DreamWorks Switches to Linux

tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux. Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers. Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.

Comments

Adobe!

[magicslax]

This is great news if it means having quality graphics software available under linux. The Gimp just doesn't provide a compelling alternative for serious professional shops. Adobe ports to linux would be a Good Thing and then some.

Re:Adobe!

[bcrowell]

This is backwards reasoning. What would really be a good thing would be if the open-source community could produce an app as good as Photoshop. Otherwise it's an admission of failure -- we have to depend forever on Adobe adobe to treat us graciously.

If open source is going to succeed on the desktop, there have to be open-source apps. The average user couldn't care less about the OS, and may not even know what an OS is. The way to impress non-geeks with open source is to show them some applications.

what about OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Final Cut Pro, Maya, and the Adobe lineup now shipping, it seems like OS X would be a platform of choice...

Proof that Linux isn't quality insurance

[gdyas]

Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'

A bit O/T I guess, but I had to note that I've unfortunately seen the preview for this film a number of times, and when you're dying for thew preview to end, it doesn't exactly speak well of the film. Whatta piece of wasteful pop pablum.

We're talking completely empty prepackaged Britney Spears - style crap here.

When the SSSCA turns into a reality...

[Karpe]

and Linux becomes illegal (you can't have efective copy prevention with source code), what will the movie studios (the same who pushed the SSSCA in the first place) use then?

Re:When the SSSCA turns into a reality...

[flink]

You mean some kind of Contenet Scrambling System? Yeah, then we'd really be screwed. ;-)

Shrek WAS rendered on Linux...

[Ryu2]

The article summary is wrong. IRIX was used for frontend modelling. But Shrek WAS rendered finally on Linux -- indeed Shrek was distinctive as it was the first major full-length film to be totally rendered on Linux.

Re:What are they thinking?

[Chris Pimlott]

I want to know, why on earth would Dreamworks want to switch to Linux.

Yeah, too bad there's not some sort of article about it to explain why they switched.

Adobe Lost Me at Hello

[idonotexist]

After the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product. So, if Adobe is finally convinced it can make a few more bucks by porting its apps to Linux, perhaps Adobe needs to correct its public relations fiasco and not with a mere press release, but something more sublime; maybe a contribution to EFF? Until such an event, no way, no how, Adobe --- not on this Linux box. I will not just forget Adobe's mistake and I hope others will not.

SW-patents problem

[villoks]

Well.

Unfortunately there's too many patents in the field. It is impossible to create a software which doesn't violate at least some of them. For example color management is highly protected area. From this background it's pretty simple why there isn't any commercially viable open source options available...

Ville

Re:SW-patents problem

[foobar104]

From this background it's pretty simple why there isn't any commercially viable open source options available...

I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees, here. The reason there's no sufficient open-source Photoshop-alike is the same reason there's no sufficient open-source ERP system. For that matter, it's the same reason there's no all-volunteer space program, or an all-volunteer hospital.

Writing software that's a functional and of as high quality as Photoshop is hard. Unbelievably hard. As hard as open-heart surgery, or sending a person into orbit. Writing an image editor that's as complete and as good as Photoshop would require a tightly coordinated and managed team of hundreds working full-time on the project for years. That's something that the open-source community has simply been unable to provide. Compared to Photoshop, Apache (arguably one of the strongest open-source efforts out there, and some excellent software) is child's play, both in overall complexity and in the sheer number of function points.

Gimp? Don't even talk to me about Gimp. I have Photoshop 3.0.1 on my iBook, which I run in Classic mode. I also have Gimp on my Windows 2000 system, because I don't have Photoshop for Windows. I use Gimp when I can't use Photoshop, which is moderately often. Across the board, without exception, I find Photoshop 3.0.1-- vintage 1991 software!-- running under Classic mode on my Mac to be superior to Gimp under Windows. Lots of time and effort went into making Photoshop a well-thought-out, high-quality piece of software, and it shows. Gimp is worked on by a loosely coupled group of part-timers, and that also shows.

I don't mean to be insulting, but Gimp is kind of like the old saying about the dog that sings. It's not that the dog sings well, because it doesn't. It's impressive simply that the dog sings at all. That's fine for singing dogs and amateurs. Professional artists will hold us-- the community, I mean-- to a higher standard.

Re:SW-patents problem

[marco_craveiro]

Writing software that's a functional and of as high quality as Photoshop is hard.

huh, say foobar, do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS, including a kernel that is portable to almost any architecture known to man as well as a compiler that works along the same lines? man, if it is all hail adobe for the real hackers work for them.

an image editor that's as complete and as good as Photoshop would require a tightly coordinated and managed team of hundreds working full-time on the project for years.

mate, replace "an image editor" with "a kernel", "an IDE", "a desktop environment", etc. and you will be saying exactly the same thing people were saying until those components stabilized. i dont think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the bazar development, or we would never have what we have today. it takes 2 things to make a good app: competent interested people and time. and remember, "UI bugs are first class bugs like any other bug" so eventually the UI will get there as well.

soup

Re:SW-patents problem

[foobar104]

huh, say foobar, do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS

Yes, it is. Sitting down and writing an operating system based on Unix isn't, conceptually, that hard a job. Don't misunderstand me: it's a big job. Vast. Worthy of praise. But nobody has done any significant revolutionary work on the Linux kernel. It's just the writing down, all in one place, of well-established ideas. And it's not even that great; it doesn't handle large memory effectively, and it can't scale very well. But it's impressive that it works at all. (See my previous post.)

Photoshop is different. It's fundamentally user productivity software. It's not sufficient that it should simply work. It must work in a good, consistent, user-friendly way. There is no such requirement for Apache, or the Linux kernel, or GCC. Nobody sits in front of the Linux kernel all day, except for the kernel developers themselves. But lots of people, including yours truly in a previous job, get paid to sit in front of Photoshop all day. So the standards for human-computer interaction in Photoshop are much higher.

i dont think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the bazar development, or we would never have what we have today.

I don't disagree with that at all. Today we have some fantastic software that came from open-source efforts: the Linux kernel, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, Emacs, TeX (especially TeX!), X, and so on. But what the open-source community has provided isn't as revealing as what it hasn't. There is no adequate open-source desktop; as a long-time user of both Gnome and KDE I assert that neither one of them is worth much right now compared to the Windows desktop, or either the Mac OS "Classic" or the OS X desktops. There is no adequate open-source illustration program: we use Illustrator, or even FreeHand, instead. There is no adequate user-friendly open-source publishing software: we use FrameMaker or QPS instead. There is no adequate open-source CRM software: we use Siebel. No ERP software: we use SAP. No page layout software: QuarkXPress, or even InDesign. No spreadsheet software: Excel. No PIM software: Outlook. It goes on and on.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself the question, why hasn't the open-source community produced any of these things? I know my answer. What's yours?

Photoshop

[skroz]

I'd sell my soul for photoshop in linux. OK, well maybe not my soul. My conscience, maybe.

GIMP is great, but it's no photoshop.

Re:Photoshop

[ArsonSmith]

I think you are mistaking. GTK is an X11 widget tool kit. It has nothing to do with rodent feces. but I can uderstand how you would not lick it in that instance.

Re:Adobe on Linux

[NanoGator]

Count me in. What's holding me back from Linux is that I can't run the programs you mentioned, plus After Effects, Lightwave, and some of the other Win things I use.

As an animator, I can tell you that I'm really excited about studios moving over to Linux. What's great about Linux is that you can run it on any platform.

I'll tell you something, Apple totally kicks ass when it comes to making laptops. I'm very happy that Lightwave 7 and all Adobe products are available on it. As a matter of fact, I am *Heavily* considering purchasing one of these machines. If the programs I mentioned ran on Linux, I'd have no qualms about buying a Mac. At that point, it wouldn't really matter!

I *Love* the idea of being totally platform independent. I could finally break out of the Windows cage.

Shrek *was* rendered on Linux...

[don_carnage]

From this article at CIO.com:

"At the film company DreamWorks, Ed Leonard has ported the entire graphics animation department to Linux; Shrek was created on a "renderfarm" (a powerful, refrigerator-size rack of servers) that had 800 processors running Linux. Leonard took the money he saved by not having maintenance contracts and used it to buy far more inexpensive Linux PCs. He says the money he has saved will allow DreamWorks to replace desktops and the renderfarm every two years instead of every five."

Am I missing something here?

I guess MS Bob really burned their goat

[Locutus]

This is great news and shows the curtain is really starting to close on Redmond.

I just read that Doug Miller is now in charge of a UNIX migration hit-team at Microsoft. They don't mention alternative OS's unless they absolutely HAVE to. Hehe. :)

It's a ZiffDavis story no less....

http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=1884&a=259 32 , 0.asp

LoB

Re:I guess MS Bob really burned their goat

[psamuels]

This is great news and shows the curtain is really starting to close on Redmond.

This is much worse news for SGI than it is for Microsoft.

SGI used to own the Hollywood effects houses - anything not Mac was IRIX. Over the past few years everyone has started realising that while SGI sells the biggest and baddest NUMA, some things like 3D rendering are naturally parallelisable to such an extent that clusters make a lot more sense than NUMA. Clusters often mean Linux, for reasons I don't need to get into here. Which is, I'm convinced, the main reason SGI got into Linux in a big way a few years ago - they figured that was the way to keep their current big-spending customers. Remember that SGI "got religion" long before IBM or HP made serious noises about Linux. HP is a comparative johnny-come-lately both to Linux and to serious 3D graphics.

So losing this contract to HP and Red Hat had to hurt SGI. Bad. This was their turf, and we just saw a major failure for SGI's Linux play. Nail in the SGI coffin?

(PS: I just thought of this: it's not a total loss for SGI - they still own Alias|Wavefront, whose Maya software was used.)

So..

[realdpk]

We're pro-MPAA today? I thought that was Tuesdays.

Re:Adobe on Linux

[Bonker]

I have a friend who refuses to go to Linux full time until he can get Photoshop

There are two things keeping me from Linux:

1. Crappy multimedia support in the form of DVD software, mpeg4/divx and other video codecs, sound drivers, etc.

and

2. The abscence of a no-problems Photoshop instance.

Games don't even count in my book, *but* I make all my $$$ with a copy of Photoshop open. Sorry, the Gimp is nice and all... played with it extensively in fact... but it just doesn't cut it upside Photoshop. Maybe it will in the near future. Wine is okay, but I've seen Photoshop run under Wine and it ain't pretty.

Since #1 is being worked on and in most cases workarounds like apps that will use the win32 codecs for various MPEG4 formats, a working Linux version of Photoshop would completely end my dependance on Microsoft.

My dependance on evil Adobe is another matter....

The Reality of it All

[TellarHK]

The entire push to make Linux a corporate desktop system is still too fragmented and too much like a battle of wills. On one side, people lament that there's no Photoshop or Premiere or MS Office, or insert-needed-app-here. On the other, people complain that the open source equivalents are good enough and just use those and stop whining.

You're both right, now shut the hell up and do what you can to make it all come together. Until people -feel- that open source equivalents to the commercial software are better, they won't settle for them unless they're forced to by ideology or economy. What will it take to make people feel the open source projects are better or even equal? I can't answer that, but watch the press. When the pundits start changing tune, then you'll be on the right track. For now, encourage and embrace the commercial applications. They'll do nothing but increase open source market and mind shares in the long run.

If you can code, do what you can for the project of your choice. If not, and there are some of us out here that can't, just keep an open mind and take the long view. Be patient, and maybe give the can-do's a kick in the pants once in a while.

*kick*

I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[NanoGator]

"fter the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product..."

I sympathize with your view, but the reason that Adobe is so popular is because it makes a totally kick as series of products. If I lose Photoshop or After Effects, I don't have a whole lot of good choices to replace them with, especially for the money. You wouldn't be 'saving me' from Adobe, you'd be hurting me if you convinced me to switch.

I really don't like what they did with Dmitry, but I need a solution to express my disgruntlement with them that doesn't involve crippling my productivity.

I have the same issue with Blizzard. I've been asked to boycott Blizzard over using the DMCA to shut down BnetD. The problem I have with that is a healthy game industry = better job market for me. Blizzard consistently makes kick ass games. Not buying Blizzard 3 would do more to work against me than help prevent them from further DMCA abuse. On top of that, I think Warcarft III will be lots of fun, and I'd hate to miss out on that too.

So what do we do? I'm open to suggestions as to how to let these companies know what they're doing is unacceptable without creating ripples in the good work that they're doing. One idea is to make their email address available so people can write in their complaints. Another would be to have Slashdot carry a banner encouraging people to read about what happened and, again, give them an email address they can send complaints to.

Personally, I think this would be far more effective than saying "I won't buy your product even tho I need it."

Re:I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[NanoGator]

"Do you pirate expensive software? If not, you have no reason to fear the DMCA."

Not true. The DMCA prevents me from doing legitimate things, such as backing up a DVD I bought. Since I need DeCSS to do that in a useful manner, I'd be violating the DMCA because it circumvents copy protection.

The DMCA takes away a number of our freedoms, even if we're working legitimately. THat's why we're fighting it.

Re:I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[testadicazzo]

I agree with you on a number of points. Primarily I think boycotts are poorly organized, and only effective when they are vastly accepted. I have a suggestion (which is admittedly of limited relevance in this case) on how to make them more efffective.

I currently boycott Nike because of their labor policies. As an active sports enthusiast, I wish I could in good concience buy nike products, as often they have the best or most available products. But I find alternatives. Then I save the receipts, and mail them to nike with a letter explaining why I bought the competitors products.

So my suggestion for an active partial boycott is this: Buy alternatives whenever possible. Send the receipt and notification of why you did this to the company. If they get enough they'll realize their bottom line is being affected far more quickly and immediately than through a normal boycott.

I have to get off my arse and make a web page propounding this idea.

Re:I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[NanoGator]

"I currently boycott Nike because of their labor policies. As an active sports enthusiast, I wish I could in good concience buy nike products, as often they have the best or most available products. But I find alternatives. Then I save the receipts, and mail them to nike with a letter explaining why I bought the competitors products."

Nike once offered a web service where you could have shoes made with words printed on them. Somebody wanted the words 'child labor', or something like that. Heh NIke wouldn't let him do it, but I sure liked his idea.

That goes a hell of a lot farther than not buying their products.

I do like your suggestion of sending the reciepts.

Linux not ready for prime Time

[MagikSlinger]

P-p-p-p-lease listen to me before moding me down! Gives readers the Roger Rabbit pouty look

It was interesting to note they had a problem with it for desktop use (including problems with XFree86). This has been one of the issues plaguing Linux now and hurting its foray into the desktop or workstation market: there are polishing features that need to be done.

Now, the good news is XFree86 did fix things up. Did the XFree86 team even know Dreamworks were having problems it? I mean, when there's a big opportunity for Linux, we really need to get the teams involved. It makes skitish users feel better, and more importantly, it gets the "hacker" culture a better idea of what the user culture needs. No contempt or animosity. Just people helping people.

Another thing is the polish. Fixing those annoying little bugs, or getting that useful feature in that no one has time to do. IBM and their billion dollars could help here, but there does need to be more support for the Open Source polishers out there (like the Linux janitors). Have you submitted a patch lately? :-)

So, hopefully, Linus and his informal team can clear up the bottleneck for patches and we can make Linux ready for primetime. Right now, I consider the current releases of Linux on the desktop to be about the same quality as Windows 3.1, and that took over the world! So let's report those annoying features! Let's leave the cool feature aside for a day and fix an annoying, but persistent bug. Then we go back to even cooler features!

Currently, the biggest challenge for Linux is making the installation painless. The problem is not that Linux developers don't want to--its just as I'm sure they can tell you, getting the hardware and drivers they need is really difficult. I'm not sure how we, as a community, can help that. Maybe mass-buy a new graphics card if the company produces a Linux driver off the bat?

Just some, hopefully, constructive and positive thoughts.

I see I wasted my $$$ on the EFF

[r_j_prahad]

Six months ago, Adobe was evil incarnate here on Slashdot. Today there's an unsubstantiated rumor that they might port their proprietary DMCA-protected crap to Linux and suddenly they're an Angelic mom-and-pop operation that can do no wrong.

When this lame movie comes out on DVDCCA region-encoded SSSCA copy-protected discs you'll all be like kids in a toy store, and the hell with Dmitry Sklyarov or Ed Felten or Eric Corley and what they suffered through because of companies like Adobe.

You people are the best supporters Eisner and Hollings could ever ask for.

Re:I see I wasted my $$$ on the EFF

[gad_zuki!]

Simply put Linux is hurting for apps. Maybe not in the server department, but certainly in other areas. Not so long ago open source types were busy condemning Netscape to hell until they released NS for linux. Suddenly going against standards was A-OK.

I'm not going to simple-mindedly yell hypocrites from the highest mountain, but there is a criticism to be had. Until Linux is in a better position software-wise this will continue to happen. In fact this may never change, if a company can end honest criticism by releasing a version of its software for Linux, well why not? In the windows world many people use software from companies they don't like. The same will be true if Linux invades the desktop market. Microsoft could easily clean some of its image by releasing office/IE for Linux. Users and software companies make for odd bedfellows.

Re:I see I wasted my $$$ on the EFF

[Sabalon]

Believe it or not there are some people on here who like Windows even.

/. has how many readers? I don't remember when I signed up reading that I had to believe in the company line about everything.

It's been said over and over - some people believe in this cause, some don't.

I'm not boycotting Adobe - I wouldn't buy any of their products anyway :) I use windows for a desktop cause I think that KDE and GNOME are both not quite there yet. I can't stand most of the independant bands that people preach I should listen to. I think RMS is a smart guy, but an ass and that the government is barking up the wrong tree with the MS case.

And I probably represent a less vocal population of /.

A little surprised they switched Workstations too.

[NanoGator]

I'm a little surprised they also switched the workstations to Linux as well. In the short term I can imagine that being a real headache, but in the long term...I dunno.. that could be a really good thing.

When you do 3D animation (or digital art of any kind, really...) you don't just have one or two programs that do all the work. You have to constantly come up with new and creative solutions to animation problems. When this happens, the artists really get close to their machines. I'll give you an example: I'm a Lightwave animator running on Windows 2000. Lightwave's scene files are text based, which means I can modify a scene without necessarily having to do it through Lightwave itself.

I had a problem once where I wanted to animate realistic eye movement. Doing it by hand would be incredibly time consuming (Not to mention repetitive...) So I came up with an inventive solution. I parented the camera in Lightwave to the 'neck' of the person, and rendered a wide-angle avi from that person's perspective. Then I wrote a quick VB-App that used MS's Media Player ActiveX control to play back the .AVI, and then track my mouse movements over the movie. While it played back, I moved the mouse around the items of interest and saved that information into a text file. Then I converted the text file into a Lightwave motion file and loaded it into the eyes.

The effect was surprising! Within 6 hours or so of programming, I had written a primitive mo-cap (Mouse capture?) program that would be useful for a lot of things, not just eye movement. All this was possible because I understood VB, Windows 2000, and Lightwave. This happened to be so valuable that I bought a Windows 2000 laptop so I could experiment more with this technique in my free time.

The reason I'm surprised at the workstations switch (I should say 'initially surprised...') is that familiarity with your computer/OS is key to coming up with inventive solutions to problems. Since Linux is fairly new to the animation scene (on the creation side, not the rendering side...), it's hard to imagine those entering the animators job market would already be experienced with that OS. They'd have to re-learn how to use their computers. That may or may not be a problem, but it's a concern I have.

My point of view on this topic is starting to change after I started to write this post. It is starting to make more sense now. It is a lot easier to get my hands on a personal copy of Linux than it is to get Windows 2000 or OSX. At that point, the brand of processor becomes the least of my concerns, just the speed of it. It'll take some getting used to, but when all the dust settles, I think Dream Works will be in for a nice boost in productivity.

What I did with VB sounds like it'd be far easier on Linux. I can imagine 3D Animators eventually having more and more programming/scripting capabilities at their disposal. With these skills comes a more robust solution for any problems that arise. Hmm... maybe I should build a Linux box now.

Then what is Disney using nowadays?

[MtViewGuy]

Here's an interesting question: does anyone know what kind of computer hardware is Disney using at their feature animation department in Burbank, CA nowadays? I believe that Disney's Computer Aided Production System (CAPS) for compositing digital and hand-drawn animation elements into a single film is based on SGI hardware, though I think if Disney could port the CAPS tools to Linux and run them on x86-based Athlon XP or Pentium 4 machines with one to two gigabytes of RAM per machine on a rendering farm level could save Disney a boatload of money.

Re:Then what is Disney using nowadays?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Personally I hope Disney continue to piss their money away buying the most overpriced and useless machine SGI sells. I also hope the movies produced thereby fail horribly at the box office. Finally, I hope Disney then goes out of business.

What is it about slashdot, where disease corporations like Disney and other MPAA members are alternately booed and cheered?

"Fellowship of the Ring" also rendered on Linux

[rogerbo]

Clearly this guy didn't do his research, as others have pointed out Shrek was rendered on Linux, and Weta used a render farm of SGI 1200 Intel Linux boxes for "Lord of the Rings".

See here:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/linux/2 001/011 56783.html

Weta used mostly SGI Octanes for 3D and compositing workstations so whats new about dreamworks is that they are switching all the artists workstations to Linux because already for several years now most big VFX houses have been using SGI and NT workstations and Linux render farms.

Photoshop on Linux

[stubear]

This is a quote from one of the Adobe Photoshop programmers concerning Photoshop on Linux:

"Adobe is keeping an open mind. And we're keeping an eye on Linux.

But right now, most Linux users aren't willing to pay for commercial software.

And the lack of a viable window manager (X-Windows does NOT count), printing solution, font solution, color management solution, etc. make Linux a WHOLE lot less attractive.

OSX and Linux only have command line utilities and a few concepts in the kernel in common. That's less than 1% of what's needed for application compatibility."

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Photoshop on Linux because not a lot has happened in the UI front since this comment was written.

Inaccurate article, but Dreamworks uses Linux

[lcarstensen]

The author clearly doesn't understand the relationship between Dreamworks Animation and Dreamworks/PDI.

Dreamworks Animation has thus far released "tradigital" (digitized traditional) animated movies "Prince of Egypt" and "Road to El Dorado", both of which used IRIX as the focus of their pipelines, and who will be releasing "Sprit: Stallion of the Cimmaron" Memorial Day weekend, which was split between IRIX and Linux. Two key workstation applications were developed for use on Spirit, and rendering mostly stayed on IRIX.

PDI/Dreamworks is a full CG production house which has been in the special effects and commerical spots business for years (Seen those alien Intel ads recently? That was PDI.), and has recently made "ANTZ" and "Shrek". ANTZ was all IRIX, Shrek was split between IRIX and Linux, with IRIX still the most popular on the workstation and Linux was used heavily for rendering.

HP provided lots of assistance with OpenGL workstation compliance on Linux - which undoubtedly contributed to them getting the 3-year deal mentioned in the article. Dreamworks also presently has a support contract with RedHat (as RedHat cited recently in their quarterly report). Dreamworks Animation and PDI/Dreamworks have been requesting Linux versions of various graphics applications and tools since Linux was decided upon several years back.

These statements are my own and not those of my employer.

Re:A little surprised they switched Workstations t

[NanoGator]

"You could always try it on OS X..."

Want to hear something interesting? LW 7.5 (and 7 I think..) has a license that explicitly lets you change between Mac and PC. I have a USB dongle with LW 7, so If I had a Mac around I could install LW on it. (I need the Mac disk, though...)

I am sooooo happy with Newtek about this. I will be buying a new laptop within the next year, and I'm really having a tough time deciding between a PC Laptop and a Mac laptop. Now that I can run LW on either platform, I really don't have a whole lot of reason to not get a Mac. Now I can spend more time worrying about the color of the casing... *G*

Re:Isn't Bill Gates part owner of Dreamworks?

[Paul Komarek]

If G was for Gatesberg, I might have believed you. ;-). However, G is in fact for David Geffen.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Isn't Bill Gates part owner of Dreamworks?

[wct]

Dreamworks SKG is Spielberg, Katzenberg and G=David Geffen, as in Geffen Records.

Re:Remember SKG?

[pressman]

No. The "G" in SKG is for Geffen, not Gates.

Re:SSSCA was killed

[MenTaLguY]

CBDTPA, actually. If he searches for what you said I doubt he'll find anything. One wonders if they deliberately gave it an impossible-to-remember name. :P