You completely miss the point of the project. They don't want to make a movie for profit, like studios would, but they want to make a move to determine what they need to do to improve the authoring software and do that while making the short movie.
It's a collaboration between the artists and the developers, that work on the next major version of blender (2.5x) and will directly interact during the project (they'll work in the same location).
They also want to use it as PR to get people interested in the software, use it, improve it, contribute to current and future projects with development, feedback, community activity and money.
The biggest advantage Internet based storage API service providers (some call this cloud), for me is: easy remote data backup and access.
See, some years ago I had to care about backing up my eMail and copying a bunch of files around when reinstalling my system (I do this at times, just because it's fun, not that I had to). Now that I installed U-LTS, I just had to set up my IMAP account, and that's it.
The so called 'cloud' is basically just an extension of this to all your other media, like your documents, you source code, what have you not.
It's convenient, and for really classified data you just use your own server to prevent data mining scrutiny.
I think the biggest challenge is to understand what to broadcast and what not (i.e. what to put on a secure location and what not).
In that, my local hard-drive now is a big, semi-permanent cache for data. And yes, I still prefer to use local applications where it makes sense (i.e. authoring stuff that needs number crunching power).
Note: I'm as far away from being a graphics crack as the next guy, but at least a basic understanding of your tools is useful. I created this image quick and dirty with the GIMP resyth. And I certainly can draw ugly pictures in CS5 to prove that GIMP is superior. Such comparisons are completely meaningless though.
The 6 month iterations are plain stupidity, IMO. Hardly anyone wants to "upgrade" that often, and when it's out, we all realize that it's the same old crap in a different color.. No real usability improvements.
You aren't into OSS development much, are you?
See, as some others pointed out, the long term support releases are there for the more conservative / more stable environments. You can upgrade every 2 or 3 years and have your peace.
Some of us are actually curious and like to see new stuff at times. We like new releases. We play with them and see how they do or break, then we post bug reports and stuff. We check out the regular releases and are happy with that.
One important thing the Linux community realized was, that building something for two years in your basement and then trying to release something perfect will most probably end in havoc.
On the other hand, releasing often, getting feedback, keeping in touch with users is much more effective.
Another good example for this is the Linux kernel: an new version is released every 3 months. Works great, is stable and everyone can calculate on when to integrate. Also developers don't have to wait ages for the merge window when they can add their own code.
ps. And there are nice changes in a lot of places, though the focus of this long time release was obviously more on the stability part and a lot of people on the previous LTS release were awaiting this one eagerly.
Though not for religious purposes, but to aggregate the orgasm at jacking off while strangling them selves:
"When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it induces a lucid, semi-hallucinogenic state called hypoxia. Combined with orgasm, the rush is said to be no less powerful than cocaine, and highly addictive" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_asphyxiation
I was wondering about that too. Mainstream Linux distros are currently switching to Nouveau. The nv drivers are becoming obsolete as we speak of, so no big loss.
As for the other posters around bitching about the basic NVidia attitude not to help the OSS drivers.. well, I'll be buying a competitive graphics card (AMD or Intel) if they have up to date specs and usable drivers. Though ATI is supporting OSS now, the drivers are still far from usable and Intel just isn't that for into contemporary graphics hardware yet (though they have a good driver dev team).
The proprietary drivers of NVidia generally do a nice job, so for a lack of choices, I'll stick to that for a little while longer (and hope the Nouveau drivers get a reasonable feature set soon to switch).
Recently there was a time (about a year) when I could do that too. Only Linux then and it was wonderful!
Now times change, new place and stuff, Windows shop. So I give it a chance again. Here was the timeline how I did:
Day 1: Well, can't be so bad. Worst that can happen is, that I get to know my foe better. Day 2: Install gVim for windows. Getting more familiar with the environment. Something is still not quite right.. Day 3: Not very productive so far, but new place and all.. Anyway, let's get something done.. Hm, where is my terminal? Day 7: Have Cygwin with mySQL, apache2, python, git and some utils installed. Productivity suddenly rises, but it still looks ugly.... Day 14: Installed a copy of VirtualBox OSE, installed an virtual Ubuntu Box. Hey, suddenly stuff works really nicely.
Following day routines: Switch on computer, log in, start virtual box (blend out host os).
Put in a lot of cussing and banging head against a wall between days 4 and 14. That's about what happened. What I want to say is, that if what grandparent says is true, then I honestly envy him.
I agree! That's why I always ask for the name before the fucking starts. I mean, what can you shout while screwing: "Oh, your cunt is so tight, stranger!"?
Yes, you will have to have *some* understanding of math, but how much and what kind is really dependent on what you are developing. If it is a database fed, scripted web page, the required calculus won't be that much compared with a missile guidance system or a 3D rendering engine / driver (because it is a completely different problem domain).
In most development cases you have to break down complex problems to many simpler ones to make it maintainable. This breaking down strongly reduces the math complexity in most cases. Writing maintainable code is often more important than fiddling around with the fastest algorithm (but there are exceptions, few).
If you can get a rod to hit with it's orbital velocity (8 km/s), that would be roughly 7 kilotons (TNT) of energy per kilogram of rod.
That's a big if: you ignore atmospheric drag here (terminal velocity). An object dropped from orbit will de-accelerate the closer it comes to the surface (falls through thicker atmosphere). Your rod would hit the ground with around 200-2000 mph depending on the aerodynamics and some other factors.. that is, if it has a heat shield and don't burn up while crossing the upper atmosphere.
You would have to drop an insanely big and massive object to counter drag (think of a mountain). Not practical at all.
If you are a person switching between computers a lot (like an admin), you should learn QWERTY touch typing. Touch typing is better, because you are less likely to get repetitive strain injury (pain in the hand) when you distribute the typing effort a bit more.
If you are someone like me (application developer) working on a few machines only, then you might want to go for Dvorak. I switched from QWERTY and never regretted it.
Note: retraining muscle reflexes is a relatively hard process. In the beginning you are going to type slow and trying to remember how to reach the keys with the new method. Then comes the real hard part, as you memorize the new method, the old reflexes kick in all the time. Takes a few months until you fully retrained yourself, though you can get up to speed in a few weeks.
Thinking back 10 years, we had 56k around here 10 years ago. Now a days 10-16 MBit is very common (central Europe) in urban regions (where around 1/3rd of the population lives). Projecting that to 2020, we'll be at 200-300 MBit. If the US does not manage to upgrade their infrastructure to at least 100MBit in residential areas by then, it will probably declared a developing country or something.
Hell, around here we even have most of the fibre laid already, just have to get the switch from copper based endpoints to fibre (building wiring).
So do the telcos in the states really think 100MBit in 10 years is unrealistic? Weird nation..
I was playing out with Qt and Qt Creator recently and the framework is very accessible and cross-platform, while GTK+ is somewhat more of a hassle to port. It's also nicer to develop with (much easier to get started and the Qt library has some very nice features, esp. since the 4.6 release).
That said, I perceive KDE as a very ugly desktop environment. I stopped using it a long time ago. Still checking it out once or twice a year, but I don't like it compared to GNOME. I want a desktop that works on installation, not one where I have to tweak around for two weeks to get it do something. Also the options that pop up everywhere, the atrocious control panel and several other things are just horrible.
Also when tweaked right (with some compiz magic) I can improve my application interaction productivity very much (application switching mapping to mouse, multiple desktop control with mouse, etc.) that are just not there in an evident way in KDE.
Never mind the fact that it still looks ugly and very clumsy.
I seriously don't know where this is going. Maybe the GTK+ team will do something unexpected and GTK+ 3 will completely smash Qt (though I'd be surprised), or maybe KDE will get some good looks and usability (which would also surprise me), or GNOME will be ported to Qt (haha), or maybe something else will let them both in the shadow while they don't get anywhere (though I have no clue what).
I don't complain though. Qt integration in GNOME is not bad, so I can happily write Qt apps and don't care about the desktop (though I'm more into web and platform development, not much of a UI person).
I do the site for fun (i.e. no material interest, no ads, etc.), and most users already found the site through the previous wiki and the forums. Being indexed is just a minor convenience at best in this case, which is why I don't care about it much.
Just strolling through the statistics now and then, and see what comes around. Google and Yahoo come around, find the site and update their index according to relevance (content, user count, link count, what have you not).
The Googlebot is fun to observe, as it is kind of smart. Instead of querying the whole site over and over again, it just checks the recent changed page to get the deltas (i.e. understands MediaWiki).
Registering sites with search engines is very 90'-ish, so if you don't get indexed automatically by a search engine while having a considerable traffic (I consider several thousand visitors a month from various countries considerable), than it is a broken search engine - if you can even call it a search engine, maybe toy would be a better description.
Note: I did not register with Google or Yahoo either and don't and didn't use their analytic tools, so they came by them selves crawling the web.
I also heard a lot of horror stories about the MSN/Bing bot going awry and causing DoS like behaviour, so I'm actually happy that it stays away.
Just wanted to point out some simple observations here.
About 2 months ago I took over a community wiki (moved it to a new domain) for a game with a traffic of thousands of users a month and several sites are linking to it now. Google and Yahoo managed to see this and list my site as second result directly below (the now defunct) original. Bing does not list the site at all!
So how about getting basic indexing right for the search engine before they come with this wizzy new feature stuff?
Not that I mind, I don't care about being indexed on Bing.
I'm using Linux. And I'm boycotting flash. So I'm here on an Ubuntu Linux (my home computer) and can't watch the videos on http://video.linuxfoundation.org/category/we-are-linux-foundation-video-contest the linuxfoundation is talking about. WTF? You people should try to make some accessibility example for OSS folks if you want to be taken seriously. What is this carp??
On the other hand, reading about the content of the videos, maybe it's better this way..
Slashdot Mirror
You completely miss the point of the project. They don't want to make a movie for profit, like studios would, but they want to make a move to determine what they need to do to improve the authoring software and do that while making the short movie.
It's a collaboration between the artists and the developers, that work on the next major version of blender (2.5x) and will directly interact during the project (they'll work in the same location).
They also want to use it as PR to get people interested in the software, use it, improve it, contribute to current and future projects with development, feedback, community activity and money.
They do a very good job with that IMO.
It's Creative Commons licensed, so you can download it from their server or one of the mirrors, torrent it or play it in your home theater.
It'll only be a 5-8 minute short movie, so don't expect a feature film, or something..
He also forgot another tiny detail: oil floats at the top of water.
The biggest advantage Internet based storage API service providers (some call this cloud), for me is: easy remote data backup and access.
See, some years ago I had to care about backing up my eMail and copying a bunch of files around when reinstalling my system (I do this at times, just because it's fun, not that I had to). Now that I installed U-LTS, I just had to set up my IMAP account, and that's it.
The so called 'cloud' is basically just an extension of this to all your other media, like your documents, you source code, what have you not.
It's convenient, and for really classified data you just use your own server to prevent data mining scrutiny.
I think the biggest challenge is to understand what to broadcast and what not (i.e. what to put on a secure location and what not).
In that, my local hard-drive now is a big, semi-permanent cache for data. And yes, I still prefer to use local applications where it makes sense (i.e. authoring stuff that needs number crunching power).
Best comment I read in a while!
Happy to be of service. I'm here all day.
Yup. I tried that too. The result can be observed here: http://j.imagehost.org/view/0164/resynth
Note: I'm as far away from being a graphics crack as the next guy, but at least a basic understanding of your tools is useful. I created this image quick and dirty with the GIMP resyth. And I certainly can draw ugly pictures in CS5 to prove that GIMP is superior. Such comparisons are completely meaningless though.
You aren't into OSS development much, are you?
See, as some others pointed out, the long term support releases are there for the more conservative / more stable environments. You can upgrade every 2 or 3 years and have your peace.
Some of us are actually curious and like to see new stuff at times. We like new releases. We play with them and see how they do or break, then we post bug reports and stuff. We check out the regular releases and are happy with that.
One important thing the Linux community realized was, that building something for two years in your basement and then trying to release something perfect will most probably end in havoc.
On the other hand, releasing often, getting feedback, keeping in touch with users is much more effective.
Another good example for this is the Linux kernel: an new version is released every 3 months. Works great, is stable and everyone can calculate on when to integrate. Also developers don't have to wait ages for the merge window when they can add their own code.
ps. And there are nice changes in a lot of places, though the focus of this long time release was obviously more on the stability part and a lot of people on the previous LTS release were awaiting this one eagerly.
Though not for religious purposes, but to aggregate the orgasm at jacking off while strangling them selves:
"When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it induces a lucid, semi-hallucinogenic state called hypoxia. Combined with orgasm, the rush is said to be no less powerful than cocaine, and highly addictive" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_asphyxiation
I was wondering about that too. Mainstream Linux distros are currently switching to Nouveau. The nv drivers are becoming obsolete as we speak of, so no big loss.
As for the other posters around bitching about the basic NVidia attitude not to help the OSS drivers.. well, I'll be buying a competitive graphics card (AMD or Intel) if they have up to date specs and usable drivers. Though ATI is supporting OSS now, the drivers are still far from usable and Intel just isn't that for into contemporary graphics hardware yet (though they have a good driver dev team).
The proprietary drivers of NVidia generally do a nice job, so for a lack of choices, I'll stick to that for a little while longer (and hope the Nouveau drivers get a reasonable feature set soon to switch).
Recently there was a time (about a year) when I could do that too. Only Linux then and it was wonderful!
Now times change, new place and stuff, Windows shop. So I give it a chance again. Here was the timeline how I did:
Day 1: Well, can't be so bad. Worst that can happen is, that I get to know my foe better. ...
Day 2: Install gVim for windows. Getting more familiar with the environment. Something is still not quite right..
Day 3: Not very productive so far, but new place and all.. Anyway, let's get something done.. Hm, where is my terminal?
Day 7: Have Cygwin with mySQL, apache2, python, git and some utils installed. Productivity suddenly rises, but it still looks ugly.
Day 14: Installed a copy of VirtualBox OSE, installed an virtual Ubuntu Box. Hey, suddenly stuff works really nicely.
Following day routines: Switch on computer, log in, start virtual box (blend out host os).
Put in a lot of cussing and banging head against a wall between days 4 and 14. That's about what happened. What I want to say is, that if what grandparent says is true, then I honestly envy him.
I agree! That's why I always ask for the name before the fucking starts. I mean, what can you shout while screwing: "Oh, your cunt is so tight, stranger!"?
Yes, you will have to have *some* understanding of math, but how much and what kind is really dependent on what you are developing. If it is a database fed, scripted web page, the required calculus won't be that much compared with a missile guidance system or a 3D rendering engine / driver (because it is a completely different problem domain).
In most development cases you have to break down complex problems to many simpler ones to make it maintainable. This breaking down strongly reduces the math complexity in most cases. Writing maintainable code is often more important than fiddling around with the fastest algorithm (but there are exceptions, few).
Wouldn't "Blue mushroom of death" be more appropriate?
The vulnerability *only* affects the current 3.6 branch. Patch is complete and will be pushed on the 30th of March.
Here is the Mozilla blog entry on the topic:
http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/18/update-on-secunia-advisory-sa38608
Here is the original bug report:
http://secunia.com/advisories/38608
Ps: can we please get security related articles with some content instead of *OMG, we are all going to die!!* ??
That's a big if: you ignore atmospheric drag here (terminal velocity). An object dropped from orbit will de-accelerate the closer it comes to the surface (falls through thicker atmosphere). Your rod would hit the ground with around 200-2000 mph depending on the aerodynamics and some other factors.. that is, if it has a heat shield and don't burn up while crossing the upper atmosphere.
You would have to drop an insanely big and massive object to counter drag (think of a mountain). Not practical at all.
Better:
+ lighter
Worse:
- less accurate and sluggish
- looks porn
4. ?????
Don't you know what to do with a girl in her bedroom?
If you are a person switching between computers a lot (like an admin), you should learn QWERTY touch typing. Touch typing is better, because you are less likely to get repetitive strain injury (pain in the hand) when you distribute the typing effort a bit more.
If you are someone like me (application developer) working on a few machines only, then you might want to go for Dvorak. I switched from QWERTY and never regretted it.
Note: retraining muscle reflexes is a relatively hard process. In the beginning you are going to type slow and trying to remember how to reach the keys with the new method. Then comes the real hard part, as you memorize the new method, the old reflexes kick in all the time. Takes a few months until you fully retrained yourself, though you can get up to speed in a few weeks.
Thinking back 10 years, we had 56k around here 10 years ago. Now a days 10-16 MBit is very common (central Europe) in urban regions (where around 1/3rd of the population lives). Projecting that to 2020, we'll be at 200-300 MBit. If the US does not manage to upgrade their infrastructure to at least 100MBit in residential areas by then, it will probably declared a developing country or something.
Hell, around here we even have most of the fibre laid already, just have to get the switch from copper based endpoints to fibre (building wiring).
So do the telcos in the states really think 100MBit in 10 years is unrealistic? Weird nation..
We can still shoot it to orbit!
I agree, it's weird.
I was playing out with Qt and Qt Creator recently and the framework is very accessible and cross-platform, while GTK+ is somewhat more of a hassle to port. It's also nicer to develop with (much easier to get started and the Qt library has some very nice features, esp. since the 4.6 release).
That said, I perceive KDE as a very ugly desktop environment. I stopped using it a long time ago. Still checking it out once or twice a year, but I don't like it compared to GNOME. I want a desktop that works on installation, not one where I have to tweak around for two weeks to get it do something. Also the options that pop up everywhere, the atrocious control panel and several other things are just horrible.
Also when tweaked right (with some compiz magic) I can improve my application interaction productivity very much (application switching mapping to mouse, multiple desktop control with mouse, etc.) that are just not there in an evident way in KDE.
Never mind the fact that it still looks ugly and very clumsy.
I seriously don't know where this is going. Maybe the GTK+ team will do something unexpected and GTK+ 3 will completely smash Qt (though I'd be surprised), or maybe KDE will get some good looks and usability (which would also surprise me), or GNOME will be ported to Qt (haha), or maybe something else will let them both in the shadow while they don't get anywhere (though I have no clue what).
I don't complain though. Qt integration in GNOME is not bad, so I can happily write Qt apps and don't care about the desktop (though I'm more into web and platform development, not much of a UI person).
What ever comes around, it should be interesting.
No, I didn't.
I do the site for fun (i.e. no material interest, no ads, etc.), and most users already found the site through the previous wiki and the forums. Being indexed is just a minor convenience at best in this case, which is why I don't care about it much.
Just strolling through the statistics now and then, and see what comes around. Google and Yahoo come around, find the site and update their index according to relevance (content, user count, link count, what have you not).
The Googlebot is fun to observe, as it is kind of smart. Instead of querying the whole site over and over again, it just checks the recent changed page to get the deltas (i.e. understands MediaWiki).
Registering sites with search engines is very 90'-ish, so if you don't get indexed automatically by a search engine while having a considerable traffic (I consider several thousand visitors a month from various countries considerable), than it is a broken search engine - if you can even call it a search engine, maybe toy would be a better description.
Note: I did not register with Google or Yahoo either and don't and didn't use their analytic tools, so they came by them selves crawling the web.
I also heard a lot of horror stories about the MSN/Bing bot going awry and causing DoS like behaviour, so I'm actually happy that it stays away.
Just wanted to point out some simple observations here.
About 2 months ago I took over a community wiki (moved it to a new domain) for a game with a traffic of thousands of users a month and several sites are linking to it now. Google and Yahoo managed to see this and list my site as second result directly below (the now defunct) original. Bing does not list the site at all!
So how about getting basic indexing right for the search engine before they come with this wizzy new feature stuff?
Not that I mind, I don't care about being indexed on Bing.
I'm using Linux. And I'm boycotting flash. So I'm here on an Ubuntu Linux (my home computer) and can't watch the videos on http://video.linuxfoundation.org/category/we-are-linux-foundation-video-contest the linuxfoundation is talking about. WTF? You people should try to make some accessibility example for OSS folks if you want to be taken seriously. What is this carp??
On the other hand, reading about the content of the videos, maybe it's better this way..