I heard a demonstration by the people that made SACD - I think it was Sony. Each speaker cost about $30K and the amp and player looked equally expensive. They went on and on about how wonderful the demo was about to be before starting. They played it, nobody said anything at all. Everone looked at each other wondering if their crappy ears missed something that was devine and beautiful... Somebody asked for an AB comparison (which is possible, before you go on about channels and crap like that) and they wouldn't do it. Nobody was impressed and we wandered out of the room in silence.
99% of people are happy with 128Kbps MP3. They have crappy stereos or listen to FM radio in their noisy cars. For a format to be very successful it has to be compelling to the masses and not offer something so boringly incremental that it doesn't even matter.
IMHO the labels/music industry are just trying to create yet another format in order to try and get everyone to buy all their music AGAIN. Their sales are nothing like they were during the '90s when everyone was busy buying all their old music on CD.
On a final note, I went to see that Star Wars digital thing on a digital projector. Unfortunately, the projector was out of order so they were just using the old 35 or 70mm projection system. At the end of the movie the guy next to me (who didn't know that the digital was out of order) commented on how amazing the digital quality was. I didn't have the heart to break the news to him. This is how I see these new higher quality (not multi channel) audio formats.
Exactly. iPod's may be cool, but they're still too expensive for the majority of consumers to have one. I know a few people that have them, but I would bet that if you could get one for under $100, they would ship many more units.
MS is aiming at the mass market. It doesn't matter if it's not quite as good, which of course will be what happens.
When humans arrived on this earth it was a total mess. There was this black, yukky stuff all over the place just *leaking* from the ground. They called it "oil" and discovered that they could use it for power!
Sure, we might be creating a mess with all the CO2, smog, and other pollutants, but just *think* what the earth would be like if we didn't clean up all this crazy leaking oil! I heard that Alaska is getting messy of late - so glad Bush proposed going there to scoop it up all up.
People have been making those kinds of statements about public transportation for decades.
Only when you remove the roads will you stop people using them. Go to London, Manhattan, Rome, or any other huge old city with a traffic problem. Sure, they have public transportation, but they didn't stop using their cars. Why? Because if everyone did, the roads would be empty and people would start using them again, until they got clogged again. Supply and demand.
Actually, wouldn't it be 19 and 35/36ths of gallon? That's *much* easier to remember...
EVERYTHING MUST BE DIVISIBLE BY 6!!!!!!! Why? Because people used to have 5 fingers and 1 thumb on each hand. When mother nature dropped the useless "tiny finger" (even smaller than the "little finger"), people went to base 10. Base 5 was deemed to be too annoying for some reason.
This evolution happened earlier in Europe than in the US, hence the conversion to metric over there first. It'll happen over here too, once all those old, white, 6 fingered politicians finally die off.
Good point!! It's EASY when you just do it from the command line! Simply use "vi", edit the appropriate weird config file after reading dozens of Howto's and forum posts, then spend another couple of hours tweaking it. SIMPLE!
So you know, I use the command line all the time, but most Linux geeks out there need and must TRY to understand that reading howto's, using the command line, configuring, tweaking is NOT fun for 99% of the computer users.
It's not FUD to say that Linux is hard to use/install. Relative to Windows, it IS harder to use. In an absolute sense, Linux is not particularly tricky to install and use, but most people don't give a damn about absolutes.
AFAIK, H.264 is a compression tecnhology that is going to be incorporated *into* MPEG4. I believe that what people think of as "MPEG4" is actually "MPEG4 - simple profile", and this is why MPEG4 has somewhat of a bad name for quality - it's rather MPEG1ish for higer bitrates.
H.264 is going to become "MPEG4 AVC", Advanced Visual Codec. This is one of the 3 compression standards due to be approved (or maybe actually approved by now) for HD-DVD. The other 2 are WM9 (love it or hate it) and MPEG2 (for those that have more bits than sense).
Again, and AFAIK, MPEG4 is more of a "wrapper" format than anything else. Thus, it's becoming a little confusing as "MPEG4" won't mean the same thing once H.264 finally comes out.
I saw some 8Mbps H.264 (Quicktime and others) at NAB 2004 in Vegas and it looked AMAZING. It was 720p on a huge plasma. I was VERY impressed although saddened to see those smooth areas still had that weird problem with posterization (or whatever it's called). Ya know, smooth skies and so on. However, fast movement was perfect. It uses a crap-load of CPU (especially for encoding!) but I think it will win out overall. Looks similar to some HD 8Mbps WM9 that I've seen....
I agree that the majority of what people feel is "intuitive" in a UI is actually something that is just plain familiar. However, I fundamentally disagree with your comment that there is nothing hard-coded in our brains that makes one interface more intuitive than another. I know, I massaged your comment a little, but that's basically what you're saying.
I have studied some cognitive pyschology (just a little) and was very surprised about with the numerous hard-coded processes our visual system performs. Edge-detection and movement detection are a couple I remember. I am by no means an expert (experts, please chime in!) but I would suggest that if you can design an interface in such a way that it pushes all the right buttons in our existing hard-coded visual system, then you can design something that instantly *feels* more familiar when in fact you've never seen or used it before. I also imagine the same processes apply for problem solving when using an application. There *is* a science (and an art) to UI design.
Also, something that is intuitive in an OS or application can feed from something that is familiar in the real-word. For example, in the real-world (don't be scared,./ readers) things in the distance are kinda hazy. The colors are desaturated and maybe even a little more blue. This effect increases the further into the distance you go. Painters have used this effect for a long time to imply distance and a 3D image in a 2D painting. If we somehow used this effect in our UI, then we would create something intuitive using something familiar. I've often thought that this would be great for all those windows not in-focus on the screen - they would seem more in the background....
It seems that Nikon are avoiding the 35mm size sensor more than anyone else. They've come out with these crippled "digital" (or whatever) lenses specifically for their DSLR range.
Right now, Canon actually *has* a 35mm sensor DSLR (EOS-1Ds) - it's supposed to be awesome, as well as being awesomely expensive ($9,000ish I believe). From what I've read, the problem is the low yield on making the sensors themselves and also some fancy expensive anti-aliasing filter that goes in front of the sensor.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can compare yield improvement of expensive 35mm 12MP sensors with yield improvement (and therefore cost reduction) on things like LCD flat panels. The reason is that consumers don't *need* image quality like the Canon EOS-1Ds provides. It's almost medium format quality and 99% of consumers used crappy tiny-lensed 35mm negative film for years, printed by shitty machines on 4x6 paper that fades.
So if it *is* the case that 35mm sensors are the future for DSLRs, I do not believe we can expect the kind of quick generational reduction in cost that we're used to for other more "commodity" consumer items like LCD flat panels, PDAs, cell phones, and so on.
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99% of people are happy with 128Kbps MP3. They have crappy stereos or listen to FM radio in their noisy cars. For a format to be very successful it has to be compelling to the masses and not offer something so boringly incremental that it doesn't even matter.
IMHO the labels/music industry are just trying to create yet another format in order to try and get everyone to buy all their music AGAIN. Their sales are nothing like they were during the '90s when everyone was busy buying all their old music on CD.
On a final note, I went to see that Star Wars digital thing on a digital projector. Unfortunately, the projector was out of order so they were just using the old 35 or 70mm projection system. At the end of the movie the guy next to me (who didn't know that the digital was out of order) commented on how amazing the digital quality was. I didn't have the heart to break the news to him. This is how I see these new higher quality (not multi channel) audio formats.
MS is aiming at the mass market. It doesn't matter if it's not quite as good, which of course will be what happens.
Sure, we might be creating a mess with all the CO2, smog, and other pollutants, but just *think* what the earth would be like if we didn't clean up all this crazy leaking oil! I heard that Alaska is getting messy of late - so glad Bush proposed going there to scoop it up all up.
Only when you remove the roads will you stop people using them. Go to London, Manhattan, Rome, or any other huge old city with a traffic problem. Sure, they have public transportation, but they didn't stop using their cars. Why? Because if everyone did, the roads would be empty and people would start using them again, until they got clogged again. Supply and demand.
This evolution happened earlier in Europe than in the US, hence the conversion to metric over there first. It'll happen over here too, once all those old, white, 6 fingered politicians finally die off.
Windows sucks, Linux rulez!
So you know, I use the command line all the time, but most Linux geeks out there need and must TRY to understand that reading howto's, using the command line, configuring, tweaking is NOT fun for 99% of the computer users.
It's not FUD to say that Linux is hard to use/install. Relative to Windows, it IS harder to use. In an absolute sense, Linux is not particularly tricky to install and use, but most people don't give a damn about absolutes.
What the hell does that mean? How many times around the earth is that? How many times to the moon and back?
START MAKING SENSE!
H.264 is going to become "MPEG4 AVC", Advanced Visual Codec. This is one of the 3 compression standards due to be approved (or maybe actually approved by now) for HD-DVD. The other 2 are WM9 (love it or hate it) and MPEG2 (for those that have more bits than sense).
Again, and AFAIK, MPEG4 is more of a "wrapper" format than anything else. Thus, it's becoming a little confusing as "MPEG4" won't mean the same thing once H.264 finally comes out.
I saw some 8Mbps H.264 (Quicktime and others) at NAB 2004 in Vegas and it looked AMAZING. It was 720p on a huge plasma. I was VERY impressed although saddened to see those smooth areas still had that weird problem with posterization (or whatever it's called). Ya know, smooth skies and so on. However, fast movement was perfect. It uses a crap-load of CPU (especially for encoding!) but I think it will win out overall. Looks similar to some HD 8Mbps WM9 that I've seen....
I have studied some cognitive pyschology (just a little) and was very surprised about with the numerous hard-coded processes our visual system performs. Edge-detection and movement detection are a couple I remember. I am by no means an expert (experts, please chime in!) but I would suggest that if you can design an interface in such a way that it pushes all the right buttons in our existing hard-coded visual system, then you can design something that instantly *feels* more familiar when in fact you've never seen or used it before. I also imagine the same processes apply for problem solving when using an application. There *is* a science (and an art) to UI design.
Also, something that is intuitive in an OS or application can feed from something that is familiar in the real-word. For example, in the real-world (don't be scared, ./ readers) things in the distance are kinda hazy. The colors are desaturated and maybe even a little more blue. This effect increases the further into the distance you go. Painters have used this effect for a long time to imply distance and a 3D image in a 2D painting. If we somehow used this effect in our UI, then we would create something intuitive using something familiar. I've often thought that this would be great for all those windows not in-focus on the screen - they would seem more in the background....
Right now, Canon actually *has* a 35mm sensor DSLR (EOS-1Ds) - it's supposed to be awesome, as well as being awesomely expensive ($9,000ish I believe). From what I've read, the problem is the low yield on making the sensors themselves and also some fancy expensive anti-aliasing filter that goes in front of the sensor.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can compare yield improvement of expensive 35mm 12MP sensors with yield improvement (and therefore cost reduction) on things like LCD flat panels. The reason is that consumers don't *need* image quality like the Canon EOS-1Ds provides. It's almost medium format quality and 99% of consumers used crappy tiny-lensed 35mm negative film for years, printed by shitty machines on 4x6 paper that fades.
So if it *is* the case that 35mm sensors are the future for DSLRs, I do not believe we can expect the kind of quick generational reduction in cost that we're used to for other more "commodity" consumer items like LCD flat panels, PDAs, cell phones, and so on.