Slashdot Mirror
Blender Goes Open Source
Christoffer Green writes "
This morning, the NaN shareholders have reached an agreement on the conditions for a new future for Blender.
In general it means that the Blender Foundation can execute it plans, to continue developement as an open source project." Perhaps some ambitious
soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app.
They'll open source my toaster, and fridge, oh wait RTFA...Um...nevermind... :)
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
"Perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app."
Maybe if you have ever used Blender for any length of time, you would realize that the interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. In fact, after having learned the full interface, I had a full blown introduction to my home movies completed in three hours.
I would be the first to admit that the learning curve is steep, but once you are there, the program is a breeze to use.
Now that I am off of my soapbox, I am pumped by this announcement. There is a huge community out there that has been gunning for this, and now that it is done, it can only go up!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
This is pretty good news for me. I started a tutorial for blender a while back. The interface at first looks daunting, but after using it for a few hours you realize that everything makes a lot of sense. It's probably as opposite as you can get to something like Bryce in terms of the interface. Not pretty, but powerful. Though there are many rt apps for Linux, none of the friendliest ones are open.
I was just thinking to myself yesterday how nice it would be if Blender went OSS. We've needed a nice open source 3D editor, and now I don't have to start a project to write one from scratch. Good deal.
The press release and proposal are both lcated here.
Congratulations Ton and everyone. This will be a great addition to the OSS community. Once the 95k USD is scrapped together.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
did you perhaps go through the tutorial? the blender interface is amazing for its job, i wouldnt put it on a file manager but for 3d is rocks, oh and by the way, if you use a mouse in blender for more then selecting and move/rotate/transform you are using the interface wrong.
i REALLY REALLY hated the interface when i started but over the span of a week i learned to love it, its great.
sorry for being so defensive but why is an editor for a "news outlet" commenting on the interface? thats like a tour de france winner bashing cars for having a steering wheel instead of handle bars
stick to what you know.
I second this. The interface is absolutely marvelous. It's targeted towards keyboard shortcuts and speeds up work in much the same way the command line does. If 'a reasonable interface' means a candy coated bryce style button set, I'll avoid it like cli elitists shun desktop environments.
In any case, this is great news!
I know there is going to be alot of cracks about it's goofy interface.
But to be honest, it is not all that bad. I went and bought the official blender book to learn how to do everything, and it was pretty straight forward. I was doing some things I never thought I would be able to do in a matter of hours. I still use Blender to do some artwork when I'm kinda bored. More of a part-time hobby then anything else, so Blender being free software was nice.
The Official Blender Guide was a really well written book. Lots of great looking shots showing off what blender can do, and putting alot of what I've seen people do in Maya to shame. I'd reccomend the book to anyone really interested in doing something with Blender. Also has a CD with updated versions of Blender, and all the pictures and animations done in the examples.
Just my two cents, I'm just happy to see that Blender isn't dead quite yet.
I haven't used Blender, but to say the interface is intuitive after using Blender for a length of time makes zero sense. Almost any programs interface is easy if you use it for a long period of time, that doesn't make the interface good, and it certainly doesn't make it intuitive.
It would seem to me that "the learning curve is steep" and "the interface is extremely intuitive" are two very contradictory remarks.
Spencer Ogden
Blender is the vi of 3D modelling applications. Like vi, Blender uses lots of single-keystroke commands. Blender is a modal editor (use TAB to switch modes between object editing and scene editing). The interface is based on the concept of having one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse, with most of the work being done by the keyboard hand.
I just wonder how the open source people are going to be able to come up with the 100000 Euro that the property holders want for the Blender source code.
My other first post is car post.
Blender is NOT intuitive. It is GREAT to use once you have trained yourself. Pico is intuitive. Vi is great to use once you have trained yourself.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
I think that once learned it is easy, yes. I think there are still points wrong with the interface such as incredibly small widgets (the sliders) and unexplained button coloring.
Also object creation is debatable - I much prefer MAX's method to blender/truespace's create then scale approach.
One of the great things about blender's UI is how small it makes the binary. I highly doubt blender would be so small if native widgets had been used. Then again a native file selector would be far easier and more powerful than Blender's 80sesque implementation.
$95,000 USD is fairly cheap to move all of Blender's IP into GPL. Ton's proposal for the Foundation didn't explicitly state (unless I missed it) how the group would obtain the starting cash. It outlined a membership for exclusive offers.
We should keep an eye out for the Foundation to be set up and gathering capital. I would also be curious to see any big corporation (Red Hat, IBM, Mandrake, etc.) donate a few thousand each to the cause. It used to be that the best way to support Blender was to buy the manual (which I did, VERY nice looking btw), but now we'll have a non-profit organization handling the continued development and support of Blender. 'Tis a good day.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
And there's 6 billion people to show you that there's a better interface than that....(COUGH)
Easy-to-learn and Easy-to-use are two very different concepts, but they are often confused. Take, for example, the controls of a modern fighter jet - it takes over a year of intensive training, and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of practice to learn to use the system effectively, but once learned using it becomes second nature. It's easy-to-use not easy-to-learn.
Blender is like that too - it's a highly specialized program that requires some intellectual investment from the user, and rewards the user by being functional and flexable.
If we can get a "banner head" in the 3D open source community it will do great things. There is currently the "Wings 3D" project which is a work off of sorts from the Nendo software. -- I believe that given a long enough timeline opensource solutions can surpass the solutions we have today. -- It just becomes a matter of how long that timeline is. -- Anyway... I use Mainly Lightwave 3D.... but if the opensource comunity can create a competitor to even the very largest packages... (Maya, 3DS, XSI, Lightwave)... then it can only do good things to the pricing of these applications as a whole. --- The next few years in 3D animation are going to be exciting even without the opensource trends... but these projects... (blender,Wings...)... I think are going to make things even more interesting to the industry as a whole.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
If something is 'intuitive', it means that its purpose and/or function can be easily ascertained from the placement and presentation within the overall interface. Blender's interface is a lot of things, it but it is NOT intuitive.
I've used Blender for about two years, and as far as interfaces goes, it sucks rocks. Admittedly, there are certain aspects that are nice, even brilliant, but there are others that make using it unnecessarily difficult and cumbersome. I am hoping that the open source initiative will lead to cleaning up the interface so that it is more consistent, and functionally better. And for cripes sake - get an UNDO function.
If you think Blender's interface is sub-par, compare it to Lightwave's
interface (a $5,000 app). If you're serious about it, you'll learn the
interface. I personally find it a ray of hope that the interfaces are simular.
In addition, I wonder if the interfaces are simular on purpose, to draw in more
experienced users.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Perhaps, but what I think the original author meant was "easy to use" not "intuitive." This makes much more sense, since "easy to use" and "hard to learn" are definitely not mutually exclusive, and often go hand-in-hand.
(To prove this to yourself, consider MS Windows Notepad. Very easy to learn, right? Try to use it for something serious: development, complex text transformations, etc. Very hard to use. Consider now vim or emacs. Pretty steep learning curve, but once you're there, it's really easy to do almost anything.)
Now, a case could be made for "intuitive" too, since once you know what you're doing and have some decent familiarity, figuring out how to do something else could be very intuitive. I tend to think this isn't what the original author meant, but a case could be made anyway.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Blender probably has a nipple incorporated already... you just need to right click the mouse on a metaball and hold alt-m (assumingly for mammaries) and hop on one foot while whistling a happy tune in the nude... piece of cake!
I hate to split hairs...but a full version of Lightwave 7.5 (the newest version) is only $1,595 and NOT $5,000.
That being said, I own and use Lightwave and I agree, the interface takes some getting used to.
"...Beer..."
There's nothing really wrong with all the graphic stuff if it's done wisely. In other words, if you can make it look nice without hindering or obscuring the workflow, then go for it.
What if blender didn't require hours of torturials just to make a simple teapot? It has become one of those examples of potentially market-changing technology that sunk because nobody could figure out how to use it--right up there with voice recognition software and Freenet. If blender was even as easy to use as, say, photoshop or soundforge (which are not as easy as AOL but simple enough to pick up on your own), do you really think Blender AG would have gone broke?
Sorry and thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I looked at the /. 8*)
newest version. Heh, time for me to get some sleep before posting to
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Initiating pet peeve mode: Steep learning curves indicate that something IS easy to learn. Plot time on the X-axis and learning on the Y-axis. If the curve is "steep" you are learning a lot in a short period of time. Pet peeve mode off.
I know you didn't use the phrase originally but the setup for my post was better so I chose your post. It irks me. Almost as much as Jeff Goldblum movies.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
I dread the day when Palladium means I have use Microsoft Certified Bread in my toaster every morning.
Worse yet, the only certified cheese will probably be Swiss (*ba-dum crash!*).
Good to see. Now development can continue, and I certainly hope the company can continue development on their web site (which is excellent, especially the tutorials) and generate greater revenue.
Good news all around. Ometedou!!
I agree that the interface at first glance appears to be convuluted. But once you learn it, you'll realize it's one of the most well thought-out gui's out there, period. I'm sure many blender users out there would atest to that.
Don't just download blender and expect to learn the GUI by fiddling around. Chances are you'll only get fustrated after a while. Buy the tutorial, it is *well* worth the ~$35 if you're serious about learning this 3D app. The Official Blender 2.0 Guide.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I agree with Taco, too. The interface of blender, when compared to other modeller's interfaces, sucks donkey balls.
It may be very quick for someone who takes the time to learn it and become one with the app, but as someone who's sat down with several modellers over time, yes, including candy-coated Bryce, it's almost unfathomable. The icons are meaningless, the tools are painful to use, and the vast array of options given to the user make absolutely no sense. It wouldn't be so bad, but understanding of all these is required to do anything at all in the modeller.
I've spent quite a bit of time with different modellers, but when I tried to do something so simple as to create a rendered sphere in Blender, it took me almost two hours to figure out that the reason my image was coming out blank was that Blender does not provide default lighting... like every other modeller out there does.
Blender can and has been used to create some fantastic graphics. I'm so glad that it's been open sourced so that development can continue. As a graphic artist, however, I strongly encourage the design team to *completely* revamp the interface. It may what programmers want, but it's definietely *NOT* what artists want.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It should say, "Blender May Go Open Source".
Frankly I'm a little dubious about the scheme. Blender hasn't been successful commercially (when it was free-like-beer), so now, the owners are making a last ditch attempt to scrape up some money. Well, I certainly understand why they want the money, but aren't they still selling their books? (Which was the only way they were making money before.) What if they don't get their money, are they going to bury or destroy the source, and cut off their income from selling the book? Isn't that like cutting off their nose to spite their face? What if they only receive 40k euros? What if I'd sent in 10 euro? Do I get a refund? Or will they just keep whatever money they've received and laugh at us? Frankly, while I hope the scheme succeeds ('cause that'll leave everyone happy), it worries me very much.
On the other hand, the comment about the interface was really clueless. Can you imagine the reaction if Taco had said "perhaps, now that vi is open source, some ambitious soul will bolt on a reasonable interface." The vi fans would be burning him in effigy. The cult of easy-to-learn, who-cares-how-easy-it-is-to-actually-use gets rather annoying sometimes. Where are the usability studies on experts?
I have a job.
.. they had something good, and couldn't figure out how to sell it properly. (Or worse, some other company was able to use advantages other than technical superiority in order to reduce the chance of that product making money in the market place.) I dont want to live in a world where you place more importance on keeping people in jobs than actually having the fruits of people's work available to people. If I lose my job, I can find another one. If you toss out all the work I've done over the past 2 years (more likely, my lawyers or management or whatever if we go kaput), I'd feel a hell of alot worse off, personally. Our entire product might not be the best, but like any wreck, there are always parts that *can and should* be salvaged. To oppose that would be to encourage inefficiency and waste.
I'm not going to be specific to Blender here.
We dont cheer when businesses fail. We cheer when a business fails, but the product it made has a chance to keep living. Its ludicrous to lament the loss of jobs (which are replacable) but ignore the utter waste of energy and money that went into building something that fails because it wasn't marketed properly.
Software has a very low physical barrier to access the tools to build and maintain, compared to traditional goods. When Coke fails, its implausible to see a group of people want to keep making it in their basement. But with software, if it can be done, and people want to do it, why the fuck not?
If anything, it demonstrates how the business world often gets it wrong - if business fail because there is no demand for their product, how on earth can you explain our happiness when products that have the chance to fall into the public domain when the business fails?
Newsflash: sometimes, its because those people losing their jobs deserved it (not all, of course)
"Old man yells at systemd"
trueSpace has a very intuitive and powerful interface. You can also scale first like in max. The pricetag for tS is also very reasonable for an application with it's power. tS's interface can also be customized. It's currently at 500 dollars for the boxed copy of tS6.
o chure/modeling.asp?Cate=BModeling
You can find info on the latest version of tS at: http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS6/Br
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The refrigerator door won't open for any of those organic, "open source" vegetables (they might be viral).
The microwave will transmit details on everything you reheat to Microsoft, to "ensure proper authorization".
What most worries me is your oven's Blue Screen/Flame of Death.
Yes, Blender has an unintuitive interface, and it took me about 3-4 tries over the years before I started to get the hang of it. But, if it does indeed go GPL, that will probably be the easiest to fix. And behind that interface lies a very fast and powerful modeller that runs on multiple platforms and whose Linux binary zips up to about 1.2Mb.
The only other major weakness I see in Blender is that its output format isn't documented, another problem that goes away as soon as the source is opened.
...it's also their income!
Maybe he messed up and put time on the Y-axis and learning on the X-axis in which case a steep curve would be the correct term. Then again, on Slashdot there is no partial credit.
Many posts regarding the interface describe it as "good once you get to know it." The challenge for any good interface designer isn't to just throw together bunches of related buttons and sliders, but to hopefully make their use, as well as the process required to learn them, as easy as practically possible. There are several instances where Blender could use some real improvement in this regard. Few if any software apps are so good that it cannot be improved, and Blender is no exception.
99% of blenders problems are because there is no undo function ...
Because.
I am not prepared to use the keyboard. When you
do graphics you think visually so there should
be a way of doing everything with a mouse and
it should be fairly intuitive.
I've got to come down on the "yes, it does need a new interface" side of the argument.
If you want to see my qualifications for making this statement, you can download a game demo I made at www.shizit.net. I also made a tutorial on IKA which NaN published on their site. Perhaps some of you are familiar with it.
It's true that the learning curve is too steep. The interface can be quick for experienced users since most commands are tied to hot keys, BUT, I found this was again a major disadvantage whenever I needed to use the program after a long period of not using it. There are/were only two ways to learn most of the hot keys, the book and the Blenderbase web site. Either way it can take a lot of digging to unearth a forgotten hot key command.
Solution: expand the menu system to contain ALL of the interface commands and display the hot key shortcut beside it. It would also be great if the hot keys could be reset by the user, ala GIMP.
The other big annoyance I found was tying up the left (for right handed users) mouse button with placement of the creation gizmo. The creation gizmo itself needs to be taken out and the left mouse button reassigned the normal selection duties it has in every other program I've ever used. New objects can either be spawned at coordinates 0 0 0 as in Maya or spawning can wait until the a point is selected with the mouse as in 3DS MAX.
This is great news for all Blender user's though. Good luck raising 90K, Ton!
It's like buying a JCB and complaining that you don't know what all the levers do. It's harder to drive than a car with cruise control and automatic gears, but then again it's designed to do a lot of things. And you need to *work* to learn how to use it.
Not everything in life is just a couple of mouse-clicks away.
At least, that's what it appears to be from the proposal. Looks like you'd have to pay to get a copy of the sources (but not necessarily binaries). I'm not sure if the GPL will be legal in the case that they're proposing. Nevertheless, it still seems like a great deal to me. I'd love to get my hands on that source code for the cost of a yearly membership.
And I quote:
Blender Foundation activities
To establish a solid revenue model, the Foundation will limit access to free services and free copies of Blender Creator. The web portal will be reorganised to serve this purpose. In general there will be four levels of access (or licenses) people can get.
The licenses can be defined to match standards for 'Free Software' or 'Open Source'. Key isue here is the right for Foundation Members to re-use or re-distribute the source codes, but strictly limited to projects that work within the (same) GPL structure. Challenge for the Foundation then is to establish a good services and management system, to provide a strong incentive for users and coders to regularly visit the web site, and participate in making Blender a better product.
A. Free (gratis) access
Limited parts of general user information (executables, tutorials, help files, discussion forums) will be accessible for free. The Foundation board can decide on the level and quality of free access , related to exploitation requirements.
B. Membership
For a reasonable fee, EUR 50 per year, you get access to the closed Membership area, which includes all user services, all executable versions, all source codes. The license for the executables and codes will be the 'copylefted GNU GPL' license, also known as 'GPL' for short. This allows Members to freely use and redistribute the code, but restricts building new applications with Blender codes to other GPLed software projects. Membership is personal and cannot be transferred. For companies or schools a Bulk Member license (10+ users) can be obtained for EU 495.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Calculations for Revenue expectations are off. In the proposal, we see that membership will cost:
B. Membership
For a reasonable fee, EUR 50 per year, you get access to the closed Membership area, which includes all user services, all executable versions, all source codes.
Later, we see the revenue expectations:
Revenue expectations (July-December 2002)
- Initial funding (community, e-shop, sponsoring): 100.000
- Member License subscriptions: 1000 in 6 months, 50.000
- E-shop revenues general products: 20.000
- Product License subscriptions: 10 x 5k = 50.000
Total: EUR 220.000
Costs:
- Website: 6k
- Webmaster / sysadm: 6k
- Full time operations (wages) 30k
- General costs 10k
- NaN Holding license fee: xxxx
First of all, 50 * 1000 for membership revenue is PER YEAR, not for 6 months. Divide that by two. That knocks about 25k off their revenue.
Where can I find a webmaster for 12k a year? Or a full-time operations staff for 60k? The site only costing 12k per year? Is bandwidth really that cheap?
I'm not sure, but these numbers aren't sounding that realistic to me. Best of luck to them - I will probably try to support them with my $$, but I sure hope they have a clear idea of where they're going with this.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I think he meant:
:) But that's my Linux experience and it's difficult to tell....For the sake of it, a final analogy: I think Linux needs to finish the 1-4 elevator for the lazy folks. But they'll still have to take the 1-4 staircaes if they want to access the 5-10 floors.
1) "the learning curve is steep"
2) "the interface is _great and makes sense only when you get to know it_"
Meaning that a flat learning curve thas has a huge cost. You learn it fast, but it limits you in unexpected ways.
Windows is a 4 story building with huge elevators. Linux (and in this case Blender) is a 10 story building with staircases from flor 1 to 4 and a modest elevator for the rest.
So the result is people think building as 4 story tall. Most people still think of Linux (Blender) as a Windows building clone with just starcases.
Sorry for having to resort to analogies
unfinished: (adj.)
(Sorry, but I need to ask this)
Meaning what?
unfinished: (adj.)
Wrong. The amount of money some people have lost is precisely the amount of money other people have won. Like in any zero-sum scheme.
You have to look at the whole system.
Well, yes. We are so happy. Nonetheless, Linux and GNU are not a "failed products" combo. They where thought out that way from the beggining.
Companies that think that can get an advantage for OSS is nice. WOuld you better like Blender selling for 4k to Autodesk?
unfinished: (adj.)
Many posts regarding the interface describe it as "good once you get to know it." The challenge for any good interface designer isn't to just throw together bunches of related buttons and sliders, but to hopefully make their use, as well as the process required to learn them, as easy as practically possible.
Not necessarily; EMACS, for example, has a pretty steep learning curve. OTH, it is by far one of the best editors available (depending on who you ask). I've never used Blender, so I can't say much for it, but just saying, that a good interface doesn't need to very intuitive, but should be easy to use *once you've learned to use it*.
Lots of people have lost huge investments, not least the public who have invested (often indirectly) in different kinds of tech-companies.
Wrong. The amount of money some people have lost is precisely the amount of money other people have won. Like in any zero-sum scheme.
Sorry to have to give you a lesson in econ 101, but the economy and the stock market are not zero-sum games.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
I think your wrong here. Just because it's opensource doesn't mean jobs are lost. You need to look at how opensource works.
I find it highly unlikely that the original poster doesn't "understand" how open source works.
I could explain it to you but there's so many good articles on that subject. Some others and myself make good money with opensource and we contribute back with development.
The fact that you personally are making money with open source does not mean that it is easy to do so. After 90% of the work force gets laid off, it would be pretty selfish of you to claim that since you still have a job there is obviously no problem.
Alot of those companies use opensource technology to make their software better.
My employer does that. It has made our software more fully featured, but I'm not sure about higher quality. What sucks for me is that my job is worse.
Opensource is usually on the cutting edge. Nan can still sell Blender support
That remains to be seen. I don't doubt that there is money to be made, but there is no proof that there is "lots" of money available. Write me back when an open source company makes more money than Microsoft. Nah... too unlikely. Write me back when an open souce company stays in business for ten years.
Before you start yelling at everyone, maybe you should do you home work.
You see, this is silly. You flame a guy for stating his opinion, even though your counter-example has not been proven true.
Years ago, I attended a lecture by a Christian Science nut. He was explaining how after the great flood, all the water froze and that's how the animals migrated to other continents, when someone interrupted and asked why the carnivores hadn't eaten the herbavores on the ark. At this point the lecturer got angry and replied that the if the guy had been to the previous lectures he would have known that all animals were initially vegetarian and they didn't become carnivores until around 3000 BC.
The point is, there may be many essays on open source out there, but they are all, to some extent, works of fiction. In the Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond talks about how "successful" his open source project was, but he measured his success in terms of number of users, and not money. Netscape released an essay on the business case for open source, but AFAIK they never made any money from it. The only really successful open source business case to date was the IPO, but that one has dried up too.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Unfortunately there is a huge number of people who think "easy to use" implies "easy to learn", or worse they think "learn" is all the work they will ever have to do with an interface (which is stupid if you plan to use a program more than once).
There are also lots of examples where interfaces are *both* hard to use and hard to learn. Perhaps this is the majority of interfaces. But this in no way implies that the sets "easy to learn" and "easy to use" are identical, all it implies is that they are small compared to the set of all interfaces. Their intersection may still be quite small compared to their non-intersecting parts (this is what I suspect).
What? That's BLENDER, not BENDER??? Oh, sorry. Nevermind.
Bite my shiny robot ass...
Interesting observation about Caligari. I really like the Caligari interface and there used to be an open source modeler with a clone interface and I believe both were based on an old SGI modeler rather than a Caligari innovation.
I always thought the total lack of text --except for the rollover hints-- was very intriguing because it eliminates the need for internationalization, hence the popularity of Truespace in Asia. Indeed an interface like that technically allows a child unable to read to use it although realistically it might be frustrating for most kids, especially slow readers with fetal alcohol syndrome or what have you. But kids and other lingual users aside that graphics only interface with pop-up menus and dialogs that you can easily collapse just looks better and provides better use of the workspace for my tastes. The lack of more shortcuts is the only real downside.
I think an interface like Truespace, with hotkeys enabled and lots more hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts/alternatives added would be a dream. I tried Blender a while back and it seemed like it needed to be split into a few different packages with different viewport configurations like a package specially for modelers ala Lightwatve, an animation package with a layout like Truespace --though with animation controls more like 3DS-- and something else specifically for gaming. When I tried it, it had some stability problems --par for the course in 3D obviously-- but it didn't look too bad.
I wonder what the source looks like in QT3 Designer. I just took a look at that, it's got as many icons as a 3D design package. It looks more like VB or Delphi than C++. They're starting to attract the likes of icon loving weirdos like myself. Things are looking colorful in open source.
Intuitive from Intuition, (knowledge obtained from) an ability to understand or know something immediately without needing to think about it, learn it or discover it by using reason. [From Cambridge International Dictionary of English]
Twice before I've been involved in discussions on Slashdot about Blender's interface. Twice before have a very strong argument from those who like the interface been that it's incredibly intuitive once you learn it. Two wrongs obviously does not make a right.
Please stop abusing the word "intuitive". Sit down for a moment, using a dictionary if necessary, and think about what "intuitive" means. Then use a better word such as "powerful", or a term like "it's obvious once you've learned it" in these cases.
English is a very rich language, please keep it that way.
Tell that to the people at ILM.
Is this really true, or is market 'growth' simply a matter of harvesting natural capital and calling it 'growth'? Surely, the true amount of wealth/resources is a zero-sum game even if the $$$ don't necessarily reflect that?
The economy is clearly not a zero-sum game. When the economy is hot, everyone prospers. In a recession, everyone suffers.
The government can control the supply of printed money, but net worth can still be created on paper. A lot of money is tied up in stocks and other investments. If the value of a stock goes up, money is created. If the stock goes bust, money is destroyed.
Wealth is not a fixed commodity either. Wealth represents the ability of an economy to produce goods that people want and distribute them among consumers. If you produce goods that society needs, you increase its wealth. If you produce goods that no one wants then the amount of goods is the same as before, but the wealth of society is not increased.
-a
How to rationalize theft.