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Linux Used To Make "Star Trek, Nemesis"
Mike McCune writes "The "Linux Journal" has a nice article about the switch
from Irix to Linux at Digital Domain and the use of Linux in 'Star Trek, Nemesis.' I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'"
``I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'''
No. It means the Enterprise is finally ready for Linux.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I wonder if Data runs on an advanced version of the Linux kernel... It would explain his lack of humor....
I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'
Urge
For that, you should surely be PUNished.
When companies switch from Irix to Linux, it means one of two things:
* they bought new SGI workstations, which run Linux, OR
* they couldn't afford SGI workstations, so they bought other Intel workstations with Linux.
It's not an amazing breakthrough jump. It's just that SGI barely sells Irix machines anymore.
The only thing that holds ANY OS or hardware back is applications. Given how well and cheaply a cluster of linux box's can be put together its only a matter of time before people start adopting it. Also the like of MQSERIES (now part of websphere unfortunatly) are available on linux and offer a very simple way to migrate legacy CICS applications or parts of from expensive mainframes, and in a reliable assured way.
Wesley Crusher uses linux, too!
Does it support Ogg Vorbis?
I really want to be able to watch the movie.
nbfn
and for the sequel - the use of Linux in making :)
M$, Nemesis
maybe you guys should post articles on movies that don't do their CGI with a Linux cluster (along with their cost of production).
It's just that SGI barely sells Irix machines anymore.
That's a shame... because Irix is a really nice OS. Too bad they didn't port it to Intel...
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
"From Red Hat to Red Shirt"
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." - Marx
It'll be out shortly with Ogg Vorbis audio for download from your favorite sources everywhere.
aren't really funny, except in the way that they make me really angry when I hear them.
Here's the deal: a switch from IRIX to Linux doesn't mean a fucking thing. They've switched from one variant of Unix to another. What was gained in the end? A net gain overall for Unix of not a fucking thing. Zero.
If they switched from Windows- or Mac-based machines, then this would be legit. Other than that it's meaningless in the sense of Linux is Taking Over.
That's all fine and great that it makes for a good story, but if the point is to claim that somehow people are realizing the benefits of Unix-derived operating systems, then it means squat.
Anyone remeber the old bumper sticker campaign from back in the original trek days? How about changing it to :
/proc
I grok
Can it automaitcaly re-modulate the phase buffer to route power to the primary shields without someone having to crawl through dark monster infeseted tunnels?
As I said on OSNews this is good. Doesn't really help the "poor" person, since what's being ported is high-end and inhouse apps. But you'll note that the beaten path is similiar to the one NT took all those years ago. So this does indeed boad well for Linux.
I thought,Linux was ready for the enterpise since Kernel 1.7.0.1-D.
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
RPM or DEB? vi or emacs? Which distro is it? Do we have to smack them for having a newbie distro? Do they have the latest patches?
Karma whorin' since 1999
At least MS didn't assimilate them...
seriously though...the switching to linux by bigger and more mainstream companies has always been a topic arround here. the comments will come about how linux "is finaly making it". i guess people ARE starting to realize that there are some benifits not paying the SGI premium prices to do awesome 3d rendering, compositing, rotoscoping, etc. don't get my wrong, i love sgi hardware...but i hate the price.
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
Rendering pretty pictures is oh-so-boring. I'd like to sit in front of a mic at a console, utter the command "Make it sew!" then watch a beowulf cluster of Singers make the whole crew wardrobe in 4 minutes, including the time needed for Troi's custom boob expansion panels.
Trolling is a art,
"Linux used to wipe fat man's ass"
Details! I want details! Are there pictures? An FAQ?
That's quite the LCARS Skin they use onboard... I wonder if it's Gnome or KDE?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
It's not an amazing breakthrough jump. It's just that SGI barely sells Irix machines anymore.
I think you miss the point. The reason SGI is probably selling less Irix machines is that Linux is available, cheaper, and does what buyers want.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
...but when will it be ready for us Klingons?
#1: i recomend we commence the ./'ing
./ data? i think it would funny to see him lie twitching on the floor from an input overload ;-)
pickard: make it so...
btw...anyone know if it would be possible to
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
of it crashing at the box office?
I heard that someones making a movie using the HURD!
I happen to like this type of news very much so. An in terms of enterprise acceptance, it's important to hear other stories of adoption and success with the Linux OS.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Robin speaks with the studio Digital Domain on using Linux to render special effects in Star Trek Nemesis and other films.
Linux got its first big Hollywood break in 1997 when Venice, California studio Digital Domain (D2) used Linux to render the special effects for the hit movie Titanic. We spoke with D2 while they were in production using Linux with Star Trek Nemesis, which has a scheduled release date of December 13, 2002. D2 uses Linux for both renderfarm servers and artist desktops.
D2 has used Linux for 21 motion pictures, including best visual effects Academy Award winners Titanic and What Dreams May Come. D2 has won two Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Awards: one for Track motion tracking software and the other for the compositing software NUKE.
Like most studios, D2 was primarily using SGI hardware running SGI's IRIX variant of UNIX, both on renderfarm servers and artist workstations. Experiments at D2 with Dante's Peak in 1996 proved that a move to Linux was feasible. ``The Linux renderfarm came first'', notes D2 Digital Production and Technology Creative Director Judith Crow. ``With Titanic we were working with a company called Areté using Renderworld, their ocean-simulation software. It ran three times faster on our Linux Alphas than on our IRIX SGI machines.'' While the renderfarm paved the way, applications such as NUKE and Houdini pushed Linux to the desktop.
Figure 1. Preparing to insert a star field into the window of a spacecraft using NUKE. The tree graph to the right is a nodal view of the composite script.
A compositor is what software artists use for overlaying moving images, for example, the starship Enterprise flying past a background matte of a space station. ``Digital Domain has been running NUKE on Linux since 1997 when it was used extensively on Titanic'', says Digital Effects Supervisor Jonathan Egstad. Egstad, along with D2's Bill Spitzak, Paul Van Camp and Price Pethel received an Academy Award for the NUKE compositor.
``NUKE is essentially a 2-D renderer'', says Egstad. ``It is five or six times faster on Linux than IRIX, but it wasn't until the beginning of 2001 that the Linux GUI was able to run fast. Back in 1993, NUKE was the original scanline-based design. It only took 20MB of RAM to render a typical composite instead hundreds of megabytes.'' Later commercial compositor applications, such as Shake, the popular node-based compositor sold by Apple, have a similar design.
``There are many instances where 2-D can assist in the workload'', points out Egstad:
We can build a complete 3-D scene in NUKE then refer to that in a 3-D package like Maya and vice versa. A 3-D scene can be created and rendered in Nuke3, complete with lighting, texturing and shader support--diffuse, Blinn and Phong are built-in. There's a complete 3-D subsystem in NUKE. That's a trend in all 2-D packages. 2-D packages are more and more turning into 3-D packages.
Houdini, a commercial 3-D package of which D2 is a big user, offers its own integrated compositor called Halo in its latest version. As with NUKE, it is hierarchy-based in conjunction with 2-D hierarchy. D2 also uses the commercial 3-D packages LightWave and Maya.
FLTK, the Window Toolkit of NUKE
NUKE version 3 has been in use at D2 since 2001, running on Linux, IRIX and Windows. D2's first Linux renderfarm was on Digital Alphas and still gets some use. The NUKE design retained the keystrokes used in IRIX, so users, especially freelancers working at D2, wouldn't face a learning curve when moving between operating systems. ``The NUKE interface is deliberately Spartan, designed more toward feature work'', notes Egstad. ``It probably has the strongest color-correction tools of any major package.''
D2's Linux Movies
D2 had requests for years to make NUKE into a commercial product for use by other studios, and the pressure increased after Apple purchased industry-leader Shake. Studios became concerned when Apple dallied with announcing future Linux support.
``We've founded the D2 Software Company to sell and market NUKE and other applications that currently exist or don't exist within the studio'', says Digital Production and Technology VP Michael Taylor. He continues:
We have NUKE evaluation sites out in the field. We're providing the latest NUKE 3 version that we use internally. About two years ago when making the decision to do a complete NUKE rewrite incorporating a 3-D into 2-D model, we considered switching to Shake, but decided we had a better program.
Taylor says Linux, Windows and IRIX versions will be available in early 2003. There are no plans yet for Mac OS X. Pricing starts under $10K US, which is comparable to Shake. For students, there will be a free-of-charge or inexpensive version, comparable to the apprentice versions of Maya and Houdini.
Digital compositor Brian Begun describes working on a scene in NUKE for Star Trek Nemesis:
I'm working on a temp, that's a shot that isn't finished--isn't ready for film. We have a production intranet for each show we work on with a web page for each shot. A lot of artists need to share information. Our job system uses Netscape with a lot of HTML forms and a server written in Perl. Rather than files in directories, we have links in directories. We can keep files in any directory on any drive anywhere without seeing what drive it is on. This allows our Systems department to juggle our disk space when necessary and to use it as efficiently as possible, without affecting production.
Begun walks us through setting up a typical effect in NUKE--moving the Enterprise across a star field:
Figure 2. A NUKE window displays an OpenGL 3-D wireframe of the virtual viewing camera.
Here's Trek's environment. We have a predefined list of variables for each show. Let's say I choose Star Trek SS145A:
$ job trek [sets show variables]
$ shot ss145a [sets job variables]
The cs command switches to my work directory, in this case work.begun:
$ cs
From here, I can go to an image directory that contains elements, parts of composite--or the work directory that contains NUKE scripts and if we do tracking, the in-house Track scripts. The work directory will contain files for NUKE, Flame, Track and Elastic Reality (old but cheap software used for roto and Avid morphing, such as bad frame or wire removal by morphing).
If I need to create my work directory, I use the jsmk command. Other directories, such as image directories also are created this way. They contain each green screen, full-resolution and scaled-down proxy image, previz and temp comp (which gives the client a rough idea of the shot, but is not necessarily pretty).
The lss command displays files in a more readable format than ls. For example, instead of looking at files like this:
test.0001.rgb
test.0002.rgb
test.0003.rgb
Typing lss displays files like this:
test.%04d.rgb 1-3
Before launching NUKE, I change to the NUKE subdirectory in my work directory:
$ cs
$ cd nuke
$ nuke3
When I launch NUKE, it brings up a GUI window, and I choose Image®Read®File and then ss145a.wh to load the foreground (green screen) images. When working on a project, I use both high-resolution images and quarter-resolution proxy images.
The images are Cineon 10-bit log. NUKE itself will convert that to 16-bit float. NUKE is capable of displaying up to ten images in one viewer. By simply entering 1 to 0 on the keyboard, I can have up to ten views.
Figure 3. Adjusting a green screen Ultimate composite in NUKE while inserting stars into spacecraft cockpit window.
Here's a green screen of a cockpit [see Figure 3]. I bring in the background image of stars. When pulling a green screen, you'll typically pull three types of mattes. An edge matte is used to retain all the fine detail present in the photography. A fill or ``innie'' is used to fill any holes that may occur due to green spill or green material in front of the foreground subject. And, a cleanup or ``outtie'' matte is used to remove anything that is supposed to be replaced by the background--such as stage lights. To pull these mattes, I'll select a ``backing color'' in Ultimatte's color picker that best represents the color I want to remove, and that will give me the best matte. After that, I'll make any necessary tweaks, including pulling additional mattes where necessary, or additional cleanup.
Technical Director Jason Iversen is responsible for energy beam effects and debris for Star Trek:
For ships exploding we use as many practical effects as possible. Practicals are faster, even though it takes time to build the model. That may take two guys two months, but it is three people for four to five months to create a 3-D shot. We shoot the explosion at 300 fps slo-mo. It's a big task, and still might not get realism. Some explosions are enhanced with digital debris using Houdini. Some Enterprise shots are still real, but not the hull-scraping beauty shots.
As we're talking, one of his SGI machines is being taken away for use on the renderfarm. At D2, workstations are being upgraded to dual-Pentium PCs.
Star Trek work at D2 was previously all done in Houdini on Linux, but most of the Maya artists are on Windows NT because of Maya plugins not being available on Linux. ``One of the largest sequences we've got is the avalanche sequence, all in Linux Houdini plus our own internal tool called VoxelB for doing volumetrics'', notes Iversen. He continues:
The avalanche is a huge powdery trail that is generated in a 3-D sense--not a 2-D cheat. Our voxel compositor VoxelB is a plugin. All of our tools can take in data from Maya or Houdini. We often combine those with our fluid dynamics software to create flowing water.
``Terragen is our terrain-generating program that was used in Time Machine for planet shots'', says Iversen. He adds:
We use it for previz and to create the initial plate for digital painters. Digital actors are all in Maya, primarily on NT. Our pipeline is based on previz rolling into production. All artists do precomposites of our work, then get assigned a compositor to take it to film out.
Although Linux supports popular 3-D packages such as Houdini and Maya, Crow says she feels frustrated by a dearth of Linux paint packages. ``There's a depth to Photoshop that Film GIMP doesn't have. Film GIMP isn't mature enough.'' Crow says a promising development is Amazon16, a 16-bit paint package that maker Interactive Effects is porting to Linux. Amazon has a long history on IRIX. ``It was layer-based before Photoshop, supports user-defined macros, provides 3-D texture paint capabilities, and most importantly, supports HDR formats like Cineon that are critical for film work'', says Crow. ``Another promising development is the 32-bit Linux paint package Photogenics by Idruna, currently in beta.''
According to Crow, porting D2's IRIX-based applications to Linux went rapidly, especially with their compositing software NUKE. The Linux conversion at D2 happened in stages, first the renderfarm that performs batch processing of movie effects, then the desktops where artists work. ``When Linux was ready for the desktop we were eager to adopt it'', says Crow. ``As soon as we got an OS like Linux supporting the features we relied on we were excited to move to it.''
Resources
Robin Rowe (Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com) is a partner in motion picture technology company MovieEditor.com and founder of LinuxMovies.org and OpenSourceProgrammers.org.
Titanic. It was on the cover of Linux Journal back in 98/99 or whenever it came out. At the time I was astounded at what they did. Now it's getting redundant (as are these articles).
Don't go to their website though. It's slower than crap.
Moving a renderfarm to a Linux cluster isn't surprising. Since rendering is an "Embarrassingly parallel" computation and AMD/Intel has more FLOPS/$ compared to the MIPS processors, this is expected. When you need to pass a lot of data between processors, you'll need one of those Origin 3000 servers with 1000 processors. Linux can't do this yet.
What is interesting though, is that they moved the workstation applications from SGI to Linux. I didn't know that the SGI hardware was lagging behind that much.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I guess this just give more validity to the "Microsoft as Borg" line of thinking...
and giving plenty more tag-lines to Linux PR - "Who's handling your Enterprise software these days? Linux, where no company has gone before."
Urghh.... Must... Stop... Stupid... Puns... Kill... Timothy... for... starting... it...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
"so please cut the bullshit and post real news stories"
You are new to slashdot, right?
I've been wondering about this for some time: I'd like to be able to switch from windows video editing to linux, and was wondering if there are any open-source equivalents to Adobe Premiere available? Also, I've read a few articles about the CGI in linux, and was wondering if these were also open-sourced? Thanks for any help you can give! :)
Given their stock performance it doesn't look like SGI does much of anything anymore.
I should have never bought at $15 3 years ago, My commission would be more than the sale price.
"It ran three times faster on our Linux Alphas than on our IRIX SGI machines."
Ya think? They are different hardware. What I'd like to know is if there was actually a SGI machine that could meet the Alpha's performance. Harware money for a CG outfit like this shouldn't really be a problem, especially if they are just up front costs.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Did you read the article? Guess not.
"It ran three times faster on our Linux Alphas than on our IRIX SGI machines"
The switch to linux was based on performance issues.
Slashbots, should read the article before posting.
Allow me to present this as timothy should have.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
We know Linux has these capabilities to meet the needs of the entertainment industry (as illustrated in countless "Linux used to make X-movie" stories). Are we so insecure of Linux's potential that we need to keep patting ourselves on the back for business as usual?
I know I'm burning kharma here, but I'm tired of reading the same story over and over again.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
This reminds me of a posting I once read.
"Haha, look... the lamer goes into the Intel movie."
"You have no clue. Intel movies have a lot higher image quality than AMD movies."
"Pah, but you the story line of Linux movies is crap, while Windows movies rock!"
"Nah, Windows movies are the most sucking movies around. You can only see a blue screen when it get's exciting. Mac movies rule!"
...
The reason SGI is probably selling less Irix machines is that Linux is available, cheaper, and does what buyers want.
No. Five years ago, SGI was selling fewer IRIX machines because Windows NT was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Two years ago, it was because Windows 2000 was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Last year it was Linux. This year it's Mac OS X. Who knows what it will be next year?
The fact that Linux is displacing IRIX in a lot of cases says much more about SGI than it does about Linux.
I write in my journal
I'm not sure if that's true. Looking over SGI's website, they don't seem to sell ANY linux based workstations any more. Only the Fuel and the Octane2 (both IRIX/MIPS machines.)
They do have a yet-to-be-released NUMA Linux system based on Itanium, but it probably shouldn't be thought of as a workstation.
I'm guessing you're probably right though that "SGI barely sells Irix machines". Not sure how many they're selling, but they're still cettainly losing money.
"Posted on Wednesday, January 01, 2003 by Robin Rowe"
Er, would that be Stardate 2003.1
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Are you kidding? Irix has more holes than swiss cheese.
An in terms of enterprise acceptance... ...it's irrelevant. Movie special effects are not what people mean when they say "the enterprise." If you want to talk about Linux in the enterprise, you're going to have to talk about productivity and messaging and stuff like that. Stuff the average white-collar business drones need.
I write in my journal
Well then who makes it now?
I always thought it they used a video camera for movies.... Im going to use linux to create my next movie! DAMN the MPAA!
| - | - |
Actually, in regards to this particular story, I'd be afraid that "enterprise acceptance" would be ministerpreted by many here as an endorsement of Linux by the United Federation of Planets.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
so, what makes it now?
I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'
Wow! What astounds me isn't that Ernest Glitch invented time travel, but that he works as a copy editor at Linux Journal.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
X86... The final frontier.
These are the source codes to the operating system Linux.
It's continuing mission,
to explore strange kernel bugs,
to seek out new applications and new platforms,
to boldy code what no one has coded before!
Linux OS: The Next Generation...
(urge to kill... rising...)
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
if the entire Enterprise-E ran on Linux. Now THAT would be newsworthy!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I always figured given the general philosophy of the federation that all their computers would run open source. Now how do i get the sexy computer voice on mine?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It does seem as if the plot and story were created on a 286.
I dunno - you consider how few actual mips based SGI machines can run linux (like the indy and indigo only pretty much - which these days are pretty old) you have to figure they are using Linux on Intel most likely.
"Who knows what it will be next year?"
I've got money on OS/2.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Ever seen Star Trek IV where Scotty sits down and talks into the mouse? .... Hello Computer?"
"Computer....
Other guy: "*ahem* you have to use the keyboard."
"KEYBOARD?! How quaint."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Which OS would the Klingons use? Klingons have long hair and beards and live in dark dirty rooms, so we know that they're UNIX users. But are they Linux users? They certainly have bad tempers, which means they'd feel right at home on the Linux kernel developers list. But take a look at Klingon ships. They're pretty simple and a little rough around the edges, but at the same time really tough and secure. With these design priorities, it's pretty safe to say that they're running OpenBSD.
:-)
Not convinced? Consider this additional evidence. On TNG, the Klingons are worried that their traditional values are dying. On Slashdot, the crapflooding trolls declare daily that BSD is dying. 'Nuff said.
Quoting the 2.4.20 changelog, "replace end user confusing 'on fire' joke with real info"
The voices aren't sexy yet but...http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
Why not fork?
Of course, it's been decided by slashdot that Solaris Sucks, so it must have been made by Windows.
The Enterprise is from the future..and Linux is the OS of the future!
D2 has used Linux for 21 motion pictures, including best visual effects Academy Award winners Titanic and What Dreams May Come. D2 has won two Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Awards: one for Track motion tracking software and the other for the compositing software NUKE.
I still think the Borg use XP.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
so by this communities standards, everything trek that has gone before sucks and everything going forward is uber cool because the drawings were rendered on a nice open operating system, using closed source software on closed source hardware to make a movie for profit rather than a closed operating system on closed rendering software on closed hardware .
Such a fickle bunch.
This weeks TV Guide has 4 different covers for this Star Trek movie - it's one of those plastic sheets where the picture changes as you move it around. (what do you call those anyway?)
Mac OS X is not "more Unix than Linux", not by any stretch of the imagination. OS X is based on BSD, which no longer incorporates any code derived from original Unices. Therefore, they are both "clones". Mac OS X is a registered Unix, ie. they paid to be able to call it Unix. Linux probably meets the single unix specification more closely than OS X, but no one has paid to have Linux certified as a Unix.
"Unix" means Unix 98 certified. Any arguments about what's more Unix than what can easily be answered by this method.
Who knows what it will be next year?
I bet SGI makes a killer abacus.
*bump MaxClients*
OS/X is based on a BSD kernel. Last I checked, BSD was a Unix clone as well.
...my computer looks like "Romy" (from "Andromeda"). Furthermore, I would not care WHAT os she's running. Right now my machine looks more like Janet Reno, is forgetful sometimes, and certainly appears to have a mind of its own. And like the Enterprise and Voyager, critical systems only fail when I need them most, and then I have to tell the damn thing every little thing it has to do. I'm hoping for, at the least, a Borg Queen interface, as she just seems more like Linux than Romy.
I should have guessed that linux was used by Star Trek. Just look at that horrible "lcars" interface. An ugly, poorly-designed, garish interface is a dead giveaway that linux is involved.
It's no secret I was the one who took over the linux projects at Digital Domain, and set up thier render farms. I created the Intel render farms, using Slackware, and I even got Patrick Volkerding to write a boot loader for the SGI 320's and 540's so we could run it on our workstations too.
I took the alpha render farm, revamped it to an NFS-root diskless cluster running Alpha-Slack. I worked on it for a year and a half, and I took a vacation and was let go WHILE I was on vacation.
Michael Taylor, and Jeff Stringer took credit for my work, and my ideas. Both constantly stood in the way of progress on anything that had to do with linux while I was there, and neither deserves any of the credit they have recieved for my work.
I ask that the entire slashdot community boycott any film, even remotely worked on by Digital Domain, it is a 20th century sweat shop located in Venice, California.
-- Sir Ace
The arcticle does mention running Linux on Alphas, My guess running Linux on SGI hardware would be fast also, if possible. I know Linux is free to aquire, hardware is what does the number crunching, and what costs $$.
Greg
Additionally, your comment that Linux is very much doing its one thing - blazing new trails in speed, stability, and of course acceptance of a free OS in the enterprise sector of business is a disgusting comment.
Linux is doing far more then you can even begin to imagine. People are writing QoS packet schedulers, playing with distributive computing, and even using linux to create wireless APs.
Please take your FUD else where.
Sunny Dubey
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
They do have a yet-to-be-released NUMA Linux system based on Itanium, but it probably shouldn't be thought of as a workstation.
No, it should be thought of as a kickass gaming system!
I've got money on OS/2.
.com idea of mine ;)
In that case, you'd probably be interested in Venture Capitalising a
in other news nuns in italy are using linux to count the days they've been virgins !@#@((@
WOW THIS IS NEWS * INFINITY
all those actors had their digital enviroments made with linux?? WOW IS THIS A FIRST
wowoowoowwwoow
in the 25th century, the 14.2.22 kernel is used in the warp drive controller. Linus' frozen head was the lead developer on the warp engine software. You didn't think you could get from here to the other side of the galaxy on Windows did you? :)
Thanks, I'll be sure to check these out!
screen -- intro to a kick-ass console-based "window" manager
quicksort -- understand the classic algorithm using DDD (shameless self-promo)
ho ho ho, sgi may have had other
problems the fact that their
low volume high performance specialty
machines for gov(nasa) and private
industry not providing sufficient
cash flow. But the little detour
they did selling Windows was a fiasco,
that did nothing good for them.
That would be holograms.
mp3: l33t term for empty.
So much anti-Linux sentiment growing on Slashdot...If you read the article they suggest merits too ya know.
Of course one of the original authors of Nuke has responded saying it was indeed based on merit too. And that if the Linux desktop does not mature in two years they could switch to Mac OS X.
The Linux desktop should have matured a lot more by then I'd imagine, especially as a great amount more effort is going into it next year due to increased corporate interest.
Wonder if Adobe will ever release Photoshop for Linux? Yes I like the Gimp too, but sometimes a name sells.
the Bird of Prey is now a Giant Penguin
Table-ized A.I.
Because it costs more, is available, and does what buyers want?
No wonder Patrick Stewart doesn't want to do any more 'Trek' movies. Should have used FreeBSD.
That reminds me of the Simpsons-episode in which Homer did the same thing...
No, this post doesn't have a point.
which shows one more gigantic photo... windows never had the ability to do what the irix machines were doing, so therefore linux has yet ANOTHER thing they can do that windows will never be able to do..
serious computing uses linux and unix... playing around like children? use windows.
Because it costs more, is available, and does what buyers want?
;-)
Well, really just that last one.
I write in my journal
Hmm, an article on star trek and still no word from CleverNickName - I guess he doesnt need any more karma today........
When making perf. statements these kind of articles are always misleading. They upgraded from old SGI hardware running IRIX to new *whatever* hardware running LINUX. Yeah, I'm sure all your perf. belong to LINUX.
Captain! She canna take it na more! I have to shut the engines down!
DOH!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
No, but it will be a feature in one of the next kernels.
It's only compilable as a module only because to "modulate the phase buffer to route power to the primary shields" takes up too much memory from the Enterprise so the holographic Doctor (based on Eliza written somewhere in the 21th century) can still function in emergencies without using swapspace rendering the sensors useless...
We don't want to have a "core dump" ya know ?
Life's a bitch
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Shut Up
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Yeah but every quater they're loosing less and less money, hopefully they'll make a profit in 2003.
This means nothing. They switched to LINUX to render... but they still use IRIX for Maya and Houdini. I've got a few friends that have done work at d2 and they all think nothing about it. Rendering is a job for a large number of systems that don't need shit for graphics, and that's exactly why they switched. Why do I need an Octane 2 or a Fuel to render?
Good one, "I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'" I'm sure that you'd put your life on the line with free software.
no sir.
you are confusing the prosumer crowd...i.e. effects studios that were running lightwave and 3dmax. sure, nt was a big hit with them.
the big boys? running nt? don't make me laugh.
in almost all cases, LINUX MACHINES REPLACED SGIS.
now run home and spank yourself.
Isn't the reason Linux is NOT Unix 98 certified because Linus Torvalds would have to pay a small royalty on each copy of Linux distributed with the Unix certification (which obviously would be a Bad Thing)? I'm asking, that was always my understanding.
The Linux trademark, on the other hand, LT can license however he wants to, and doesn't have to charge people who use it: he can just license the circumstances if he wants to.
IANAL, of course.
And furthermore, *BSD, which OS X is based on(!), is also _NOT_ certified.
So this whole "OS X is more Unix than Linux" is total BS.
Cheers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
You tool.
Congrats Linux on your one movie. May it play forever on TNN and strengthen the souls of the zealots that promote you.
LOL.
You crack me up.
I guess you didn't hear that ILM converted to Linux. Star Trek Episode II was thier first Linux project.
Irix has become...deprecated?
Nice joke. Too bad I beat you to it! ;-)http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=47222&cid=4 838277
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Isn't it obvious? LCARS is a theme for Enlightenment! :)
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
"Star Trek Episode II"???
Do you mean "Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn" or "Star WARS Episode II, Attack of the Clones"?
Or did you mean Clone Wars Star, Attack Trek of War?
Sometimes I get confused too.
Well, Seeing as STII came out in 1982, I'd have to guess that it wasn't made using Linux...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
From the linked website: Processors 2-512
Where did you get 1000?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
There are many SGI systems running over 1000 CPUs, LANL has a 6144 CPU installation.
If you read John Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper you'll see that such systems can be configured in a mind-boggling number of ways. So SGI packages certain common/sensible configs. You can give them your credit card and call in an order for a preconfigured 512 CPU machine, no prob. If you want 1024 CPUs, or 2048 CPUs, or more you have to sit down, have a nice lunch with them, and talk about your exact needs so they can spec a system for you.
Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon
the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program
ran like a gentle wind.
Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"
"Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I
follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I
would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no
longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing.
My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit,
free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program
writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them
coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code
and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the
program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my
eyes for a moment and then log off."
Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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