Slashback: Blender, Paly, Dragon

The last Slashback of July brings you updates on the open-source Blender and Diebold's approach to voting security, and a skeptical look at the design origins of the Dragon V CPU, John Poindexter's very own future, and more. Read on for the details.

A cleaner UI would be nice in the next round. Qbertino writes "Blender 2.28 - the first major release after it was GPLd after a $100,000 community source-code buyout in October last year -- is finished. It's now got a wide variety of added features such as Audio Sequencing (as mentioned earlier) and a complete redo of the built-in Python engine for your 3D scripting convenience and import/export empowerment. It runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris and that other OS :-). See the full changelog here and get the new version binaries here. Cheers to the Blender folks and: Happy Blending!"

Just close the curtain on your way out, citizen. utunga writes "After recent claims that their voting systems were grossly insecure, Diebold has issued a rebuttal which has in turn been panned. One question this raises : Do programmers now have worry that their comments ... such as - 'Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.' - might wind up in the media (or worse, in court) as evidence for one side or the other ?"

Correspondence school? chipace writes "The newly released Dragon-V CPU could have deeper roots in Austin, Texas than in China. The Alchemy Au1500 (AMD) displayed at Comdex 2002 has a lot in common with the new CultureCom Dragon-V cpu (or is it the other way around?). Both have identical MIPS32 cores (16k instruction + 16k data caches), Ethernet MACs, USB 1.1, PCI 2.2, SDRAM controller ... same power consumption. I'm not saying they are pin-compatible... just that this is by no means an original chip (seeing as the Au1500 has been available for over a year). Is the Dragon-V a ground-up development that CultureCom is describing, or is this just another case of a Chinese company doing reverse engineering?"

They can swim out and try, though. Complete Bastard writes "The Australian is reporting today that Aussie corporate Linux users, including AusRegistry, which runs Australia's domain name registry, are also starting to say no to SCO's licensing scheme. After reading the recent /. roundup of corporate ire, it would seem the business world is starting to truly make it's opinions known in this issue..."

The wisdom of the free market. skwang writes "Do you think John Poindexter should keep his job? The head of Pentagon's department responsible for Terrorism Information Awareness (formerly Total Information Awareness) and most recently known for his Policy Analysis Market, which would allow investors to buy future's contracts in middle east events such as the overthrow of King Adbullah of Jordan, has himself a futures contract on Tradesports, as reported by CNN.

Investors can now buy futures contracts to speculate on whether or not Poindexter will keep his job after August 31st. Since Poindexter's contracts are new, they do not represent an accurate indicator of his job security."

Could be too late: Eponymous Coward writes "CNN writes "Retired Adm. John Poindexter, who created a firestorm this week with his plan to create a futures market that would capitalize on predicting terror attacks, will resign in coming weeks from his post at the Pentagon, a senior defense official said Thursday. The official said the research that Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness program (TIA) were conducting had become just too 'unorthodox'." Ya think?"

No good deed goes unpunished. Anonymous Coward writes "In regards to the June 25th Article 'WiFi Exposes Sensitive Student Data': The School district has decided to boot all volunteers, the story is here..."

Seems like a harsh way to treat long-time volunteers with expensive skills.

Comments

No good deed goes unpunished???

[winkydink]

Setting up wifi in an insecure way hardly qualifies as an expensive skill.

....an expensive mistake perhaps, but I don't see tons of job ads saying "wanted: bozo who doesn't know how to configure wifi to set up our wireless network"

Blender

[Squidgee]

Blender's UI is actually really useful once you get used to it.

The problem is, getting used to it. It's set up for the advanced user (read: keystrokes for EVERYTHING!), not for the newbie-point-and-clicker.

It's kinda like Slack, but in the 3D app land.

Re:Blender

[aardvarkjoe]

Maybe it works for the experienced user, but it's still a stellar example of bad UI design. Tiny buttons with cryptic icons, a GUI interface that works in an irritatingly nonstandard fasion, and so forth. Fixing these would go a long way towards making it accessible to new users, and would not hurt the experienced users one bit. Given that the poor interface is by far the biggest complaint people have about Blender, you would think that some thought would be given to fixing it.

Re:Blender

[OverCode@work]

Recently I've learned to write 3ds max plugins, and a good 3/4 of the time I spend is just trying to get around in max. The actual 3d handling code (C++) is really simple to deal with.

Point being, 3d modelling is Hard, and I would expect any reasonably capable 3d modeller to be difficult to learn, even with a well designed UI.

Blender doesn't necessarily have a horrible UI. It's just a targetted one, meant for power users who need fast access to a lot of functionality.
Not to say it couldn't be improved.

-John

Re:Blender

[Xerithane]

Maybe it works for the experienced user, but it's still a stellar example of bad UI design. Tiny buttons with cryptic icons, a GUI interface that works in an irritatingly nonstandard fasion, and so forth. Fixing these would go a long way towards making it accessible to new users, and would not hurt the experienced users one bit. Given that the poor interface is by far the biggest complaint people have about Blender, you would think that some thought would be given to fixing it.

The people who complain about Blenders UI wouldn't manage with any 3d application. If you read any of the numerous tutorials on Blender, you can get the hang of the UI in less than a half hour. I'm not saying be efficient and quick, but at least use it without difficulty.

3d modeling applications with more power than TruSpace can't have that user friendly of an interface because of the sheer number of functions it has to have in quick access. If you look at Maya, they have spent tons of time in the UI, and their biggest contribution was the pie menu. Using Maya for an hour, vs. Blender you will notice Blender has faster keystrokes (while Maya is more "usable") but after 10 hours, Blender is more usable.

Their GUI also works in fairly standard fashion, with menus and hotkeys. The button tray at the bottom (default) is easy to see, and after you know what the icons mean (5 minutes of reading) it makes sense. I'm going to reiterate this point: Most people that complain about Blender and it's interface haven't read any of the documentation on it and spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out.

It isn't a mail client, it's a 3d modelling application.

Cribbed from the Wine Project?

[BrotherPope]

'Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.'

Wine has been under the LGPL for a while now... anyone know more about this 'cribbing'? What exactly was copied, and from what tree?

I haven't heard that the voting system code is available under the LGPL... in fact, I've heard that secret source code is quite important to keep ahead of competitors.

So can i cash in now?

[Merik]

Poindexter has already lost his job.

Volunteer work does not pay

[Anonymous Coward]

In reference to the Palo Alto story, I have learned to be wary of volunteer work. People just don't appreciate what they don't pay for. If you volunteer to do something, people act like your time is of no value, so they will feel free to waste your time.

Maybe the school district will understand the value of these past volunteer services when they finally have to break down and pay someone. The added bonus is that a paying job will be created. I know volunteer work is full of good intentions, but a side effect is contributing to unemployment.

Diebold source code...

[Handpaper]

Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.
This looks like a job for the FSF. How far are the binaries being distributed? Since they contain GPL code, it shouldn't be too difficult to make a case for source code release, which would open the whole app to peer review (and, if the article is even halfway right, hilarity).

Re:Diebold source code...

[Suppafly]

This looks like a job for the FSF. How far are the binaries being distributed? Since they contain GPL code, it shouldn't be too difficult to make a case for source code release, which would open the whole app to peer review (and, if the article is even halfway right, hilarity).


Since they are distributed to the state, the source code should be available via the freedom to information act or similar laws.

Re:Confusing UI

[AvantLegion]

One could say that a violin has a confusing UI. Does that mean it's broken? No. But it does mean that you need to know what you are doing.

"The violin sucks. It's too confusing."

"Do you read sheet music?"

"Uh, no. Would that help?"

This is a nonsense example.

A more realistic one would be if someone created a violin that operated very differently from all the other violins on the market, and also had "different" sheet music that required lots of re-learning.

That's what a piece of software that ignores industry standards in things like UI is equal to.

Re:Wha?

[aled]

Hey, this is the guy that tried to destroy the electronic evidence of their illegal activities. Call THAT unorthodox.

Hope my comments never get public

[sideshow]

Cause between all the, "Fix this when I'm less drunk"'s and, "This better fucking work GODDAMMIT!"'s I might be out of a job.

Re:Poindexter at the Hellmouth

[Concerned Onlooker]

The problem I had with it was the potential for abuse. Athletes aren't allowed to bet on games and for the same reason the CIA shouldn't be allowed to "bet" on things that they can have an influence over. Especially when they might be tempted to create even more chaotic and violent situations than they normally do.

Blender - great success

[myklgrant]

As an avid Blender user I consider Blender to be one of OSS's greatest success stories. Since going GPL the rate of improvement has been rapid (the audio sequencer was wanted for years) and the fact that the community made it happen despite it being considered commercially "dead" is a tribute to the power of open source. Makes you wonder what dead code is out there that can be "rescued" by the OSS community.

Heisenberg's uncertany principle

[autopr0n]

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that people complaining about the government terrorism futures market are idiots, because they're just being emotional about something that could theoretically help fight terrorism or whatever But the futures market thing really is a bad Idea, and not because it's 'immoral' but because it can provide direct financial support to terrorists. All the terrorists need to do is bet on their own activities. In fact, it could cause a lot more terrorism as real criminal gangs get into terrorism as a way of more money. Imagine if the resources of a Columbian drug cartel applied to terrorism. Not good. And plus, terrorist's true plans aren't known to that many people. Unless betting could be totally anonymous, no one who actually knew anything would place any bets.