I use "x86 stuff" with my Mac in order to save on hardware, too - ATI card, Seagate SATA drives, Kensington mouse, etc. I didn't like the default keyboard and mouse that came with the Dell I had a few years ago, either, but that's not why I don't have a PC now.
Positive example: the single. The recording industry always has had singles, and pretending that they're getting shafted by not selling an entire album is not only crap, it blatantly ignores reality. Not that they're not good at it, though.
I have a dynamo on a bicycle headlight, and let me tell you, it's a real drag when it's engaged (no pun intended.) They'll definitely have to improve the technology somewhat before that's viable.
Japanese phones did all that when I got here two years ago (except the Bluetooth, which came out last year.) They have to add the extra features since they've already mastered the simple stuff.
And if I trade up my Vodaphone, it will probably cost me either a dollar (depending on whether they're competing with NTT's current offer) or $40, like it did last year.
However, what I will probably get is one of the international models, so I can use it in any country.
If you ignore the comment that you can burn the songs to CDs capable of being played, DRM-free, in any music player, then yeah, you have to have an iPod.
It's good for any kind of animation, if you actually do any. For example, complex actions, such as hitting pins with a bowling ball can be modeled, saving a lot of time setting keyframes and tweaking them to look right.
I'm American and I live in Japan, and I found GTA3 to be just damned boring in concept. I prefer fantasy games, too. I think the reason most people in Japan didn't like it is that it was too reality-oriented. That, and "scary." (You'd be amazed at what the Japanese will define as scary, and vice-versa.) Parents don't want their kids playing it, kids don't want to be associated with criminals. While the Japanese draw a sharp line between reality and make-believe, GTA3's only serious draw was the hip-hop/rapper/"street fashion" image that is currently popular in Japan (just got to Osaka's American Village and you'll see what I mean.)
As for the train simulators, is it any surprise that they're popular in a country where everybody takes the train at least several times a week?
As far as graphic designers and marketers go (I'm a graphic designer, too, although I find that "salary" and "talent" are hardly synonymous), I think you're missing the point. Especially on the PR front.
This was a PR ploy, and as such, was successful. Okay, so you're saying that the unschooled efforts of a 15-year-old are a poor reflection on a competition targeted at schools? Um. Yeah. As any good designer will tell you, the right design for the project.
Secondly: opinions are subjective. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it didn't fulfill its purpose. Bad designers forget to target the average person and instead waste their time trying to impress other designers.
Oh, and by the way: a mascot is not a logo, by any means; that's why we have two different names for them. Do you think the MGM lion, an easily recognizable and well-known mascot, would fulfill your criteria? No. Does that nullify the hitherto-successful history of MGM? No.
A well-paid opinion does not make it a good opinion (although possibly a pompous one with an inferiority complex who takes pot shots at teenagers.) It just means that you're good at convincing other people with no artistic sensibilities that you know what you're doing.
Actually, it looks almost exactly like that if you switch it into Browse mode and turn on album artwork. The only difference is moving the playback buttons to the bottom, which are otherwise identically arranged. If it wasn't for the app being skinned differently (and that damn ugly), it would be almost completely identical. The iPhoto rip-off is even more similar, only lacking a few extra buttons along the bottom.
"Hardware sinking ship?" I have to disagree with you there. With the release of the G5 bringing the Mac hardware platform on par with, if not ahead of its PC counterparts, Apple is by no means hurting. This is without counting the 64-bit capabilities of the processor that are, as yet, still largely under-utilized. They also have a good price point for their workstation systems, that easily compete with what the other guys have to offer.
Apple is far better off than it was a year ago, or even five years ago, when things were really ugly.
There's a strange (and, IMHO, unrealistic) trend of opinion lately that says that Apple should stop making great hardware and concentrate on making great software that only runs on that great hardware. If you think the software is that damn great, then buy a Mac. That's what Apple's trying to get you to do, but people seem to be missing the point.
The main issue with this interface is that it's on a 2D screen. Imagine trying to tech support your family every time they "lost a window," because they couldn't get the damn thing turned around. Worse still is trying to manipulate the 3D environment with a mouse. Ugh.
The entire thing, while very cool, will require some new input and output devices before the common man is really comfortable using it. Yes, people who play video games may be able to relate, but a lot of people out there don't. I say all this as a computer animator, and at the same time, somebody who takes tech support calls from Mom and Grandma.
...but only carries about the same weight as saying "crap" or "manure" in English. Funny the first couple of times, but doesn't really impress the natives much.
The only problem with the "artists should do live performances" and "there should be no royalties" is this: incentive. The industry would collapse, and a whole lot of other industries dependent on that business would be hurt, too. So, great utopian theory, but no. It goes back to the argument, "Why should I pay for someone's software?" Because they gotta eat, that's why.
This idea is not a brilliant leap forward, but rather a backslide to how things were in the Bad Olde Days hundreds of years ago, when artists didn't get paid crap to do what they did. Limiting reimbursement to live performances, etc., is a sure way to accomplish two things: put the artists out of business, thus reducing our cultural heritage. Also, by limiting their exposure, you again reduce our cultural heritage, since without those vaporous media previews, nobody will have ever heard of them.
Why do artists get paid royalties? Usually, they're not that high, and if you don't like the royalty, you don't have to license the work. If the royalties demanded are too high, the artist simply can't get any contracts. On the other hand, it doesn't do for the distributors to make money hand over fist for sales while the artist gets paid only a pittance (which seems to be the actual fact in the music industry.) If you can't get paid everything up front, then get paid back in smaller installments over time. You know, like when you sell copies of software, you get reimbursed for the development costs. Same idea.
The better argument is, "Why should we pay high prices for complete crap?" Easy answer: don't. Nobody's forcing you to. There is a lot of so-called art out there that is truly drivel, but enough of it is good (despite the best efforts of the suits) to justify spreading it around. Bet you paid to go see Lord of the Rings, didn't you?
In the end, art is a luxury item. You can argue all you want that the prices are unfair, but since it's not actually a necessity of life, you don't actually have to buy it. I don't like the RIAA and I don't like the high prices. I think they have a truly retarded attitude towards copying and file sharing, as, despite their bitching about loss of sales, they're still raking in obscene amounts of money.
I've lived in Germany, the US, and Japan, and I have a pretty good idea why the sales are going down. In the US and Japan, the prices are simply too high (Japan is double that of the US, for absolutely no good reason at all.) Germany is actually half the price of the US (in other words, a fair price), but has the highest piracy rate in Europe, be it software, music, or movies.
Japan has one situation that makes piracy even more likely, and is pretty humorous: rental stores not only rent CDs, they actually put the play time and how many tapes or MDs you'd have to buy to record it, so no surprise at the problem there. Not exactly discouraging people, are they? "Let's charge some of the highest prices in the world and then encourage people to pirate the media!" Interestingly, people are still willing to buy the original when it's someone's music they really like.
The first obvious one is home/end vs command up/down. Do some programming and you might notice, newb.
I don't know about you, but I use home and end, as well as page up and page down, to navigate through screens on my keyboard. Especially when I'm coding. On OSX.
The second is the way Mac's are more menu centric, when you cycle through a program, you cycle through the windows. On a other platforms, you cycle through the programs.
When you command-tab on the Mac, you cycle through the programs. This also has absolutely nothing to do with being menu-centric or not. Also, OSX, just like any OS, allows for many different work styles; after all, it was the Mac that invented the keyboard shortcut for GUI menu commands.
A grey market product is simply one that exists outside of the market for which it was intended; it's not like a criminal thing if you're the end user and you've legitimately purchased it on your own. My girlfriend is Japanese, and was studying abroad for a year in the USA; hardly a case of nefarious intent.
That particular Fujitsu laptop was hardly different from its US counterparts, but that's not what the inventory sheet said. The tech support guy who helped us out was nice enough to see past the corporate BS and got us a power cord that worked (because, amazingly enough, it was exactly the same one.)
A Dell user who took an American-purchased Dell laptop back to the UK would indeed be a grey user, but only if that particular laptop model was earmarked as a US exclusive. They can sell an identical laptop in the UK with a different product number, and the US one still counts as a grey product. Ah, the wonders of a global economy!
Nobody ever asks you about your laptop; they really could care less. They're more interested in people smuggling in plants and animals, since those actually have a serious, measurable impact.
That being said, I hope your plane ticket is less than the $900 difference in price, else you're not actually saving any money. That, and you'll never be able to get any kind of tech support or warranty work for it.
So-called "grey market" products can be a pain to take care of; my girlfriend's Fujitsu laptop turned out to be a Japan-only release, which made replacing something as simple as her power cord in the US a real pain in the butt. For one, none of the inventory numbers matched up on the replacement parts.
Thank goodness I have a Mac. Worldwide support, no matter what. Only the usual run-around, instead of a special one.;)
Any man that is intimidated by girl gamers needs to consider the following phrase: Strip Counter-strike.
Of course, perhaps many of them already have, considered the talents of the girl in question, have taken a good look at their own physique, and decided the risks wasn't worth it.
Yeah, if I was getting beat by a girl in that situation, I could understand the intimidation factor.;)
Massive is not rendering software, but crowd-simulation software. As for rendering, that was most likely done in RenderMan, which has been around for forever and a day, and therefore has already garnered all the accolades it can long ago.
Dreamweaver is also good at creating great style sheets. The HTML code it writes is pretty tight, too, IMHO. I've run it past my hard-core coding friends in the past, and they gave it a thumbs up, too.
As for mocking up pages in Illustrator vs. Photoshop, I've done both. Depends on how shiny a site the client wants. As of Photoshop 7, things got a lot better in the vector art department, although still not as robust or flexible as Illustrator, of course. My current site layout is going to be 80% Photoshop and 20% Illustrator. It's nice to be able to maintain vector shapes and add things like glow and emboss effects to them, things I can't accomplish as easily in Illustrator.
Slashdot Mirror
I use "x86 stuff" with my Mac in order to save on hardware, too - ATI card, Seagate SATA drives, Kensington mouse, etc. I didn't like the default keyboard and mouse that came with the Dell I had a few years ago, either, but that's not why I don't have a PC now.
Positive example: the single. The recording industry always has had singles, and pretending that they're getting shafted by not selling an entire album is not only crap, it blatantly ignores reality. Not that they're not good at it, though.
I have a dynamo on a bicycle headlight, and let me tell you, it's a real drag when it's engaged (no pun intended.) They'll definitely have to improve the technology somewhat before that's viable.
Japanese phones did all that when I got here two years ago (except the Bluetooth, which came out last year.) They have to add the extra features since they've already mastered the simple stuff.
And if I trade up my Vodaphone, it will probably cost me either a dollar (depending on whether they're competing with NTT's current offer) or $40, like it did last year.
However, what I will probably get is one of the international models, so I can use it in any country.
No, I live in Japan. The population is primarily made up of nerds.
If you ignore the comment that you can burn the songs to CDs capable of being played, DRM-free, in any music player, then yeah, you have to have an iPod.
It's good for any kind of animation, if you actually do any. For example, complex actions, such as hitting pins with a bowling ball can be modeled, saving a lot of time setting keyframes and tweaking them to look right.
I'm American and I live in Japan, and I found GTA3 to be just damned boring in concept. I prefer fantasy games, too. I think the reason most people in Japan didn't like it is that it was too reality-oriented. That, and "scary." (You'd be amazed at what the Japanese will define as scary, and vice-versa.) Parents don't want their kids playing it, kids don't want to be associated with criminals. While the Japanese draw a sharp line between reality and make-believe, GTA3's only serious draw was the hip-hop/rapper/"street fashion" image that is currently popular in Japan (just got to Osaka's American Village and you'll see what I mean.)
As for the train simulators, is it any surprise that they're popular in a country where everybody takes the train at least several times a week?
As far as graphic designers and marketers go (I'm a graphic designer, too, although I find that "salary" and "talent" are hardly synonymous), I think you're missing the point. Especially on the PR front.
This was a PR ploy, and as such, was successful. Okay, so you're saying that the unschooled efforts of a 15-year-old are a poor reflection on a competition targeted at schools? Um. Yeah. As any good designer will tell you, the right design for the project.
Secondly: opinions are subjective. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it didn't fulfill its purpose. Bad designers forget to target the average person and instead waste their time trying to impress other designers.
Oh, and by the way: a mascot is not a logo, by any means; that's why we have two different names for them. Do you think the MGM lion, an easily recognizable and well-known mascot, would fulfill your criteria? No. Does that nullify the hitherto-successful history of MGM? No.
A well-paid opinion does not make it a good opinion (although possibly a pompous one with an inferiority complex who takes pot shots at teenagers.) It just means that you're good at convincing other people with no artistic sensibilities that you know what you're doing.
Rule of thumb: go to court only if there's something important at stake, not if you're planning on making money.
Actually, it looks almost exactly like that if you switch it into Browse mode and turn on album artwork. The only difference is moving the playback buttons to the bottom, which are otherwise identically arranged. If it wasn't for the app being skinned differently (and that damn ugly), it would be almost completely identical. The iPhoto rip-off is even more similar, only lacking a few extra buttons along the bottom.
How do you market to ignorance?
Microsoft didn't win with marketing, they won by playing dirty and ruthless.
"Hardware sinking ship?" I have to disagree with you there. With the release of the G5 bringing the Mac hardware platform on par with, if not ahead of its PC counterparts, Apple is by no means hurting. This is without counting the 64-bit capabilities of the processor that are, as yet, still largely under-utilized. They also have a good price point for their workstation systems, that easily compete with what the other guys have to offer.
Apple is far better off than it was a year ago, or even five years ago, when things were really ugly.
There's a strange (and, IMHO, unrealistic) trend of opinion lately that says that Apple should stop making great hardware and concentrate on making great software that only runs on that great hardware. If you think the software is that damn great, then buy a Mac. That's what Apple's trying to get you to do, but people seem to be missing the point.
But because of Apple's proprietary copy-protection standard Fairplay...
Somebody needs to work on the definition of "standard," it would seem.
The main issue with this interface is that it's on a 2D screen. Imagine trying to tech support your family every time they "lost a window," because they couldn't get the damn thing turned around. Worse still is trying to manipulate the 3D environment with a mouse. Ugh.
The entire thing, while very cool, will require some new input and output devices before the common man is really comfortable using it. Yes, people who play video games may be able to relate, but a lot of people out there don't. I say all this as a computer animator, and at the same time, somebody who takes tech support calls from Mom and Grandma.
...but only carries about the same weight as saying "crap" or "manure" in English. Funny the first couple of times, but doesn't really impress the natives much.
The only problem with the "artists should do live performances" and "there should be no royalties" is this: incentive. The industry would collapse, and a whole lot of other industries dependent on that business would be hurt, too. So, great utopian theory, but no. It goes back to the argument, "Why should I pay for someone's software?" Because they gotta eat, that's why.
This idea is not a brilliant leap forward, but rather a backslide to how things were in the Bad Olde Days hundreds of years ago, when artists didn't get paid crap to do what they did. Limiting reimbursement to live performances, etc., is a sure way to accomplish two things: put the artists out of business, thus reducing our cultural heritage. Also, by limiting their exposure, you again reduce our cultural heritage, since without those vaporous media previews, nobody will have ever heard of them.
Why do artists get paid royalties? Usually, they're not that high, and if you don't like the royalty, you don't have to license the work. If the royalties demanded are too high, the artist simply can't get any contracts. On the other hand, it doesn't do for the distributors to make money hand over fist for sales while the artist gets paid only a pittance (which seems to be the actual fact in the music industry.) If you can't get paid everything up front, then get paid back in smaller installments over time. You know, like when you sell copies of software, you get reimbursed for the development costs. Same idea.
The better argument is, "Why should we pay high prices for complete crap?" Easy answer: don't. Nobody's forcing you to. There is a lot of so-called art out there that is truly drivel, but enough of it is good (despite the best efforts of the suits) to justify spreading it around. Bet you paid to go see Lord of the Rings, didn't you?
In the end, art is a luxury item. You can argue all you want that the prices are unfair, but since it's not actually a necessity of life, you don't actually have to buy it. I don't like the RIAA and I don't like the high prices. I think they have a truly retarded attitude towards copying and file sharing, as, despite their bitching about loss of sales, they're still raking in obscene amounts of money.
I've lived in Germany, the US, and Japan, and I have a pretty good idea why the sales are going down. In the US and Japan, the prices are simply too high (Japan is double that of the US, for absolutely no good reason at all.) Germany is actually half the price of the US (in other words, a fair price), but has the highest piracy rate in Europe, be it software, music, or movies.
Japan has one situation that makes piracy even more likely, and is pretty humorous: rental stores not only rent CDs, they actually put the play time and how many tapes or MDs you'd have to buy to record it, so no surprise at the problem there. Not exactly discouraging people, are they? "Let's charge some of the highest prices in the world and then encourage people to pirate the media!" Interestingly, people are still willing to buy the original when it's someone's music they really like.
Just because something hasn't been done does not make it impossible. Postulating thus is bad scientific reasoning.
The first obvious one is home/end vs command up/down. Do some programming and you might notice, newb.
I don't know about you, but I use home and end, as well as page up and page down, to navigate through screens on my keyboard. Especially when I'm coding. On OSX.
The second is the way Mac's are more menu centric, when you cycle through a program, you cycle through the windows. On a other platforms, you cycle through the programs.
When you command-tab on the Mac, you cycle through the programs. This also has absolutely nothing to do with being menu-centric or not. Also, OSX, just like any OS, allows for many different work styles; after all, it was the Mac that invented the keyboard shortcut for GUI menu commands.
A grey market product is simply one that exists outside of the market for which it was intended; it's not like a criminal thing if you're the end user and you've legitimately purchased it on your own. My girlfriend is Japanese, and was studying abroad for a year in the USA; hardly a case of nefarious intent.
That particular Fujitsu laptop was hardly different from its US counterparts, but that's not what the inventory sheet said. The tech support guy who helped us out was nice enough to see past the corporate BS and got us a power cord that worked (because, amazingly enough, it was exactly the same one.)
A Dell user who took an American-purchased Dell laptop back to the UK would indeed be a grey user, but only if that particular laptop model was earmarked as a US exclusive. They can sell an identical laptop in the UK with a different product number, and the US one still counts as a grey product. Ah, the wonders of a global economy!
Weird Al did "It's All About the Pentiums," and that one was funny enough.
Nobody ever asks you about your laptop; they really could care less. They're more interested in people smuggling in plants and animals, since those actually have a serious, measurable impact.
;)
That being said, I hope your plane ticket is less than the $900 difference in price, else you're not actually saving any money. That, and you'll never be able to get any kind of tech support or warranty work for it.
So-called "grey market" products can be a pain to take care of; my girlfriend's Fujitsu laptop turned out to be a Japan-only release, which made replacing something as simple as her power cord in the US a real pain in the butt. For one, none of the inventory numbers matched up on the replacement parts.
Thank goodness I have a Mac. Worldwide support, no matter what. Only the usual run-around, instead of a special one.
Any man that is intimidated by girl gamers needs to consider the following phrase: Strip Counter-strike.
;)
Of course, perhaps many of them already have, considered the talents of the girl in question, have taken a good look at their own physique, and decided the risks wasn't worth it.
Yeah, if I was getting beat by a girl in that situation, I could understand the intimidation factor.
Massive is not rendering software, but crowd-simulation software. As for rendering, that was most likely done in RenderMan, which has been around for forever and a day, and therefore has already garnered all the accolades it can long ago.
Dreamweaver is also good at creating great style sheets. The HTML code it writes is pretty tight, too, IMHO. I've run it past my hard-core coding friends in the past, and they gave it a thumbs up, too.
As for mocking up pages in Illustrator vs. Photoshop, I've done both. Depends on how shiny a site the client wants. As of Photoshop 7, things got a lot better in the vector art department, although still not as robust or flexible as Illustrator, of course. My current site layout is going to be 80% Photoshop and 20% Illustrator. It's nice to be able to maintain vector shapes and add things like glow and emboss effects to them, things I can't accomplish as easily in Illustrator.