It may have a state of the art physical design, but this is a design which has served virtually no function other than to make any meaningful upgrades impossible. If apple had at least kept up and offered systems with modern components then this could be overlooked to a degree, but they havent. Talking as a 3D user, the current top end mac pro is nothing short of laughable in terms of specs. A single CPU socket competing in a world of dual and quad chip workstations, Two immensely out of date GPUs which are exactly the same as the ones launched three years ago, in real-world performance they're beaten by a single low-mid range gaming card. The forums I visit are filled with post after post of mac users asking the windows guys for help picking a machine.
You simply cannot leave the same old machine on sale for 3 years and expect to maintain a market. At least in the past when apple did this it wasn't too bad because the larger cheesegrater towers were somewhat expandable and could be kept somewhat up to date, but the trashcans have no decent cpu options short of what they shipped with and most people would have maxed the memory out in the first place.
Put another way, if apple left it 3 or 4 years between iphones, they'd have people jumping ship; that's the current situation for pro macs right now
And I'll bet real hard cash that she ignores every single question of any merit. Wu has been asked many many many questions over the months, she has pretty much refused to answer a single one, instead resorting to calling people sealions for having the audacity to question her official line. All we will see here is a puff piece, the answered questions will all be about how she's a victim, how people should send her money and how she's completely innocent of any wrong doing. Can't wait to see the hug box in action.
You misunderstand, Im sure Wu has had plenty of horrific experiences, I just think most of them have been brought upon herself for the purpose of garnering attention, sympathy and money. I know plenty of women in male dominated industries, specifically 3D illustration and programming (>80% male in my experience), none of them have experienced anything even remotely akin to a 'boys club'. Yes it's a sausage-fest, but they're generally perfectly accepting of any women that they get to work with.
My main objection is that somebody with a reputation of milking every penny of sympathy they possibly can from those gullible enough to believe everything she says, has somehow obtained a Slashdot frontpage entry *with a link to her donation page*. Regardless of what you or I think of her, it beggars belief that even for a Q&A promotion the "Im a victim, give me money" link still gets through.
Congratulations slashdot, you just jumped the shark for me. A front page story about a scam artist with a victim complex and a direct link to a Patreon account so people can give her more money. Time to go find another tech news site.
Can you provide or link to any proof or information on the Cinebench claim? That's quite a statement which I haven't seen presented anywhere else. I run what I believe to be the largest database of cinebench scores (cbscores.com) so have a somewhat vested interest to look into this. To the best of my understanding, AMD performs poorly in certain tasks and benchmarks because of its shared use of FPUs, despite shipping consumer cpus with 8 cores, they only have 4 FPUs, which given benchmarks like cinebench run almost nothing but floating point math, would rather explain the results.
But hey, I could be wrong and there might be a giant conspiracy from intel to artificially slow down their competitors. Feel free to contact me privately if you prefer and I may be able to look into it further. mash at 3dfluff.com.
Disclosure: Used to work for Maxon 10 years ago
Ive been using a contour perfit mouse now for some 8 or so years and love the ergonomics, its genuinely saved me from the RSI monster that was giving me problems. But as you say, the optical tracking is just about as bad as it gets; it often skips over 2-3 pixels randomly and the low dpi means you cant speed it up to any useful degree on high DPI screens. This sucks majorly for doing photoshop and 3D stuff and making gaming a less than great experience.
I mailed them 2-3 years back asking if they had any plans to upgrade the tracking and just got a generic canned response that they will look into it.
3D Animator here. I made the same mistake as you, thinking my 2.8GHz i7 920 (overclocked to 3.7GHz) would be as fast a current 3.7GHz i7. Each new generation of i7 has been ~5% faster clock for clock. For example my new i7 laptop at 2.6GHz is roughly the same speed as my desktop at 3.7GHz in both single and multi threaded tasks.
I have the programming skills of a peanut, I can't tell you how it works, All Im doing is telling you what it does.
The serial you enter to activate the product is ###########-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
Your personal number is the first 11 digits, this is all that is ever used or sent to identify someone, the next 16 characters are just the hash, this is only ever entered or seen during installation, so youre not sending a full usable serial number over the network at any point.
In the 7 or so years theyve been using this system (I spent 5 years doing tech support, and continue beta testing for them) this system has never cropped up as a problem in any shape or form. Seven years and some 50,000 customers (the last sales figures they released 2 years ago) and not a single problem with this system nor complaint. It works, no matter how much you might like to froth at the mouth.
The other options are hardware dongles, tying to NICs or performing no check whatsoever
The best method I've really seen is at the company I used to work for, Maxon Computer, they make cinema 4d. The only stuff you can really protect against is casual opportunistic pirating. Ie a company that buys a copy and puts it on several machines at once instead of buying several licences; which by the way is extremely common amongst smaller 10 man studios.
C4D uses a serial number, this is very little burden for you or the customer. The serial is not tied to the hardware in any way; its freely moveable and installable on any machines you like. The check is simple, it checks the network to see if someone else with the same serial is already running the software, if so then it just doesn't load, that's it.
Yes, you can in theory start yanking out network cables before you load it and so forth but this isnt really an option for most, crawling under the desk, losing shared network drives of media etc several times a day. Just make a personally identifiable serial number to scare some away from giving it out and add a network check to stop people casually spreading it around the office.
If someone wants to copy your software for free, they will do it, no protection will save you, just accept this and don't burden your paying customers with annoying crap.
- Dongles cost money, you'll have driver/os issues, they'll break, they'll get fried and corrupted, they take up slots, they get stolen, they are truly crap IMHO.
- Tying your serials to NICs is a hassle and you will be forever sending new serials every time someone upgrades their computer, you don't want to set yourself up for this eternal headache
- Online checks, lets not even go there.
Slashdot Mirror
It may have a state of the art physical design, but this is a design which has served virtually no function other than to make any meaningful upgrades impossible. If apple had at least kept up and offered systems with modern components then this could be overlooked to a degree, but they havent. Talking as a 3D user, the current top end mac pro is nothing short of laughable in terms of specs. A single CPU socket competing in a world of dual and quad chip workstations, Two immensely out of date GPUs which are exactly the same as the ones launched three years ago, in real-world performance they're beaten by a single low-mid range gaming card. The forums I visit are filled with post after post of mac users asking the windows guys for help picking a machine.
You simply cannot leave the same old machine on sale for 3 years and expect to maintain a market. At least in the past when apple did this it wasn't too bad because the larger cheesegrater towers were somewhat expandable and could be kept somewhat up to date, but the trashcans have no decent cpu options short of what they shipped with and most people would have maxed the memory out in the first place.
Put another way, if apple left it 3 or 4 years between iphones, they'd have people jumping ship; that's the current situation for pro macs right now
Is it hiding behind the lens flare from the sunrise on the left?
And I'll bet real hard cash that she ignores every single question of any merit. Wu has been asked many many many questions over the months, she has pretty much refused to answer a single one, instead resorting to calling people sealions for having the audacity to question her official line. All we will see here is a puff piece, the answered questions will all be about how she's a victim, how people should send her money and how she's completely innocent of any wrong doing. Can't wait to see the hug box in action.
You misunderstand, Im sure Wu has had plenty of horrific experiences, I just think most of them have been brought upon herself for the purpose of garnering attention, sympathy and money. I know plenty of women in male dominated industries, specifically 3D illustration and programming (>80% male in my experience), none of them have experienced anything even remotely akin to a 'boys club'. Yes it's a sausage-fest, but they're generally perfectly accepting of any women that they get to work with. My main objection is that somebody with a reputation of milking every penny of sympathy they possibly can from those gullible enough to believe everything she says, has somehow obtained a Slashdot frontpage entry *with a link to her donation page*. Regardless of what you or I think of her, it beggars belief that even for a Q&A promotion the "Im a victim, give me money" link still gets through.
Congratulations slashdot, you just jumped the shark for me. A front page story about a scam artist with a victim complex and a direct link to a Patreon account so people can give her more money. Time to go find another tech news site.
Can you provide or link to any proof or information on the Cinebench claim? That's quite a statement which I haven't seen presented anywhere else. I run what I believe to be the largest database of cinebench scores (cbscores.com) so have a somewhat vested interest to look into this. To the best of my understanding, AMD performs poorly in certain tasks and benchmarks because of its shared use of FPUs, despite shipping consumer cpus with 8 cores, they only have 4 FPUs, which given benchmarks like cinebench run almost nothing but floating point math, would rather explain the results. But hey, I could be wrong and there might be a giant conspiracy from intel to artificially slow down their competitors. Feel free to contact me privately if you prefer and I may be able to look into it further. mash at 3dfluff.com. Disclosure: Used to work for Maxon 10 years ago
Ive been using a contour perfit mouse now for some 8 or so years and love the ergonomics, its genuinely saved me from the RSI monster that was giving me problems. But as you say, the optical tracking is just about as bad as it gets; it often skips over 2-3 pixels randomly and the low dpi means you cant speed it up to any useful degree on high DPI screens. This sucks majorly for doing photoshop and 3D stuff and making gaming a less than great experience. I mailed them 2-3 years back asking if they had any plans to upgrade the tracking and just got a generic canned response that they will look into it.
3D Animator here. I made the same mistake as you, thinking my 2.8GHz i7 920 (overclocked to 3.7GHz) would be as fast a current 3.7GHz i7. Each new generation of i7 has been ~5% faster clock for clock. For example my new i7 laptop at 2.6GHz is roughly the same speed as my desktop at 3.7GHz in both single and multi threaded tasks.
Just install windows on the mac?
Because the rolling brownouts on the regulated electricity "utility" is a real winner.
Because "Hi-Speed USB" was a real winner in explaining what it does.
Maybe test things rather than just guessing? HT is a ~20% speedup for anyone doing 3D rendering. http://www.cbscores.com/
Mach 6, how blades is that?
The Deeprun Tram?
I am rubber, you are glue!
Office max and sams club dont threaten to revoke your rebate if you go down the road and also decide to buy something from another store.
If someone cant succinctly describe a book in screenfull, then something is wrong.
You need a bigger screen.
2k, 4k and 8k, when referred to film, are the horizontal resolution.
720p and 1080p when referred to TV sizes, refer to the vertical resolution.
Look at the image in the middle with the coloured blocks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography [wikipedia.org]
It shows 2K being just slightly larger than 1080p. If 2k referred to the vertical size then it would cover 4 times the area
I have the programming skills of a peanut, I can't tell you how it works, All Im doing is telling you what it does.
The serial you enter to activate the product is ###########-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
Your personal number is the first 11 digits, this is all that is ever used or sent to identify someone, the next 16 characters are just the hash, this is only ever entered or seen during installation, so youre not sending a full usable serial number over the network at any point.
In the 7 or so years theyve been using this system (I spent 5 years doing tech support, and continue beta testing for them) this system has never cropped up as a problem in any shape or form. Seven years and some 50,000 customers (the last sales figures they released 2 years ago) and not a single problem with this system nor complaint. It works, no matter how much you might like to froth at the mouth.
The other options are hardware dongles, tying to NICs or performing no check whatsoever
The best method I've really seen is at the company I used to work for, Maxon Computer, they make cinema 4d. The only stuff you can really protect against is casual opportunistic pirating. Ie a company that buys a copy and puts it on several machines at once instead of buying several licences; which by the way is extremely common amongst smaller 10 man studios. C4D uses a serial number, this is very little burden for you or the customer. The serial is not tied to the hardware in any way; its freely moveable and installable on any machines you like. The check is simple, it checks the network to see if someone else with the same serial is already running the software, if so then it just doesn't load, that's it. Yes, you can in theory start yanking out network cables before you load it and so forth but this isnt really an option for most, crawling under the desk, losing shared network drives of media etc several times a day. Just make a personally identifiable serial number to scare some away from giving it out and add a network check to stop people casually spreading it around the office. If someone wants to copy your software for free, they will do it, no protection will save you, just accept this and don't burden your paying customers with annoying crap. - Dongles cost money, you'll have driver/os issues, they'll break, they'll get fried and corrupted, they take up slots, they get stolen, they are truly crap IMHO. - Tying your serials to NICs is a hassle and you will be forever sending new serials every time someone upgrades their computer, you don't want to set yourself up for this eternal headache - Online checks, lets not even go there.
Then perhaps you should watch it before slating it. The film DOES contain the gargleblaster and even shows it being made, plus towels feature aplenty.