It makes me wonder if this practice will continue once actual immortality becomes a reality. I sincerely hope I'll be around to observe the results, but like Bill I'm not holding my breath.
Holding your breath would, in fact, be quite the wrong way to try to achieve immortality.
I've gone through 3 palm pilots. First, a b&w palm that served me forabout 3 years until one day, it wouldn't turn on. Second, a color that lasted about 3 weeks before I dropped it from about 3 feet and it wouldn't turn on. Portable devices should be able to take a 3-foot drop! Anyway, the third I had for only a couple weeks before it wouldn't turn on after a stay in my pocket on a TV shoot, where I was doing a bit of running around. After that I vowed never to buy a Palm ever again.
Re: Movies shown digitally.
Yeah, too bad the movies will be about a sixteenth of the original effective resolution. Film has an effective resolution of 4000 pixels wide or so. The highest resolution I've heard about projecting movies digitally at is 1280x1024. Can you imagine that resolution stretched out to 50 feet wide? Hello pixellation. Plus, RGB color space has a smaller color gamut than film.
Not enough buttons! When going to a gamepad I always miss the flexibility that having 104 keys to bind gives me. If only it has dual analog sticks, though.
98 as in... Windows 98. My computer was originally built in 96 and has since been upgraded one component at a time when I had the money. The last upgrade was the hard drive (250 GB, yay!) and operating system (Windows 2000, 'cause XP sucks).
I recently upgraded my computer from 98 to 2000 on another hard drive. Took me forever to figure out how to get my old email into Thunderbird on the new hard drive. Shouldn't this be just slightly easier?
My point about source code availability is that there is no reason that any media device, especially software, could not implement support for practically free, it's just that none of the major manufacturers want to because they have their own acoustically inferior, *actually* crippled formats to push.
As for nobody using it, two words: UNREAL TOURNAMENT. There are loads of games and applications coming out that use Ogg for audio, since Fraunhofer's licensing sucks. For music, name a single media player that *doesn't* have its own proprietary format to push that doesn't support Ogg. Realplayer and Winamp support it out of the box. Windows Media Player can play it just by installing a directshow filter. For hardware support, see the iRiver, Rio and Neuros portables. Again, iPod and Sony don't support it because they have AAC and ATRAC to push.
I still don't see how you can call Ogg crippled compared to ATRAC. ATRAC can't even be played on a computer! Encoding an Ogg file is no harder and in fact much easier to get a good sounding file compared to MP3, again, as long as you aren't ripping and encoding with something that has its own proprietary format to push. CDex, the most popular non-commercial CD ripper at the moment, has an option for OGG right in the encoder configuration. I invite you to take a look at the options screen for it and MP3. MP3 has a couple dozen options to tweak and choose from, with no explanation to the user as to what they do. Ogg has ONE SLIDER LABELLED "QUALITY". Again, how is Ogg weirder than MP3 now?
Sorry, but Vorbis is not weird, and ESPECIALLY not crippled.
For weirdness, let's take a look at the command-line switches required for LAME, the popular MP3 encoder. By contrast, Vorbis uses a simple -1 through 10 quality setting. What's weird now?
As for crippled, compared to what? WMA? The AACs from iTunes? Or MP3Pro, which has no open-source decoders for the SBR portion of the bitstream? Heck, plain MP3 technically requires a license to encode and distribute files in the format. The source for Vorbis is available, anything can play an OGG file if they want to. How is that crippled?
As for a niche audio format, there is very broad software support (WinAmp and CDex, for a start) and expanding hardware support (see: most Rio products). Media players with their own proprietary formats to push (Sony, iPod, Windows Media Player) are pretty much the only ones that *don't* support it.
ATRAC is far worse than OGG in terms of usability, portability and audio quality. How, exactly, is it so much better?
A car chase scene in a movie through a traffic system controlled this way would rock, two manually controlled cars, everything else automated and trying to compensate for their erratic movement. It ends when someone does some maneuvering with some sudden deceleration to get the chaser nailed at an intersection, causing a 16,384 car pileup.
Why even have a screen? A land line certainly doesn't need one.
Calls on a landline are cheaper. If you mis-dial a number on a cell-phone, it costs more, so it's nice to check the make sure you dialed correctly. That, and you would certainly need a screen to keep a phone-book in your cell phone, which was something I left out of my original feature list.
The problem is that a phone just rings, it doesn't ring at you
That is a problem... The best solution for that, though, is something like what you suggested. Allow someone to record their own ringtones. I've been considering making my phone ring with just me saying "ring." But all of the stupid songs are just annoying.
I don't want 5 million features I don't want or need in a $5,000 phone. I just want a couple of useful features in a nice inexpensive phone I won't be afraid to actually use.
For me, the following would be perfect:
Folds up to protect the screen from my pocket.
Monochrome display, just large enough to display the info I need, maybe 3-4 lines. Placed somewhere that won't be pressed up against my cheek when I'm making a call, making me have to wipe it off every time I make a call. Color uses too much batteries.
A ringtone that sounds like a phone. This is a pet peeve, I don't want some annoying song to play when I get a call, I just want something to let me know I have a call, that's it.
Good reception. I want to be able to use my phone from my basement or my office building.
Rugged. Should take at the very least a 3-foot drop.
That's it! You could probably sell this phone for $50 with a HUUGE profit margin, and I'd buy it.
It's 32 kbps. What did you expect? We are testing which quality gets the most bang for its buck when being streamed over a dial-up connection. If you want good sound, go with high-bitrate lossy or lossless.
Sound great on 8 and 16 khz material, even up to 22 khz, but sounds terrible in its "super wideband" mode.
Another recommendation is Ogg Vorbis, though so far it's ending up near the bottom of the quality scale for my ears in this 32 kbps test.
I refuse to use Windows Media Player, since it's a bloated piece of crap, but I can't play it in any other player. Way to alienate your audience (i.e. geeks) guys.
What city do you live in? I'm living in Minneapolis, where you can walk into pretty much any bar and see a killer band playing live, with a good-sized crowd if the opening band didn't drive them away. A few people are saying we might be the next Seattle.
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Not gonna happen. Flesh-and-blood actors are far cheaper and far less creepy-looking (Google for uncanny valley).
It makes me wonder if this practice will continue once actual immortality becomes a reality. I sincerely hope I'll be around to observe the results, but like Bill I'm not holding my breath.
Holding your breath would, in fact, be quite the wrong way to try to achieve immortality.
I've gone through 3 palm pilots. First, a b&w palm that served me forabout 3 years until one day, it wouldn't turn on. Second, a color that lasted about 3 weeks before I dropped it from about 3 feet and it wouldn't turn on. Portable devices should be able to take a 3-foot drop! Anyway, the third I had for only a couple weeks before it wouldn't turn on after a stay in my pocket on a TV shoot, where I was doing a bit of running around. After that I vowed never to buy a Palm ever again.
Re: Movies shown digitally. Yeah, too bad the movies will be about a sixteenth of the original effective resolution. Film has an effective resolution of 4000 pixels wide or so. The highest resolution I've heard about projecting movies digitally at is 1280x1024. Can you imagine that resolution stretched out to 50 feet wide? Hello pixellation. Plus, RGB color space has a smaller color gamut than film.
Not enough buttons! When going to a gamepad I always miss the flexibility that having 104 keys to bind gives me. If only it has dual analog sticks, though.
98 as in... Windows 98. My computer was originally built in 96 and has since been upgraded one component at a time when I had the money. The last upgrade was the hard drive (250 GB, yay!) and operating system (Windows 2000, 'cause XP sucks).
I recently upgraded my computer from 98 to 2000 on another hard drive. Took me forever to figure out how to get my old email into Thunderbird on the new hard drive. Shouldn't this be just slightly easier?
My point about source code availability is that there is no reason that any media device, especially software, could not implement support for practically free, it's just that none of the major manufacturers want to because they have their own acoustically inferior, *actually* crippled formats to push.
As for nobody using it, two words: UNREAL TOURNAMENT. There are loads of games and applications coming out that use Ogg for audio, since Fraunhofer's licensing sucks. For music, name a single media player that *doesn't* have its own proprietary format to push that doesn't support Ogg. Realplayer and Winamp support it out of the box. Windows Media Player can play it just by installing a directshow filter. For hardware support, see the iRiver, Rio and Neuros portables. Again, iPod and Sony don't support it because they have AAC and ATRAC to push.
I still don't see how you can call Ogg crippled compared to ATRAC. ATRAC can't even be played on a computer! Encoding an Ogg file is no harder and in fact much easier to get a good sounding file compared to MP3, again, as long as you aren't ripping and encoding with something that has its own proprietary format to push. CDex, the most popular non-commercial CD ripper at the moment, has an option for OGG right in the encoder configuration. I invite you to take a look at the options screen for it and MP3. MP3 has a couple dozen options to tweak and choose from, with no explanation to the user as to what they do. Ogg has ONE SLIDER LABELLED "QUALITY". Again, how is Ogg weirder than MP3 now?
Heck, there are even listening tests that prove that ATRAC doesn't sound as good as MP3 in the first place.
Sorry, but Vorbis is not weird, and ESPECIALLY not crippled.
For weirdness, let's take a look at the command-line switches required for LAME, the popular MP3 encoder. By contrast, Vorbis uses a simple -1 through 10 quality setting. What's weird now?
As for crippled, compared to what? WMA? The AACs from iTunes? Or MP3Pro, which has no open-source decoders for the SBR portion of the bitstream? Heck, plain MP3 technically requires a license to encode and distribute files in the format. The source for Vorbis is available, anything can play an OGG file if they want to. How is that crippled?
As for a niche audio format, there is very broad software support (WinAmp and CDex, for a start) and expanding hardware support (see: most Rio products). Media players with their own proprietary formats to push (Sony, iPod, Windows Media Player) are pretty much the only ones that *don't* support it.
ATRAC is far worse than OGG in terms of usability, portability and audio quality. How, exactly, is it so much better?
Half-Life 2's lip sync appears to be much better, judging from their E3 demonstration. Heck, even Half-Life 1's lip sync looks better.
Half-Life 2's appears to be far superior, based on what I've seen from their E3 demonstration. Heck, even Half-Life 1 looks better.
Am I the only person who thought the lip-sync sucked?
There'd better be a patch for this soon.
A car chase scene in a movie through a traffic system controlled this way would rock, two manually controlled cars, everything else automated and trying to compensate for their erratic movement. It ends when someone does some maneuvering with some sudden deceleration to get the chaser nailed at an intersection, causing a 16,384 car pileup.
Why even have a screen? A land line certainly doesn't need one. Calls on a landline are cheaper. If you mis-dial a number on a cell-phone, it costs more, so it's nice to check the make sure you dialed correctly. That, and you would certainly need a screen to keep a phone-book in your cell phone, which was something I left out of my original feature list. The problem is that a phone just rings, it doesn't ring at you That is a problem... The best solution for that, though, is something like what you suggested. Allow someone to record their own ringtones. I've been considering making my phone ring with just me saying "ring." But all of the stupid songs are just annoying.
I don't want 5 million features I don't want or need in a $5,000 phone. I just want a couple of useful features in a nice inexpensive phone I won't be afraid to actually use.
For me, the following would be perfect:
Folds up to protect the screen from my pocket.
Monochrome display, just large enough to display the info I need, maybe 3-4 lines. Placed somewhere that won't be pressed up against my cheek when I'm making a call, making me have to wipe it off every time I make a call. Color uses too much batteries.
A ringtone that sounds like a phone. This is a pet peeve, I don't want some annoying song to play when I get a call, I just want something to let me know I have a call, that's it.
Good reception. I want to be able to use my phone from my basement or my office building.
Rugged. Should take at the very least a 3-foot drop.
That's it! You could probably sell this phone for $50 with a HUUGE profit margin, and I'd buy it.
It's 32 kbps. What did you expect? We are testing which quality gets the most bang for its buck when being streamed over a dial-up connection. If you want good sound, go with high-bitrate lossy or lossless.
Speex.
Sound great on 8 and 16 khz material, even up to 22 khz, but sounds terrible in its "super wideband" mode. Another recommendation is Ogg Vorbis, though so far it's ending up near the bottom of the quality scale for my ears in this 32 kbps test.
I refuse to use Windows Media Player, since it's a bloated piece of crap, but I can't play it in any other player. Way to alienate your audience (i.e. geeks) guys.
Hrmmm. Good point.
I agree with you here. Metal puts far too much emphasis on technical proficiency and not enough on good solid songwriting.
What city do you live in? I'm living in Minneapolis, where you can walk into pretty much any bar and see a killer band playing live, with a good-sized crowd if the opening band didn't drive them away. A few people are saying we might be the next Seattle.
By any chance, do you work at JASC software? You don't have to reply publicly, I have private messaging turned on.
My boss is cool with me sleeping on my lunch break.