I'll be willing to bet they'll make a chunk of change off this service in the next year or two. What the article fails to mention is that this business model is an infant. It'll take Apple a little while to figure out how to get it organized and stream-lined a bit, then the profits will pour in.
Once they are established, Visa will have no choice but to lower their charges. Once they get comfortable with that steady revenue, they'll bend over backwards to keep it.
The "OMG IT'S NOT PROFITABLE?!" thing quit being exciting after 9th grade Economics class...
I actually had to hit google to refresh my memory.
Here is a breakdown of what transpires. Keep in mind, Lucas was just trying to generate some holiday revenue. Expect little consistency with what happens in this thing and what goes on in the rest of the SW Universe.
And yes, wookies live in trees. I know, I know, intelligent, civilized bipeds with fully developed thumbs still living in trees. I, personally, would have liked to see wookies asorbing all the bad qualities of their human counter-parts. Enslaving their own population in the name of progress and creating a wookie death star that explodes the first time it's used in anger. This would have to be while it's in a critical-low orbit of an ewok dwelling planet. That way, only about half the ewoks would die instantly, the rest would suffer a slow death from the radiation released in the atmosphere.
I'm right there with you. It baffles me as to why Lucas is such a big deal these days. After Episode 1, I refused to go see Episode 2. Finally, last weekend, it arrived in the mail as it was last in line on my Netflix queue.
I popped it into my home theater and found myself bored silly for the next 2 hours. I have a hard time believing that DVD was even THX certified, as there were a boat-load of artifacts in some scenes. They really should have made it a 2 DVD set and not try to stick the movie and all the extras on one middle-of-the-road quality disc.
Lucas officially became a worthless has-been the moment he released an edited version of episode 6. Changing the story to be more PR is a bunch of crap. What the hell was wrong with Solo firing first??
I guess that goes with many artists. They do their most inspired works when hungry. Once fame is obtained, the crap tends to follow.
Man, that hurts to think about. How about those scenes of the loving wookie family.. in their tree, making gurgling noises and pointing at stuff... That was about as demoralizing as watching an entire season of the Tele-tubbies while sober.
I've got a broadcast->VCR->DiVX copy of it. It's also got all of the original commercial breaks. Found it on Kazaa a while back. I guess it's legit since it has all the ads, right?
"To keep things honest, and unbiased, the DJ Console does have one minor flaw, there is a bit of latency between button push, and software response. Though, this is somewhat expected due to the Consoles USB 1.1 connection to the computer. The resident HH DJ (yours truly), was having a few issues timing his beat matching/scratch/etc due to being accustom to the instantaneous response of actual DJ Equipment and traditional turn-table. All in all, we did learn to compensate for the delay in response and we were back to having fun with the equipment in short time. One question can only be raised here however, as to why a USB 2.0 interface was not implemented during the design process of this console.
Heh, a musical instrument with a latency issue. Oh yes, sure, Pros are going to stock up on these things. Not bloody likely.
Anyway, how's this news? There's like a hundred gimmicy little audio things you can hook up to your PC. Is tomorrow's headline going to be about one of those electronic midi guitars with the plastic strings? I can see the headline now "Yamaha introduces new electronic guitar, Jimmy Page surrenders".. Wait a sec, that's a Fark headline! It's a trap! NSFW!
USB 1.1 on that thing reduces it from a toy to trash, IMO.
"Boo" to the guy who wrote the article, as well. There were no performance benchmarks to demonstrate whether the card impacts frame rates when compared to other audio solutions. That's what I looked at when I bought my last card, I didn't want to go to the trouble of over-clocking my system just to have the wrong accessories eat up whatever FPS gains I picked up.
Final thought on this review:
Moving on to the next series of tests we listened to a various mixture of high bitrate Mp3's ( > 192kps) and audio CD's that spanned various spectrums of musical styles. Initial we tossed in Crystal Method's Tweekend CD due to its great sound range.
WTF? Crystal Method's music has no sound staging or real depth to it. It's just a bunch of clicks and whistles for the raver kids. How about getting out something with real instruments and natural sounds next time, foo. Samples of resampled bits of music with a punchy bass sound ain't depth unless you are 14 and dream about having a car with a big stereo so you can be like the guys in The Fast and the Furious.. And get that glowstick pacifier thingy out of your mouth, dumbass.
The WM9 files are linked from the parent. They are heavily compressed. That's what allows for a full-length WM9 compressed movie to fit on one dual layer DVD.
I was just assuming the way they got their money from the government had something to do with the fact that this research could easily be forked over to learn how to quickly kill humans with a viral agent. Especially with mice being so similar to humans.
4.2 gigs? That's not nearly enough space. A single movie, stored in 1920x1080 @ 23 fps is around 8 gigs when compressed using Media Player 9's codec.
Even a 480p movie will take up 4.72 gigs for every 120 minutes, that's uncompressed tho.
I'm fine with the physical size of the media out now. I doubt a flash card costs less in materials than a DVD, since all a DVD consists of is a small plastic wafer and metallic film. That boils down to much, much less than a penny in materials. Then you've got that added benefit of people already having CD and DVD storage devices.
I'm a lot more concerned with what's considered acceptible quality right now. Movies need to be encoded at 1280x720 and 1920x1080 with the original audio data on the disc. Currently, anyone with a decent 36", or larger, display is stuck watching artifacts and seeing about 1/4 of the detail the original film was recorded in.
It's much like comparing a 128K mp3 to a CD Audio track. The effect isn't really noticed until it's experienced.
Microsoft, which I've hated for years, has managed to be the only ones being proactive at bringing decent quality movies to home theaters.
For a demonstration of this product, click here. Be warned, you need Windows and Media Player 9 to view the site. If you have these, then you can download some video demos in 720p and 1080p. Yeah, it's not much content, but I'm all ears if anyone's found a better demo with more actual products out.
Sorry about the long-winded response. One only has to browse back through my comment history to see how upset I am with the industry over HDTV issues. We can put a damn man on the moon, but we can't seem to get a system in place to have high-resolution video entertainment in our homes.
Don't forget the big gaps between pixels on all plasma displays, too.
Is it my imagination, or are these things being marketed just for the simple fact that they knew they picked a crappy technology and are trying to re-coup what they can before moving on?
The pro: fits on a wall The cons: loud, hot, ages quickly, cost is outrageous, EDTV and not HDTV resolution for any models under $10,000, most have a PC sized external control unit, and very inefficient with electricity.
Anyone who buys one knowing these things is nuts.
I'd like to see someone really spend some $$$ developing a DLP or LCoS goggle system. It seems that with the size of the chips and small amount of energy needed to power them, having a power/video system on your belt that feeds video over fiber to project and image on the back of the glasses would make for a very crisp, high resolution, display at a reasonable cost. You could get fancy and use that chemical coating that changes the tint of the glasses with electrical currents. Have the option of a transparent display with vector-style (think vectrex) graphics for simple text display, translucent display for reading information while still using your hands and focusing on the world around you, or a closed display for computer gaming, movie watching, etc.
With the possible exception of independence from England, there is no single issue which all of the Founders were of one mind about. They tended to be sharply divided over most of the crucial issues which went into forming our Constitution. It therefore makes no sense to make them into one monolithic body, "the Founding Fathers," whose "intentions" can be quoted like Scripture.
Someone mod this joker up. He's got the best point in the thread.
Let's also not forget the heat output of these suckers. Plasma is plasma if folks didn't already realize it. I was looking at a 50" EDTV the other day and it had 4 75mm fans turning at ~3500RPM. I imagine that it releases about as much heat into a room as a vacuum cleaner, too. (The 1000w has to dissipate somehow)
Another issue is plasma's aging effect. Though it's hardly mentioned in HDTV forums and reviews, I've noticed a serious loss of brightness in ones used as display units and others used as signs. I suspect, after a good while, the things just burn out.
I'm sure the average videophile that owns a full HDTV resolution one (720p or greater) probably does not leave them sitting around displaying an image all day. Just doesn't seem prudent.
LCD, on the other hand, I know little about the aging process. I've had laptop displays get dimmer and look worse over time, but I think that was due to all the bending and daily beatings I gave them.
I'd suggest LCoS or DLP if you are going with static images. Much, much lower power requirements; something in the range of 120-180w and the displays don't age in a manner you can detect visually. Still seems like a waste of power.
Perhaps a trip down to the next local art festival and purchasing a couple of hundred dollars worth of real artwork would be a better idea? I mean, really, what's original about having the Mona Lisa or Last Supper in your pad when you can have some truely original work for very little money?
Ok, fine. You are too cheap to get an original. I've got another plan for you. Dig around on the web for ultra-high resolution PSD, PNG, and the like, then print them out on a photo printer. Slap it in a frame and you've got the same thing and get to save money on your power bill.
Not really debating or disagreeing with anyone here but:
Pump and dump is correct. Any attempts to apply any logic to this are just a waste of time.
This is exactly why SCO is taking it's issues up in the US courts. With the ignorance and insanity that dominates our legal system, they actually have a shot. A long shot, yes; but a shot, none the less.
You have to remember, a lot of the people who sit in high political offices are former judges. They are old white men who care about appeasing each other's financial interests and don't mind if all the geeks in the world want to rip their throats out. Plus, you have to remember that there's a good chance any random judge will have SCO or one of it's alliances somewhere in their investment portfolio. They probably don't care about Linux one bit, nor grasp the importance of the GPL. It's more likely someone in this mindset would think "Well, if this free stuff would go away, then people would have to buy software from the guys I've invested in.. More money! Woohoo!"...
If there was any sanity or fairness left in our courts and political systems, the DMCA would have never gone into law. Nor would we have gone to war in Iraq. It's a dark time for the little guy.:(
True. But the lower traffic ones only need a semi-proactive webmaster. Plus, you could play around with the code a bit and make it so enough -1 or -2 posts could result in the inability to post.
Spam is not very fun to debate. It's like a swamp in the back yard during flood season. It's only a matter of time before you wake up floating in it.
As always, it only takes being around tech for a few years to go ahead and start knocking 20%-99% of whatever a company quotes on the capabilities of an item before it's actually put into service.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be willing to bet they'll make a chunk of change off this service in the next year or two. What the article fails to mention is that this business model is an infant. It'll take Apple a little while to figure out how to get it organized and stream-lined a bit, then the profits will pour in.
Once they are established, Visa will have no choice but to lower their charges. Once they get comfortable with that steady revenue, they'll bend over backwards to keep it.
The "OMG IT'S NOT PROFITABLE?!" thing quit being exciting after 9th grade Economics class...
I actually had to hit google to refresh my memory.
Here is a breakdown of what transpires. Keep in mind, Lucas was just trying to generate some holiday revenue. Expect little consistency with what happens in this thing and what goes on in the rest of the SW Universe.
And yes, wookies live in trees. I know, I know, intelligent, civilized bipeds with fully developed thumbs still living in trees. I, personally, would have liked to see wookies asorbing all the bad qualities of their human counter-parts. Enslaving their own population in the name of progress and creating a wookie death star that explodes the first time it's used in anger. This would have to be while it's in a critical-low orbit of an ewok dwelling planet. That way, only about half the ewoks would die instantly, the rest would suffer a slow death from the radiation released in the atmosphere.
It would only be a small victory for the Empire.
I'm right there with you. It baffles me as to why Lucas is such a big deal these days. After Episode 1, I refused to go see Episode 2. Finally, last weekend, it arrived in the mail as it was last in line on my Netflix queue.
I popped it into my home theater and found myself bored silly for the next 2 hours. I have a hard time believing that DVD was even THX certified, as there were a boat-load of artifacts in some scenes. They really should have made it a 2 DVD set and not try to stick the movie and all the extras on one middle-of-the-road quality disc.
Lucas officially became a worthless has-been the moment he released an edited version of episode 6. Changing the story to be more PR is a bunch of crap. What the hell was wrong with Solo firing first??
I guess that goes with many artists. They do their most inspired works when hungry. Once fame is obtained, the crap tends to follow.
Man, that hurts to think about. How about those scenes of the loving wookie family.. in their tree, making gurgling noises and pointing at stuff... That was about as demoralizing as watching an entire season of the Tele-tubbies while sober.
I've got a broadcast->VCR->DiVX copy of it. It's also got all of the original commercial breaks. Found it on Kazaa a while back. I guess it's legit since it has all the ads, right?
You caught me.. I was trollin anyway. :]
"To keep things honest, and unbiased, the DJ Console does have one minor flaw, there is a bit of latency between button push, and software response. Though, this is somewhat expected due to the Consoles USB 1.1 connection to the computer. The resident HH DJ (yours truly), was having a few issues timing his beat matching/scratch/etc due to being accustom to the instantaneous response of actual DJ Equipment and traditional turn-table. All in all, we did learn to compensate for the delay in response and we were back to having fun with the equipment in short time. One question can only be raised here however, as to why a USB 2.0 interface was not implemented during the design process of this console.
Heh, a musical instrument with a latency issue. Oh yes, sure, Pros are going to stock up on these things. Not bloody likely.
Anyway, how's this news? There's like a hundred gimmicy little audio things you can hook up to your PC. Is tomorrow's headline going to be about one of those electronic midi guitars with the plastic strings? I can see the headline now "Yamaha introduces new electronic guitar, Jimmy Page surrenders".. Wait a sec, that's a Fark headline! It's a trap! NSFW!
USB 1.1 on that thing reduces it from a toy to trash, IMO.
"Boo" to the guy who wrote the article, as well. There were no performance benchmarks to demonstrate whether the card impacts frame rates when compared to other audio solutions. That's what I looked at when I bought my last card, I didn't want to go to the trouble of over-clocking my system just to have the wrong accessories eat up whatever FPS gains I picked up.
Final thought on this review:
Moving on to the next series of tests we listened to a various mixture of high bitrate Mp3's ( > 192kps) and audio CD's that spanned various spectrums of musical styles. Initial we tossed in Crystal Method's Tweekend CD due to its great sound range.
WTF? Crystal Method's music has no sound staging or real depth to it. It's just a bunch of clicks and whistles for the raver kids. How about getting out something with real instruments and natural sounds next time, foo. Samples of resampled bits of music with a punchy bass sound ain't depth unless you are 14 and dream about having a car with a big stereo so you can be like the guys in The Fast and the Furious.. And get that glowstick pacifier thingy out of your mouth, dumbass.
Peace out
The WM9 files are linked from the parent. They are heavily compressed. That's what allows for a full-length WM9 compressed movie to fit on one dual layer DVD.
Duh
Really? I can get blanks for around 20 cent each.
Woo Hoo!
Don't forget, expensive too! That Jag upgrade isn't cheap.
Wasn't it Packard Bell that came with a sticker on the space bar that read "The ANY Key"?
dude, hurry up and pass the doob.. you hit it like three times in a row. huhuh
I was just assuming the way they got their money from the government had something to do with the fact that this research could easily be forked over to learn how to quickly kill humans with a viral agent. Especially with mice being so similar to humans.
I hope they don't give it to my cat.
You are correct. I should have said "120 minutes, normal DVD encoding, compression level 0".
Damned geeks..
I'm not sure where I was off, considering DVD media that holds 4.72 gigs is also considered a 120 dvd video disc.
SealBeater,
While your views are share by a large number of us, you can be more PR about your side of the story.
For instance:
When are we going to stop being so
fucking stupid?
Could read:
When will humanity come to the conclusion that we have not evolved enough socially and morally to handle this type of knowlege in a safe manner?
Aren't mice used for research cause
they are very simular to humans in their responses? Idiots.
The answer as to why they picked mice for this is so obvious it doesn't bear typing a response to.
4.2 gigs? That's not nearly enough space. A single movie, stored in 1920x1080 @ 23 fps is around 8 gigs when compressed using Media Player 9's codec.
Even a 480p movie will take up 4.72 gigs for every 120 minutes, that's uncompressed tho.
I'm fine with the physical size of the media out now. I doubt a flash card costs less in materials than a DVD, since all a DVD consists of is a small plastic wafer and metallic film. That boils down to much, much less than a penny in materials. Then you've got that added benefit of people already having CD and DVD storage devices.
I'm a lot more concerned with what's considered acceptible quality right now. Movies need to be encoded at 1280x720 and 1920x1080 with the original audio data on the disc. Currently, anyone with a decent 36", or larger, display is stuck watching artifacts and seeing about 1/4 of the detail the original film was recorded in.
It's much like comparing a 128K mp3 to a CD Audio track. The effect isn't really noticed until it's experienced.
Microsoft, which I've hated for years, has managed to be the only ones being proactive at bringing decent quality movies to home theaters.
For a demonstration of this product, click here. Be warned, you need Windows and Media Player 9 to view the site. If you have these, then you can download some video demos in 720p and 1080p. Yeah, it's not much content, but I'm all ears if anyone's found a better demo with more actual products out.
Sorry about the long-winded response. One only has to browse back through my comment history to see how upset I am with the industry over HDTV issues. We can put a damn man on the moon, but we can't seem to get a system in place to have high-resolution video entertainment in our homes.
Don't forget the big gaps between pixels on all plasma displays, too.
Is it my imagination, or are these things being marketed just for the simple fact that they knew they picked a crappy technology and are trying to re-coup what they can before moving on?
The pro: fits on a wall
The cons: loud, hot, ages quickly, cost is outrageous, EDTV and not HDTV resolution for any models under $10,000, most have a PC sized external control unit, and very inefficient with electricity.
Anyone who buys one knowing these things is nuts.
I'd like to see someone really spend some $$$ developing a DLP or LCoS goggle system. It seems that with the size of the chips and small amount of energy needed to power them, having a power/video system on your belt that feeds video over fiber to project and image on the back of the glasses would make for a very crisp, high resolution, display at a reasonable cost. You could get fancy and use that chemical coating that changes the tint of the glasses with electrical currents. Have the option of a transparent display with vector-style (think vectrex) graphics for simple text display, translucent display for reading information while still using your hands and focusing on the world around you, or a closed display for computer gaming, movie watching, etc.
With the possible exception of independence from England, there is no single issue which all of the Founders were of one mind about. They tended to be sharply divided over most of the crucial issues which went into forming our Constitution. It therefore makes no sense to make them into one monolithic body, "the Founding Fathers," whose "intentions" can be quoted like Scripture.
Someone mod this joker up. He's got the best point in the thread.
Let's also not forget the heat output of these suckers. Plasma is plasma if folks didn't already realize it. I was looking at a 50" EDTV the other day and it had 4 75mm fans turning at ~3500RPM. I imagine that it releases about as much heat into a room as a vacuum cleaner, too. (The 1000w has to dissipate somehow)
Another issue is plasma's aging effect. Though it's hardly mentioned in HDTV forums and reviews, I've noticed a serious loss of brightness in ones used as display units and others used as signs. I suspect, after a good while, the things just burn out.
I'm sure the average videophile that owns a full HDTV resolution one (720p or greater) probably does not leave them sitting around displaying an image all day. Just doesn't seem prudent.
LCD, on the other hand, I know little about the aging process. I've had laptop displays get dimmer and look worse over time, but I think that was due to all the bending and daily beatings I gave them.
I'd suggest LCoS or DLP if you are going with static images. Much, much lower power requirements; something in the range of 120-180w and the displays don't age in a manner you can detect visually. Still seems like a waste of power.
Perhaps a trip down to the next local art festival and purchasing a couple of hundred dollars worth of real artwork would be a better idea? I mean, really, what's original about having the Mona Lisa or Last Supper in your pad when you can have some truely original work for very little money?
Ok, fine. You are too cheap to get an original. I've got another plan for you. Dig around on the web for ultra-high resolution PSD, PNG, and the like, then print them out on a photo printer. Slap it in a frame and you've got the same thing and get to save money on your power bill.
Not really debating or disagreeing with anyone here but:
:(
Pump and dump is correct. Any attempts to apply any logic to this are just a waste of time.
This is exactly why SCO is taking it's issues up in the US courts. With the ignorance and insanity that dominates our legal system, they actually have a shot. A long shot, yes; but a shot, none the less.
You have to remember, a lot of the people who sit in high political offices are former judges. They are old white men who care about appeasing each other's financial interests and don't mind if all the geeks in the world want to rip their throats out. Plus, you have to remember that there's a good chance any random judge will have SCO or one of it's alliances somewhere in their investment portfolio. They probably don't care about Linux one bit, nor grasp the importance of the GPL. It's more likely someone in this mindset would think "Well, if this free stuff would go away, then people would have to buy software from the guys I've invested in.. More money! Woohoo!"...
If there was any sanity or fairness left in our courts and political systems, the DMCA would have never gone into law. Nor would we have gone to war in Iraq. It's a dark time for the little guy.
Yeah, but /. is less likely to have a privacy policy change that results in ass-loads of spam coming my way.
/Dale Gribble
Anyway, NY Times is a corrupt tool of government propoganda. Once you go through your "free registration", your in the system, man.
True. But the lower traffic ones only need a semi-proactive webmaster. Plus, you could play around with the code a bit and make it so enough -1 or -2 posts could result in the inability to post.
Spam is not very fun to debate. It's like a swamp in the back yard during flood season. It's only a matter of time before you wake up floating in it.
You could just run
As always, it only takes being around tech for a few years to go ahead and start knocking 20%-99% of whatever a company quotes on the capabilities of an item before it's actually put into service.