Thanks for that. Hadn't seen the updated aviation policies published before, but after reading your reply, it does indeed look like it's much less of a problem for airlines than previously. Much appreciated!
I frequently have to work in radio quiet zones. I also frequently fly on airliners, which don't allow the use of personal digital radio transmitters (e.g. Bluetooth sources) during flight. In addition, I have a pretty nice set of wired Bose noise-cancelling headphones for use during said flights. All of these are good reasons for me to spurn a wireless-only solution. And I'm not the world's only frequent flier that's also a frequent Apple user.
Also, as others have already noted: using the charging port for a wired headphone connection is only inviting an increased risk of critical failure in the charging system, rendering the whole device useless.
Ditching the option of a separate audio port completely would be a stupid idea. Apple didn't even dare to try that one (yet) with the new-style MacBooks.
"It's 2020 and Windows 7 will no longer have updates? Oh, I have disabled them 4 years ago, so I don't care"
Fortunately for me, the MS Updates system on the only Windows machine that I still own (W7) borked itself well before the release of Windows 10, so I've apparently been rendered immune to forced Windows 10 upgrades by Microsoft's own code. It's just one more way in which Windows 7 is more efficient!:-)
As noted by a lot of the other posters, it depends on whether the CGI is done well or not. There are two examples that particularly stand out for me:
1. I saw a breakdown of the Tyrannosaurus Rex attack sequence from the original "Jurassic Park", which captioned which shots used CGI and which used animatronics, and I really wouldn't have been able to tell without the captions.
2. In a recent documentary about ILM, there was part of an interview with the director of "Iron Man", Jon Favreau. He said that he'd been very emphatic about using physical effects wherever possible, but that there was one scene which was a close-up of the suit, and he wanted to be very specific about how the studio lights reflected off it as the camera &/or the suit moved. They iterated on the shot a whole bunch of times, and in the end, the shot was also rendered digitally, and even he really couldn't tell which was which any more. And this is someone who obviously lived & breathed the imagery of that film for months.
On the other end of ILM's CGI scale, there's the end of "The Mummy Returns"...
"In 2016, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't buy an iPhone."
Given that MS are skipping over having a Windows 9 because of the negative reception of Windows 8, they're just anticipating that everyone will hate Windows 10 so much that they're going to skip over all the numbers from 11-364.
It's been a while since I watched it, but I recall that one of the DVD extras for the first "Iron Man" movie is on the GUI design of the HUDs for the suits. The designers apparently thought quite a bit about the specific HCI issues that might arise for such a usage situation (essentially like a fighter plane, but with more stuff), and so there are nested menus that radiate out from the lower left when the user's attention focuses on that part of the display, without obscuring the full field of view, etc.
The different GUI colour schemes used between the various suits was also considered, although narrative clarity and style were (sensibly) prioritized above functionality in this respect, I think.
Also...
Potentially wandering off topic (but sticking with fictional movie aircraft instrumentation):
One of my favourite special effects stories is that back when "Escape from New York" was being made, it was too difficult/expensive to do the computerized 3D wire-frame rendering of Manhattan digitally that was to be displayed on Snake Plissken's glider, so they just made black miniature models of the buildings with gridlines painted on them, and then "flew" a camera over them to get the footage that ended up being displayed on the screen. Back in those days, practical effects based on painted wood were still cheaper than CGI!
We had a King Charles spaniel that used to jump up at the screen and bark whenever there was horse racing (flat racing) on the TV.
Even funnier, though, was that he was a *big* fan of "Walking With Dinosaurs" - he used to get very aggressive, bark, & try to face down the dinosaurs on the TV. I always thought that it was a real testament to the computer animation on that show that it could trick him into thinking they were realistically moving animals.
I have a Garmin sports watch that has the usual complement of buttons, but also makes use of the round bezel (not the screen, mind) in a similar way to a 5th-generation iPod: sliding the finger one way scrolls down the menus, sliding it the other scrolls up. Touching it in two places simultaneously toggles the backlight. It locks/unlocks by pressing two of the buttons together, so accidental selections are avoided. It works rather well, actually.
Thanks for taking the time to post a reasoned response to my (admittedly rather flippant) comment. I understand the points you're trying to make, but I've heard these arguments before, and with the greatest respect, I think that they're fundamentally flawed.
I do actually mostly just buy the DVDs, as I prefer the flexibility. I also mostly buy games on disk.
Online streaming-based services like Netflix are not much good for people who (for example) frequently travel internationally, as I do. Such services impose artificial regional limitations of the Internet on geopolitical and financial grounds, not technical ones, so I can't watch the videos I'm entitled to whenever I travel (see also: regional coding). I do have an Amazon Prime account (opened for the savings on shipping costs, but it also means I get access to video streaming), and it'd be a lot more useful to me without any DRM or regional controls.
If I wanted to actually buy videos from these services, I'd end up paying more than just renting them, and I'd still effectively lose them when the authentication servers get switched off. I ran into exactly this sort of problem with a few iTunes music tracks & apps that I bought online back in the day (iTunes in the early days being the textbook example of "DRM done right"). I bought them online, moved to another country, and ran afoul of the DRM.
If I do buy any such things online these days, I now have to very carefully weigh up the fact that in most cases, even if I can travel and use them in some sort of offline mode on a suitably registered device, I'm really just loaning them until someone else suddenly decides that I can't have them any more. Such a consideration has significantly cooled my enthusiasm for any such strings-attached "purchases". I'm not saying I'd never buy games online, but to be honest, I'm much more inclined to spend money on online games purchases *without* DRM. And from a content owner's perspective, that's a win-win: they score both a sale and popularity points with me as a customer, and they don't have to license or operate a DRM system.
Here's the biggest flaw in your argument for DRM, though: it doesn't work.* I could make the oft-repeated point that it's effectively attempting to enforce encryption/obfuscation while still having to supply the key to the very person that is to be prevented from accessing the material, but I think the empirical evidence argument is even more compelling: illicit copies of the content are already everywhere.
I could still watch/burn/distribute from DVDs/Blu-Rays, but I don't do that, because I can afford the disks and think that the producers of the media should get paid for their work. However, because of that honesty, I'm subjected to the stupidity of attempts to impose DRM on the disks (plus annoying nonsense like unskippable menus, self-defeating FBI warnings, etc.). And to add insult to injury, as a legitimate customer, I'm paying more for the inclusion of this nonsense. If I weren't so honest, I could just download the content illegally, and wouldn't have to deal with the DRM at all. I think it's pretty well accepted at this point that DRM-related annoyances like these drive some people to illegal downloading of a copy of the product that is not DRM-encumbered. Making the legitimate customers jump through more hoops than the illegal downloaders is clearly not a sensible way to run a business.
And to answer the question about providing some insurance to the content owners that their stuff won't be illegally copied? In light of my above points, I totally agree that it makes a difference in terms of making the deals between Netflix, et al. and the content owners happen. However, I'd instead argue that DRM is just the snake-oil used by Netflix et al. to loosen the grip of the content owners enough to persuade them to sign their contracts (see Apple and their since-abandoned iTunes Music Store DRM). Netflix, Apple et al. have to be seen to offer DRM as a token gesture to the content owners, but that doesn't m
In general terms, Digital Rights Management isn't necessarily a bad thing, and used properly can be very helpful.
With all due respect, I don't think that I can agree with this. I can't think of a single instance ever in which I've thought: "Oh yes! I'll preferentially buy X over Y because it's got DRM with it. Yay!" I don't really think that "DRM done right" actually exists: it's more "DRM just done less obnoxiously than..."
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that. Hadn't seen the updated aviation policies published before, but after reading your reply, it does indeed look like it's much less of a problem for airlines than previously. Much appreciated!
Mod parent up.
I frequently have to work in radio quiet zones. I also frequently fly on airliners, which don't allow the use of personal digital radio transmitters (e.g. Bluetooth sources) during flight. In addition, I have a pretty nice set of wired Bose noise-cancelling headphones for use during said flights. All of these are good reasons for me to spurn a wireless-only solution. And I'm not the world's only frequent flier that's also a frequent Apple user.
Also, as others have already noted: using the charging port for a wired headphone connection is only inviting an increased risk of critical failure in the charging system, rendering the whole device useless.
Ditching the option of a separate audio port completely would be a stupid idea. Apple didn't even dare to try that one (yet) with the new-style MacBooks.
"It's 2020 and Windows 7 will no longer have updates? Oh, I have disabled them 4 years ago, so I don't care"
Fortunately for me, the MS Updates system on the only Windows machine that I still own (W7) borked itself well before the release of Windows 10, so I've apparently been rendered immune to forced Windows 10 upgrades by Microsoft's own code. It's just one more way in which Windows 7 is more efficient! :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For fake perpetual motion machines, accept no substitutes!
As noted by a lot of the other posters, it depends on whether the CGI is done well or not. There are two examples that particularly stand out for me:
1. I saw a breakdown of the Tyrannosaurus Rex attack sequence from the original "Jurassic Park", which captioned which shots used CGI and which used animatronics, and I really wouldn't have been able to tell without the captions.
2. In a recent documentary about ILM, there was part of an interview with the director of "Iron Man", Jon Favreau. He said that he'd been very emphatic about using physical effects wherever possible, but that there was one scene which was a close-up of the suit, and he wanted to be very specific about how the studio lights reflected off it as the camera &/or the suit moved. They iterated on the shot a whole bunch of times, and in the end, the shot was also rendered digitally, and even he really couldn't tell which was which any more. And this is someone who obviously lived & breathed the imagery of that film for months.
On the other end of ILM's CGI scale, there's the end of "The Mummy Returns"...
http://economixcomix.com/home/...
Next question.
"In 2016, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't buy an iPhone."
If we do that, it's total war until everyone is dead.
Hans: An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
Billy: No, it doesn't. There'll be one guy left with one eye. How's the last blind guy gonna take out the eye of the last guy left?
-- Seven Psychopaths (2012)
(j/k: Good post!)
Although a little lengthy, I found this to be an interesting assessment of the TPP:
http://economixcomix.com/home/...
... would disapprove.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Given that MS are skipping over having a Windows 9 because of the negative reception of Windows 8, they're just anticipating that everyone will hate Windows 10 so much that they're going to skip over all the numbers from 11-364.
Web browsing is very busty.
Um... I think that very much depends on which particular pr0n websites the user chooses to frequent...
Free Will is one of the gifts of being human: The ability to chose how to live your life.
It is a gift because other higher and lower life forms don't have it.
Clearly, you've never owned a cat...
It's been a while since I watched it, but I recall that one of the DVD extras for the first "Iron Man" movie is on the GUI design of the HUDs for the suits. The designers apparently thought quite a bit about the specific HCI issues that might arise for such a usage situation (essentially like a fighter plane, but with more stuff), and so there are nested menus that radiate out from the lower left when the user's attention focuses on that part of the display, without obscuring the full field of view, etc.
The different GUI colour schemes used between the various suits was also considered, although narrative clarity and style were (sensibly) prioritized above functionality in this respect, I think.
Also...
Potentially wandering off topic (but sticking with fictional movie aircraft instrumentation):
One of my favourite special effects stories is that back when "Escape from New York" was being made, it was too difficult/expensive to do the computerized 3D wire-frame rendering of Manhattan digitally that was to be displayed on Snake Plissken's glider, so they just made black miniature models of the buildings with gridlines painted on them, and then "flew" a camera over them to get the footage that ended up being displayed on the screen. Back in those days, practical effects based on painted wood were still cheaper than CGI!
See (e.g.) http://www.theefnylapage.com/e...
Ha! Now I can *prove* that I'm the one that's supposed to be here! They can now confidently set me free and lock up that other guy.
In your (my) face, Future-Me!
Fucking gongs. The Brits beg for these baubles, too - like puppies, on their hindmost.
Not all: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16736495
Yup, I've seen this as well.
We had a King Charles spaniel that used to jump up at the screen and bark whenever there was horse racing (flat racing) on the TV.
Even funnier, though, was that he was a *big* fan of "Walking With Dinosaurs" - he used to get very aggressive, bark, & try to face down the dinosaurs on the TV. I always thought that it was a real testament to the computer animation on that show that it could trick him into thinking they were realistically moving animals.
"For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralized enemy who is advancing in utter disorder." - E. F. Russell
A touch control with buttons can work quite well.
I have a Garmin sports watch that has the usual complement of buttons, but also makes use of the round bezel (not the screen, mind) in a similar way to a 5th-generation iPod: sliding the finger one way scrolls down the menus, sliding it the other scrolls up. Touching it in two places simultaneously toggles the backlight. It locks/unlocks by pressing two of the buttons together, so accidental selections are avoided. It works rather well, actually.
... does it make The Noise from "The Six Million Dollar Man" when it zooms in?
Thanks for taking the time to post a reasoned response to my (admittedly rather flippant) comment. I understand the points you're trying to make, but I've heard these arguments before, and with the greatest respect, I think that they're fundamentally flawed.
I do actually mostly just buy the DVDs, as I prefer the flexibility. I also mostly buy games on disk.
Online streaming-based services like Netflix are not much good for people who (for example) frequently travel internationally, as I do. Such services impose artificial regional limitations of the Internet on geopolitical and financial grounds, not technical ones, so I can't watch the videos I'm entitled to whenever I travel (see also: regional coding). I do have an Amazon Prime account (opened for the savings on shipping costs, but it also means I get access to video streaming), and it'd be a lot more useful to me without any DRM or regional controls.
If I wanted to actually buy videos from these services, I'd end up paying more than just renting them, and I'd still effectively lose them when the authentication servers get switched off. I ran into exactly this sort of problem with a few iTunes music tracks & apps that I bought online back in the day (iTunes in the early days being the textbook example of "DRM done right"). I bought them online, moved to another country, and ran afoul of the DRM.
If I do buy any such things online these days, I now have to very carefully weigh up the fact that in most cases, even if I can travel and use them in some sort of offline mode on a suitably registered device, I'm really just loaning them until someone else suddenly decides that I can't have them any more. Such a consideration has significantly cooled my enthusiasm for any such strings-attached "purchases". I'm not saying I'd never buy games online, but to be honest, I'm much more inclined to spend money on online games purchases *without* DRM. And from a content owner's perspective, that's a win-win: they score both a sale and popularity points with me as a customer, and they don't have to license or operate a DRM system.
Here's the biggest flaw in your argument for DRM, though: it doesn't work.* I could make the oft-repeated point that it's effectively attempting to enforce encryption/obfuscation while still having to supply the key to the very person that is to be prevented from accessing the material, but I think the empirical evidence argument is even more compelling: illicit copies of the content are already everywhere.
I could still watch/burn/distribute from DVDs/Blu-Rays, but I don't do that, because I can afford the disks and think that the producers of the media should get paid for their work. However, because of that honesty, I'm subjected to the stupidity of attempts to impose DRM on the disks (plus annoying nonsense like unskippable menus, self-defeating FBI warnings, etc.). And to add insult to injury, as a legitimate customer, I'm paying more for the inclusion of this nonsense. If I weren't so honest, I could just download the content illegally, and wouldn't have to deal with the DRM at all. I think it's pretty well accepted at this point that DRM-related annoyances like these drive some people to illegal downloading of a copy of the product that is not DRM-encumbered. Making the legitimate customers jump through more hoops than the illegal downloaders is clearly not a sensible way to run a business.
And to answer the question about providing some insurance to the content owners that their stuff won't be illegally copied? In light of my above points, I totally agree that it makes a difference in terms of making the deals between Netflix, et al. and the content owners happen. However, I'd instead argue that DRM is just the snake-oil used by Netflix et al. to loosen the grip of the content owners enough to persuade them to sign their contracts (see Apple and their since-abandoned iTunes Music Store DRM). Netflix, Apple et al. have to be seen to offer DRM as a token gesture to the content owners, but that doesn't m
Mod parent up.
And in the same vein, they need to ditch region coding on DVDs, Blu-Ray disks and optical drives as well.
In general terms, Digital Rights Management isn't necessarily a bad thing, and used properly can be very helpful.
With all due respect, I don't think that I can agree with this. I can't think of a single instance ever in which I've thought: "Oh yes! I'll preferentially buy X over Y because it's got DRM with it. Yay!" I don't really think that "DRM done right" actually exists: it's more "DRM just done less obnoxiously than..."
And yes, I just reread the summary and saw that "The Shrinking Man" was already mentioned. Duh. Chalk it up to my enthusiasm for the man's work...