Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D

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Posted by Hemos on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @01:47AM from the frantically-building-a-future dept.

gruenz writes "Linux Planet writes in this article about a project inside Sun developing "an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers." A demo is available from Sun. 'In the demonstration, Jonathan Schwartz, vice president of Sun's software group, increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it, turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf, turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back, and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.'" It's called Looking Glass, in case you've heard that name before.

5 of 545 comments (clear)

Lots for little by Mr.+Darl+McBride · 2004-03-23 01:51 · Score: 0, Troll

I'll save you the trouble of this little PowerPoint presentation:
Pages and pages of "data" culminating in the punchline of Scott McNealy flailing about and screaming "I am God here!"
Re:Hey! Asses! by MoonFog · 2004-03-23 01:53 · Score: 0, Troll

If you saw the video you'd notice that he talks about this being open source, or at least with an "open community". This being Sun, that probably means the Sun public license, but I still doubt they throw that much money at it.
This is _old_ news by zilver · 2004-03-23 02:04 · Score: 0, Troll

Why was this posted? Does anyone even "need" to use their applications in a 3d-environment? I think it would be mainly frustrating and slow. (java, anyone?) A speedy terminal and a lean windowmanager (xfce) is my cup of tea.

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Translate this for me please by amigoro · 2004-03-23 02:08 · Score: 1, Troll

"One of the things we wanted to do was revisit the paradigm that's been around for a long time and unlock some of this [updated] capability of the hardware and create a more compelling and more useable experience for the desktop users. We believe the Linux desktop is a compelling desktop and there's no reason it should be standing still or following any other platform for features for the user, so we embarked on Looking Glass and we are rapidly working to formalize the implementation,"
-Juan Carlos Soto, the head of Project Looking Glass
Can anyone tell me in simple English what Mr Soto meant?

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Re:Eye candy is nice (more pressing issues) by alienw · 2004-03-23 03:19 · Score: 0, Troll

Ummm... How about telling users to stuff it instead of dumbing down the interface? I had absolutely no trouble learning about all the acronyms and so on. If you actually put towards an effort and RTFM you will not have trouble figuring things out on any modern system. If someone can't quite learn how a computer operates, they should probably be fired.