This is a lightweight Kit Car with a VW TDI engine driving the rear wheels and an electic motor driving the front wheels. Unlikely that the electrics do anything but boost accelleration. 50MPG is not unheard of for a VW TDI without electic assist.
Neat that kids did it, but it is no surprise that if you build an ultra lightweight hybrid diesel with hybrid, that you will get great mileage/accelleration. The challenge car companies face is making the weight in the regulatory framework and still making it practical enough to own. This is all but impossible.
What we really need is some change in regulations to allow lightweight city cars to exist, so we can get great gas mileage.
The problem here is that there is no Open DRM standard. So any company building players and having a music system would love to use their own free DRM system that they don't have to pay royalties on. Apple succeeded in doing this. Everyone else decided to feed at the Microsoft booth. Instead of whining, Real, Napster et al, should band together and build an open royalty free DRM and give it two HW manufacturers and run their services on that, rather than complaining that the big two won't interoperate. Which Apple really can't do without cutting their own throat.
Apple really needs to maintain Fairplay exclusively or cede yet another market to Microsoft. Remember when Palm had a PDA monopoly? Remember when Sony owned Video Games. Apple is just desperately trying to hang on to that one niche that Microsoft hasn't crushed with it's computing monopoly and mountain of Cash (Yet).
Apple won't license fairplay for the same reason they don't license OSX, they make money selling hardware. What happens if they license fairplay?
1: Stiffer competition in hardware sales, in fact Apple will find itself at a competitive disadvantage, as competing players will have fairplay and playforsure.
2: Apple forced to license play4sure from microsoft. Because of the competitive disadvantage they would be in, Apple would be forced to licence ($$$) play4sure from Microsoft. Can you see how distastefull this is.
Now where are we. Apple has now lost it's competitive advantage and was forced to pay money to arch rival computer monopolist microsoft, just to stay competitive. No wonder they won't open Fairplay up.
So music services, quit your damn whining and make a free, open DRM solution available to both music services and HW companies and break free of the big two.
To pay more money, and go through the pain of a reinstall, there must be a killer feature. I use Win2k and I still don't see a feature I am missing.
My productivity/entertainment/leisure all comes from application features, not OS features. The OS is merely an enabler and I don't see any reason to upgrade yet.
Maybe on my next computer but even there with the levelling off on HW, my 2GHz Barton core with ATI 9700 Pro is still going strong and my Nforce (first version) with superb onboard sound and DD encoding still hasn't been topped. Zero reason to upgrade anything right now. The curve has definitely flattened.
I am already following that discussion. I may comment in it later. If you wish to continue here please email me. I doubt anyone else is interested in the back and forth.
"That is a great example, because it actually shows one of Foveon's great strengths. yes to some extent false detail is presented. However what you convienently fail to mention is the alterantive in such cases that the Bayer chip presents - gray shapeless mush."
Well if you believe that, then it is the perfect camera for you. That is clear example of Aliasing error and it doesn't look in any way natural, it looks like moire to me. This seems to be the big deciding factor between those who prefer the Sigma. Those who like this false detail, prefer sigma images.
As far as your offerred comparisons, if you have seen any comparison discussions before, then you should know that it is totally pointless to compare completely differernt images.
Take comparable lenses, shoot the same subject under the same light in RAW mode.Then compare an 8MP bayer camera and it will capture marginally more detail than the sigma.
Certain manufactures have much better interpolation than others, but they are all getting pretty good in recent years, especially the big names (Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony). My G6 has RAW mode and I have done a fair bit of testing Jpg vs RAW (from multiple converters).
You will see essentially no differnce between Canon RAW vs Canon jpg. You need to use a 3rd party converter to extract a tiny bit more detail. Canon does a bit of noise smoothing in both the jpgs and the RAW converter. Get a 3rd party converter and you can convert without the noise smoothing to get a tiny bit more detail but a bit more noise. From my printing test this is only slightly visible in a 13x19 print to the most picky of people and not visible at all in 8x10.
The 20d has extremely low noise ISO3200 that blows away any color film/transparency. In black an white mode its noise profile is an easy match for any B&W film/transparency. I think digital is more adaptable, being able to do ISO 100-3200 with lower noise, in color or in B&W and all at the flip of a button.
Some people don't realize how much more noise there is in film than in digital, look at this 11MP 1ds vs Provia 100. Notice the noise on the Provia.
So yes if going for ultimate resolution in B&W you can still do better with film. Otherwise the digital SLR is superior.
"They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.
The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well."
This utterly fails to take into account how the human visual system works. It also fails to take into account the necessity of filtering when sampling. It also fails to take into account the sophistication of current interpolation algorithms.
The Bayer pattern is actually just about the most efficient layout for capturing images for human perception. I have done dozens of camparison of images capture using the 6Million Bayer arrayed sensors, versus 10.2 Million layered sensors. In the end they are essentially equivalent. The bayer layout allows you to do more with less by taking into account the human image processing system that is heavily organized to toward luminance/green information.
It is utter fanboy nonsense to say a bayer 8MP camera turns into a 2MP when taking fall foliage shots. In any real world situation including fall foliage, an 8MP bayer camera like the Canon 350D will capture more detail than the Foveon sensored SD10 NEW 10.2 Million Pixels (3.4 Mp Red + 3.4 MP Green + 3.4 Mp Blue) (description from Sigma USA page).
As technical bunch we should be able to understand that optimization is sometimes better than brute force. By tilting the sensor toward green, it is tilted toward luminance capture and tilted toward the way humans view details.
In thousand of empirical comparison online, parity is reached when there is an approximately equal number of green sensors. So 6MP bayer (3MP green) where approximate equal to 10.2MP foveon chip with ~3MP green. Actual 10MP bayer (5MP green) cameras like Nikon D200 easily capture much more detail than Sigmas 10.2MP chip.
The sampling issue. The Sigma has no filter to prevent undersampling artifacts. It doesn't suffer from colour moire artifacts, but it has plenty of luminance moire. See here for an ancient comparison of the 6MP Canon D60 and the 10.2MP Sigma SD9: http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/DigPhotog/alias/ Scroll to the photo comparison at the end. The only extra detail in the Foveon based image is Aliasing errors. These are extremely prevalent in Sigma images with sharp diagnals, or repeating patterns beyond the Nyquist frequency of the sensor.
In the end, bayer is an excellent engineering optimization to do more with less. The real comparison that counts is how does it compare with film. A 6mp Bayer sensor in an DSLR is already better than 35mm film. By 10MP it is significantly better.
The other important factor is how the bayer DPI translates in the printed image. I have found that around 240 DPI is close to optimal image quality. So a Canon 350D with a 3456 pixel image width can produce a superb quality image about 14 inches wide. Be aware this is not to say you can't print larger. This is highly subjective depending on source material, but with detailed material this is the point where I consider that you would be hard pressed to notice any improvement from more pixels.
So even if you only want to print 13"x19" I think you could still see improvement from more pixels if printing detailed subjects like landscapes.
You can argue the quandry of subject, material and view distance till the cows come when considering viable prints size. I mere wish to express what I consider the
Hopefully "Supreme Commander" captures some of the magic. Though I think sometimes everything just lines up to make a standout game.
I will never forget multiplayer games of TA that I had, the total fear the first time a Big Bertha had my base under fire. Or the innocent days when you all suck and some brawlers could chew through the enemy. Great times using the corporate ISDN network for 2vs2 play. Ahh man, good times.
The biggest factor that I see is recognition of top talent. This is essentially the same thing I see Google doing.
"Jobs has believed that small teams of top talent will outperform better-funded big ones. He has used the same approach at Pixar, where creative chief John Lasseter has led the way in creating blockbusters like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Jobs also outsources far more selectively than his rivals. He'd rather have all his creatives working together than save a few bucks by outsourcing such work overseas."
I work designing telecom software and I see the opposite. Software personal here are hired and managed like cattle. They throw bodies at problems and the cheaper the bodies, the better(we are currently ramping India and China labs while downsizing Texas labs). They create a process that is aimed at the lowest common denominator and that is the result it has, lowest common denominator performance.
If you want to be the best, you hire the best and remove obstacles from their path, and demand their best.
I have occasionally had the priviledege to work in an environment that empowered the talented employees and encouraged them to do great things. It is amazing. But those days are gone now.
Some have an almost accusatory tone when referring to Jobs micromanaging. I think of it as taking a direct interest in the quality and showing it. Encouraging his people to do great things.
I would rather be encouraged by a perfectionist wanting great things, than the mindless hordes of management graduates with decks of powerpoint slides and MS project plans indicating when every piece is projected to be done by the headcount. Mindlessly they shuffle bodies around when reality doesn't line up to projections.
Building leading technology will always be a least partially like producing great art. It will be the domain of creative driven talent, not commodity bodies monitored in MS project plan.
I really think you are dreaming if you think they will remove that fee. Hypocrisy is something that both government and corporations are quite comfortable with.
So the model will be you are all collectively guilty (levy), but some are even more guilty (lawsuits).
Thus far we haven't had lawsuits here. You can count on the conservatives to give CRIA the same options as RIAA has in the USA. Conservatives are pretty near the same as the GOP. #1 rule, the most buisness friendly climate possible, and that means friendly to squashing those evil 12 year girls downloading mp3s with massive lawsuits.
The political parties are all have a different ratio in favoring the individual/corporation. The conservatives are farthest to the right and will favor corporations the most over individuals.
The last several years I have been saddened by the steady shift of the political climate of the USA. This stuff gives me chills.
Now we are set to elect our own extreme right party here. I never thought a party this far to the right would get elected in this country. High on their platform, abolishing gay marriage. The new leader ends his speeches with God bless Canada (something usually not done in Canadian Politics). Beefing up the military, tax cuts aimed at the wealthy. He has already complained of activist judges.
I am not looking forward to history repeating itself up here.
They would end up screwing themselves. I think the only reason Jobs would like to see Gates build an MP3 player is in hopes of getting a cross licensing deal on DRM.
Here is what happens if fairplay gets licensed:
Significant marketing advantage for all iPods competitors. They can play Fairplay and Playforsure.
That would place apple in the unenviable position of having to get a Playforsure license from Microsoft for all its iPods to negate that advantage.
Before Fairplay licensing: Ipod competetive advantage, no DRM royalties.
After Fairply licensing: No Ipod competetive advantage, DRM royalties on each player to Microsoft.
To put it bluntly. Licensing Fairplay would be an incredible boneheaded move on Apples part.
I mean we pay for our download/upload bandwidth on the user end. The companies pay for it on their end already.
So already the content user and the content provider have paid for their upload/download bandwidth agreements.
Now they stroll out and want to extort the content provider. Hey, you want your users to not run into trouble, you need to pay us some money to protect your interests, otherwise it could get messy for them. Sheesh!
Didn't google buy some dark fiber. Google ISP. Lightweight no frills, no throttling. Sign me up.:-)
The mini mac was supposed to be the risk free way that someone could cheaply try out a mac with little risk, but an Intel Mac dual booting windows is an even better trial and transition machine.
Naturally you only plan to dual boot with a few key apps and seldom may soon become never, but it gives piece of mind about leaving behind your windows software.
I am waiting for the Intel Mac Mini as my first potential Mac.
The pace of change is increasing dramatically, 10 years is plenty to recoup value on research if that is the real purpose of patents. Beyond that patents expiring sooner means more can easily be built upon that patent freely.
"If you have these apps/games you don't want to do away with, why do you want to make the switch in the first place?"
Why would anyone want to do away with ALL of their software that just does not make any sense. In 10+ years of Windows use I am bound to have some software I don't want to junk. Does this mean I must use windows forever?
Wasn't there a 68k Mac emulator for new PPC macs. I wonder why. Wasn't there an Apple II emulator card for the Mac? Rosseta for Intel Macs, Dos emulation boxes on WinXp etc...
Most everyone I would think wants to access their old software during the transition time. Myself included.
I don't need a Mac, but I do want one(just time for a change), and making the transition easy will make that want a reality. Like most other computer transitions I have made (in 20 years of ownership) it usually takes a year to completely leave behind old software, and during that interval it is very nice to have easy access to all the previous software.
Re:Digital out 5.1 works works with divx, xvid
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"Wrong. I have plenty of OGM and MKV files that have 6 channel AAC audio."
Well it works fine for Avi (that most people use) and while I have seen a few OGM's I have never seen one with AC3. If I could find one I would try it, but since I can't find one, I am hardly concerned about something I can't even find.
Digital out 5.1 works works with divx, xvid
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"This is not a big deal for DVDs because most soundcards have Dolby digital pass through -- so they pass the 5.1 signal to your A/V receiver and it decodes the signal. However, for MP3's, downloaded movies, or anything else you are play on your HTPC, there is no real 5.1 solution --- unless you go with a Turtle Beach unit (or M-Audio, which I haven't tried). Yes, you can "simulate" but at the core, it's only a stereo feed with most sound cards."
Actually you are not quite correct. Anything with DTS/DD will passthrough on digital for full 5.1. This INCLUDES divx,xvid movies that have properly encoded soundtracks. I watch them all the time. You just need to properly set up your player with the proper SPDIF settings. I use media player classic and allows this setup but it can take a bit of looking around to find all the proper settings.
If they don't have AC-3 soundtracks then they are STEREO and you are simply "simulating" 5.1 in your audio card (dolby surround) and encoding that to AC3. How is that any better, actually it is probably worse since you are re-encoding for no gain, better send it is unadulterated stereo into the reciever and use Dolby Prologic to playback.
Just about the only source where you have the situation of multichannel and no dolby encoding is with multichannel gaming. Most sound solutions don't do this. Either you have to use analog connections or live with stereo over the digital conneciton. My Nforce MB does encode this, but after doing a couple of times I found it never made enough differnce to worry about. Stereo and Dolby Prologic is sufficient for my gaming. I haven't used my Nforce native dolby encoding in years. Everything is passthrough to digital out, either PCM or AC3 without re-encoding.
This is exactly what I am looking for to ease my transition to OSX.
Addressing complaints about this strategy I have heard:
Dual boot is a pain: it is not that bad for infequent usage and I already did the same for over a year, back when transitioning from Win98 to Win2k. It is not like you are going to switch back and forth 6 times a day. If you are, then this is not a good idea for you.
Dual boot means the end to Mac Software: Dual boot IS a pain if you are going to do it frequently. So it is not like you buy new software that will make you do it more. It is merely legacy support used less and less and eventually not at all.
Use a separate PC: Why? Part of this is I want a nice high quality, low noise solution in my space challenged apt.
What this does is make it very easy for me to transition to OSX, while still painlessly using my Garmin GPS software (they are planning mac version eventually) and some misc games like Total Annihilation and Baldurs Gate. Eventually I will probably use only the OSX side, but in the interim it provides easy acces to legacy software.
I look forward to eventually getting instructions on getting this going.
Yes I currently have a PC. But I also want access to nicely engineered quiet Mac HW in my apartment and ditch the noisy old boxen. It is about making the transition easier that is all. I don't consider dual boot that bad. I dual booted Win98/Win2k for about a year while making that transition.
"If it is difficult for you to switch, why would you want to? Why would you consider it? Apple hardware and OSX is very nice in my opinion, but there's nothing it does that windows or linux can't do"
I absolutely didn't get what you have againsts making the transition easier. Would you have raised the same complaint when I switched from win98 to Win2k and used dual boot for over a year to make the transition easier.
I think not, it is clear from the above that you have a problem because I wan't to switch to a Mac, so I guess you are just another Anti-Mac zealot. It is not making the transition easier that gets on your nerves it is making the transition at all.
Slashdot Mirror
http://evteam.gambitdesign.com/gallery/attack_buil d
Some items not mentioned in the original article.
This is a lightweight Kit Car with a VW TDI engine driving the rear wheels and an electic motor driving the front wheels. Unlikely that the electrics do anything but boost accelleration. 50MPG is not unheard of for a VW TDI without electic assist.
Neat that kids did it, but it is no surprise that if you build an ultra lightweight hybrid diesel with hybrid, that you will get great mileage/accelleration. The challenge car companies face is making the weight in the regulatory framework and still making it practical enough to own. This is all but impossible.
What we really need is some change in regulations to allow lightweight city cars to exist, so we can get great gas mileage.
The problem here is that there is no Open DRM standard. So any company building players and having a music system would love to use their own free DRM system that they don't have to pay royalties on. Apple succeeded in doing this. Everyone else decided to feed at the Microsoft booth. Instead of whining, Real, Napster et al, should band together and build an open royalty free DRM and give it two HW manufacturers and run their services on that, rather than complaining that the big two won't interoperate. Which Apple really can't do without cutting their own throat.
Apple really needs to maintain Fairplay exclusively or cede yet another market to Microsoft. Remember when Palm had a PDA monopoly? Remember when Sony owned Video Games. Apple is just desperately trying to hang on to that one niche that Microsoft hasn't crushed with it's computing monopoly and mountain of Cash (Yet).
Apple won't license fairplay for the same reason they don't license OSX, they make money selling hardware. What happens if they license fairplay?
1: Stiffer competition in hardware sales, in fact Apple will find itself at a competitive disadvantage, as competing players will have fairplay and playforsure.
2: Apple forced to license play4sure from microsoft. Because of the competitive disadvantage they would be in, Apple would be forced to licence ($$$) play4sure from Microsoft. Can you see how distastefull this is.
Now where are we. Apple has now lost it's competitive advantage and was forced to pay money to arch rival computer monopolist microsoft, just to stay competitive. No wonder they won't open Fairplay up.
So music services, quit your damn whining and make a free, open DRM solution available to both music services and HW companies and break free of the big two.
The column adds up to $800 and they have $900 under it. A pretty obvious mistake from financial ANALysts.
Who is in a hurry to upgrade their OS?
To pay more money, and go through the pain of a reinstall, there must be a killer feature. I use Win2k and I still don't see a feature I am missing.
My productivity/entertainment/leisure all comes from application features, not OS features. The OS is merely an enabler and I don't see any reason to upgrade yet.
Maybe on my next computer but even there with the levelling off on HW, my 2GHz Barton core with ATI 9700 Pro is still going strong and my Nforce (first version) with superb onboard sound and DD encoding still hasn't been topped. Zero reason to upgrade anything right now. The curve has definitely flattened.
I am already following that discussion. I may comment in it later. If you wish to continue here please email me. I doubt anyone else is interested in the back and forth.
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/DigPhotog/alias/
"That is a great example, because it actually shows one of Foveon's great strengths. yes to some extent false detail is presented. However what you convienently fail to mention is the alterantive in such cases that the Bayer chip presents - gray shapeless mush."
Well if you believe that, then it is the perfect camera for you. That is clear example of Aliasing error and it doesn't look in any way natural, it looks like moire to me. This seems to be the big deciding factor between those who prefer the Sigma. Those who like this false detail, prefer sigma images.
As far as your offerred comparisons, if you have seen any comparison discussions before, then you should know that it is totally pointless to compare completely differernt images.
Take comparable lenses, shoot the same subject under the same light in RAW mode.Then compare an 8MP bayer camera and it will capture marginally more detail than the sigma.
Certain manufactures have much better interpolation than others, but they are all getting pretty good in recent years, especially the big names (Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony). My G6 has RAW mode and I have done a fair bit of testing Jpg vs RAW (from multiple converters).
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You will see essentially no differnce between Canon RAW vs Canon jpg. You need to use a 3rd party converter to extract a tiny bit more detail. Canon does a bit of noise smoothing in both the jpgs and the RAW converter. Get a 3rd party converter and you can convert without the noise smoothing to get a tiny bit more detail but a bit more noise. From my printing test this is only slightly visible in a 13x19 print to the most picky of people and not visible at all in 8x10.
As for 35mm, you are looking at the extreme fringe use, there is a small advantage in detial capture for B&W, That is about it. As far as shooting ISO 3200, see here: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2004/10/06/canon2
The 20d has extremely low noise ISO3200 that blows away any color film/transparency. In black an white mode its noise profile is an easy match for any B&W film/transparency. I think digital is more adaptable, being able to do ISO 100-3200 with lower noise, in color or in B&W and all at the flip of a button.
Some people don't realize how much more noise there is in film than in digital, look at this 11MP 1ds vs Provia 100. Notice the noise on the Provia.
So yes if going for ultimate resolution in B&W you can still do better with film. Otherwise the digital SLR is superior.
"They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.
The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well."
This utterly fails to take into account how the human visual system works. It also fails to take into account the necessity of filtering when sampling. It also fails to take into account the sophistication of current interpolation algorithms.
The Bayer pattern is actually just about the most efficient layout for capturing images for human perception. I have done dozens of camparison of images capture using the 6Million Bayer arrayed sensors, versus 10.2 Million layered sensors. In the end they are essentially equivalent. The bayer layout allows you to do more with less by taking into account the human image processing system that is heavily organized to toward luminance/green information.
It is utter fanboy nonsense to say a bayer 8MP camera turns into a 2MP when taking fall foliage shots. In any real world situation including fall foliage, an 8MP bayer camera like the Canon 350D will capture more detail than the Foveon sensored SD10 NEW 10.2 Million Pixels (3.4 Mp Red + 3.4 MP Green + 3.4 Mp Blue) (description from Sigma USA page).
As technical bunch we should be able to understand that optimization is sometimes better than brute force. By tilting the sensor toward green, it is tilted toward luminance capture and tilted toward the way humans view details.
In thousand of empirical comparison online, parity is reached when there is an approximately equal number of green sensors. So 6MP bayer (3MP green) where approximate equal to 10.2MP foveon chip with ~3MP green. Actual 10MP bayer (5MP green) cameras like Nikon D200 easily capture much more detail than Sigmas 10.2MP chip.
The sampling issue. The Sigma has no filter to prevent undersampling artifacts. It doesn't suffer from colour moire artifacts, but it has plenty of luminance moire. See here for an ancient comparison of the 6MP Canon D60 and the 10.2MP Sigma SD9:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/DigPhotog/alias/
Scroll to the photo comparison at the end. The only extra detail in the Foveon based image is Aliasing errors. These are extremely prevalent in Sigma images with sharp diagnals, or repeating patterns beyond the Nyquist frequency of the sensor.
In the end, bayer is an excellent engineering optimization to do more with less. The real comparison that counts is how does it compare with film. A 6mp Bayer sensor in an DSLR is already better than 35mm film. By 10MP it is significantly better.
The other important factor is how the bayer DPI translates in the printed image. I have found that around 240 DPI is close to optimal image quality. So a Canon 350D with a 3456 pixel image width can produce a superb quality image about 14 inches wide. Be aware this is not to say you can't print larger. This is highly subjective depending on source material, but with detailed material this is the point where I consider that you would be hard pressed to notice any improvement from more pixels.
So even if you only want to print 13"x19" I think you could still see improvement from more pixels if printing detailed subjects like landscapes.
You can argue the quandry of subject, material and view distance till the cows come when considering viable prints size. I mere wish to express what I consider the
Hopefully "Supreme Commander" captures some of the magic. Though I think sometimes everything just lines up to make a standout game.
d er/news.html?sid=6134783
I will never forget multiplayer games of TA that I had, the total fear the first time a Big Bertha had my base under fire. Or the innocent days when you all suck and some brawlers could chew through the enemy. Great times using the corporate ISDN network for 2vs2 play. Ahh man, good times.
In case you haven't heard:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecomman
I have played these two more than any other games I bought. Played them each for years, still will play them today.
The biggest factor that I see is recognition of top talent. This is essentially the same thing I see Google doing.
"Jobs has believed that small teams of top talent will outperform better-funded big ones. He has used the same approach at Pixar, where creative chief John Lasseter has led the way in creating blockbusters like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Jobs also outsources far more selectively than his rivals. He'd rather have all his creatives working together than save a few bucks by outsourcing such work overseas."
I work designing telecom software and I see the opposite. Software personal here are hired and managed like cattle. They throw bodies at problems and the cheaper the bodies, the better(we are currently ramping India and China labs while downsizing Texas labs). They create a process that is aimed at the lowest common denominator and that is the result it has, lowest common denominator performance.
If you want to be the best, you hire the best and remove obstacles from their path, and demand their best.
I have occasionally had the priviledege to work in an environment that empowered the talented employees and encouraged them to do great things. It is amazing. But those days are gone now.
Some have an almost accusatory tone when referring to Jobs micromanaging. I think of it as taking a direct interest in the quality and showing it. Encouraging his people to do great things.
I would rather be encouraged by a perfectionist wanting great things, than the mindless hordes of management graduates with decks of powerpoint slides and MS project plans indicating when every piece is projected to be done by the headcount. Mindlessly they shuffle bodies around when reality doesn't line up to projections.
Building leading technology will always be a least partially like producing great art. It will be the domain of creative driven talent, not commodity bodies monitored in MS project plan.
I really think you are dreaming if you think they will remove that fee. Hypocrisy is something that both government and corporations are quite comfortable with.
So the model will be you are all collectively guilty (levy), but some are even more guilty (lawsuits).
Just wait and see...
Thus far we haven't had lawsuits here. You can count on the conservatives to give CRIA the same options as RIAA has in the USA. Conservatives are pretty near the same as the GOP. #1 rule, the most buisness friendly climate possible, and that means friendly to squashing those evil 12 year girls downloading mp3s with massive lawsuits.
The political parties are all have a different ratio in favoring the individual/corporation. The conservatives are farthest to the right and will favor corporations the most over individuals.
I would think this was obvious.
Absolutely. Sarah is amazing. Fumbling towards ecstacy is one of my favorite albums.
Celine oh god make her stop, erase all recordings, erase my memories of ever hearing her... Please...
The last several years I have been saddened by the steady shift of the political climate of the USA. This stuff gives me chills.
Now we are set to elect our own extreme right party here. I never thought a party this far to the right would get elected in this country. High on their platform, abolishing gay marriage. The new leader ends his speeches with God bless Canada (something usually not done in Canadian Politics). Beefing up the military, tax cuts aimed at the wealthy. He has already complained of activist judges.
I am not looking forward to history repeating itself up here.
They would end up screwing themselves. I think the only reason Jobs would like to see Gates build an MP3 player is in hopes of getting a cross licensing deal on DRM.
Here is what happens if fairplay gets licensed:
Significant marketing advantage for all iPods competitors. They can play Fairplay and Playforsure.
That would place apple in the unenviable position of having to get a Playforsure license from Microsoft for all its iPods to negate that advantage.
Before Fairplay licensing: Ipod competetive advantage, no DRM royalties.
After Fairply licensing: No Ipod competetive advantage, DRM royalties on each player to Microsoft.
To put it bluntly. Licensing Fairplay would be an incredible boneheaded move on Apples part.
I mean we pay for our download/upload bandwidth on the user end. The companies pay for it on their end already.
:-)
So already the content user and the content provider have paid for their upload/download bandwidth agreements.
Now they stroll out and want to extort the content provider. Hey, you want your users to not run into trouble, you need to pay us some money to protect your interests, otherwise it could get messy for them. Sheesh!
Didn't google buy some dark fiber. Google ISP. Lightweight no frills, no throttling. Sign me up.
The mini mac was supposed to be the risk free way that someone could cheaply try out a mac with little risk, but an Intel Mac dual booting windows is an even better trial and transition machine.
Naturally you only plan to dual boot with a few key apps and seldom may soon become never, but it gives piece of mind about leaving behind your windows software.
I am waiting for the Intel Mac Mini as my first potential Mac.
The pace of change is increasing dramatically, 10 years is plenty to recoup value on research if that is the real purpose of patents. Beyond that patents expiring sooner means more can easily be built upon that patent freely.
"If you have these apps/games you don't want to do away with, why do you want to make the switch in the first place?"
Why would anyone want to do away with ALL of their software that just does not make any sense. In 10+ years of Windows use I am bound to have some software I don't want to junk. Does this mean I must use windows forever?
Wasn't there a 68k Mac emulator for new PPC macs. I wonder why. Wasn't there an Apple II emulator card for the Mac? Rosseta for Intel Macs, Dos emulation boxes on WinXp etc...
Most everyone I would think wants to access their old software during the transition time. Myself included.
I don't need a Mac, but I do want one(just time for a change), and making the transition easy will make that want a reality. Like most other computer transitions I have made (in 20 years of ownership) it usually takes a year to completely leave behind old software, and during that interval it is very nice to have easy access to all the previous software.
"Wrong. I have plenty of OGM and MKV files that have 6 channel AAC audio."
Well it works fine for Avi (that most people use) and while I have seen a few OGM's I have never seen one with AC3. If I could find one I would try it, but since I can't find one, I am hardly concerned about something I can't even find.
"This is not a big deal for DVDs because most soundcards have Dolby digital pass through -- so they pass the 5.1 signal to your A/V receiver and it decodes the signal. However, for MP3's, downloaded movies, or anything else you are play on your HTPC, there is no real 5.1 solution --- unless you go with a Turtle Beach unit (or M-Audio, which I haven't tried). Yes, you can "simulate" but at the core, it's only a stereo feed with most sound cards."
Actually you are not quite correct. Anything with DTS/DD will passthrough on digital for full 5.1. This INCLUDES divx,xvid movies that have properly encoded soundtracks. I watch them all the time. You just need to properly set up your player with the proper SPDIF settings. I use media player classic and allows this setup but it can take a bit of looking around to find all the proper settings.
If they don't have AC-3 soundtracks then they are STEREO and you are simply "simulating" 5.1 in your audio card (dolby surround) and encoding that to AC3. How is that any better, actually it is probably worse since you are re-encoding for no gain, better send it is unadulterated stereo into the reciever and use Dolby Prologic to playback.
Just about the only source where you have the situation of multichannel and no dolby encoding is with multichannel gaming. Most sound solutions don't do this. Either you have to use analog connections or live with stereo over the digital conneciton. My Nforce MB does encode this, but after doing a couple of times I found it never made enough differnce to worry about. Stereo and Dolby Prologic is sufficient for my gaming. I haven't used my Nforce native dolby encoding in years. Everything is passthrough to digital out, either PCM or AC3 without re-encoding.
This is exactly what I am looking for to ease my transition to OSX.
Addressing complaints about this strategy I have heard:
Dual boot is a pain: it is not that bad for infequent usage and I already did the same for over a year, back when transitioning from Win98 to Win2k. It is not like you are going to switch back and forth 6 times a day. If you are, then this is not a good idea for you.
Dual boot means the end to Mac Software: Dual boot IS a pain if you are going to do it frequently. So it is not like you buy new software that will make you do it more. It is merely legacy support used less and less and eventually not at all.
Use a separate PC: Why? Part of this is I want a nice high quality, low noise solution in my space challenged apt.
What this does is make it very easy for me to transition to OSX, while still painlessly using my Garmin GPS software (they are planning mac version eventually) and some misc games like Total Annihilation and Baldurs Gate. Eventually I will probably use only the OSX side, but in the interim it provides easy acces to legacy software.
I look forward to eventually getting instructions on getting this going.
Yes I currently have a PC. But I also want access to nicely engineered quiet Mac HW in my apartment and ditch the noisy old boxen. It is about making the transition easier that is all. I don't consider dual boot that bad. I dual booted Win98/Win2k for about a year while making that transition.
"If it is difficult for you to switch, why would you want to? Why would you consider it? Apple hardware and OSX is very nice in my opinion, but there's nothing it does that windows or linux can't do"
I absolutely didn't get what you have againsts making the transition easier. Would you have raised the same complaint when I switched from win98 to Win2k and used dual boot for over a year to make the transition easier.
I think not, it is clear from the above that you have a problem because I wan't to switch to a Mac, so I guess you are just another Anti-Mac zealot. It is not making the transition easier that gets on your nerves it is making the transition at all.