Firefox is a pretty bad example, as in almost every other program theres is a huge amount of consistency. Th shortcut differences in firefox mostly stem from the dev team trying to keep FF the same across platforms, though it is looking like they will make it more macified in the next major release. Honestly, if you dig a little bit, like in system preferences, you can change the behavior of a lot of whats pissing you off.
2- Window switching I have to totally disagree. command + ` usually switches between windows in the app on top
command + tab has a TON of options. First off, command+tab, you can let go of tab and you have the switcher up. Now, you can use mouse, tab, or arrow keys to move between apps. You can also minimize or quit an app from here, by pressing H to hide and Q to quit.
Expose is really the best way though. I map expose to a mouse button, as well as the last few F keys. You expose in to show all windows or show windows in current app. If you have a few documents open, doing it for that app is a ton faster then anything in windows. I use it extensively in photoshop, where I often have 5-10 things open.
Also, if you expose, you can tab and it will go app to app showing open windows. I wouldn't be surprised if theres a trick involving minimized windows, but imm not here to do your research. To be honest, I dont even minimize things anymore. Theres really no point.
3- fans and battery First off, fans going gung ho is usually because of some piece of bad software over utilizing the cpu/gpu. If theres something more sinister, it's either a hardware failure or theres probably an update for errant behavior. But, honestly, having a semi-easy way to reset your systems hardware.. is a good thing, right? Also, its not PRAM anymore for anyone reading (on the intel hardware). Crap happens, it's not just cus you have a mac.
Also, for people who REALLLLLY want to customize keyboard shortcuts and, well, everything else, try
Honestly, I remember reading this the day of or the day after launch, if I remember right. $90 something is not all that terrible.
Batteries for the RAZR are like 40-50. And of course, if you didnt know the batteries were non-replaceable when you bought the iPhone, youre dumb as a rock. I do however feel that for that price, you should get a loaner phone, but I digress.
I personally dont think theres any cell phone competition in the US.
I mean look, my cell phone bill has never/really/ gone down. My minutes have gone up slightly for the price, but with the ubiquity, thats the least they could do.
These guys charge for things that barely use infrastructure thats already up (10c a text message? cmon).
They dont compete directly on price either. Or service. You can never have it all with these guys, its al a carte and they take you to the bank.
They neuter phones, and find other great ways to take your money.
If there was competition, wed all be paying $40 or less for/every/ feature.
If the cell band opens up, the cell companies are screwed. People will come along and offer service and make a reasonable profit for 1/4 of the prices offered now.
OSX started out long ago as open step (as far as being for intel). Open step became rhapsody beta, which ran on intel (i have some cds around somewhere still =). I could go on, but the point is that I'd bet, and it's been said, that osx was kept at mostly build parity with the commercially released PPC versions. I think the main thing holding back the intel version was an enabling technology like rosetta. Of course, it had been rumored for years that OSX was/is also compiled for Sparc and some other targets.
Now, this is important because an os kept this relativly flexible would seem to have a monumentally esier time being targeted at different architectures (linux has this benefit as well). And leveraging APIs and frameworks for things like phones, video players, palmtop devices, media centers, could produce the most user friendly and functionaly devices seen yet.
This brings me to why the apple phone will clean up, if even done remotely right. Cell phones suck. The UI's get worse and worse. Cell companies charge in retarded fashions for stuff in the US (ring tones? backgrounds?). Cell phone layouts keep getting worse (am I the only one who thinks the keypad on the new slim line of moto phones is atrocious?). Cell phone companies dont compete in the US (at least on price... has your cell phone bill ever really gone down, even with the current ubiquity?). Oh yeah, #1 thing - a competant music player/photo/video viewer without all the restrictions a verizon would place on it.
And if apple is able to go te way of european phones, sellong unlocked phones useable worldwide with sim chips (and even possibly paid for with the latter in the US), all in all, apple should clean up and maybe, just maybe, force cell companies to make somereally good products. Kinda sucks that apple would be at least somewhat tied to current infrastructure, as it is said to be buying network usage from cingular.
Oh well, I'll been holding off my cell upgrade till macworld.
I had this discussion at a game developers meeting, and it went like this. I claimed, in essence, games are art, and should be made properly and to reflect the artits vision (paraphrasing, but you get the drift).
Some game developers, said that "art doesnt make money" (again paraphrasing), and that being profitable is more important.
Some applauded me. I think you see the problem here: If you're not spending time to make great games because of the need for money - or you're only making the game for money - quality will suffer. If this gets repeated by every dev house in the industry, you start the downward spiral. I'm of the oppinion that if you make a great game, your audience doesn't know how to tell yours from say, the n64 superman. Is it because gaming is overly marketing drivin? Is it because the industry has dug the hole where innovation and originality cease to be driving factors? Prolly a little of everything. Thi is why gamers are so entranced by the wii - it would seem it could break some of the bad treands.
Someoen also mentioned about flash/java games. Why are they so popular? Quick, simple, little cost. Honestly, a lot of flash games, simple as can be, have the same depth as a lot of $50 games. Wheres the value proposition in that? I think less games, of higher quality, with an effort to re-educate the gaming masses, especially on the front of better greaphics to not a good game make, could keep the gaming industry from completly turning off at the least the more hardcore market.
Here's the bottom line: how many bleh games have you played, that if they had just a bit more dev time could have been awesome? Well, this problem is only going to get worse as costs go up, and it's probably up there with just plain bad game design of why a game cant be better then mediocer.
I know, I know, RTFA, but when I read the blurb on the front page of slashdot containing the following phrases: new revolutionary create movie-quality games blazing-speed graphics PlayStation 3 100 million homes in five years usher in the next microchip revolution prowess to a microprocessor called Cell chip wizards at IBM
I get the sick feeling that the article has a more then slight bias, and I will get no real information from it.... but thats just me
Course, theres also a little bit of economics to consider here:
Lets say, the iPod had the choice of using 2AA batteries. Lets's say you got your AA's at $0.50(too high? too low? i dont have to buy them). Lets's see what youve paid for JUST BATTERIES over the "300-500" charge average lifetime of apples built in battery:
err, $300-$500... I made my math too easy =(
Probably more depending on how much you use the ipod, if the ipod could run on only 2AAs, and what quality battery you buy for it. Still complaining? If you are really desperate, i think some companies offer *gasp* external battery packs. But even at 99 bucks, Apples battery replacement nost likely means your not gonna blow double that much on batteries over the next few years.
I think they wrote the perfect article to get Ad revenue. But i digress.
The testing scheme they used seems more then a bit suspect. If they had done ANY research, they would know Premier is hobbled, cludgy, slow, and unuseable on a mac. Word on windows loads itself in to the system to get performance increases on x86. Photoshop is hindered by disk access as much as CPU. When they take away the raid, the scores seem a little more real. (you CAN do raid in the G5 box, albeit software, its still faster). And Quake3, not so much hindered by video ram, as with a more then likely slower clocked video card, not up to date Quake version, etc. Also notable, is unless im mistaken, NONE of the apps, except photoshop, would be useing the dual processors. There is NO link to the test methods (app version numbers, weather the G5 plugin on PS was used, what version of word...). Macworld may have done the Mac tests, but they only did it to what PCworld asked, or i dont think they would have agreed to do a premier test. Benchmarks are benchmarks, but these seemd to be a little more then bent. Good for ad $$ though....
Ok, while these codecs have brought the best of internet IP theft so i can watch my favorite TV shows and such, there is also one HUGE problem.. It's like no 2 files use the same mix of video+audio formats. This really sucks after you reinstall your computer and cant remember which of 100 things you need to install to get your Aqua teen hunger force video to play (if you havnt guessed, im dealing with that right now).
Another problem for adoptation i'd assume, would be the REAL MPEG4 codec and QuickTIme. If you havent worked in video professionally, you dont understand how much headace quicktime releaves, compared to trying to get stuff to encode/play with open source tools, and even windows media. Before you waste a keystroke trying to tell me otherwise.. go work with various digital media assets coming from multiple sources with open source, quicktime based, and windows media based. 8+ hours a day. 40 hours a week. See which you would base your post houses workflow on.
the true MPEG4 standard will most likely win out (if any is used at all) because of quicktime... thats a mainstay tool people use to put together tv/movies/DVDs now, changing would not make sense.
Taxes are levied in Second life because of finite server resources(ALL content is server-side, the client download is a mere 11mb). A server can handle x amount of objects, and tax levels are calculated based on things like total available land, and other factors.
For example, i have an empty "sim" (one game world unit, in an interconnected grid of sims), and i first want to buy some land in that sim. I buy a 32x32m plot of land for x amount of money. Now, you get taxed for that land, since its a limited server resource. Now i want to build say a house. I "rez" in 4 cube primitives, shape them to form walls. Each item costs y money to bring in to the world, then has a tax for stying in the work for an extended period of time, based on a variety of factors. Basically anything that costs server ram and CPU cycles, you get taxed for. You would have to play the game to fully understand the results this actually has, but as the base of it.. is theres a finite amount of resources, and the rules keep them form being exploited.
Second life is a game where the players make their own content. Theres a scripting language and primitives based modeller. You can import textures and sounds, and create what you like. Dont want to create? no problem. Its a game you play as you like. Its a paradigm shift, and worth your time to take a look at if you want a truly new gaming experience.
I think they are directly corilated. Its not easy, if not impossible to do live filtering/searching like that w/o some kind of new backend. And since apple hired one or both of the guys form the article...
Then lables. There is NO metadata in osx files. In old mac os, every file had a good chunk of metadata attached (type, creator, invisibility among other flags, and no doubt lables was another one. In a beos type file system, you can suport any number of different types of metadata, from ID3 type stuff, email information(the classic beOS emails-are-files), or in this case, lables.
I think the transition will be gradual, since adopting something of this nature gung-ho could be disasterous (not everyone on the new FS, and losing the metadata on transfer). I would also something like this might eventually get rolled in to opensource. If it does, and its what id expect it to be, i imagine the adoption rate will be very fast.
Theres no definite evidence, but this FS transition was speculated year(s) ago when apple hired these guy(s), and wouldnt expect anything but "really great stuff"
Potential connection between the advanced file system developed at Be Inc. (BFS) and Apple's new Finder for Panther:
Reference these two URLs for some background:
Tales of a BeOS Refugee Windows on a Database - Sliced and Diced by BeOS Gurus
I think, in terms of the new Finder, it's time for a paradigm shift. First, note that Apple hired the guys mentioned in the articles above. Second, realize that the demo of "live" searches is most certainly because of the efforts of the BFS people. Third, realize that you could, in theory, never have to look thru another folder again. If you take some of the ideas the BFS people had, everything would be context-based. Having a database back-end to your Finder, with unlimited "meta data" (actually, the start of this, I beleive, was shown, in the form of labels), could provide, as one of the engineers put it, a kind of "google" interface to your data. Just some things to chew on while we watch the new Finder evolve.
Not to burst anyones overhyped bubble on this one, but this game is really, really boring. And, the only people who are goign to do good at it, are the huge guilds who have dolled out jobs and will be working together to become the powerhouses in the game VERY fast over people who are not.
I killed jarjar many times in beta, i think thats good enough~
I was excited to try this out last night, and it runs beautifully, but after readon the comment about the hair (how its not shaded to kind of fade out), i also noticed that Sawn has no eyelashes, and aparently does on the nvidia cards. Having seen the demo on boh cards, i cant say technically why the ati does in fact seem to have a nicer overall image (is it the gamma, is it actually what rage 3d mentions?), but nonetheless, this is still a really, really cool hack. Now if we get the hairs back, can have an even match up~
I think we have to look at waht really dirves a HDs cost and size to put this in a little better perspective. First, lets look at the phsical components and their evolutions:(please reply for any glaring ommisions or innacuracies)
Heads(faster, able to read higher densities on platters) Platters(thinner, higher density) Motors(faster bigger better more) Drive Electronics (Less chips, new interfaces)
Ok, now, lets look at the current dive costs: 80gb drive is say 100 bucks 120gb drive is like 110 bucks...
wait a tick, wtf is going on here? Ahh, the REAL cost of the hard drive starts to come to light: everything BUT what the data is actually stored on. This means that mostly you are paying for the dirve electronics etc., and that for the more common platter of densitys between x and y only raise the price a small amount.
This leads us to the current problem in drive size and performance. Size is going up exponentially to performance. (mostly on the IDE side). In this respect, i think the comparison to moores law falls on its ass.
Size: has come from 5mb to 200+GB
Performance: (ide side, and to some extent SCSI)) has gone from who knows how ungodly slow to real world numbers form 40-100mb/s(single drive) about. -- these numbers have not changed dramaticaly in the last 5-8 years.. really. They do not corrispond at all with the raise in size. This has also become one of the biggest bottlenecs on the PC(notice the P for personal, im not getting in to raids and stuff here)
Cost: This really need to be split up in to 2 categories to get the real picture: platter cost and dirve electronics cost. Id wager the electronics cost is a fairly flat line compared to platter cost (having a LOT to do with where R&D money seems to being spent). So while Drives may SEEM to be going ahead of the curve, they are really far behind, held back mostly by legacy tech, no real mass market demand in greatly improved per drive performance, and good ol laws of physics*.
End of off the top of my head rant, sorry for the intrusion.
*(C)(TM)(R) The Microsoft Corperation, all rights reserved.
The pictures Above are of the old ipod.. the new one makes the old one look bulkey. basically take off the white top portion, round all the corners and shrnik it just a bit and that new ipod
theres also something to be said about the new ipods face being completly sealed... ie. no more dustbunnies (dont know if it comes with covers for the IO ports)
and, really, the ipod just is a marvel of engeneering, design, and ergonomics compared to anythying else. Also take in to account its VERy easy to do all song functions blind with one hand (scrubing, volume, rev/ff play stop)
Even though the results may be/seem bogus, on HUGE thing to keep in mind is that these processors will be going in to a motherboard that will not castrate the performance of the chip. That alone could be the reason for the stellar results... Just something to chew on that no one seemed to mention.
I usually dont flame but god hes got something up his ass on this one. Hes only being detrimental by bing so nitpicky about words. ITS THE CONCEPT STUPID. Who cares if they call it Toenal-OS, its still the same damn thing and the same danm concepts. Quit trying to pat yourself on the back and check your ego at the door >_
It has come to our attention that you have a hard drive full of illeagal MP3's, but are not running the far superior Microsoft Windows operating system. Enclosed please find a certificate good for one eMachines WindowsME based computer, and please proceed to transfer all your MP3s to our platform of choice so we may then use all these great programs we developed then sue the living daylights out of... err.. serve you better.
Have a Nice Day, The RIAA
*when you buy music, buy it from us, because we CARE*
Just a note so people know where these apps fit in to workflows: (feel free to correct any innacuracies)
FINAL CUT PRO 4
Non Linear Editor. Now works with DV, DV-Pro(more bandwidth, better resolution/quality), film, and aparently anything in between. Other things to note are a new Title generator, audio mixer, and lots of tools (color correction, various video analizers). If you dont work in video production, the reasons for choosing an Avid over FCP might not seem readily apparent, especially considering the potential cost difference, but it mostly has to do with what you can do in real time(rendering effects and dissolves in software can get tedius with hi rez footage)
SHAKE 3
Compositing software. NOT a direct competitor to combustion or after effects. They all have their place in the workflow, and it would do a potential buyer well to know which tool will fulfill the requirements of their project. It is not for special effects so much (by itself, though you would composite them in on it), and dos not have the 3d support of combustion. It does however work very well for film resolutions, and has a very powerfull workflow.
DVD STUDIO 2
DVD Studio offered the most accessable way to profession DVD authoring I had found (compared to the products for windows, which had potentially more power, but were messy at best to work with). Looks as though ver.2 will up the flexibility while improving the workflow. Also, big tools that were missing from ver.1 are better compressors with more granular control, timline for integrating various video, audio, and subtitles, and better integration with final cut pro.
All in all, Apple is offering a very compelling set of tools for a wide subset of motion media production. Ugg dont want to sound like an ad, but do yourself a favor and look in to an apple solution if your going to buy tools to work in video.
These funds do not just go for people getting CS degrees. Computer labs, art departments, secretaries, on and on. And i will tell you this, unless someone is in to computers, and youve all seen it, they are completly programmed for MS computing. At a web cafe, i recently added a linux machine, and the first customer to use it came up to the counter and said the computer was broken. Well i got the call, and it turns out he didnt see the IE icon on the desktop and could get no further. THIS is the problem, and id wager even people with a masters in some non computer related field do the same thing.
Why does this happen? Because people become homoginized on MS software, and dont REALLY learn how to use a computer. I made a web kiosk with only mozilla. It took a few tries, as people would fight tooth and nail to not use mozilla. The point of this, is the average user is brainwashed.
So, money aside, i think the point of this "gift" is to force people, no matter how they will use it, to learn the computer beyond the microsoft microcosm. To learn there IS a world w/o MS, you CAN use mozilla, etc. You are only doing students a diservice by having a computing platform where they dont have to think (since they all "know" how to use it already) and wont know wht to do if presented with anythign outside the teeny scope of that.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that old hardware is staying useable longer and longer. A 1ghz PC will IMHO do everytyhing you could do day to day 10 years from now. You could make all of these dual boot, and do a slow changeover from your current licenses.
I say go for it, change the face of university computing, be a pioneer. This is like a free ride to try something new.
Slashdot Mirror
1- Shortcuts form program to program.
Firefox is a pretty bad example, as in almost every other program theres is a huge amount of consistency. Th shortcut differences in firefox mostly stem from the dev team trying to keep FF the same across platforms, though it is looking like they will make it more macified in the next major release. Honestly, if you dig a little bit, like in system preferences, you can change the behavior of a lot of whats pissing you off.
2- Window switching
I have to totally disagree.
command + ` usually switches between windows in the app on top
command + tab has a TON of options. First off, command+tab, you can let go of tab and you have the switcher up. Now, you can use mouse, tab, or arrow keys to move between apps. You can also minimize or quit an app from here, by pressing H to hide and Q to quit.
Expose is really the best way though. I map expose to a mouse button, as well as the last few F keys. You expose in to show all windows or show windows in current app. If you have a few documents open, doing it for that app is a ton faster then anything in windows. I use it extensively in photoshop, where I often have 5-10 things open.
Also, if you expose, you can tab and it will go app to app showing open windows. I wouldn't be surprised if theres a trick involving minimized windows, but imm not here to do your research.
To be honest, I dont even minimize things anymore. Theres really no point.
3- fans and battery
First off, fans going gung ho is usually because of some piece of bad software over utilizing the cpu/gpu. If theres something more sinister, it's either a hardware failure or theres probably an update for errant behavior. But, honestly, having a semi-easy way to reset your systems hardware.. is a good thing, right? Also, its not PRAM anymore for anyone reading (on the intel hardware). Crap happens, it's not just cus you have a mac.
Also, for people who REALLLLLY want to customize keyboard shortcuts and, well, everything else, try
http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/
really, it's amazing, and I use it for adding shortcuts on my logitech mouse on a per app basis.
Honestly, I remember reading this the day of or the day after launch, if I remember right. $90 something is not all that terrible.
Batteries for the RAZR are like 40-50. And of course, if you didnt know the batteries were non-replaceable when you bought the iPhone, youre dumb as a rock. I do however feel that for that price, you should get a loaner phone, but I digress.
I personally dont think theres any cell phone competition in the US.
/really/ gone down. My minutes have gone up slightly for the price, but with the ubiquity, thats the least they could do.
/every/ feature.
I mean look, my cell phone bill has never
These guys charge for things that barely use infrastructure thats already up (10c a text message? cmon).
They dont compete directly on price either. Or service. You can never have it all with these guys, its al a carte and they take you to the bank.
They neuter phones, and find other great ways to take your money.
If there was competition, wed all be paying $40 or less for
If the cell band opens up, the cell companies are screwed. People will come along and offer service and make a reasonable profit for 1/4 of the prices offered now.
Sorry for the tired, bitter, rant.
Just a little history on osx:
OSX started out long ago as open step (as far as being for intel). Open step became rhapsody beta, which ran on intel (i have some cds around somewhere still =). I could go on, but the point is that I'd bet, and it's been said, that osx was kept at mostly build parity with the commercially released PPC versions. I think the main thing holding back the intel version was an enabling technology like rosetta. Of course, it had been rumored for years that OSX was/is also compiled for Sparc and some other targets.
Now, this is important because an os kept this relativly flexible would seem to have a monumentally esier time being targeted at different architectures (linux has this benefit as well). And leveraging APIs and frameworks for things like phones, video players, palmtop devices, media centers, could produce the most user friendly and functionaly devices seen yet.
This brings me to why the apple phone will clean up, if even done remotely right. Cell phones suck. The UI's get worse and worse. Cell companies charge in retarded fashions for stuff in the US (ring tones? backgrounds?). Cell phone layouts keep getting worse (am I the only one who thinks the keypad on the new slim line of moto phones is atrocious?). Cell phone companies dont compete in the US (at least on price... has your cell phone bill ever really gone down, even with the current ubiquity?). Oh yeah, #1 thing - a competant music player/photo/video viewer without all the restrictions a verizon would place on it.
And if apple is able to go te way of european phones, sellong unlocked phones useable worldwide with sim chips (and even possibly paid for with the latter in the US), all in all, apple should clean up and maybe, just maybe, force cell companies to make somereally good products. Kinda sucks that apple would be at least somewhat tied to current infrastructure, as it is said to be buying network usage from cingular.
Oh well, I'll been holding off my cell upgrade till macworld.
I had this discussion at a game developers meeting, and it went like this. I claimed, in essence, games are art, and should be made properly and to reflect the artits vision (paraphrasing, but you get the drift).
Some game developers, said that "art doesnt make money" (again paraphrasing), and that being profitable is more important.
Some applauded me. I think you see the problem here: If you're not spending time to make great games because of the need for money - or you're only making the game for money - quality will suffer. If this gets repeated by every dev house in the industry, you start the downward spiral. I'm of the oppinion that if you make a great game, your audience doesn't know how to tell yours from say, the n64 superman. Is it because gaming is overly marketing drivin? Is it because the industry has dug the hole where innovation and originality cease to be driving factors? Prolly a little of everything. Thi is why gamers are so entranced by the wii - it would seem it could break some of the bad treands.
Someoen also mentioned about flash/java games. Why are they so popular? Quick, simple, little cost. Honestly, a lot of flash games, simple as can be, have the same depth as a lot of $50 games. Wheres the value proposition in that? I think less games, of higher quality, with an effort to re-educate the gaming masses, especially on the front of better greaphics to not a good game make, could keep the gaming industry from completly turning off at the least the more hardcore market.
Here's the bottom line: how many bleh games have you played, that if they had just a bit more dev time could have been awesome? Well, this problem is only going to get worse as costs go up, and it's probably up there with just plain bad game design of why a game cant be better then mediocer.
I know, I know, RTFA, but when I read the blurb on the front page of slashdot containing the following phrases:
new revolutionary
create movie-quality games
blazing-speed graphics
PlayStation 3
100 million homes in five years
usher in the next microchip revolution
prowess to a microprocessor called Cell
chip wizards at IBM
I get the sick feeling that the article has a more then slight bias, and I will get no real information from it.... but thats just me
Mozilla
http://drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?code=5184-TIC2
I havent got to use one, but the form and function of this case looks like it could be teh win, as such. And it looks badass.
Course, theres also a little bit of economics to consider here:
Lets say, the iPod had the choice of using 2AA batteries. Lets's say you got your AA's at $0.50(too high? too low? i dont have to buy them). Lets's see what youve paid for JUST BATTERIES over the "300-500" charge average lifetime of apples built in battery:
err, $300-$500... I made my math too easy =(
Probably more depending on how much you use the ipod, if the ipod could run on only 2AAs, and what quality battery you buy for it. Still complaining? If you are really desperate, i think some companies offer *gasp* external battery packs. But even at 99 bucks, Apples battery replacement nost likely means your not gonna blow double that much on batteries over the next few years.
*CHEERS*
I think they wrote the perfect article to get Ad revenue. But i digress.
The testing scheme they used seems more then a bit suspect. If they had done ANY research, they would know Premier is hobbled, cludgy, slow, and unuseable on a mac. Word on windows loads itself in to the system to get performance increases on x86. Photoshop is hindered by disk access as much as CPU. When they take away the raid, the scores seem a little more real. (you CAN do raid in the G5 box, albeit software, its still faster). And Quake3, not so much hindered by video ram, as with a more then likely slower clocked video card, not up to date Quake version, etc. Also notable, is unless im mistaken, NONE of the apps, except photoshop, would be useing the dual processors. There is NO link to the test methods (app version numbers, weather the G5 plugin on PS was used, what version of word...). Macworld may have done the Mac tests, but they only did it to what PCworld asked, or i dont think they would have agreed to do a premier test. Benchmarks are benchmarks, but these seemd to be a little more then bent. Good for ad $$ though....
Ok, while these codecs have brought the best of internet IP theft so i can watch my favorite TV shows and such, there is also one HUGE problem.. It's like no 2 files use the same mix of video+audio formats. This really sucks after you reinstall your computer and cant remember which of 100 things you need to install to get your Aqua teen hunger force video to play (if you havnt guessed, im dealing with that right now).
Another problem for adoptation i'd assume, would be the REAL MPEG4 codec and QuickTIme. If you havent worked in video professionally, you dont understand how much headace quicktime releaves, compared to trying to get stuff to encode/play with open source tools, and even windows media. Before you waste a keystroke trying to tell me otherwise.. go work with various digital media assets coming from multiple sources with open source, quicktime based, and windows media based. 8+ hours a day. 40 hours a week. See which you would base your post houses workflow on.
the true MPEG4 standard will most likely win out (if any is used at all) because of quicktime... thats a mainstay tool people use to put together tv/movies/DVDs now, changing would not make sense.
Taxes are levied in Second life because of finite server resources(ALL content is server-side, the client download is a mere 11mb). A server can handle x amount of objects, and tax levels are calculated based on things like total available land, and other factors.
For example, i have an empty "sim" (one game world unit, in an interconnected grid of sims), and i first want to buy some land in that sim. I buy a 32x32m plot of land for x amount of money. Now, you get taxed for that land, since its a limited server resource. Now i want to build say a house. I "rez" in 4 cube primitives, shape them to form walls. Each item costs y money to bring in to the world, then has a tax for stying in the work for an extended period of time, based on a variety of factors. Basically anything that costs server ram and CPU cycles, you get taxed for. You would have to play the game to fully understand the results this actually has, but as the base of it.. is theres a finite amount of resources, and the rules keep them form being exploited.
Second life is a game where the players make their own content. Theres a scripting language and primitives based modeller. You can import textures and sounds, and create what you like. Dont want to create? no problem. Its a game you play as you like. Its a paradigm shift, and worth your time to take a look at if you want a truly new gaming experience.
I think they are directly corilated. Its not easy, if not impossible to do live filtering/searching like that w/o some kind of new backend. And since apple hired one or both of the guys form the article...
Then lables. There is NO metadata in osx files. In old mac os, every file had a good chunk of metadata attached (type, creator, invisibility among other flags, and no doubt lables was another one. In a beos type file system, you can suport any number of different types of metadata, from ID3 type stuff, email information(the classic beOS emails-are-files), or in this case, lables.
I think the transition will be gradual, since adopting something of this nature gung-ho could be disasterous (not everyone on the new FS, and losing the metadata on transfer). I would also something like this might eventually get rolled in to opensource. If it does, and its what id expect it to be, i imagine the adoption rate will be very fast.
Theres no definite evidence, but this FS transition was speculated year(s) ago when apple hired these guy(s), and wouldnt expect anything but "really great stuff"
Not to burst anyones overhyped bubble on this one, but this game is really, really boring. And, the only people who are goign to do good at it, are the huge guilds who have dolled out jobs and will be working together to become the powerhouses in the game VERY fast over people who are not.
I killed jarjar many times in beta, i think thats good enough~
I ATTACK THE DARKNESS!
I was excited to try this out last night, and it runs beautifully, but after readon the comment about the hair (how its not shaded to kind of fade out), i also noticed that Sawn has no eyelashes, and aparently does on the nvidia cards. Having seen the demo on boh cards, i cant say technically why the ati does in fact seem to have a nicer overall image (is it the gamma, is it actually what rage 3d mentions?), but nonetheless, this is still a really, really cool hack. Now if we get the hairs back, can have an even match up~
I think we have to look at waht really dirves a HDs cost and size to put this in a little better perspective. First, lets look at the phsical components and their evolutions:(please reply for any glaring ommisions or innacuracies)
Heads(faster, able to read higher densities on platters) Platters(thinner, higher density)
Motors(faster bigger better more)
Drive Electronics (Less chips, new interfaces)
Ok, now, lets look at the current dive costs:
80gb drive is say 100 bucks
120gb drive is like 110 bucks...
wait a tick, wtf is going on here? Ahh, the REAL cost of the hard drive starts to come to light: everything BUT what the data is actually stored on. This means that mostly you are paying for the dirve electronics etc., and that for the more common platter of densitys between x and y only raise the price a small amount.
This leads us to the current problem in drive size and performance. Size is going up exponentially to performance. (mostly on the IDE side). In this respect, i think the comparison to moores law falls on its ass.
Size: has come from 5mb to 200+GB
Performance: (ide side, and to some extent SCSI)) has gone from who knows how ungodly slow to real world numbers form 40-100mb/s(single drive) about. -- these numbers have not changed dramaticaly in the last 5-8 years.. really. They do not corrispond at all with the raise in size. This has also become one of the biggest bottlenecs on the PC(notice the P for personal, im not getting in to raids and stuff here)
Cost: This really need to be split up in to 2 categories to get the real picture: platter cost and dirve electronics cost. Id wager the electronics cost is a fairly flat line compared to platter cost (having a LOT to do with where R&D money seems to being spent). So while Drives may SEEM to be going ahead of the curve, they are really far behind, held back mostly by legacy tech, no real mass market demand in greatly improved per drive performance, and good ol laws of physics*.
End of off the top of my head rant, sorry for the intrusion.
*(C)(TM)(R) The Microsoft Corperation, all rights reserved.
The pictures Above are of the old ipod.. the new one makes the old one look bulkey. basically take off the white top portion, round all the corners and shrnik it just a bit and that new ipod
theres also something to be said about the new ipods face being completly sealed... ie. no more dustbunnies (dont know if it comes with covers for the IO ports)
and, really, the ipod just is a marvel of engeneering, design, and ergonomics compared to anythying else. Also take in to account its VERy easy to do all song functions blind with one hand (scrubing, volume, rev/ff play stop)
Even though the results may be/seem bogus, on HUGE thing to keep in mind is that these processors will be going in to a motherboard that will not castrate the performance of the chip. That alone could be the reason for the stellar results... Just something to chew on that no one seemed to mention.
whoa, missed some spelling in that rant, sorry in advanced :p
RMS.. your a twat.
I usually dont flame but god hes got something up his ass on this one. Hes only being detrimental by bing so nitpicky about words. ITS THE CONCEPT STUPID. Who cares if they call it Toenal-OS, its still the same damn thing and the same danm concepts. Quit trying to pat yourself on the back and check your ego at the door >_
I envision an email like this some day soon...
Dear Valued Thi...err...Customer,
It has come to our attention that you have a hard drive full of illeagal MP3's, but are not running the far superior Microsoft Windows operating system. Enclosed please find a certificate good for one eMachines WindowsME based computer, and please proceed to transfer all your MP3s to our platform of choice so we may then use all these great programs we developed then sue the living daylights out of... err.. serve you better.
Have a Nice Day,
The RIAA
*when you buy music, buy it from us, because we CARE*
Just a note so people know where these apps fit in to workflows: (feel free to correct any innacuracies)
FINAL CUT PRO 4
Non Linear Editor. Now works with DV, DV-Pro(more bandwidth, better resolution/quality), film, and aparently anything in between. Other things to note are a new Title generator, audio mixer, and lots of tools (color correction, various video analizers). If you dont work in video production, the reasons for choosing an Avid over FCP might not seem readily apparent, especially considering the potential cost difference, but it mostly has to do with what you can do in real time(rendering effects and dissolves in software can get tedius with hi rez footage)
SHAKE 3
Compositing software. NOT a direct competitor to combustion or after effects. They all have their place in the workflow, and it would do a potential buyer well to know which tool will fulfill the requirements of their project. It is not for special effects so much (by itself, though you would composite them in on it), and dos not have the 3d support of combustion. It does however work very well for film resolutions, and has a very powerfull workflow.
DVD STUDIO 2
DVD Studio offered the most accessable way to profession DVD authoring I had found (compared to the products for windows, which had potentially more power, but were messy at best to work with). Looks as though ver.2 will up the flexibility while improving the workflow. Also, big tools that were missing from ver.1 are better compressors with more granular control, timline for integrating various video, audio, and subtitles, and better integration with final cut pro.
All in all, Apple is offering a very compelling set of tools for a wide subset of motion media production. Ugg dont want to sound like an ad, but do yourself a favor and look in to an apple solution if your going to buy tools to work in video.
These funds do not just go for people getting CS degrees. Computer labs, art departments, secretaries, on and on. And i will tell you this, unless someone is in to computers, and youve all seen it, they are completly programmed for MS computing. At a web cafe, i recently added a linux machine, and the first customer to use it came up to the counter and said the computer was broken. Well i got the call, and it turns out he didnt see the IE icon on the desktop and could get no further. THIS is the problem, and id wager even people with a masters in some non computer related field do the same thing.
Why does this happen? Because people become homoginized on MS software, and dont REALLY learn how to use a computer. I made a web kiosk with only mozilla. It took a few tries, as people would fight tooth and nail to not use mozilla. The point of this, is the average user is brainwashed.
So, money aside, i think the point of this "gift" is to force people, no matter how they will use it, to learn the computer beyond the microsoft microcosm. To learn there IS a world w/o MS, you CAN use mozilla, etc. You are only doing students a diservice by having a computing platform where they dont have to think (since they all "know" how to use it already) and wont know wht to do if presented with anythign outside the teeny scope of that.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that old hardware is staying useable longer and longer. A 1ghz PC will IMHO do everytyhing you could do day to day 10 years from now. You could make all of these dual boot, and do a slow changeover from your current licenses.
I say go for it, change the face of university computing, be a pioneer. This is like a free ride to try something new.