I read the article, and your comment still needs work. Yes, people are using alternatives, and yet another format seems a bit redundant, especially considering the source. Comparing RAW to JPEG is a poor comparison indeed, as they serve two completely different purposes. RAW is for maintaining the original image data as faithfully as possible; JPEG is for presentation in a low-bandwidth format.
While JPEG is aging and replacements have been in place for several years now, the slow uptake shows that the general public isn't exactly in a hurry to find a better alternative, regardless of what photophiles might think.
You might have been better off using PNG as an example. Not only is it a good format for the low-end (web), it's even used in high end applications such as storing 2D texture maps for 3D animations on the movie-quality level. In the end, it isn't just the camera support that counts; despite Adobe offering to include support, that still leaves a lot of Photoshop-less users out in the cold, and Microsoft's typical bad habit of failing to support OSX and other operating systems is bound to bite it in the rear yet again.
Re:Does Vista have anything we need?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
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· Score: 1
So you're suppporting my argument that there are other reasons besides MMORPG and FPS to get a console. How is this lame? As for off-topic, I specifically went on to talk about my own Vista installation. You should try reading more than the first line of the comment before replying.
Good advice; I'll have to try that. As for turning around when I back up, I *always* do that, because not only is it the safest, it's also in the driving rules.;)
Re:Does Vista have anything we need?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 1
"FPSs, MMORPGs and RTSs all suck on consoles. Considering that I'm only interested in those genres and that online play with a fast control scheme (ie. keyboard and mouse) is a requirement for me to even consider playing, I think I'll stick with my PC."
So, basically, everything?
I disagree. I tend to be a PC gamer, but my PS2 has some damn fine games that work very well on it indeed. As for role-playing games, the PS2 was originally designed for a Japanese audience that likes little else (I live in Japan, and the people I know who are into gaming are all into role-playing on the PS2.)
Of course, it really all comes down to your subjective taste in games and your gaming style (network play vs. in-the-same-room playing against friends.) I think that the advent of hi-def on game consoles is going to really help them overtake PCs for overall gaming value, for the above-mentioned reasons (the comfort of the couch, massive wide-screen TV screen sizes, and the social experience.)
As for Vista, I've installed it with no issues whatsoever; the network connected just fine, drivers were all installed for me, and I had no need to upgrade my modest hardware (I scored a 3.0 overall on the Vista scale, due to needing a beefier video card.) I have also been able to play all of my games without a problem. I probably don't tax my PC the way a power gamer would, but games like HL2 work without a hitch.
It does feel like a lackluster release, however, and I had to immediately turn off UAC (you can leave the warning shield icon on next to system-critical links if you want a heads-up, but Vista's new "security" is a total joke.) If it wasn't for needing an upgrade for a new computer I built, I wouldn't have bought it. Except for gaming, the computer also mostly runs in Linux.
At my former employer, a large university, the IT department informed us that they were no longer supporting Macs. Actually, they'd apparently said this a few months earlier and we'd never noticed because we didn't have any reason to talk to them unless we had network issues (and, yes, they would then tell us that they didn't support Macs, although the problem was pretty much always turned out to be the building's router or somewhere outside.)
By their own admission, the IT people lived in fear of people figuring out how to do things on their own and thus obviate the need for the IT guys to have a job. Also, it's much more lucrative salary-wise to get multiple MS certifications; although Apple also offers similar certificates, I guess it just doesn't hold up when you're talking about a platform widely regarded as usable by any idiot.
Well, I actually read it, and despite not liking some of the wording in some passages (his deft use of the word, "duh," for example), his reasoning for why Apple doesn't sell indie music for free seemed to make sense. If you could make iTunes capable of handling non-DRM music next to DRM music, you run the risk of creating an exploit whereby somebody figures out how to fool iTunes into thinking that all the music should be DRM-free.
Another possible reason that I haven't heard anybody mention yet is that perhaps the labels have told Apple flat out that they themselves don't want non-DRM music being sold side-by-side with their offerings, as it would, if nothing else, give a bad impression and create negative customer feedback.
By your logic, European culture would then not count when viewed from the Asian perspective. Asia, and China in particular, had everything down pat way before the Europeans, and it was largely due to importing that culture that the Europeans advanced as fast as they did. I guess the nice thing about the world being round is that it always looks like you're on top no matter where you stand.
I think your comment is largely on the ball, except I don't understand your comment about not wanting to spend $1,000 to $2,000 on a mid-level system. My parents are very much your typical PC user, and theirs have always come in at around $1,200 to $1,400 for your mid-range Dell. If you meant that people don't want to spend that kind of money just to try something new, I see your point. If you meant that people don't want to spend that kind of money to buy a new computer, I just wanted to point out that they're spending it already.
Except that "clear and informative" is also a subjective concept, when you get right down to it. Rather than saying, "I want everyone to bend to my ideas of what a good website is," it's better to look around, see what's successful, and try to incorporate that into your own designs. Just because every movie trailer website out there feels the need to run a full-window Flash animation to impress users hardly makes this the common trend. There are many more big, popular sites that run without any Flash at all and keep users coming back.
If you want a good, free site on how to combine good CSS and design into your page (without Flash!), check out A List Apart. The site itself is a good example of good design combined with well-organized information.
Violent fuchsia and purple as a color combination have never really resonated well with the large majority of people, ever. The page may be well laid out, but this is a perfect example of where understanding a little bit of how people react to colors would be helpful. As a graphic designer, I consider the ease of access of information and graphics that compliment rather than dominate to be an essential part of good design. Good designers understand that not everything should be Flash; the right art for the right occasion, and even plain text can be done elegantly.
The good news is, it's still cheaper to do a cut-away than it is to reshoot or retouch footage. Sure, it's *possible* to digitally modify a performance, but even with the tools we have, it can be a serious pain in the butt to do, and take far longer (and more money) than it's worth to just live with it.
Unfortunately, although Blender has a very professional feature set, its UI and methodology are so vastly different to everything else out there that I doubt it'll replace the big boys anytime soon. Also, you can't afford to work on the deadlines that the industry imposes on you using open source software unless you pay to get a programmer on staff who can handle potential problems for you. The TOC for something like Maya or 3DS Max suddenly pales in comparison.
He's not breaking the law in any country except Norway. Funny how that whole international business world works, huh? I'm not too savvy about Norwegian politics, except for the vague impression that the Scandinavian countries are usually a lot more intelligent in general when it comes to making rational political decisions, butI have to wonder if this law was influenced in any way by other multinational corporations interested in giving Apple a hard time. Surely bribery and corruption isn't limited to the good ol' U. S. of A?
While we're on the topic of battling ignorance, the Oxford English Dictionary defines science as "a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject." In other words, "ology" means "science." Therefore, political science and computer science are appropriately named, and no further sleep need be lost on the subject.
Agreed, and different administrations will have different leanings; I'd prefer to have one that respected my fair use rights, too. However, the DMCA doesn't really hurt American industry abroad, it just picks on American consumers. If you want to talk about infringement of rights, forget the DCMA, let's talk about the RIAA's continued efforts to extort money from every man, woman or child on charges of digital music piracy, regardless of whether they've ever even had the internet, let alone owned a computer. Now there's something that needs to be curtailed.
Because it's in a government's best interest to protect its own industry and business. If your corporations do well, money flows in, and the country grows in strength and prosperity. Those same corporations also pay taxes, which the government needs in order to function. Governments represent their people, and yes, their businesses. It's not evil or corrupt, it's common sense (although there is certainly enough evil and corruption involved for the knee-jerk reaction to be understandable.) Whose corporations would you rather they represent?
Actually, people can, and do, send render jobs over the internet all the time, and there are companies that make money off of renting out render farms (such as RenderCore, Inc.). As a freelance animator in Japan, I am actually considering using such a service in the near future, and have heard good things from other people about the service. The data only has to be sent once, and if it's cached remotely, the payoff is well worth it. After all, gigabytes of data might get sent one time, but subsequent transfers such as texture updates are going to be incremental, not completely from scratch.
As for the movie studios, a lot of them have the budget to get decent high-speed data lines, which is how a lot of movie dailies are shipped nowadays (think Lord of the Rings.)
I think this story has less to do with the caution of the US military, and more with the slothful, wasteful pace of government contracting. Government contracts are considered enviable cash cows, where you get paid obscene amounts of money whether you produce a product or not, thereby making longer turn-around times into a reliable source of income for your company, regardless of how your riskier, more tradtional business ventures work out. There is a certain amount of the government shooting itself in the foot as well, vis a vis accountability, red tape, and paperwork, so the contractors aren't completely to blame.
That's the tricky bit, isn't it? You'll never know if there's anything to find out unless you die first, which is pretty much a one-way trip as far as we know.
As far as the original discussion is concerned, that is, science explaining the meaning of life: the entire premise is faulty. Science explains how. Religion and philosophy explain why. Science cannot disprove there is no purpose in existence, because purpose cannot be measured, collected, or quantified. Hate whatever religion you want, but no matter how we figure out how to lengthen our lives, we will *all* die someday, be it 50 years or 5,000 years from now (and 5,000 years is a *very* long time. No matter what else medicine might learn to fix, I doubt it'll figure out how to cure boredom.)
Usually it is indeed the hardware that gets in the way. However, from an inexcusable Linux developer blunder perspective, I'm unable to boot the Ubuntu live CD on my wife's computer because something about Ubuntu checking USB in the wrong sequence. It seems amazing to me that such a popular distro known for its ease-of-use could have such a basic bug (known and documented, by the way.) We never even got past the boot screen, and now my wife is understandably reluctant to try out Linux.
So they demonstrated their theory using a water bottle with two holes cut in the bottom, and showed how covering one hole slowed the rate of water leaving the bottle. That's all good and fine, but we're talking about water that's responding to the force of gravity, not pent-up pressure and geothermal heating. If the weight of the balls can counteract that, great, but if that's their idea of a physically accurate analogy, I think they might be in for some surprises. Here's hoping it works, anyway, despite their faulty physics.
They're going to be hard-pressed for time, considering how much of the earth is still in such low resolution in Google Earth and the like. Based on that information, everything outside of a few, major metropolitan centers will show up as a prime target, and as for the cities themselves, they already *knew* to bomb those.
Actually, that's not true. One main reason that cell phone companies try to lock you into an annual or bi-annual contract is to help pay off the subsidized phones. Of course, I agree that this is by no means guaranteed to work in reverse; Cingular might be perfectly happy to go with the status quo and not blink twice about pocketing the extra cash. We'll see what happens after the iPhone ships; Cingular might decide to offer a reduced rate just for good PR's sake, or be forced to do so later if too many peopl balk at the fact that their calling plan costs the same regardless of whether or not they pay for the phone up front.
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I read the article, and your comment still needs work. Yes, people are using alternatives, and yet another format seems a bit redundant, especially considering the source. Comparing RAW to JPEG is a poor comparison indeed, as they serve two completely different purposes. RAW is for maintaining the original image data as faithfully as possible; JPEG is for presentation in a low-bandwidth format.
While JPEG is aging and replacements have been in place for several years now, the slow uptake shows that the general public isn't exactly in a hurry to find a better alternative, regardless of what photophiles might think.
You might have been better off using PNG as an example. Not only is it a good format for the low-end (web), it's even used in high end applications such as storing 2D texture maps for 3D animations on the movie-quality level. In the end, it isn't just the camera support that counts; despite Adobe offering to include support, that still leaves a lot of Photoshop-less users out in the cold, and Microsoft's typical bad habit of failing to support OSX and other operating systems is bound to bite it in the rear yet again.
So you're suppporting my argument that there are other reasons besides MMORPG and FPS to get a console. How is this lame? As for off-topic, I specifically went on to talk about my own Vista installation. You should try reading more than the first line of the comment before replying.
Good advice; I'll have to try that. As for turning around when I back up, I *always* do that, because not only is it the safest, it's also in the driving rules. ;)
"FPSs, MMORPGs and RTSs all suck on consoles. Considering that I'm only interested in those genres and that online play with a fast control scheme (ie. keyboard and mouse) is a requirement for me to even consider playing, I think I'll stick with my PC."
So, basically, everything?
I disagree. I tend to be a PC gamer, but my PS2 has some damn fine games that work very well on it indeed. As for role-playing games, the PS2 was originally designed for a Japanese audience that likes little else (I live in Japan, and the people I know who are into gaming are all into role-playing on the PS2.)
Of course, it really all comes down to your subjective taste in games and your gaming style (network play vs. in-the-same-room playing against friends.) I think that the advent of hi-def on game consoles is going to really help them overtake PCs for overall gaming value, for the above-mentioned reasons (the comfort of the couch, massive wide-screen TV screen sizes, and the social experience.)
As for Vista, I've installed it with no issues whatsoever; the network connected just fine, drivers were all installed for me, and I had no need to upgrade my modest hardware (I scored a 3.0 overall on the Vista scale, due to needing a beefier video card.) I have also been able to play all of my games without a problem. I probably don't tax my PC the way a power gamer would, but games like HL2 work without a hitch.
It does feel like a lackluster release, however, and I had to immediately turn off UAC (you can leave the warning shield icon on next to system-critical links if you want a heads-up, but Vista's new "security" is a total joke.) If it wasn't for needing an upgrade for a new computer I built, I wouldn't have bought it. Except for gaming, the computer also mostly runs in Linux.
At my former employer, a large university, the IT department informed us that they were no longer supporting Macs. Actually, they'd apparently said this a few months earlier and we'd never noticed because we didn't have any reason to talk to them unless we had network issues (and, yes, they would then tell us that they didn't support Macs, although the problem was pretty much always turned out to be the building's router or somewhere outside.)
By their own admission, the IT people lived in fear of people figuring out how to do things on their own and thus obviate the need for the IT guys to have a job. Also, it's much more lucrative salary-wise to get multiple MS certifications; although Apple also offers similar certificates, I guess it just doesn't hold up when you're talking about a platform widely regarded as usable by any idiot.
Well, I actually read it, and despite not liking some of the wording in some passages (his deft use of the word, "duh," for example), his reasoning for why Apple doesn't sell indie music for free seemed to make sense. If you could make iTunes capable of handling non-DRM music next to DRM music, you run the risk of creating an exploit whereby somebody figures out how to fool iTunes into thinking that all the music should be DRM-free.
Another possible reason that I haven't heard anybody mention yet is that perhaps the labels have told Apple flat out that they themselves don't want non-DRM music being sold side-by-side with their offerings, as it would, if nothing else, give a bad impression and create negative customer feedback.
At least the UpUpDownDownLeftRightLeftRightBA combo trick still makes my wife happy.
I live in Japan; I wonder if the Konami machines here do the same thing, and if so, what kind of regulation they have?
By your logic, European culture would then not count when viewed from the Asian perspective. Asia, and China in particular, had everything down pat way before the Europeans, and it was largely due to importing that culture that the Europeans advanced as fast as they did. I guess the nice thing about the world being round is that it always looks like you're on top no matter where you stand.
I think your comment is largely on the ball, except I don't understand your comment about not wanting to spend $1,000 to $2,000 on a mid-level system. My parents are very much your typical PC user, and theirs have always come in at around $1,200 to $1,400 for your mid-range Dell. If you meant that people don't want to spend that kind of money just to try something new, I see your point. If you meant that people don't want to spend that kind of money to buy a new computer, I just wanted to point out that they're spending it already.
Except that "clear and informative" is also a subjective concept, when you get right down to it. Rather than saying, "I want everyone to bend to my ideas of what a good website is," it's better to look around, see what's successful, and try to incorporate that into your own designs. Just because every movie trailer website out there feels the need to run a full-window Flash animation to impress users hardly makes this the common trend. There are many more big, popular sites that run without any Flash at all and keep users coming back.
If you want a good, free site on how to combine good CSS and design into your page (without Flash!), check out A List Apart. The site itself is a good example of good design combined with well-organized information.
Violent fuchsia and purple as a color combination have never really resonated well with the large majority of people, ever. The page may be well laid out, but this is a perfect example of where understanding a little bit of how people react to colors would be helpful. As a graphic designer, I consider the ease of access of information and graphics that compliment rather than dominate to be an essential part of good design. Good designers understand that not everything should be Flash; the right art for the right occasion, and even plain text can be done elegantly.
The good news is, it's still cheaper to do a cut-away than it is to reshoot or retouch footage. Sure, it's *possible* to digitally modify a performance, but even with the tools we have, it can be a serious pain in the butt to do, and take far longer (and more money) than it's worth to just live with it.
Unfortunately, although Blender has a very professional feature set, its UI and methodology are so vastly different to everything else out there that I doubt it'll replace the big boys anytime soon. Also, you can't afford to work on the deadlines that the industry imposes on you using open source software unless you pay to get a programmer on staff who can handle potential problems for you. The TOC for something like Maya or 3DS Max suddenly pales in comparison.
He's not breaking the law in any country except Norway. Funny how that whole international business world works, huh? I'm not too savvy about Norwegian politics, except for the vague impression that the Scandinavian countries are usually a lot more intelligent in general when it comes to making rational political decisions, butI have to wonder if this law was influenced in any way by other multinational corporations interested in giving Apple a hard time. Surely bribery and corruption isn't limited to the good ol' U. S. of A?
While we're on the topic of battling ignorance, the Oxford English Dictionary defines science as "a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject." In other words, "ology" means "science." Therefore, political science and computer science are appropriately named, and no further sleep need be lost on the subject.
Agreed, and different administrations will have different leanings; I'd prefer to have one that respected my fair use rights, too. However, the DMCA doesn't really hurt American industry abroad, it just picks on American consumers. If you want to talk about infringement of rights, forget the DCMA, let's talk about the RIAA's continued efforts to extort money from every man, woman or child on charges of digital music piracy, regardless of whether they've ever even had the internet, let alone owned a computer. Now there's something that needs to be curtailed.
Because it's in a government's best interest to protect its own industry and business. If your corporations do well, money flows in, and the country grows in strength and prosperity. Those same corporations also pay taxes, which the government needs in order to function. Governments represent their people, and yes, their businesses. It's not evil or corrupt, it's common sense (although there is certainly enough evil and corruption involved for the knee-jerk reaction to be understandable.) Whose corporations would you rather they represent?
Actually, people can, and do, send render jobs over the internet all the time, and there are companies that make money off of renting out render farms (such as RenderCore, Inc.). As a freelance animator in Japan, I am actually considering using such a service in the near future, and have heard good things from other people about the service. The data only has to be sent once, and if it's cached remotely, the payoff is well worth it. After all, gigabytes of data might get sent one time, but subsequent transfers such as texture updates are going to be incremental, not completely from scratch.
As for the movie studios, a lot of them have the budget to get decent high-speed data lines, which is how a lot of movie dailies are shipped nowadays (think Lord of the Rings.)
I think this story has less to do with the caution of the US military, and more with the slothful, wasteful pace of government contracting. Government contracts are considered enviable cash cows, where you get paid obscene amounts of money whether you produce a product or not, thereby making longer turn-around times into a reliable source of income for your company, regardless of how your riskier, more tradtional business ventures work out. There is a certain amount of the government shooting itself in the foot as well, vis a vis accountability, red tape, and paperwork, so the contractors aren't completely to blame.
That's the tricky bit, isn't it? You'll never know if there's anything to find out unless you die first, which is pretty much a one-way trip as far as we know.
As far as the original discussion is concerned, that is, science explaining the meaning of life: the entire premise is faulty. Science explains how. Religion and philosophy explain why. Science cannot disprove there is no purpose in existence, because purpose cannot be measured, collected, or quantified. Hate whatever religion you want, but no matter how we figure out how to lengthen our lives, we will *all* die someday, be it 50 years or 5,000 years from now (and 5,000 years is a *very* long time. No matter what else medicine might learn to fix, I doubt it'll figure out how to cure boredom.)
Really? I thought it was more like a truck. ;)
Usually it is indeed the hardware that gets in the way. However, from an inexcusable Linux developer blunder perspective, I'm unable to boot the Ubuntu live CD on my wife's computer because something about Ubuntu checking USB in the wrong sequence. It seems amazing to me that such a popular distro known for its ease-of-use could have such a basic bug (known and documented, by the way.) We never even got past the boot screen, and now my wife is understandably reluctant to try out Linux.
So they demonstrated their theory using a water bottle with two holes cut in the bottom, and showed how covering one hole slowed the rate of water leaving the bottle. That's all good and fine, but we're talking about water that's responding to the force of gravity, not pent-up pressure and geothermal heating. If the weight of the balls can counteract that, great, but if that's their idea of a physically accurate analogy, I think they might be in for some surprises. Here's hoping it works, anyway, despite their faulty physics.
They're going to be hard-pressed for time, considering how much of the earth is still in such low resolution in Google Earth and the like. Based on that information, everything outside of a few, major metropolitan centers will show up as a prime target, and as for the cities themselves, they already *knew* to bomb those.
Actually, that's not true. One main reason that cell phone companies try to lock you into an annual or bi-annual contract is to help pay off the subsidized phones. Of course, I agree that this is by no means guaranteed to work in reverse; Cingular might be perfectly happy to go with the status quo and not blink twice about pocketing the extra cash. We'll see what happens after the iPhone ships; Cingular might decide to offer a reduced rate just for good PR's sake, or be forced to do so later if too many peopl balk at the fact that their calling plan costs the same regardless of whether or not they pay for the phone up front.