All the moving parts on the cube work. The disk spins fine, no weird noises, and the laser moves back and forth.
I have yet to test to see if the laser is faulty. I also plan to open it up eventually to see if I can find anything obvious.
Warranty is up, so it's another potential project.:D I had a DVD player a few years ago that spontaneously died with symptoms very similar to yours. The laser moved back and forth and back and forth and back and forth etc. Over time, the cable attached to the laser fatigued and one of the inputs broke, shutting off the laser. That may or may not be related to your problem, I'm just trying to point out why the moving parts bit is a prob.:)
"a) compensation levels in hollywood are way above norm."
This isn't really true. There are lots of, for lack of a better term, grunts that are needed to make a movie, and they're not paid above norm. For every one guy you get making oodles of cash there are probably 20 people making just enough to get by in Los Angeles.
But... but... this is/. !!! Where we believe our technical savvy gives us special permission to have anything we want for free. And anyone that would ask for dirty money in exchange for their work is automatically an evil greedy bastard--especially if they try to enforce their perceived "ownership" of the material by using a so called "law" to force people to pay.
If that's really what you think this is about then you really have absolutely no grasp of the situation at all. You basically did the equivalent of saying: "You idiots don't like Episode I because Han Solo isn't in it!"
"Piracy hurts Hollywood in the ongoing sales and royalties business. And it isn't the Hollywood execs that lose the most: it is the people like union workers, cameramen, grips, and even sysadmins that lose their jobs."
Funny. Those guys have already been paid by the time the movie is released. The execs, however, are the ones that stand to make money by the continual sales of completed works.
That is beside the point, however. The DVD industry has an 'open your mouth and close your eyes' business model. You cannot take a movie back if it sucks. So long as that is the case, there'll always be a 'market' for piracy. They're attempting to fight it by making that demand even stronger.
I work in Hollywood and frankly piracy isn't on my list of job-related fears at all. The execs pissing off audiences, however....
"I beg to argue that older technologies have stood the test of time compared to our modern works which last two years or less."
In all fairness, the SNES was solid state. The GameCube has moving parts. Obviously I do not know the extent of the damage to the GameCube, but given their inherent designs, it seems a given that the SNES would out-live it.
"Yep I wish someone would explain to me, in plain terms that make business sense, why an actor should be paid 42 bazillion dollars for four half-days of work."
Familiar actors draw audiences. Take a look at Horton Hears a Who. They make a BFD about Jim Carrey and Steve Correll being actors in it. They hired those voices so they could advertise that in the commercials and draw people in to watch the movie. These actors aren't paid by the hours they've worked, but by how much money they stand to make the studio.
I don't mean to insult anybody here, but software architects are unlikely to bring an audience with them. That's why they don't get the 7 million dollar contracts.
"Clinton didn't get into trouble for getting a blowjob and vandalising a cigar. No he got into trouble for lying."
Are you talking about getting in trouble with the legal system or about getting into trouble with the media? I only ask because I wish the real world was as fair as you're describing.
"So people are really so stuck in their ways that work has to start when the clock says 9?"
When you've got multiple people on a team and customers/clients to work with, then yes, they're 'stuck' in their ways. If you've ever described somebody as a 'flake', then you already understand this concept.
"If you're going to change the clocks, change them drastically, make 9 occur in the middle of the night, see if people really are stubborn enough to go to work at such hours."
Okay, you win, if you take something to an absurd extreme, people won't follow it. Glad we got that all cleared up.
"I also think timezones should be abolished, they only serve to confuse, especially with the global communication we have now. Time should be something that always remains constant, so things can be kept in sync. Having multiple timezones confuses that, using dst to manipulate those timezones even further just makes the problem even worse."
All you'd do is solve one problem and create a whole bunch of others. At least, right now, I know roughly what time of day it is in Australia. I know what the hour offset is, and I know the sun sets there roughly the same time it does here (relatively speaking.) With your proposed system, I'd have to know what time of day the sun sets for them over there. "Their sun rises at 9am and sets at 8pm... Oh, wait, it's summer for them right now, so it's like 10pm.. I think... " Since our days are tied to the light/dark cycle of this planet, we'd have to make a lot of other things relative with the only common base of reference not really being all that intuitive. It makes getting that conference call in Tokyo a little bit easier to arrange, it makes picking the right time of day for everybody to get involved a bit harder.
"Why is it that the idea of things occurring at specific numbers on the clock is more important than what those numbers actually mean?"
Because if you poke your head outside at several times over the next 12 hours, you're likely to catch a glimpse of the sun. Our bodies are tuned to that. Our lives are tuned to that. We haven't reached a point yet where we're ready to shed ourselves of that. The Time Zones solved a huge problem, as did DST, by giving everybody an intuitive point of reference. Switching to 'stardate' will solve a few problems, but it will not actually reduce the number of problems we have. As the years go by, and technology becomes more and more ubiquitous, your suggestions may come to pass. Actually, I have no doubt that'll happen. But right now, despite how whizz-bang our communications capabilities are, we're still heavily influenced by the sun. And that means we need things like Time Zones to co-ordinate. Sorry.
We dont want to see a little bit of content over 9 pages! Great. Let's Slashdot a few sites with their print link and cause them to make those annoying, too.
"Futurama is the most predictable show ever. An evil santa clause, a jewish lobster that everyone hates, constant 21st century references via heads in jars. I have never so much as chuckled while watching Futurama."
"I've not given Adobe a single dime in a decade*. First it was their overpricing themselves out of all but the students-and-pirates market..." Photoshop and After Effects, for example, are professional tools and are priced accordingly. Basically what I'm saying is that you missed a rather important market in your original comment.;)
> For example, you can see that the person wearing it is a complete tool without having to wait for them to open their mouth and say something idiotic. These are really time-saving gadgets when you think about it.
Anything to help you make harsh judgements at first sight, mmm?
I cannot help but wonder if the average Slashdotter really wants to live in that world.
"You mean like those blue-tooth headsets people insist on wearing all the time even when they're not talking on them? Ugggggh"
You'd rather they set their ringers to full power in case they can't hear their oh-so-important-call from their pocket? There are some benefits to the rest of us from those ear-pieces.
"Linux has made strong inroads?! I hereby crown you de-facto king ov understatements! There is really only one choice when you are making big farms."
No argument on either count. =)
However, Linux on a rendfarm has nothing to do with CinePaint useage. I'm seriously not kidding, though. I've been to two of the studios listed on CinePaint's page, and I've worked at 3 others. Photoshop. Every machine. Photoshop. Texture work? Photoshop. Matte work? Photoshop. Illustration? Photoshop and, more recently, ZBrush.
"Yeah, photoshop is used on desktops. but only because photoshop finally caught up to the film gimp. If you wanted to do HDR before cs2 you only had one choice, and it was not adobie. and once you have something that works, why change?"
I would imagine because Photoshop has more useful image manipulation tools. There's a difference between being inferior and having a single devastating flaw. Besides that, HDRI editing is more specialized than you might expect. I was actually surprised to find that most matte work, for example, is still done in 24-bit even though 16-bit support's been around for ages.
I promise you this isn't bias or fanboyism on my part. I've been working on various projects for 4 years now. I haven't seen an artist's station without Photoshop. It has, in every case, been the primary 2D app. Other apps are sometimes used for auxilary tasks, but that's where the result lands.
There have been stories on the web that are a bit misleading. They talk about how Linux is taking over. Renderfarm-wise? Sure. Workstation-wise? Maybe at ILM. But when you get down to places like Zoic or EdenFX or the Syndicate or CafeFX or the Box or Rythmn and Hues or a number of other places, it's mostly Windows with a fair percentage of Macs. The reason for that is pretty simple. Lots of studios use MAX and Lightwave. Niether of those apps have native Linux support. Even if they do, there's still the matter of plugins etc being supported. (That alone makes reliance on WINE scary.)
"Eight years ov proven success is not 'inroads'. Every major studio uses CinePaint, and every major studio uses Linux."
Linux has made strong inroads into studios for the render farms. Workstation-wise, most of it is Mac and PC. CinePaint's probably around, but Photoshop is, by far, the de-facto king. Go tool around CGTalk's forums if you don't believe me.
The only thing you just said, in the most eloquent, verbose, and compassionate way possible, was that you're sometimes a terrible, offensive, negative, argumentative, and self-absorbed communicator. Why'd you do that? What is your point? My point was that missing context on this topic is what's causing the conflict. It wasn't flattering, but I was just being honest in how I'd reply. I needed to explain why I'd participate in a flame war on this topic.
"If you're going to bother writing that much, you should use your experience and insight to give a comparison between Photoshop and Gimp in your workflow. Or maybe just describe your workflow and how Photoshop uniquely suits it. I don't know what could be a secret about it."
Well, the point wasn't that one or the other is better. It's that concensus is distant. However, if you click here you can see one of my earlier posts talking about Photoshop's strengths.
I'll say something else: If there's some benefit along these lines that the GIMP offers, I'd love to hear it. There's no reason I cannot download the GIMP and add it as a tool to my toolbox. It's not like Photoshop disappears if I install it.:)
"Hollywood? CinePaint? Your opinion is the only thing totally worthless here."
And... this is what I'm talking about. Heh. Yes, CinePaint's making inroads. No, it's not replacing Photoshop. It's not like any of these studios are going to say "Ah, we have this, now we can stop using that even though it still has features we need." If I'm not being clear, here, I'll put it another way: It's not like CinePaint requires an uninstall of Photoshop to use. If you're a CG artist in Hollywood, one of the biggest things that can hurt you is lack of Photoshop knowledge.
"While I don't agree with the GP that the GIMP is a Photoshop replacement, I think you're being pretty harsh. It's a damn powerful piece of software, and the fact that it doesn't do _everything_ does NOT make it a toy."
I think before we let this line of discussion get too out of control, it needs to be brought up that there is such a wide variety of uses for photo editing that no two people are likely to come together to argue about using it for the same reason. I'll give you an example:
I work in Hollywood. I do a lot of texturing and matte work. I don't think there's a corner of Photoshop I don't touch in any given week. I've tried to use GIMP... Now, if you were to ask me what I thought of the GIMP, the first thing I'd do is call up in my mind the experience of using it. (In other words, context matters.) Then, without considering (or even knowing about) the point of view you're coming from, I'd respond with "The GIMP is totally useless." You'd think I was odd for having such a harsh opinion. Since I don't talk about my living much, you'd have little reason to know where I'm coming from. Given the harsh tone of my opinion, you wouldn't be too likely to ask me to clarify. Instead, you'd probably think I was a brand-biased jerk. (I don't say that to imply that you jump to conclusions, rather, I think you'd probably do that because I know *I* would probably do that and have done so in the past. I'm not proud.) And, from there, we'd argue. I wouldn't know how you're measuring the GIMP, and you wouldn't know how I'm measuring Photoshop.
There really is no baseline for comparing the two. Without out, this debate will endlessly circle the drain. I can honestly tell you that GIMP is not even in the ballpark of being a useful replacement to Photoshop with me. The $600 price difference doesn't even slightly narrow the gap. (I make money from Photoshop work, so if I can't work with the GIMP, it's not free, it's actually expensive.) I can also tell you that I don't think a lot of people commenting on Slashdot are in a similar field of work, so most would not see where I'm coming from. And frankly, they'd be right. Who am I to judge an app as versatile as the GIMP or Photoshop for their use? It's like arguing about whether a hammer or a screwdriver is a better tool. An IT guy would think a carpenter's a fucking idgit.
Slashdot Mirror
The disk spins fine, no weird noises, and the laser moves back and forth.
I have yet to test to see if the laser is faulty. I also plan to open it up eventually to see if I can find anything obvious.
Warranty is up, so it's another potential project.
"a) compensation levels in hollywood are way above norm."
This isn't really true. There are lots of, for lack of a better term, grunts that are needed to make a movie, and they're not paid above norm. For every one guy you get making oodles of cash there are probably 20 people making just enough to get by in Los Angeles.
If that's really what you think this is about then you really have absolutely no grasp of the situation at all. You basically did the equivalent of saying: "You idiots don't like Episode I because Han Solo isn't in it!"
"Piracy hurts Hollywood in the ongoing sales and royalties business. And it isn't the Hollywood execs that lose the most: it is the people like union workers, cameramen, grips, and even sysadmins that lose their jobs."
Funny. Those guys have already been paid by the time the movie is released. The execs, however, are the ones that stand to make money by the continual sales of completed works.
That is beside the point, however. The DVD industry has an 'open your mouth and close your eyes' business model. You cannot take a movie back if it sucks. So long as that is the case, there'll always be a 'market' for piracy. They're attempting to fight it by making that demand even stronger.
I work in Hollywood and frankly piracy isn't on my list of job-related fears at all. The execs pissing off audiences, however....
"I beg to argue that older technologies have stood the test of time compared to our modern works which last two years or less."
In all fairness, the SNES was solid state. The GameCube has moving parts. Obviously I do not know the extent of the damage to the GameCube, but given their inherent designs, it seems a given that the SNES would out-live it.
"FAIL. you can't have extra spaces in a CSV, unless you drive a " Porsche"."
Sorry. I'll append my CSV:
Pedantic, Feelings of Superiority by Mastering of Mundane Technical Details, Nitpick a Comment About Why Geeks Don't Score
0, 0, 0
"What's the Excel formula for getting laid?"
I can give you the CSV version:
Income, Car, Looks, Star Wars Fan, Flosses, Dress Quality, Glasses, Muscles, Fat
$250k, Porsche, Good, 0, 1, >0.8, 0, 1, 0
"Yep I wish someone would explain to me, in plain terms that make business sense, why an actor should be paid 42 bazillion dollars for four half-days of work."
Familiar actors draw audiences. Take a look at Horton Hears a Who. They make a BFD about Jim Carrey and Steve Correll being actors in it. They hired those voices so they could advertise that in the commercials and draw people in to watch the movie. These actors aren't paid by the hours they've worked, but by how much money they stand to make the studio.
I don't mean to insult anybody here, but software architects are unlikely to bring an audience with them. That's why they don't get the 7 million dollar contracts.
"Clinton didn't get into trouble for getting a blowjob and vandalising a cigar. No he got into trouble for lying."
Are you talking about getting in trouble with the legal system or about getting into trouble with the media? I only ask because I wish the real world was as fair as you're describing.
"Time is an illusion...." ... Lunch time doubly-so.
"So people are really so stuck in their ways that work has to start when the clock says 9?"
When you've got multiple people on a team and customers/clients to work with, then yes, they're 'stuck' in their ways. If you've ever described somebody as a 'flake', then you already understand this concept.
"If you're going to change the clocks, change them drastically, make 9 occur in the middle of the night, see if people really are stubborn enough to go to work at such hours."
Okay, you win, if you take something to an absurd extreme, people won't follow it. Glad we got that all cleared up.
"I also think timezones should be abolished, they only serve to confuse, especially with the global communication we have now. Time should be something that always remains constant, so things can be kept in sync. Having multiple timezones confuses that, using dst to manipulate those timezones even further just makes the problem even worse."
All you'd do is solve one problem and create a whole bunch of others. At least, right now, I know roughly what time of day it is in Australia. I know what the hour offset is, and I know the sun sets there roughly the same time it does here (relatively speaking.) With your proposed system, I'd have to know what time of day the sun sets for them over there. "Their sun rises at 9am and sets at 8pm... Oh, wait, it's summer for them right now, so it's like 10pm.. I think... " Since our days are tied to the light/dark cycle of this planet, we'd have to make a lot of other things relative with the only common base of reference not really being all that intuitive. It makes getting that conference call in Tokyo a little bit easier to arrange, it makes picking the right time of day for everybody to get involved a bit harder.
"Why is it that the idea of things occurring at specific numbers on the clock is more important than what those numbers actually mean?"
Because if you poke your head outside at several times over the next 12 hours, you're likely to catch a glimpse of the sun. Our bodies are tuned to that. Our lives are tuned to that. We haven't reached a point yet where we're ready to shed ourselves of that. The Time Zones solved a huge problem, as did DST, by giving everybody an intuitive point of reference. Switching to 'stardate' will solve a few problems, but it will not actually reduce the number of problems we have. As the years go by, and technology becomes more and more ubiquitous, your suggestions may come to pass. Actually, I have no doubt that'll happen. But right now, despite how whizz-bang our communications capabilities are, we're still heavily influenced by the sun. And that means we need things like Time Zones to co-ordinate. Sorry.
We dont want to see a little bit of content over 9 pages! Great. Let's Slashdot a few sites with their print link and cause them to make those annoying, too.
"'Some party'? The phrase you're looking for is 'a fool and his money are SOON PARTED.'"
I think he was going with the Australian variant of the phrase.
"Futurama is the most predictable show ever. An evil santa clause, a jewish lobster that everyone hates, constant 21st century references via heads in jars. I have never so much as chuckled while watching Futurama."
Right. So compare that with Family Guy. Heh.
"Just one question... Why the hell do you need to watch a movie in HD on a 15 inch screen?"
This is the same 15 inch screen people read emails off of. I don't have the best vision in the world, yet I still find your question baffling.
A: Just one. The real question is how many patent attorneys got involved! =)
> For example, you can see that the person wearing it is a complete tool without having to wait for them to open their mouth and say something idiotic. These are really time-saving gadgets when you think about it.
Anything to help you make harsh judgements at first sight, mmm?
I cannot help but wonder if the average Slashdotter really wants to live in that world.
"You mean like those blue-tooth headsets people insist on wearing all the time even when they're not talking on them? Ugggggh"
You'd rather they set their ringers to full power in case they can't hear their oh-so-important-call from their pocket? There are some benefits to the rest of us from those ear-pieces.
"Linux has made strong inroads?! I hereby crown you de-facto king ov understatements! There is really only one choice when you are making big farms."
No argument on either count. =)
However, Linux on a rendfarm has nothing to do with CinePaint useage. I'm seriously not kidding, though. I've been to two of the studios listed on CinePaint's page, and I've worked at 3 others. Photoshop. Every machine. Photoshop. Texture work? Photoshop. Matte work? Photoshop. Illustration? Photoshop and, more recently, ZBrush.
"Yeah, photoshop is used on desktops. but only because photoshop finally caught up to the film gimp. If you wanted to do HDR before cs2 you only had one choice, and it was not adobie. and once you have something that works, why change?"
I would imagine because Photoshop has more useful image manipulation tools. There's a difference between being inferior and having a single devastating flaw. Besides that, HDRI editing is more specialized than you might expect. I was actually surprised to find that most matte work, for example, is still done in 24-bit even though 16-bit support's been around for ages.
I promise you this isn't bias or fanboyism on my part. I've been working on various projects for 4 years now. I haven't seen an artist's station without Photoshop. It has, in every case, been the primary 2D app. Other apps are sometimes used for auxilary tasks, but that's where the result lands.
There have been stories on the web that are a bit misleading. They talk about how Linux is taking over. Renderfarm-wise? Sure. Workstation-wise? Maybe at ILM. But when you get down to places like Zoic or EdenFX or the Syndicate or CafeFX or the Box or Rythmn and Hues or a number of other places, it's mostly Windows with a fair percentage of Macs. The reason for that is pretty simple. Lots of studios use MAX and Lightwave. Niether of those apps have native Linux support. Even if they do, there's still the matter of plugins etc being supported. (That alone makes reliance on WINE scary.)
I'm telling you what I've seen with my own eyes.
"Eight years ov proven success is not 'inroads'. Every major studio uses CinePaint, and every major studio uses Linux."
Linux has made strong inroads into studios for the render farms. Workstation-wise, most of it is Mac and PC. CinePaint's probably around, but Photoshop is, by far, the de-facto king. Go tool around CGTalk's forums if you don't believe me.
"If you're going to bother writing that much, you should use your experience and insight to give a comparison between Photoshop and Gimp in your workflow. Or maybe just describe your workflow and how Photoshop uniquely suits it. I don't know what could be a secret about it."
Well, the point wasn't that one or the other is better. It's that concensus is distant. However, if you click here you can see one of my earlier posts talking about Photoshop's strengths.
I'll say something else: If there's some benefit along these lines that the GIMP offers, I'd love to hear it. There's no reason I cannot download the GIMP and add it as a tool to my toolbox. It's not like Photoshop disappears if I install it.
"Hollywood? CinePaint? Your opinion is the only thing totally worthless here."
And... this is what I'm talking about. Heh. Yes, CinePaint's making inroads. No, it's not replacing Photoshop. It's not like any of these studios are going to say "Ah, we have this, now we can stop using that even though it still has features we need." If I'm not being clear, here, I'll put it another way: It's not like CinePaint requires an uninstall of Photoshop to use. If you're a CG artist in Hollywood, one of the biggest things that can hurt you is lack of Photoshop knowledge.
"While I don't agree with the GP that the GIMP is a Photoshop replacement, I think you're being pretty harsh. It's a damn powerful piece of software, and the fact that it doesn't do _everything_ does NOT make it a toy."
I think before we let this line of discussion get too out of control, it needs to be brought up that there is such a wide variety of uses for photo editing that no two people are likely to come together to argue about using it for the same reason. I'll give you an example:
I work in Hollywood. I do a lot of texturing and matte work. I don't think there's a corner of Photoshop I don't touch in any given week. I've tried to use GIMP... Now, if you were to ask me what I thought of the GIMP, the first thing I'd do is call up in my mind the experience of using it. (In other words, context matters.) Then, without considering (or even knowing about) the point of view you're coming from, I'd respond with "The GIMP is totally useless." You'd think I was odd for having such a harsh opinion. Since I don't talk about my living much, you'd have little reason to know where I'm coming from. Given the harsh tone of my opinion, you wouldn't be too likely to ask me to clarify. Instead, you'd probably think I was a brand-biased jerk. (I don't say that to imply that you jump to conclusions, rather, I think you'd probably do that because I know *I* would probably do that and have done so in the past. I'm not proud.) And, from there, we'd argue. I wouldn't know how you're measuring the GIMP, and you wouldn't know how I'm measuring Photoshop.
There really is no baseline for comparing the two. Without out, this debate will endlessly circle the drain. I can honestly tell you that GIMP is not even in the ballpark of being a useful replacement to Photoshop with me. The $600 price difference doesn't even slightly narrow the gap. (I make money from Photoshop work, so if I can't work with the GIMP, it's not free, it's actually expensive.) I can also tell you that I don't think a lot of people commenting on Slashdot are in a similar field of work, so most would not see where I'm coming from. And frankly, they'd be right. Who am I to judge an app as versatile as the GIMP or Photoshop for their use? It's like arguing about whether a hammer or a screwdriver is a better tool. An IT guy would think a carpenter's a fucking idgit.
"Um, if your sig is accurate, how the hell did you end up replying to an AC?"
Um, if your sig is accurate, why did you reply instead of abusing the moderator system?