Just because they're aimed at being an easy to use dominant desktop OS, doesn't mean they have or will get there. Just look at what happened with Freedows [sourceforge.net].
FreeFlatScreens.com [freeflatscreens.com]
Just to get it straight... You don't believe a grass-roots effort to create a free alternative to Windows has a chance, because one project didn't see fruition... But you do believe a shady pyramid scheme to sell out your privacy for a flat screen TV is a great idea?
Do you really need a faster drive "on the go?" External firewire and USB 2.0 drives are much faster, much cheaper and more likely to have +/- RW support... And you can swap it between computers.
While their quality is unquestionable, Apple's products perform functions not only without the user needing to understand how they work but where understanding how they work does not extend the user any extra power. That might be considered very good design, but to geeks, who get a kick out of the power of knowing how things work, you wouldn't think it would be so attractive.
Well... That's not entirely true. The Powermacs are very easy for the average user to pop open and muck around with, even the new G5's.
The laptops... That's another story, at least since the end of the black plastic models.
On the other hand, since they cost the same amount as OS X machines, you'd be better off buying one from Apple and then selling the install DVD (which is transferable and can be used, for example, by someone with an older version of OS X)
OS X is also pre-installed on the Yellow Dog machines (I don't think Apple would let them get away with a Linux-only box.) I would assume you get all of the standard install and restore DVD's, too. They're really just acting as a reseller here, selling otherwise stock machines with Yellow Dog installed too.
I wouldn't trust these guys to be around in six months. The site looks like it was designed with a Geocities easy-page-creator. Oh, and the first thing you see is a story about a Turkey Testicle Festival, complete with picture.
What on earth do you need to store over there that'll take up more than 250mb?
iDisk isn't just for backups. It's also an extremely convenient way to exchange media files. I use it all the time to swap Photoshop resources and find it much more convenient than using FTP (since I don't use.Mac e-mail, I have no problem creating a temporary password to let a client or collaborator have access to my iDisk.)
Considering what a staple Final Cut Pro is to Apple, I could see where the ability to exchange raw video files (or DVD Studio Pro or Motion projects, which also tend to be huge) via a 1gig+ iDisk would come in handy... Uploading and downloading would of course be time consuming, but it would still be faster, cheaper and less hassle than using FedEx.
I think the strength of having.Mac isn't the e-mail address... It's the iDisk, which is an extremely useful tool for exchanging large files and projects with other Mac owners (I use it quite often to exchange 30mb+ Photoshop files with companies I work for.) Gmail of course has a cap on attachment sizes, and anyway it's never a good idea to send files that size via e-mail even when it works (or attachments in general at this point.)
I'm now a bit worried about the QA on Apple's laptops. Major recalls on virtually all of the iBooks...
No, there weren't major recalls on all of the iBooks. There is a recuring problem in many 12" screen G3 iBooks made from mid-2002 through mid-2003 (600mhz-900mhz.) That is quite a few machines, but it is by no means the entire line-- there were few reports of the logic board problems (not enough to signify a design flaw) in earlier (500mhz) or later (G4) 12" books, and the entire 14" line have been pretty much trouble-free.
If you play Counterstrike, and if you ever die (which I'm sure you do if you only play from time to time) then you have a taste of what it's like to spectate. And if you don't take advantage of the ability to switch between the P.O.V. of the remaining players, you really should.
I think it's a great tool-- watching, rather than enaging other players gives you valuable insights on different playstyles and strategies. You might learn a technique to use a weapon you normally wouldn't, how to use a device like a flash grenade in a way you normally wouldn't, and best of all you get to "explore" the nooks and crannies of a map-- e.g. all the places snipers camp-- without someone shooting at you.
Without "Star Wars", would "Star Trek: TMP" have been possible?
Maybe. But much, much more imnportant: without Star Wars, would the Buck Rogers series starring Gil Gerard have been possible?
What I want is what I get on a CD: lossless music without DRM. (stupid attempts at copy protection notwithstanding.) At that point, your pricing is going to determine how much I'll buy. If you're at 99c per song/$10 per album, I'll buy some... if you're at $5/album, I'll buy a heck of a lot more.
Distributing audio files has some overhead, but not nearly as much as a physical CD... Why not lower the price on the back catalog, so the hot new single is full price but stuff that's a couple years (or couple decades) old is dirt cheap? All songs aren't created equal, after all... Why should the long-awaited new Radiohead single cost as much as "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" or a forgotten song on a Flock of Seagulls record?
Learn from the Napster rush-- most of the music that was downloaded wasn't the stuff we loved, it was music we were vaguely curious about but didn't want to pay full price for. A huge percentage of those mp3's were listened to one or twice and then put in a folder and forgotten. Say I was feeling nostalgic for my indie rock days, so I'd download a bunch of Replacements, Hoodoo Gurus, Camper Van Beethoven or whatever, listen to it a couple times and then move on to the next "hankering." There's no way I'd go spend $100 for a mess of 15-to-20 year old indie rock CDs (real or at the iTunes store), but if I could buy a mess of guilty pleasure songs for a real bargain... Why not?
And freakin' fill out your partial albums already. I've been waiting to get a legal copy of the gary jules Tears for Fears cover "Mad World" but they won't complete the album
"Mad World" is of course originally from the Donnie Darko (otherwise instrumental) soundtrack, and credited to composer Roland Orzabal (with "vocals by Gary Jules")... And that's not available on iTunes, either.
So don't blame Apple for this missing song, I'm sure it's a rights issue-- which often happens with both covers and soundtracks... Though who exactly is holding it back, I couldn't tell you.
Amen... The contest/festival business is a big cash cow, the odds are defitely stacked against you
I made a short film a few years back and went through the process of entering it in all the major fests-- Sundance, Slamdance, SXWS, and about fifteen to twenty more. Each one had an entry fee of $25-$65. Each one sent me back a polite rejection letter, usually not even signed by a human. I had no guarantee that anyone even watched the damn thing, especially anyone in a position to decide to put it in the program (from what I understand, screening the submissions is usually an unpaid intern's job-- so if you don't appeal to the taste of a random 22-year old film student, good luck making it out of the pile.)
I eventually hooked up with a friend-of-a-friend who worked for the New York Underground Film Festival. I showed it to her directly, she liked it and put it in the program. No fees paid. The screening was attended by programmers from other festivals, and a few of them asked to show it too. Since then it's played around the country and in Europe and Asia-- each festival usually leading to another, and no submission forms or fees paid each time.
That's why I think the system is pretty screwed-- it's completely arbitrary, and I'm convinced the programmers rarely draws from the submissions piles. I'm glad festivals exist, but I don't think its right for the lesser ones to charge entry fees. At least the major film fests are attended by the "right" people, and getting your work in there is great exposure. They also have massive staffs and production costs, and the fee is a good way to limit the submissions. On the other hand it's almost criminal for these no-name festivals and contests to operate the way they do-- charging entry fees on the promise of fame and exposure that they really can't provide. It's kind of like those "we set your poetry to music" ads in the back of Parade magazine.
Methinks Sony learned a lesson from the X-Box... The HD made it extremely easy to mod the console and swap games. I bet it's as much about preventing piracy as anything else.
Woody Allen did the equivalent of what these guys are doing when he released What's Up Tiger Lily? He bought the rights to do that to that movie, even though it was a Japanese film, and even though the environment was much different in the 1960's. So that should tell you something. I don't think LucasFilm is really wrong in this case.
A natural comparison... But not quite correct. With Tiger Lily Allen took a random Japanese spy film ("Kagi No Kag"), redubbed it with wacky dialogue and-- most importantly-- gave it a new name. He turned the source material into a new film that was shown in theaters and later released on video.
This group OTOH is a small theater troupe "dubbing" Star Wars live, on a stage, presumable with different dialogue every time (it's "improv", after all.) They aren't making a product, releasing a dubbed version to movie theaters or on DVD. I think it's much closer to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the culture enacts cheesy stage shows and shouts out wisecracks as the film plays on the screen. It's not a matter of parody or copyright law... But they should be subject to whatever it costs to show the film in public and for profit, and the distributer certainly has a right to say, "I'm not going to let you show it."
The point is that with 90% of television, watching does nothing to improve you or the world. Think about the massive amount of time that is wasted by people watching that part of television.
I think it is rather odd, considering we all live just a short amount of time...
No, the grandparent didn't say watch less or watch quality TV. He stated it in black and white terms, as if you are either a zombie slave to the idiot box or you truly "live", talking politics with friends and taking nature strolls. Of course it's not healthy to watch TV seven hours a day, but it's equally unhealthy (and annoying) to do nothing but talk religion or politics with your friends or about hopes and fears with your spouse. But you can do all of those things and be a well-rounded person. I don't put down people who play games, watch sports or have a drink to unwind if that's what they like. It's all about moderation.
And yes, 90% of TV could be considered crap. But 90% of the web is crap. And music, and games, and movies, and plays and paintings and sculptures. There are a lot of crappy people out there, too. So what? Enjoy the good and enlightening and don't waste your time on the bad.
How about keeping your opinions about what I do with my spare time to yourself? Or at least, don't be so superior about your decision not to watch it.
TV is a form of entertainment, no more or less a waste of time than watching movies, playing video games, reading or perusing the intraweb-- which all have their ratio of good-stuff-to-crap. If I want a way to record the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Strangers with Candy, Larry Sanders, King of The Hill, The Office etc. so I can watch them when I feel like it, then please stay out of it. Believe it or not, I can watch a couple hours of TV a day and still have time to ride my bike and hang out with friends.
Yeah but this would be an extremely streamlined version of VPC, designed to do a single function-- emulate games between two specific processors.
There wouldn't be many of the things slowing VPC down on the Mac-- for example you wouldn't have a complicated OS within another complicated OS (XP within OSX is obviously torture, but NT or 98 emulated on a new dual-boot 1.25 DP G4 running OS 9 is fast, enough to play modern games.)
The LP as we know it wasn't a common thing in the 40's through early 60's. Artists would release music a '45 at a time (and if one of the first couple didn't take off, they never got to make more.) The "A" side was the commercial effort and the "B" side was a chance to take a chance and experiment a little, to cover another artist or whatever. The reason the "B" side songs were usually lesser efforts is that they weren't taken very seriously by DJ's or the public, and it was better to save their best work for the next single.
When an LP was finally released, it was really a "greatest hits"-- a collection of popular singles (like, say, "Meet The Beatles".) Now, of course, you're expected to make a full album, whether you have the material or not-- which is why most pop CDs have one or two decent songs and a lot of filler. But the labels make more selling a CD than a single, so...
Anyway... I can't see how there would be a correlation as far as games go. Games are such team efforts, requiring so much more investment in man-hours and money than recording a song, that it's just not feasible to make a "labor of love" (and who's labor of love would that be, anyway?)
From what I hear, "Tiger Wood's Need for Speed" is actually a dark and disturbing tale about his addiction to methanphetamines. Though it does explain his tendancy to have incredible performances followed by crashes-and-burns.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because they're aimed at being an easy to use dominant desktop OS, doesn't mean they have or will get there. Just look at what happened with Freedows [sourceforge.net].
FreeFlatScreens.com [freeflatscreens.com]
Just to get it straight... You don't believe a grass-roots effort to create a free alternative to Windows has a chance, because one project didn't see fruition... But you do believe a shady pyramid scheme to sell out your privacy for a flat screen TV is a great idea?
Do you really need a faster drive "on the go?" External firewire and USB 2.0 drives are much faster, much cheaper and more likely to have +/- RW support... And you can swap it between computers.
"Auteur" is a film term for one who writes, produces and directs... Say, Woody Allen. It is used with a bit of sarcasm more often than not.
Kind of like saying "artiste" instead of "artist."
While their quality is unquestionable, Apple's products perform functions not only without the user needing to understand how they work but where understanding how they work does not extend the user any extra power. That might be considered very good design, but to geeks, who get a kick out of the power of knowing how things work, you wouldn't think it would be so attractive.
Well... That's not entirely true. The Powermacs are very easy for the average user to pop open and muck around with, even the new G5's.
The laptops... That's another story, at least since the end of the black plastic models.
On the other hand, since they cost the same amount as OS X machines, you'd be better off buying one from Apple and then selling the install DVD (which is transferable and can be used, for example, by someone with an older version of OS X)
OS X is also pre-installed on the Yellow Dog machines (I don't think Apple would let them get away with a Linux-only box.) I would assume you get all of the standard install and restore DVD's, too. They're really just acting as a reseller here, selling otherwise stock machines with Yellow Dog installed too.
I wouldn't trust these guys to be around in six months. The site looks like it was designed with a Geocities easy-page-creator. Oh, and the first thing you see is a story about a Turkey Testicle Festival, complete with picture.
"old-school"? Counterstrike?! You'll have to forgive him. When you're 15, a game from four years ago is "old-school."
What on earth do you need to store over there that'll take up more than 250mb?
.Mac e-mail, I have no problem creating a temporary password to let a client or collaborator have access to my iDisk.)
iDisk isn't just for backups. It's also an extremely convenient way to exchange media files. I use it all the time to swap Photoshop resources and find it much more convenient than using FTP (since I don't use
Considering what a staple Final Cut Pro is to Apple, I could see where the ability to exchange raw video files (or DVD Studio Pro or Motion projects, which also tend to be huge) via a 1gig+ iDisk would come in handy... Uploading and downloading would of course be time consuming, but it would still be faster, cheaper and less hassle than using FedEx.
I think the strength of having .Mac isn't the e-mail address... It's the iDisk, which is an extremely useful tool for exchanging large files and projects with other Mac owners (I use it quite often to exchange 30mb+ Photoshop files with companies I work for.) Gmail of course has a cap on attachment sizes, and anyway it's never a good idea to send files that size via e-mail even when it works (or attachments in general at this point.)
I'm now a bit worried about the QA on Apple's laptops. Major recalls on virtually all of the iBooks...
No, there weren't major recalls on all of the iBooks. There is a recuring problem in many 12" screen G3 iBooks made from mid-2002 through mid-2003 (600mhz-900mhz.) That is quite a few machines, but it is by no means the entire line-- there were few reports of the logic board problems (not enough to signify a design flaw) in earlier (500mhz) or later (G4) 12" books, and the entire 14" line have been pretty much trouble-free.
If you play Counterstrike, and if you ever die (which I'm sure you do if you only play from time to time) then you have a taste of what it's like to spectate. And if you don't take advantage of the ability to switch between the P.O.V. of the remaining players, you really should.
I think it's a great tool-- watching, rather than enaging other players gives you valuable insights on different playstyles and strategies. You might learn a technique to use a weapon you normally wouldn't, how to use a device like a flash grenade in a way you normally wouldn't, and best of all you get to "explore" the nooks and crannies of a map-- e.g. all the places snipers camp-- without someone shooting at you.
Without "Star Wars", would "Star Trek: TMP" have been possible? Maybe. But much, much more imnportant: without Star Wars, would the Buck Rogers series starring Gil Gerard have been possible?
What I want is what I get on a CD: lossless music without DRM. (stupid attempts at copy protection notwithstanding.) At that point, your pricing is going to determine how much I'll buy. If you're at 99c per song/$10 per album, I'll buy some... if you're at $5/album, I'll buy a heck of a lot more.
Distributing audio files has some overhead, but not nearly as much as a physical CD... Why not lower the price on the back catalog, so the hot new single is full price but stuff that's a couple years (or couple decades) old is dirt cheap? All songs aren't created equal, after all... Why should the long-awaited new Radiohead single cost as much as "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" or a forgotten song on a Flock of Seagulls record?
Learn from the Napster rush-- most of the music that was downloaded wasn't the stuff we loved, it was music we were vaguely curious about but didn't want to pay full price for. A huge percentage of those mp3's were listened to one or twice and then put in a folder and forgotten. Say I was feeling nostalgic for my indie rock days, so I'd download a bunch of Replacements, Hoodoo Gurus, Camper Van Beethoven or whatever, listen to it a couple times and then move on to the next "hankering." There's no way I'd go spend $100 for a mess of 15-to-20 year old indie rock CDs (real or at the iTunes store), but if I could buy a mess of guilty pleasure songs for a real bargain... Why not?
Yeah. progress sucks. But look on the bright side-- you can download each and every one of those original books...!
Only problem is they only have the crappy "Legends and Lore", not the original "Deities and Demigods" with Elric and Cthulu.
God. I really haven't grown up one bit in the last twenty years.
And freakin' fill out your partial albums already. I've been waiting to get a legal copy of the gary jules Tears for Fears cover "Mad World" but they won't complete the album
"Mad World" is of course originally from the Donnie Darko (otherwise instrumental) soundtrack, and credited to composer Roland Orzabal (with "vocals by Gary Jules")... And that's not available on iTunes, either.
So don't blame Apple for this missing song, I'm sure it's a rights issue-- which often happens with both covers and soundtracks... Though who exactly is holding it back, I couldn't tell you.
Amen... The contest/festival business is a big cash cow, the odds are defitely stacked against you
I made a short film a few years back and went through the process of entering it in all the major fests-- Sundance, Slamdance, SXWS, and about fifteen to twenty more. Each one had an entry fee of $25-$65. Each one sent me back a polite rejection letter, usually not even signed by a human. I had no guarantee that anyone even watched the damn thing, especially anyone in a position to decide to put it in the program (from what I understand, screening the submissions is usually an unpaid intern's job-- so if you don't appeal to the taste of a random 22-year old film student, good luck making it out of the pile.)
I eventually hooked up with a friend-of-a-friend who worked for the New York Underground Film Festival. I showed it to her directly, she liked it and put it in the program. No fees paid. The screening was attended by programmers from other festivals, and a few of them asked to show it too. Since then it's played around the country and in Europe and Asia-- each festival usually leading to another, and no submission forms or fees paid each time.
That's why I think the system is pretty screwed-- it's completely arbitrary, and I'm convinced the programmers rarely draws from the submissions piles. I'm glad festivals exist, but I don't think its right for the lesser ones to charge entry fees. At least the major film fests are attended by the "right" people, and getting your work in there is great exposure. They also have massive staffs and production costs, and the fee is a good way to limit the submissions. On the other hand it's almost criminal for these no-name festivals and contests to operate the way they do-- charging entry fees on the promise of fame and exposure that they really can't provide. It's kind of like those "we set your poetry to music" ads in the back of Parade magazine.
Methinks Sony learned a lesson from the X-Box... The HD made it extremely easy to mod the console and swap games. I bet it's as much about preventing piracy as anything else.
Woody Allen did the equivalent of what these guys are doing when he released What's Up Tiger Lily? He bought the rights to do that to that movie, even though it was a Japanese film, and even though the environment was much different in the 1960's. So that should tell you something. I don't think LucasFilm is really wrong in this case.
A natural comparison... But not quite correct. With Tiger Lily Allen took a random Japanese spy film ("Kagi No Kag"), redubbed it with wacky dialogue and-- most importantly-- gave it a new name. He turned the source material into a new film that was shown in theaters and later released on video.
This group OTOH is a small theater troupe "dubbing" Star Wars live, on a stage, presumable with different dialogue every time (it's "improv", after all.) They aren't making a product, releasing a dubbed version to movie theaters or on DVD. I think it's much closer to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the culture enacts cheesy stage shows and shouts out wisecracks as the film plays on the screen. It's not a matter of parody or copyright law... But they should be subject to whatever it costs to show the film in public and for profit, and the distributer certainly has a right to say, "I'm not going to let you show it."
The point is that with 90% of television, watching does nothing to improve you or the world. Think about the massive amount of time that is wasted by people watching that part of television.
I think it is rather odd, considering we all live just a short amount of time...
No, the grandparent didn't say watch less or watch quality TV. He stated it in black and white terms, as if you are either a zombie slave to the idiot box or you truly "live", talking politics with friends and taking nature strolls. Of course it's not healthy to watch TV seven hours a day, but it's equally unhealthy (and annoying) to do nothing but talk religion or politics with your friends or about hopes and fears with your spouse. But you can do all of those things and be a well-rounded person. I don't put down people who play games, watch sports or have a drink to unwind if that's what they like. It's all about moderation.
And yes, 90% of TV could be considered crap. But 90% of the web is crap. And music, and games, and movies, and plays and paintings and sculptures. There are a lot of crappy people out there, too. So what? Enjoy the good and enlightening and don't waste your time on the bad.
How about keeping your opinions about what I do with my spare time to yourself? Or at least, don't be so superior about your decision not to watch it.
TV is a form of entertainment, no more or less a waste of time than watching movies, playing video games, reading or perusing the intraweb-- which all have their ratio of good-stuff-to-crap. If I want a way to record the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Strangers with Candy, Larry Sanders, King of The Hill, The Office etc. so I can watch them when I feel like it, then please stay out of it. Believe it or not, I can watch a couple hours of TV a day and still have time to ride my bike and hang out with friends.
Yeah but this would be an extremely streamlined version of VPC, designed to do a single function-- emulate games between two specific processors.
There wouldn't be many of the things slowing VPC down on the Mac-- for example you wouldn't have a complicated OS within another complicated OS (XP within OSX is obviously torture, but NT or 98 emulated on a new dual-boot 1.25 DP G4 running OS 9 is fast, enough to play modern games.)
MOD PARENT UP! Oh... Wait. Never mind.
The LP as we know it wasn't a common thing in the 40's through early 60's. Artists would release music a '45 at a time (and if one of the first couple didn't take off, they never got to make more.) The "A" side was the commercial effort and the "B" side was a chance to take a chance and experiment a little, to cover another artist or whatever. The reason the "B" side songs were usually lesser efforts is that they weren't taken very seriously by DJ's or the public, and it was better to save their best work for the next single.
When an LP was finally released, it was really a "greatest hits"-- a collection of popular singles (like, say, "Meet The Beatles".) Now, of course, you're expected to make a full album, whether you have the material or not-- which is why most pop CDs have one or two decent songs and a lot of filler. But the labels make more selling a CD than a single, so...
Anyway... I can't see how there would be a correlation as far as games go. Games are such team efforts, requiring so much more investment in man-hours and money than recording a song, that it's just not feasible to make a "labor of love" (and who's labor of love would that be, anyway?)
From what I hear, "Tiger Wood's Need for Speed" is actually a dark and disturbing tale about his addiction to methanphetamines. Though it does explain his tendancy to have incredible performances followed by crashes-and-burns.
You fool! How dare you bring up Mac shortcomings on Slashdot-- don't you realize the floodgates of smarmy anti-Apple comments you're letting in?