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Comment Apple provided APIs (Score 5, Informative) 320

Apple has provided the API's to do the hardware decoding, and Adobe has a beta called Gala which has Mac OSX Hardware Acceleration enabled.. Adobe will have a release out soon that will incorporate the hardware decoding in OSX. My guess is Adobe had to fast-track the release of 10.1 to compensate for the wide open security holes they had lingering, and weren't prepared to merge the beta and the final release trees.

Comment Re:Not buying Neweggs explanation (Score 2, Insightful) 447

Remember, when you have long term suppliers and buyers like this, you actually create a real relationship, and that relationship is worth more than just the money and product changing hands. You don't want to terminate or damage that relationship more than you have to.

Agreed, but how many people are going to be skeptical to order from newegg now due to trying to protect the relationship with the partner. Newegg might want to not reitterate whatever the supplier is saying in protecting themselves a little more. A statement like this would be more effective, "We have received a limited number of complaints from customers receiving their orders. We are immediately sending out replacement products to these customers and will investigate this situation to insure it doesn't happen again."

This wouldn't throw anybody under the bus, keep everyone at ease thinking that newegg backs their customers, and then they can work on figuring out the situation at hand.

Comment H.264 Quality BETTER than OGV, sorry! (Score 2, Insightful) 315

I checked out the website and watched the comparisons of their test video vs H.264. I'm sorry but H.264 looks much richer, has more depth, has better contrast and recovers quicker when skipping through the video. OGV looks blown out out, slightly blurry, missing some richness and seems easily susceptible to blocky video.

Google

Google To Host International SVG Conference 38

stelt writes "On Oct.2–4 Google will host the international conference on Scalable Vector Graphics at its campus in Mountain View, California. The SVG Open conference schedule shows developers and designers of various backgrounds. Major brands, open source projects, universities, and individuals are presenting on a variety of subjects like interactive scientific visualizations, mobile web animation art, internationalization and localization in print, geo-systems, etc. A couple of weeks back we discussed Google's adding SVG support to IE, and details of this project will be presented during the keynote 'SVG in Internet Explorer and at Google.'" Early-bird registration has already ended for this conference, but the pricing is not steep.

Comment Entertainment Visionaries vs Internet (Score 1) 562

Being in the entertainment industry the largest disconnect is that people creating entertainment products are visionaries, such as Walt Disney. Obviously he was much more visionary than many of the CEO's of today, but the concept is the same.

Things aren't always about "the money", it's more about "the experience". But to create a complete experience it requires a lot of time and resources of talented individuals which requires money from investors (also known as entertainment companies). Investors want a return on their investment (well, duh). So it requires people paying for that experience to make the effort balanced. A complete experience also requires going into a controlled environment which means leaving your house. The internet junkies of today want to experience the "complete experience" without leaving their house. So there's a HUGE disconnect.

There could probably be a system created for micro-billing of watching entertainment but there probably wouldn't be the recoup necessary to offset the investment in creating quality entertainment, but more importantly this would create lesser quality of entertainment in the end. As things would be created with the uncontrolled environment and computer screen as the target audience, the number of senses that are able to be stimulated from the experience are lessened. This format would attract people who want to capitalize on making money in that genre, but be restrictive of serious creative types to realize a whole and complete experience.

If you want to be entertained and want to continue having great art created, get off your duff and go see a movie. Throw your vote of what arts you want to see more of with your hard earned dollars. Buy the stuff you enjoy, pay to see the stuff you enjoy.

Comment Re:You gotta be able to hold it (Score 1) 776

So my guess would be that, as someone new to running, you'd probably need equipment that helps you avoid injury rather than equipment that "makes you good". At least, well, that's what I'd want when I start with a sport. I certainly don't want a Formula 1 car to learn driving, the chances to kill myself are just a wee bit too high.

Well, let's think through this logically. With your ski analogy the more advanced you become the more performance you want out of your gear. Effectively what you're suggesting is to not put novices in a position to getting injured and letting them build strength.

After reading this article thoroughly you would find that running barefoot (or with a thin leather strip) is exactly like your novice ski gear. This situation induces the novice to take it slower, let the muscles develop and teach your body to absorb the impact, let your feet get stronger, etc.

Putting your feet in 'comfy cushy shoes' enables an inexperienced runner to believe he could run forever without developing those muscles and correct running style. An untrained runner puts too much impact on the heal not letting the foot and legs absorb things correctly.

So your analogy actually works in reverse from what you thought. The less advanced you are, the less "high-performance gear" you should get, exactly like in skiing.

Comment Re:I'm a Mac. . . (Score 1) 858

I just want to thank you for this comment. At my university the Mac students are unbelievably dogmatic and too blinded by their love of their computers to ever concede a Windows machine might, in some instances, have an advantage for certain people.

It's very refreshing to see Mac users who actually understand that the computer you buy is simply a personal decision of which one you think is worth it. On the whole Slashdot users are pretty reasonable about it on both sides. For the people who want what Macs offer, they're great. For other people? Not so great.

I hope this mentality dissipates as I get older.

I too applaud the parent poster of these comments along with yours. I'm glad these wars are ending! FINALLY!

After all, if those idiotic moron windows users want to continue to waste their time re-installing windows on their machines every 6 months, install and maintain 6 different virus checkers and pop-up blocking softwares, and have over 50 applications nested deep in their registry to automatically start upon login and stay resident in their system tray and slowing down their machine, and be at the mercy of microsoft gods at every software update to hopefully not blow the system up, I say, go for it!

Glad these wars are over with! Good riddance.

Comment It's always about the money (Score 1) 291

This might look like PRS is being the lame ones, but if you actually know a bloody thing about the music industry you would understand better what this really is about.

Youtube/Google makes millions upon millions of ad revenues from youtube. A clip that gets seen a lot generates more revenues. If it contains music that is 'copywritten' there should be a performance royalty associated to that clip. This is a movement to control the cash-flow of the music industry. There is no sense for Google to retain all the profit and not pay the writers and creators of the content while they rake it in.

Look at all the moving parts before slandering a group going after your "sainted" google.

Comment So Narrow Sighted! (Score 1) 626

Ok, so it points out a flaw with Windows 7 and Linux but completely fails to give the praise to the efforts that Apple is doing with Mac OSX and Snow Leopard!!! OSX is incorporating incredible efforts to leverage GPU and Multi-core solutions for developers. Ignoring these pieces is incredibly ignorant of the "personal computer" and "distributed computing" markets.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/

Comment Let me in... (Score 1) 230

I want in on this lawsuit. Normally I'm a strong proponent of "you got yourself in it, get yourself out of it." But the iPhone's exclusivity on AT&T combined with AT&T requiring me to buy a 3G contract is totally anti consumer friendly.

I don't ever use the 3G network even though my phone has the capabilities. I leave it on the EDGE network because the 3G network drops too many calls.

I'd deserve to just be paying for the EDGE speeds instead of 3G speeds and be compensated for all the forced expenses of having to have a 3G premium. There's no way I would have known "going into the contact" that 3G would drop more calls.

Comment Re:In Defence of Sony... (Score 1) 616

Have you noticed multi platform games look better on the Xbox 360 vs the PS3 or PS3 ones come out way later? The simple reason is you have to sweat blood and tears to get the same performance out of the PS3 to match the Xbox. (Hear those thousands of screams out in the night? Those are PS3 developer! :)

As a consumer, this is frustrating.

Years ago when I heard rumors about Microsoft getting into the video game console business, I knew this would put the console games into the crapper.

I knew that Microsoft would have enough capital to force their way in and create a rough situation for CONSUMERS. The playstation was the leading platform but developers wouldn't want to be ignorant of Microsoft's commitment to their console and their capital to make it happen. So the net result would be mediocre results on ALL platforms.

Here we are, years later, and I have lived confirmation of my fear for the console industry.

Video game companies would rather have a mediocre performing game on all platforms rather than pick one platform to develop for and maximize the platform for the benefit of the consumer's experience. This is because they will sell more copies world wide being on all platforms. So they think it makes the most sense for them.

The reality? The reality is in the past, serious gamers owned all the platforms. Sega Genesis, Nintendo Game Cube, PS1/PS2 and there was more exclusivity. So why don't game developers get some balls and write games tailored specifically what they want accomplished and focus 100% of their time on that platform. If they want power, goto the PS3, if they want quick time to delivery goto the XBOX, if they want fun low-quality stuff goto the Wii.

This would help developers focus on what they do, making amazing experiences for consumers and making people buy the console to play their game.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, stop these cross-unified ports for all consoles.

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