 semesters = $24,000) and spend that money on buying the fastest damn computer you can get your hands on, use your student discount which will be valid for the next 8 weeks to buy the software you want to learn, and then spend a pile of money on "how to" books.
3. use those books to learn how to do what you want to do.
4. Put together a kick ass portfolio, intern at the best company you can find nearby, and LEARN.
Do that, and you will learn all the button pushing you need to know. Remember, your portfolio speaks better than you do.
Now, if you want to LEARN SOMETHING, like CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS, and a REASON to do what you do, giving your life things like MEANING AND DIRECTION, then shut up, sit down and pay attention.
We will now learn our first three words in Turkish.
RS
Lean to the left? There are people on those networks who "lean to the left" (Olberman, for example) but the networks themselves are actually run by the same bunch of corporate plutocrats as FOX or any of the rest. And there is nothing "leftist" about them.
RS
RS
And yes, "one little bullet hole" at 550mph at 35,000 could EASILY bring down a plane, especially if that "one little bullet" happens to sever a major hydraulic line AND cause a catastrophic decompression. If the bullet wizzed past your face and went through the wall next to your head, your face would be instantly sucked through it, making the hole bigger, and then you and who ever is sitting next to your would be blown out of the plane to fall to your deaths. In the meantime all hell would break lose and people would quickly die from apoxia:
Altitude (feet) Moderate Activity Sitting quietly 22,000 5 minutes 10 minutes 25,000 2 minutes 3 minutes 30,000 45 seconds 75 seconds 40,000 18 seconds 30 seconds
So: plane is beset by hijackers - I don't see people calm i ntheir seats. I see LOTs of activity, cutting the survival time in half. At 35,000 feet that would be in the neighbourhood of 12 seconds.
Do your research, trollbait.
RS
Then how did bombers survive with, forget bullet holes, holes from ack ack (anti aircraft) guns riddled in the fuselage during WWII?
1. They didn't fly at 35,000 feet. They were lucky to fly (fully loaded) at 20,000 ft
2. They didn't fly at 550 mph, they flew, fully loaded, around 250mph.
The atmosphere at 35k is a fraction of what it is at 20k.
The difference in speed between a loaded B17 and a 767 is that of a full strength tornado.
The difference is ENORMOUS.
RS
You. Are. An. Idiot.
guns? On a PLANE? Great - blow some holes in the fuselage flying 940 kmph at 35,000 feet and see how long people live. Even assuming the bullets don't happen to sever anything important to the basic airworthiness of the plane (which they very easily could), the decompression itself would fuck up the plane big time and kill a bunch of people, if not bring the plane itself down. And as the terrists (at least the ones who didn't get sucked through the holes out into the stratosphere, or didn't pass out from lack of oxygen) would be storming the cockpit, what are you going to do? Shoot at the cockpit and kill the pilot? Brilliant! Good move, ACE.
Simply: Guns do NOT belong on a plane or a spacecraft. Ever.
RS
The consequences have been enormous - dumps like AII "train" people to use software that "the industry" uses, and the industry uses that software because that's what they learned in school, and they learned it in school because back in the early 1990s, Adobe (and Apple) did one helluva job embedding themselves in every art and design school they could find.
Macromedia tried to do the same thing, but they didn't have the range of products: they had an image editor for a while, xRes, but it was such a buggy piece of shite, and Macromedia had done such a crap job of getting into schools, that MM decided the thing to do was to switch enemies. Adobe used to be their hated target - they saw the Internet as the next big thing and dumped their graphics orientation for the Web. With a proper panoply of tools (Dreamweaver, Flash) they got their web software into schools, and ceded the graphics market to Adobe.
Fundamentally, people use what they know, and what they know is what they learn, and that's why Quark Xpress, possibly one of the single most over-rated pieces of software EVER, still has a deep hold in the printing industry. Quark 2 was WAY better than Pagemaker aka, RAGEmaker, and Quark 3 completely blew Pagemaker out of the water. Here is where Adobe's Education strategy started to pay off... Pagemaker was a dud, and the first rev of InDesign was putrid. However, they quickly fixed InDesign, and it is now an extremely competitive product to Quark. Combined with Quark's dramatic expense for minor upgrades, InDesign is now making massive inroads into Quark turf - and the kids coming out of design "schools" have experience using it and know it as a decent product. They use what they know...
Now: this brings us to Premiere...
Adobe and Apple were on the skids when Apple cooked up FCP and iMovie. There was zero incentive for Adobe to continue developing Premiere o nthe Mac, and they stopped doing so. That, at the time, Premiere was a buggy piece of shit was not that much of an issue - the Top End was AVID at $150k for a decent set up, and then there was the rest of us... FCP (originally developed by Macromedia and sold to Apple when MM changed their focus to the Web) came in and sawed AVID off at the knees. The lead programmer for FCP was the guy who had developed Premiere for Adobe - Randy Ubillos. With massive infusions of cash from Apple (Jobs didn't care - he saw FCP as a way to sell hardware...) So, Adobe saw this all as one big Bitch Slap. Adobe's response? The Education Angle... people will use what they know, and what they know is what they learn in school...
If Apple was going to eat Premiere's lunch, then Adobe was going to de-emphasise the Apple platform, and crush FCP from without. How? After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator on the Mac is OK - Adobe defeated MM there. But Premiere ? Windows. Encore? Windows. Soundbooth? Just a repackaging of CoolEdit Pro - Windows only. And sell ALL of that software to Art Schools at a cut rate price...
Translation: an end run around Apple - a reverse Bitch Slap.
Problem: It didn't really work. In the Windows World, AVID hadn't surrendered. They used their Cash Cow (Digidesign) to help drag their ailing video editing systems along until they could get a new strategy going. AVID cooked up a pile of new software, all of it superior to Premiere et al. Cost competitive? No, but the UI was extremely similar from the low end to the high end, and with increased integration from AVID into ProTools, there was no way that Adobe could possibly compete with AVID. AVID provided an entry -> pro environment, and was deeply embedded in the industry - recording studios use ProTools, and Hollywoo
RS
The funny thing is - when you KNOW someone is trying to drop your airplanes out of the air - and this isn't being paranoid - that big hole in the ground in New York supports the claim, then taking precautions to try and identify problem passengers BEFORE the plane takes off seems only prudent doesn't it?
However: there are a vast number of different targets, all of them VASTLY more devastating if attacked than the shitbags on 9/11.
Example? Try the water pipes that basically provide H2O for LA. 4 giant pipes that roll right over the mountains by the Grapevine south of Bakersfield. All you would have to do is blow those up in two places, and LA and the surrounding basin would essentially cease to exist as a city. Thousands would die of thirst, especially if it was blown up in midAugust.
Another? The LNG tanks in Brooklyn. Several heavily armed people clear the way for several dumptrucks loaded with fertiliser bombs. The LNG Tanks would set each other off, going off with a blast about 1/4 the size of Hiroshima (IIRC). Casualities in the hundreds of thousands.
another: similar tanks in Elizabeth NJ. Fewer dead, but completely devastating in terms of economics and political theatre - definite fear mongering potential.
Another? Put a huge bomb on a train going under the Hudson. It would sever the NE corridor, kill hundreds, perhaps more if properly timed, and basically devastate the NE USA.
Another? Suicidal Armed personnel shoot and cut their way into the Microsoft campus in Redmond, followed by semis filled with fertiliser bombs. Boom. Thousands die. MS collapses and the world computer industry is thrown into complete disarray for years. Linux and OSX would take up the slack, but it would take a long time for that to happen...
Another? And Another? There are threats everywhere. To cover all possible forms of devastating attack would reduce this country to a state of paranoid infantile catatonia.
As for any claims by other posters about our "fascist" government. Go look up the term "fascist."
I have, many times. And I use it all the time to describe the deteriorating situation here in the States.
I suggest YOU read this:
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism By Dr. Lawrence Britt
and you will see we are actually NOT a long way from it, in fact we're very much collapsing directly into it.
RS
Since the Mac won't be able to play the protected content either without the protected video/audio paths and heavy handed DRM, your time is coming too as I'm sure that the "media platform" won't want to miss out on HD.
Well, it already DOES HD. iMovie HD is part of the $79 iLife suite. FinalCut Pro also (finally) handles HD.
With contemporary processors, editing video is trivial, and getting a system that Just Does That, is also trivial (compared to the cost of software and outboard hardware). Example: I have an old Amiga that has a crusty TBC card in it that will strip macrovision and other DRM noise out of the signal. And I use it for exactly that purpose when (in the rare instance) I need it, or if the signal from the tape needs Time Base Correction. The Amiga? Old, useless, hopelessly slow. But the TBC works like a charm.
Another example: I have a hobby of type design, and LOVE Fontographer (FOG). For years, Macromedia shafted FOG. In the process, Fontlab sprang up and became a dominant tool. However, the UI of fontLab is for shite - FOG is WAY better - fontlab isn't even close, and: FOG is way cheaper. so, for many years I kept a crusty old G3 running OS 9.x just so I could run FOG when I wanted to. I got the G3 for FREE (it's only worth like $30 - it's a 350 mHz G3...) so, I was good to go. I would design the font in FOG and then kick out a PS font, open it in Fontlab in OSX and then output as I deemed necessary.
Well, just before Adobe bought MM, FOG was sold to Fontlab. Fontlab upgraded FOG for OSX and so now I don't need the G3. It sits here under my desk collecting dust...
My point is, the cost of a CPU box is trivial, esp. in terms of legacy gear. As long as the motherboard doesn't fry, and you can get a HD it can address, you're basically good to go. The same goes for video. I have a G5 that runs FCP HD. When FCP requires Intel, and is encumbered by the kind of DRM you and the article describe, then that FCP machine will get set to "permanent legacy" status. It will sit and rot under my desk until a suitable alternative comes about...
or switch to Linux.
Unfortunately, while Linux is great for network/server stuff, and fine for office type work, it truly sucks for doing video. Driver hell, incompatibilities, lack of abilities in the software, etc. And when you get into that realm the Linux Geek saying "well, build your own video editor" is ludicrous. That kind of software is extremely complex, and far beyond even average programmer abilities. And with the constantly changing standards and the increasing complexity of those standards, you're not going to get anything out of a volunteer army that's worth using.
That said, I do have an old Linux box across the room. I use it for tinkering mostly - it's a "project machine". It runs openOffice. Yay.
RS
How do others deal with these issues?"
As a media professional, I can tell you EXACTLY how I deal with it:
I use an Apple Macintosh Computer
RS
But, no, the planet is full of violent assholes, bent on taking over the world, and then there are their opponents: the rest of the world.
RS
When WHEN will this madness end?
RS
RS