"Why the flying fuck did you allow the Man to kill your working pleasure?"
Why?, For money of course. I used to have a fun job doing microntroller development any way I wanted. I was the only programmer in the R&D hardware department(actually I did part programming and part breadboarding new designs). Thing was it was a small company (~50 employees) and I was making a pittance. For various reasons there was no future there or in the small town.
I doubled my salary, by moving and going to work for big corp (50000+ employees) . Big corp was pretty cool in the beginning. Lots of perks. Still a cool working environment etc...
Then we hit the wall. We laid off and outsourced more than half the staff and turned work into crap.During the dark times there was no jobs, most laid off went into real estate, auto mechanics, bus drivers etc... I "survived" 3 years of downsizing, But now I am 40+. Not many folks are that interested in old 40+ developers. It is a very rough job market for the 40+ crowd. Big corp still hires locally occaisionally and they ONLY hire kids right out of school. This is the common mode at most companies. Age-ism is alive and well. I feel a bit trapped, that is why I don't just find another job. Also you start to think about things like pensions if you can just hang on...
Great for you if you can keep the small projects work up for a long period of time, but the reality is most of us won't. Most developers probably end up doing the thankless job of maintaining huge monster legacy code bases somewhere (excluding the web/visual basic developers). There is no joy in this. Change two lines of code, do 4 hours of process. Even a small scale project in big corp wouldn't be too bad, but they are few and far between. Plus they are the still targets in the layoffs that are still happening.
BTW, I too have a great manager, who is into sailing, and have been out sailing with him. But a great manager isn't enough when you face big corp. There is little he can do.
And to those who said I wouldn't be going in if I didn't love it. You are nuts. It is a terrible thing to live in fear. It is fear not love that has me going in to run weekend test cases for code I didn't write. I do it because I don't want get laid off next.
Stay far, far away from big corp software development. Take less money to work on smaller projects if you must, because in the long run it will be better. Big corp will trap you and suck out your soul.
I would advise anyone who is not brilliant at development to seek another path.
Consider it if you are really love coding, and are extremely good, and confident enough in your skills to job jump, or set up your own consulting buisness etc. Unless this is true. Run, don't walk to another faculty.
Here is the reality of working as a developer in a big corporations. Crushing deathmarch deadlines. Tons of off hours solo work, and continual outsourcing. So much process overhead that it will suck any of the joy out of design/coding that ever existed for you. A process that is now vain as there exists a multi-million LOC monstrosity that is always ready to collapse.
Your interactions will consist mainly of mind dulling staff meetings, early morning, barely intelligible conference calls to far off lands attempting to keep outsource staff up to speed (good luck with that) while the real work will be long solo hours staring at a machine (evenings and weekends if need be).
I have always considered myself pretty good, but not the best. The only ones who really get much out of this job are the best.
I could go on, but hey it is a beautiful sunny Saturday and I have to go into work.
Over-reactions. Only small % will dual boot.
on
Going To Boot Camp
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You have to love the responses to this.
Type A: Woo who! Apple is going to the moon, and taking over the PC market. Brilliant... (stock market in this camp as well).
Type B: Apple just doomed themselves, OSX will die now...
Hmmm. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between? Which do I think it is closer?
First off, The vast majority will never dual boot. So this will not create a mass movement one way or the other. (A much bigger impact will be the virtualization program announced.
The only real impact will be those potential switchers who didn't want to abandon windows. A safety net. And the bet is that once they switch they will be doing more and more mac and less and less windows. So a small net win. I put myself in this camp.
Negative possabilities: Game devs will drop mac since they can dual boot. Well most people won't dual boot, I think they will simply watch sales of mac games. If Macs pick up market share, someone will want to exploit that with native games.
So I think this is a net positive, just not on the scale most think. This is of interest to me, but I am a small part of the market. Now where is is my Conroe Mac?
One of the biggest differences in LCD is wether it has a PVA/MVA/IPS/TN panel. Personally I don't like the tone shifts of PVA/MVA panels and would pay extra for an IPS panel, but it is very difficult to find out when they are used.
Most of the Dells use Samsung LCD panels, assembled by Acer/Benq.
There are some exceptions. I think they even reserve the right to change the panels at a whim. I saw specs for dell LCD's that said TFT type: PVA/IPS. Implying whatever we get cheap.
I don't want to feed brand rants, but almost all the Apple panels are IPS panels which don't suffer view angle problem nearly as bad as the PVA/MVA panels that are in most other LCDs. IPS panels generally cost more, but worth it IMO.
I couldn't agree more, though I think it is too subtle for most people, but I recently sold my new 24" otherwise beautifull dell widescreen.
While they claim 170 degree vieing angles, they actually change tone with about 10-20 degrees, it creates a glare, or some other edge effect that almost seems to create a false 3d effect.
Anyway I wouldn't say All. IPS panels seem MUCH better with angles so it might not be so bad, but IPS panels are more expensive and most monitors are PVA/MVA which change drastically with small angles.
I am going back to CRT, but IPS panels might be worth considering.
I am getting rid of my 2405, but every problem you describe is out to lunch.
Why on earth would anyone complain about having more inputs, except to Troll. RGB is nearly identical to DVI (both amazingly sharp). I connect it to my VCR for PIP all the time and even go full screen to also watch tv. Great stuff. I wouldn't buy a monitor that didn't at least have two connections. I am always connecting things to RGB.
The stand is fantastic in my opinion, Put to any height/angle easily and it just stays there.
Again the USB/Card reader are just bonus nothing to complain about.
It seems like you are just trolling, because you are largely complaining about bonus items.
The real issue for me is more substantial. I prefer IPS screen viewing angles, to the PVA ones.
But for now I plan on going back to CRT if I can sell it for a minimal loss.
I use it for everything. It is great as a media center. At 5-6 ft it no longer too bright and the angle of view is a non issue.
But sitting close enought to touch it and doing serious work. White fonts on dark backgrounds are searing bright. I get unwelcome brightness shifts in darker games. Yeah it can be further dimmed in the grapics card panel, but this has mixed results.
Anyway it is mostly me that has the problem, this is a widely loved monitor.
I just bought the 2405 and someone is coming to look at it soon as it is for sale and it is only days old. Beware that dell has a 15% restocking fee.
Make sure you like LCDs before you buy. They are very different than CRT.
I like a dim screen. The 2405 is very Bright, even at minimum settings. I tend to run my CRTs at minimum brightness so it hurts my eyes to use an LCD for long periods.
Viewing angle issues bother me a fair bit. Dark tones shift when only 20 degrees off axis. If you sit close to a 24" wide screen you are going to be off axis somewhere on screen. All MVA/PVA panels do this and they are most of the market. IPS panels seem much superior in this regard, but good luck finding one.
Some things you should try before you buy and this is one of them. 500cd brightness in a computer monitor is just insane. But it contributes to making that contrast number higher, but in no contributes to makeing a usable monitor.
Overall though, most people love this monitor. And there is a lot to love. It looks amazingly sharp, colorfull, black is deep, and it has connectivity for everything. Human factor of greater eye fatigue rule it out for me.
I have nothing against ads, just annoying ones. Ads are what makes the net go round.
Flashblock is a must have plugin for me. It is the first one I download. I disable gif animations as well, that way nothing jumps around on the screen. I go to pages for information not a show. Anything that moves, needs my permission.
I wish it was a dream, that is the only way I can reconcile the startling inconsistency after his head hit the desk.
With Baltar in mad dictator Caligula mode (complete with drug addiction and his own harem) running them into the ground, and Adama doing nothing about it. This is the man that put Roslyn in Jail for less. Now his only passtime is moustache growing.
Starbuck playing house in the shanty town, complete with hair extensions.
That last half hour was completely sureal and that is not a good thing for a series that has hard edged realism as its core.
It is easy to reconcile events of a flash forward, it is no so easy to reconcile the big change in most of the characters behavior. Inconsistent is how it appears to me. I bet that will never be addressed, they just needed to get to the next plot element in the most expedient manner and they broke character consistency to do it. A big miss-step. My respect for the creative team has dropped a large amount.
I was certain a box set was in my future, but now that is much less likely. I will judge it on it's complete merit when the series is done, but overall this finale lowered my view of the whole series from a 10 to an 8.
Well It was my favourite show last year, but this year it is taking on shark jumping proportions.
From "Deus ex machina" cures for cancer, to the totally surreal (not in a good way) final thirty minutes of the finale where every character seems so untrue to themselves, that any suspension of disbelief is shattered.
I felt like I was watching one of those "evil opposite universe" story lines from other sci fi. Or a self indulgent wierdness for the sake of wierdness episode like the twin peaks finale. At least in Peaks that wierdness was self consistent.
Of course diehards will paint this as being "brave", but to me it is one step removed from backwards talking dwarfs.
The brilliance of BSG was it's strong, even harsh realism in the face of the fantastic. The finale was self inconsistent and surreal. It left me cold.
Note that your list doesn't have the CELL final until April... This is late. Very late. The question is do you seriously believe it is AACS holding up launch till November?
PS3: - GLOBAL RELEASE NOVEMBER 11th - 60GB HDD 2.5" with pre-installed Linux OS will be included? - Dev kit specs fix as of today - Final PS3 development kits will be sent to developers in June - 10.000.000 BD-ROMS manufacturing capability per month @ cost around same as 2-layer DVD - Every PS3 game will be on a Blu Ray Disc, in an attempt to prevent piracy - Price will not be less than 50.000YEN (~$425USD) - PS3 will have HDMI support from launch - Sony plans to produce 1 million PS3s a month; 6 million PS3s for FY2006 (by the end of March 07) - Basic online service free, no details yet (could be XBLS for PS3) - Full backwards compatibility, hi-res and texture filtering for all titles (akin to what the Xbox 360 does to Halo) - The online service will be working off of GameSpy technology
This is just a convenient excuse. If you read the statements. The dev Kits are only going out in June!. This mean everything is behind, not just DRM which has no effect on games development. Further Blu-Ray players are also due in that timeframe and all the AACS discussions are over and finalized already. You don't even need a Blu Ray drive for Dev Kit and I bet even the final dev kits don't have one.
Sony is late with everything most likely the Cell processors and the programming tools for it. DRM is just a smokescreen, handy because really did have issues with both HD/BD getting it finalized, but it is now.
But in Sonys case it is a very stupid excuse, give the rootkit problems. Many people will percieve this is Sony being late so they can figure out new ways to screw us over with DRM. They really need new marketing droids before they release lame excuses like this.
"Almost every PC maker has made a fortune on the PC... In fact those companies made more money, faster than Apple. "
Really, which HW maker other than Dell brought in more profit on its PC buisness than Apple? I think most would kill to have Apples margins. You would have to be a total moron to trade a unique high quality brand margins for commodity margins. Dell is the only real HW winner as they are the master of efficiencies and commodity production. Would you rather see more companies in the world like Dell or like Apple?
"but they can't add many features to their OS that Apple already has in OS X due to anti-trust issues. It is wrong to hurt MS to help Apple, period. Both must be open or die."
A touch dramatic? Open or die? Just like Open Linux is destroying Closed MS right? As far as I can see Microsoft is facing zero restrictions in North America even though they probably should, since they wield monopoly powers which all but destroy anyone attempting to compete. Apple carved out it's niche by keeping itself somewhat insulated from Microsoft by sticking to selling the well itegrated package.
"All they need to do is make their unburdened OS available for a reasonable price, with the restriction that we do not get customer support, and that is it. Apple can do this cost effectively."
This is a simplistic argument. Apple is a hardware company. Apple could give their OS away for free and it really wouldn't gain much market share. What is the desktop market share of Solaris, Solaris is fantasic, robust, secure and mature OS. Millions of dollars into it's development. You can download it directly for free. How much do you think this improved the market share of Solaris? Face there is only one Microsoft. What works for them will not work for anyone else.
It would be corporate suicide to allow open licensing of OSX as it would merely gut the HW revenue stream and replace it with one less than 1% the size in dollar value.
People with a completely simplistic view of the world always insist that Apple should free the OS, and then they will steal marketshare from Microsoft and make Billions on SW. This idea is total nonsense.
The market share would not move at all, it might even drop, because Apple would effectively soon be out of the Hardware buisness and that is part of the attraction. People are funny creatures. They say they want quality, but they will buy crap at walmart until no one builds quality merchandise anymore.They just don't make Crappy Mac to buy a walmart, live with it.
"The best is still booting OSX on a white box. It may not be legal, and it may not suit the Mac addict crowd, but it's the only way to get their best product (OS X) on a reasonably open and competitive platform (the PC).
All they're doing is taking a really awful OS and making it work on an anti-competitive system. That's really not good for anyone, except Apple."
Apple is a buisness so that is why they restrict deployment to the extent that it is good for Apple. Seems reasonable to me.
I point out that it is good for me as well. And I wager quite a few others as well. I have no problem pay a few more bucks for nice apple HW. I am no Mac addict, never owned an Apple product of any sort before.
Even if Apple put a massive effort into supporting generic hardware and then offerred the OS for sale it would not net them any real increase in market share. The vast majority of people will never install a new OS on their computer and continue to use what their computer came with until they get a new computer. All Apple would do with generic sales is eat their own HW sales as Dell offered bargain basement Clones. Apple would be out of the computer biz without it's HW margins.
As far as hacked OSX on PC's, this is won't even by 1/10000 th of the market(so completely irrelevant). It will strictly be geeks who do it, to say they can. Much the same as Amiga owners who emulated classic Mac (I was one of them).
If someone really wants a Mac they will do what they always did. Buy a Mac.
The difference is now there is a significant barrier for entry removed. You can, if you need to, dual boot to windows to run you legacy Apps/Games.
Apple would never want to support this or even make it easy. But this is a boon. Many people such as myself who wouldn't switch previously will now consider it. In fact I am certain, my next computer will be a Conroe Mac. I predict the cool machine next year will be dual booting Mac with Conroe. Reminds of the old days when hackers liked the Amigas with x86 module that could run Dos/Amiga/Mac software all at full speed.
Why this won't negatively affect SW developers view of mac sales: The average Mac user is never going to set up a dual boot (especially given no support, difficulties involved) so this really won't impact software developer plans (ie they won't stop making Mac software). Even those who dual boot will probably prefer to have native Mac versions of software. In the end all Macs sold will be potential buyers of Mac software. That is why this is a perfect solution, no official support and difficulties make it something only those who MUST have it will do, so it will not have any significant percentage of people using a Mac, but buying Windows software for it.
Why this is better than booting OSX on a whitebox: Booting windows on a Mac, is a legal solution. Apple has said they are not doing anything to stop it. So you can have legal OSX and legal WinXP on the mac and keep them both updated with ease. Also the Mac which has less HW support will be running on it's intended platform. Windows should have no problem running on the same hardware. Contrast running pirate/hacked OSX on the whitebox (the only way to do it) which will always be of questionable stability and a fight to upgrade without breaking it.
Copy protection is the same system on HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Both of which are supposed to ship real soon now. Certainly long before november. So this doesn't wash as an excuse for me.
European Christianity was just coming out of the Dark ages around 1000AD. This was the same time Islamic societies entered into their own dark ages, shutting the doors on further pogress. Not much has changed for Islam since. Naturally during the Dark Ages for either culture, not much of scientific value is produced.
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/ijtihad.html "Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam."
Of course UMPC cost more. After all it weighs 4 times as much, that mass cost something. The Nokia is a piddly half pound, put that in a pocket and you might forget it is there and sit on it. Poor design Nokia.
Now the brilliant UMPC design weighs two pounds. No accidently forgetting you have that with you. And there is no way it will fit in a pocket so you are are less likely to sit on it. Brilliant design there, always thinking of the user.
Now isn't it worth $1000 (only reported actual price so far) to have a design big enough that you won't accidently have it in your pocket and sit on it?
BTW the only announced pricing I have seen is at least $1000. http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/03/09/umpc/index .php "Samsung plans to put the Q1 on sale in Europe before the end of June. The device will cost around 1,000 (US$1,190), it said."
Exactly what does this get you that a tiny subnotebook would not? Except looking like a dork as you stand around using it. Even using my PDA to read a lot, I prefer to sit down. If you are sitting down, a small notebooks is better has a real keyboard, holds itself up even in your lap to watch movies etc. With a tablet you have to hold it. Compare the size of the Samsung UMPC to the Sony VAIO. Almost the same, I would much rather have the Sony. Fold it and throw it in a bag. This thing will get scratched unless you carry it in a case....
Size: Samsung Q1 UMPC: 779g 230mm x 140mm 7-inch touchscreen LCD VAIO PCG-C1MSX: 998g 249mm x 152mm 8.9" LCD (only slightly bigger but real keyboard, bigger screen)
What exactly is Lucas referring to? Kong grossed 500 Million dollars and IMO it was a bad movie. Of course it still heaps better than anything Lucas did in about 20 years, so I guess we can't expect Lucas to judge quality.
I went to Kong with 4 friends and we were all dissapointed. And we are all Fans of Jackson/LOTR sci fi etc... Jackson went overboard to the point of it being extremely tedious to watch at times, and plain silly at other times. I would never want to sit through it again.
What I can't reconcile is the critical success this movie enjoyed. That plus other hype translated to box office, but in truth this was not a well executed movie. It would be better if it went on a diet and lost 45 minutes. Remove some of the sillyness and tedium.
"Apple can simply licence Fairplay so that non-Apple stores can sell music for the iPod."
Good point, this does seem like a more workable solution. Still might lose Itunes competetive advantage then. If a really good store came along, it could then advertise compatability with Ipod/non ipods.
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"Why the flying fuck did you allow the Man to kill your working pleasure?"
Why?, For money of course. I used to have a fun job doing microntroller development any way I wanted. I was the only programmer in the R&D hardware department(actually I did part programming and part breadboarding new designs). Thing was it was a small company (~50 employees) and I was making a pittance. For various reasons there was no future there or in the small town.
I doubled my salary, by moving and going to work for big corp (50000+ employees) . Big corp was pretty cool in the beginning. Lots of perks. Still a cool working environment etc...
Then we hit the wall. We laid off and outsourced more than half the staff and turned work into crap.During the dark times there was no jobs, most laid off went into real estate, auto mechanics, bus drivers etc... I "survived" 3 years of downsizing, But now I am 40+. Not many folks are that interested in old 40+ developers. It is a very rough job market for the 40+ crowd. Big corp still hires locally occaisionally and they ONLY hire kids right out of school. This is the common mode at most companies. Age-ism is alive and well. I feel a bit trapped, that is why I don't just find another job. Also you start to think about things like pensions if you can just hang on...
Great for you if you can keep the small projects work up for a long period of time, but the reality is most of us won't. Most developers probably end up doing the thankless job of maintaining huge monster legacy code bases somewhere (excluding the web/visual basic developers). There is no joy in this. Change two lines of code, do 4 hours of process. Even a small scale project in big corp wouldn't be too bad, but they are few and far between. Plus they are the still targets in the layoffs that are still happening.
BTW, I too have a great manager, who is into sailing, and have been out sailing with him. But a great manager isn't enough when you face big corp. There is little he can do.
And to those who said I wouldn't be going in if I didn't love it. You are nuts. It is a terrible thing to live in fear. It is fear not love that has me going in to run weekend test cases for code I didn't write. I do it because I don't want get laid off next.
Stay far, far away from big corp software development. Take less money to work on smaller projects if you must, because in the long run it will be better. Big corp will trap you and suck out your soul.
I would advise anyone who is not brilliant at development to seek another path.
Consider it if you are really love coding, and are extremely good, and confident enough in your skills to job jump, or set up your own consulting buisness etc. Unless this is true. Run, don't walk to another faculty.
Here is the reality of working as a developer in a big corporations. Crushing deathmarch deadlines. Tons of off hours solo work, and continual outsourcing. So much process overhead that it will suck any of the joy out of design/coding that ever existed for you. A process that is now vain as there exists a multi-million LOC monstrosity that is always ready to collapse.
Your interactions will consist mainly of mind dulling staff meetings, early morning, barely intelligible conference calls to far off lands attempting to keep outsource staff up to speed (good luck with that) while the real work will be long solo hours staring at a machine (evenings and weekends if need be).
I have always considered myself pretty good, but not the best. The only ones who really get much out of this job are the best.
I could go on, but hey it is a beautiful sunny Saturday and I have to go into work.
You have to love the responses to this.
Type A: Woo who! Apple is going to the moon, and taking over the PC market. Brilliant... (stock market in this camp as well).
Type B: Apple just doomed themselves, OSX will die now...
Hmmm. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between? Which do I think it is closer?
First off, The vast majority will never dual boot. So this will not create a mass movement one way or the other. (A much bigger impact will be the virtualization program announced.
The only real impact will be those potential switchers who didn't want to abandon windows. A safety net. And the bet is that once they switch they will be doing more and more mac and less and less windows. So a small net win. I put myself in this camp.
Negative possabilities: Game devs will drop mac since they can dual boot. Well most people won't dual boot, I think they will simply watch sales of mac games. If Macs pick up market share, someone will want to exploit that with native games.
So I think this is a net positive, just not on the scale most think. This is of interest to me, but I am a small part of the market. Now where is is my Conroe Mac?
One of the biggest differences in LCD is wether it has a PVA/MVA/IPS/TN panel. Personally I don't like the tone shifts of PVA/MVA panels and would pay extra for an IPS panel, but it is very difficult to find out when they are used.
Most of the Dells use Samsung LCD panels, assembled by Acer/Benq.
There are some exceptions. I think they even reserve the right to change the panels at a whim. I saw specs for dell LCD's that said TFT type: PVA/IPS. Implying whatever we get cheap.
I don't want to feed brand rants, but almost all the Apple panels are IPS panels which don't suffer view angle problem nearly as bad as the PVA/MVA panels that are in most other LCDs. IPS panels generally cost more, but worth it IMO.
I couldn't agree more, though I think it is too subtle for most people, but I recently sold my new 24" otherwise beautifull dell widescreen.
While they claim 170 degree vieing angles, they actually change tone with about 10-20 degrees, it creates a glare, or some other edge effect that almost seems to create a false 3d effect.
Anyway I wouldn't say All. IPS panels seem MUCH better with angles so it might not be so bad, but IPS panels are more expensive and most monitors are PVA/MVA which change drastically with small angles.
I am going back to CRT, but IPS panels might be worth considering.
Dells 24" is a Samsung PVA panel.
Apples 23" is an LG IPS panel (better panel type).
The vast majority of Dells are Samsung PVA panels with a couple of exceptions.
The vast majority of Apples are LG IPS panels.
I am getting rid of my 2405, but every problem you describe is out to lunch.
Why on earth would anyone complain about having more inputs, except to Troll. RGB is nearly identical to DVI (both amazingly sharp). I connect it to my VCR for PIP all the time and even go full screen to also watch tv. Great stuff. I wouldn't buy a monitor that didn't at least have two connections. I am always connecting things to RGB.
The stand is fantastic in my opinion, Put to any height/angle easily and it just stays there.
Again the USB/Card reader are just bonus nothing to complain about.
It seems like you are just trolling, because you are largely complaining about bonus items.
The real issue for me is more substantial. I prefer IPS screen viewing angles, to the PVA ones.
But for now I plan on going back to CRT if I can sell it for a minimal loss.
I use it for everything. It is great as a media center. At 5-6 ft it no longer too bright and the angle of view is a non issue.
But sitting close enought to touch it and doing serious work. White fonts on dark backgrounds are searing bright. I get unwelcome brightness shifts in darker games. Yeah it can be further dimmed in the grapics card panel, but this has mixed results.
Anyway it is mostly me that has the problem, this is a widely loved monitor.
I just bought the 2405 and someone is coming to look at it soon as it is for sale and it is only days old. Beware that dell has a 15% restocking fee.
Make sure you like LCDs before you buy. They are very different than CRT.
I like a dim screen. The 2405 is very Bright, even at minimum settings. I tend to run my CRTs at minimum brightness so it hurts my eyes to use an LCD for long periods.
Viewing angle issues bother me a fair bit. Dark tones shift when only 20 degrees off axis. If you sit close to a 24" wide screen you are going to be off axis somewhere on screen. All MVA/PVA panels do this and they are most of the market. IPS panels seem much superior in this regard, but good luck finding one.
Some things you should try before you buy and this is one of them. 500cd brightness in a computer monitor is just insane. But it contributes to making that contrast number higher, but in no contributes to makeing a usable monitor.
Overall though, most people love this monitor. And there is a lot to love. It looks amazingly sharp, colorfull, black is deep, and it has connectivity for everything. Human factor of greater eye fatigue rule it out for me.
I have nothing against ads, just annoying ones. Ads are what makes the net go round.
Flashblock is a must have plugin for me. It is the first one I download. I disable gif animations as well, that way nothing jumps around on the screen. I go to pages for information not a show. Anything that moves, needs my permission.
I wish it was a dream, that is the only way I can reconcile the startling inconsistency after his head hit the desk.
With Baltar in mad dictator Caligula mode (complete with drug addiction and his own harem) running them into the ground, and Adama doing nothing about it. This is the man that put Roslyn in Jail for less. Now his only passtime is moustache growing.
Starbuck playing house in the shanty town, complete with hair extensions.
That last half hour was completely sureal and that is not a good thing for a series that has hard edged realism as its core.
It is easy to reconcile events of a flash forward, it is no so easy to reconcile the big change in most of the characters behavior. Inconsistent is how it appears to me. I bet that will never be addressed, they just needed to get to the next plot element in the most expedient manner and they broke character consistency to do it. A big miss-step. My respect for the creative team has dropped a large amount.
I was certain a box set was in my future, but now that is much less likely. I will judge it on it's complete merit when the series is done, but overall this finale lowered my view of the whole series from a 10 to an 8.
Well It was my favourite show last year, but this year it is taking on shark jumping proportions.
From "Deus ex machina" cures for cancer, to the totally surreal (not in a good way) final thirty minutes of the finale where every character seems so untrue to themselves, that any suspension of disbelief is shattered.
I felt like I was watching one of those "evil opposite universe" story lines from other sci fi. Or a self indulgent wierdness for the sake of wierdness episode like the twin peaks finale. At least in Peaks that wierdness was self consistent.
Of course diehards will paint this as being "brave", but to me it is one step removed from backwards talking dwarfs.
The brilliance of BSG was it's strong, even harsh realism in the face of the fantastic. The finale was self inconsistent and surreal. It left me cold.
Note that your list doesn't have the CELL final until April... This is late. Very late.
e rence-news-roundup-160603.php
The question is do you seriously believe it is AACS holding up launch till November?
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/playstation-conf
Here's their summary so far for anyone who wants to catch up:
PS3:
- GLOBAL RELEASE NOVEMBER 11th
- 60GB HDD 2.5" with pre-installed Linux OS will be included?
- Dev kit specs fix as of today
- Final PS3 development kits will be sent to developers in June
- 10.000.000 BD-ROMS manufacturing capability per month @ cost around same as 2-layer DVD
- Every PS3 game will be on a Blu Ray Disc, in an attempt to prevent piracy
- Price will not be less than 50.000YEN (~$425USD)
- PS3 will have HDMI support from launch
- Sony plans to produce 1 million PS3s a month; 6 million PS3s for FY2006 (by the end of March 07)
- Basic online service free, no details yet (could be XBLS for PS3)
- Full backwards compatibility, hi-res and texture filtering for all titles (akin to what the Xbox 360 does to Halo)
- The online service will be working off of GameSpy technology
This is just a convenient excuse. If you read the statements. The dev Kits are only going out in June!. This mean everything is behind, not just DRM which has no effect on games development. Further Blu-Ray players are also due in that timeframe and all the AACS discussions are over and finalized already. You don't even need a Blu Ray drive for Dev Kit and I bet even the final dev kits don't have one.
Sony is late with everything most likely the Cell processors and the programming tools for it. DRM is just a smokescreen, handy because really did have issues with both HD/BD getting it finalized, but it is now.
But in Sonys case it is a very stupid excuse, give the rootkit problems. Many people will percieve this is Sony being late so they can figure out new ways to screw us over with DRM. They really need new marketing droids before they release lame excuses like this.
"Almost every PC maker has made a fortune on the PC... In fact those companies made more money, faster than Apple. "
Really, which HW maker other than Dell brought in more profit on its PC buisness than Apple? I think most would kill to have Apples margins. You would have to be a total moron to trade a unique high quality brand margins for commodity margins. Dell is the only real HW winner as they are the master of efficiencies and commodity production. Would you rather see more companies in the world like Dell or like Apple?
"but they can't add many features to their OS that Apple already has in OS X due to anti-trust issues. It is wrong to hurt MS to help Apple, period. Both must be open or die."
A touch dramatic? Open or die? Just like Open Linux is destroying Closed MS right? As far as I can see Microsoft is facing zero restrictions in North America even though they probably should, since they wield monopoly powers which all but destroy anyone attempting to compete. Apple carved out it's niche by keeping itself somewhat insulated from Microsoft by sticking to selling the well itegrated package.
"All they need to do is make their unburdened OS available for a reasonable price, with the restriction that we do not get customer support, and that is it. Apple can do this cost effectively."
This is a simplistic argument. Apple is a hardware company. Apple could give their OS away for free and it really wouldn't gain much market share. What is the desktop market share of Solaris, Solaris is fantasic, robust, secure and mature OS. Millions of dollars into it's development. You can download it directly for free. How much do you think this improved the market share of Solaris? Face there is only one Microsoft. What works for them will not work for anyone else.
It would be corporate suicide to allow open licensing of OSX as it would merely gut the HW revenue stream and replace it with one less than 1% the size in dollar value.
People with a completely simplistic view of the world always insist that Apple should free the OS, and then they will steal marketshare from Microsoft and make Billions on SW. This idea is total nonsense.
The market share would not move at all, it might even drop, because Apple would effectively soon be out of the Hardware buisness and that is part of the attraction. People are funny creatures. They say they want quality, but they will buy crap at walmart until no one builds quality merchandise anymore.They just don't make Crappy Mac to buy a walmart, live with it.
"The best is still booting OSX on a white box. It may not be legal, and it may not suit the Mac addict crowd, but it's the only way to get their best product (OS X) on a reasonably open and competitive platform (the PC).
All they're doing is taking a really awful OS and making it work on an anti-competitive system. That's really not good for anyone, except Apple."
Apple is a buisness so that is why they restrict deployment to the extent that it is good for Apple. Seems reasonable to me.
I point out that it is good for me as well. And I wager quite a few others as well. I have no problem pay a few more bucks for nice apple HW. I am no Mac addict, never owned an Apple product of any sort before.
Even if Apple put a massive effort into supporting generic hardware and then offerred the OS for sale it would not net them any real increase in market share. The vast majority of people will never install a new OS on their computer and continue to use what their computer came with until they get a new computer. All Apple would do with generic sales is eat their own HW sales as Dell offered bargain basement Clones. Apple would be out of the computer biz without it's HW margins.
As far as hacked OSX on PC's, this is won't even by 1/10000 th of the market(so completely irrelevant). It will strictly be geeks who do it, to say they can. Much the same as Amiga owners who emulated classic Mac (I was one of them).
If someone really wants a Mac they will do what they always did. Buy a Mac.
The difference is now there is a significant barrier for entry removed. You can, if you need to, dual boot to windows to run you legacy Apps/Games.
Apple would never want to support this or even make it easy. But this is a boon. Many people such as myself who wouldn't switch previously will now consider it. In fact I am certain, my next computer will be a Conroe Mac. I predict the cool machine next year will be dual booting Mac with Conroe. Reminds of the old days when hackers liked the Amigas with x86 module that could run Dos/Amiga/Mac software all at full speed.
Why this won't negatively affect SW developers view of mac sales:
The average Mac user is never going to set up a dual boot (especially given no support, difficulties involved) so this really won't impact software developer plans (ie they won't stop making Mac software). Even those who dual boot will probably prefer to have native Mac versions of software. In the end all Macs sold will be potential buyers of Mac software. That is why this is a perfect solution, no official support and difficulties make it something only those who MUST have it will do, so it will not have any significant percentage of people using a Mac, but buying Windows software for it.
Why this is better than booting OSX on a whitebox:
Booting windows on a Mac, is a legal solution. Apple has said they are not doing anything to stop it. So you can have legal OSX and legal WinXP on the mac and keep them both updated with ease. Also the Mac which has less HW support will be running on it's intended platform. Windows should have no problem running on the same hardware. Contrast running pirate/hacked OSX on the whitebox (the only way to do it) which will always be of questionable stability and a fight to upgrade without breaking it.
Way to go guys!
Copy protection is the same system on HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Both of which are supposed to ship real soon now. Certainly long before november. So this doesn't wash as an excuse for me.
Then again this seems far from official.
European Christianity was just coming out of the Dark ages around 1000AD. This was the same time Islamic societies entered into their own dark ages, shutting the doors on further pogress. Not much has changed for Islam since. Naturally during the Dark Ages for either culture, not much of scientific value is produced.
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/ijtihad.html
"Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam."
Of course UMPC cost more. After all it weighs 4 times as much, that mass cost something. The Nokia is a piddly half pound, put that in a pocket and you might forget it is there and sit on it. Poor design Nokia.
Now the brilliant UMPC design weighs two pounds. No accidently forgetting you have that with you. And there is no way it will fit in a pocket so you are are less likely to sit on it. Brilliant design there, always thinking of the user.
Now isn't it worth $1000 (only reported actual price so far) to have a design big enough that you won't accidently have it in your pocket and sit on it?
BTW the only announced pricing I have seen is at least $1000.x .php
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http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/03/09/umpc/inde
"Samsung plans to put the Q1 on sale in Europe before the end of June. The device will cost around 1,000 (US$1,190), it said."
Exactly what does this get you that a tiny subnotebook would not? Except looking like a dork as you stand around using it. Even using my PDA to read a lot, I prefer to sit down. If you are sitting down, a small notebooks is better has a real keyboard, holds itself up even in your lap to watch movies etc. With a tablet you have to hold it. Compare the size of the Samsung UMPC to the Sony VAIO. Almost the same, I would much rather have the Sony. Fold it and throw it in a bag. This thing will get scratched unless you carry it in a case....
Size:
Samsung Q1 UMPC: 779g 230mm x 140mm 7-inch touchscreen LCD
VAIO PCG-C1MSX: 998g 249mm x 152mm 8.9" LCD (only slightly bigger but real keyboard, bigger screen)
Jpgs:
http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/03/samsung_q1.
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleimages/transv
More stuff on the VAIO, I think this one never made it to North america, but the could bring it back using the UMPC chips:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=
Put the same processor in each, which would you rather have, tablet or submini notebook?
What exactly is Lucas referring to? Kong grossed 500 Million dollars and IMO it was a bad movie. Of course it still heaps better than anything Lucas did in about 20 years, so I guess we can't expect Lucas to judge quality.
I went to Kong with 4 friends and we were all dissapointed. And we are all Fans of Jackson/LOTR sci fi etc... Jackson went overboard to the point of it being extremely tedious to watch at times, and plain silly at other times. I would never want to sit through it again.
What I can't reconcile is the critical success this movie enjoyed. That plus other hype translated to box office, but in truth this was not a well executed movie. It would be better if it went on a diet and lost 45 minutes. Remove some of the sillyness and tedium.
"Apple can simply licence Fairplay so that non-Apple stores can sell music for the iPod."
Good point, this does seem like a more workable solution. Still might lose Itunes competetive advantage then. If a really good store came along, it could then advertise compatability with Ipod/non ipods.
Then again I don't care. I won't by DRM'd music.