Well said. I thought this was a very well thought-through article; the author was hardly scare-mongering about the internet; it just happened that one of this pedophile's tools was the the internet. This is not an attack on web users, folks, try to focus on the actual article.
No kidding. I used to be able to check my balance on First Union's 800-number in about 30 seconds flat. Helpful, when you're as constantly broke as I am. Now, I have to maneuver through three different menus just to get to the manual option so as to avoid - um - RECITING MY ACCOUNT NUMBER AND PIN OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC!
Arrghman points out above that you should see what appeals to you, and I certainly agree. As said, Lightwave's interface is the subject of some debate - I certainly agree with this, but having a number of year's experience with it under my belt, I'll weigh in - play with the demo you have, and see what you think.
IMHO, Lightwave's interface is designed *not* to get started quickly with, but to *work* quickly once you have a bit of experience with it. All command buttons are text and nothing but - I've played with 3DSMAX, and after using Lightwave, I find it incredibly frustrating. Um, which of those tiny icons that look like cubes do I hit to make a cube? Oh, that icon with the shaft of light pouring down, does that mean lighting options, volumetric lighting, or what?
I haven't had an opportunity to play much with Maya, but what I've seen gives me the impression that it has the same sort of problem. Lightwave (can you tell what I'm recommending here?) Is a very transparent interface... which I hardly use anymore. One hand on the keyboard, and the other on the mouse or tablet, and I can turn out models and animate very quickly indeed. For me, at least, it feels more like working on an art project, and less like futzing around with a computer program. And, as you said, the renderer is fantastic.
Why does the poster give Fallout Tactics as an example of a failure? I think that's one of the better turn-based action games I've ever played! If the game didn't do well when it first came out, that doesn't mean it was bad - if we're comparing the games biz to the movie biz, there are plenty of titles that bombed on release and found an audience later; Fight Club anyone? eXistenz? Repo Man?
"Joe Barr, a LinuxWorld.com columnist, compares Linux and Windows installations. He expected Windows to be faster and easier since Microsoft has been at it for 21 years. (DOS 1.0 was released 21 years ago today.) It turns out Red Hat is quicker and less manually intensive."
If the Onion ever decides to make fun of Slashdot, they need look no further than this post to realize that it's already been done for them. This is like an article that reads "Cheese Enthusiast Joe Barr compares cheese versus hummus. Turns out, cheese is better!"
1) The ads serve to make buying the movies cheap enough that you can rewatch them over and over to save from reading books or spending time with your kids.
Um, no - the movie costs $50 million to produce and distribute. It makes $100 million in the theatres in the U.S. and abroad. I should watch the ads because that's how the studio can afford to make the DVD available?! They're ads for movies from the same studio. The studio is not a non-profit organization, and forced-viewing ads are annoying because unlike ads in a magazine or a newspaper, you can't ignore them, and they don't subsidize anything.
Give me a break, and while you're at it, how about refraining from insulting everyone here - we're not reading or caring for our kids 'cause we're too busy watching DVDs? I read more than you do, and I don't have dev/kids.
Get off your h1gH h0rsE, d00d. Nobody here was going to mistake you for a studio executive; they have better grasps on reality, and are more subtle.
If they're going to be 25 - 250 m away, wouldn't using a telescopic sight to to pop the mine a few time with a rifle be just as effective, and cheaper?
The performances, particularly Ron Livingstone (hugely underrated actor)...
No kidding. He was fantastic in "Band of Brothers" [IMDB link] as Cpt. Lew Nixon. For anyone who may have seen the show, he was the hard-drinking pal of Major Winters, the noble and heroic leader of the company.
It was a great mini-series - hell, it was a great film - and Livingston was equally great in a second-banana role. He could easily have played it as the 'drunk heroe's buddy', but instead filled the role with humanity. He made a character who had comparatively little screen-time seem like a real person. I hope the real Lewis Nixon is toasting him with a tumbler of Vat 69, wherever he is.
Let me preface this by saying that I know very little about the mechanics of putting up / maintaining a satellite.
We've all heard about how space garbage, like paint-chip or an errant screw from another satellite, travelling at the ridiculous speeds they do while in orbit routinely knock out other satellites. There's (according to a TLC program I recently saw) actually a crew at NORAD that keeps watch for larger pieces of space junk, and advises the space shuttle on how to avoid them.
So, how is it that this thing is even in one piece? Anyone who has an answer, please respond - this has been bothering me all day.
DC area. The tech firms (and the wind-down of the last administration) burned off a LOT of people in all sectors. Housing is, if not cheap, getting plentiful again, and I'm seeing many more jobs advertised than I was even six months ago. When I got roundfiled by a tech company right after 9/11, it took me about 4 months to find a job. Now I'm doing exactly what I did there - web design and graphics - full time for a university here in town. There are jobs out there.
Not independent, but the Uptown in Washington, DC is still a great place to see a movie. One MASSIVE screen in the house, full balcony, great sound, and projectionists who actually know how to do their job.
Saw all the SW re-releases and Episode I there. Also saw Se7en and Natural Born Killers - very, very cool venue, and perfect for those kinds of sensory-overload movies.
kzinti - I agree that it would have been much more practical to do it with a digital camera, but I'm not sure I agree with you that the purpose wasn't to create great single photos. Have you ever taken a snapshot - 35mm film or otherwise - that you forgot about until you got it back from the lab or pulled it down to your computer that totally surprised you how perfectly composed and exposed it was? A photo that you put no thought into? I kinda see that as the point of this fellow's excericise, and honestly, a fantastic digital photo (at least on a consumer-grade camera) can't hold a candle to a good photo taken on 35mm.
Does anyone honestly want to have onscreen cues telling them to scroll left and right while watching a movie? Let alone do the scrolling while watching a movie? I prefer to watch the movie.
And, barawn, people don't watch movies in widescreen for the 'meaningless information', we watch them that way to see the shots the way the director and DP composed them. A lot of thought and talent (in a good movie) went into that process.
If it had been decided by the printing press manufacturers that the optimum length of a book was 200 pages and that anything over that should be removed or condensed down to 'fit the format', would that make sense? Would it make any more sense for the condensed sections to have a footnote that read 'refer to addendum 4.0.1 for full text'?
Ahh... come on. It was probably NOT a final draft (all early drafts of big movies suck), and that writer has a huge hate-on for Rick Berman. Berman produced 'First Contact', and that rocked, no?
Will the leader of the Center for Internet Security be running for President in twenty years as a spoiler, handing the election to oh, say, George P. Bush that time around?
Slashdot Mirror
The one here - it looks like an army of Fred Dursts.
Sign me up for the Cops team...
Well said. I thought this was a very well thought-through article; the author was hardly scare-mongering about the internet; it just happened that one of this pedophile's tools was the the internet. This is not an attack on web users, folks, try to focus on the actual article.
Plus, the mice own the Earth. Best not to mess with them, right?
I'm thrilled that that game is being remade. I still have my Pirates map!
If the slashdot team trips and falls, will the host yell "Tools down"?
Spellcheck, dude.
Oh - sorry. Spellcheck, d00d!
No kidding. I used to be able to check my balance on First Union's 800-number in about 30 seconds flat. Helpful, when you're as constantly broke as I am. Now, I have to maneuver through three different menus just to get to the manual option so as to avoid - um - RECITING MY ACCOUNT NUMBER AND PIN OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC!
Arrghman points out above that you should see what appeals to you, and I certainly agree. As said, Lightwave's interface is the subject of some debate - I certainly agree with this, but having a number of year's experience with it under my belt, I'll weigh in - play with the demo you have, and see what you think.
IMHO, Lightwave's interface is designed *not* to get started quickly with, but to *work* quickly once you have a bit of experience with it. All command buttons are text and nothing but - I've played with 3DSMAX, and after using Lightwave, I find it incredibly frustrating. Um, which of those tiny icons that look like cubes do I hit to make a cube? Oh, that icon with the shaft of light pouring down, does that mean lighting options, volumetric lighting, or what?
I haven't had an opportunity to play much with Maya, but what I've seen gives me the impression that it has the same sort of problem. Lightwave (can you tell what I'm recommending here?) Is a very transparent interface... which I hardly use anymore. One hand on the keyboard, and the other on the mouse or tablet, and I can turn out models and animate very quickly indeed. For me, at least, it feels more like working on an art project, and less like futzing around with a computer program. And, as you said, the renderer is fantastic.
Why does the poster give Fallout Tactics as an example of a failure? I think that's one of the better turn-based action games I've ever played! If the game didn't do well when it first came out, that doesn't mean it was bad - if we're comparing the games biz to the movie biz, there are plenty of titles that bombed on release and found an audience later; Fight Club anyone? eXistenz? Repo Man?
"Joe Barr, a LinuxWorld.com columnist, compares Linux and Windows installations. He expected Windows to be faster and easier since Microsoft has been at it for 21 years. (DOS 1.0 was released 21 years ago today.) It turns out Red Hat is quicker and less manually intensive."
If the Onion ever decides to make fun of Slashdot, they need look no further than this post to realize that it's already been done for them. This is like an article that reads "Cheese Enthusiast Joe Barr compares cheese versus hummus. Turns out, cheese is better!"
1) The ads serve to make buying the movies cheap enough that you can rewatch them over and over to save from reading books or spending time with your kids.
Um, no - the movie costs $50 million to produce and distribute. It makes $100 million in the theatres in the U.S. and abroad. I should watch the ads because that's how the studio can afford to make the DVD available?! They're ads for movies from the same studio. The studio is not a non-profit organization, and forced-viewing ads are annoying because unlike ads in a magazine or a newspaper, you can't ignore them, and they don't subsidize anything.
Give me a break, and while you're at it, how about refraining from insulting everyone here - we're not reading or caring for our kids 'cause we're too busy watching DVDs? I read more than you do, and I don't have dev/kids.
Get off your h1gH h0rsE, d00d. Nobody here was going to mistake you for a studio executive; they have better grasps on reality, and are more subtle.
Does anyone out there still use their floppy?
Are you seriously asking Slashdot readers this?
If they're going to be 25 - 250 m away, wouldn't using a telescopic sight to to pop the mine a few time with a rifle be just as effective, and cheaper?
The performances, particularly Ron Livingstone (hugely underrated actor)...
No kidding. He was fantastic in "Band of Brothers" [IMDB link] as Cpt. Lew Nixon. For anyone who may have seen the show, he was the hard-drinking pal of Major Winters, the noble and heroic leader of the company.
It was a great mini-series - hell, it was a great film - and Livingston was equally great in a second-banana role. He could easily have played it as the 'drunk heroe's buddy', but instead filled the role with humanity. He made a character who had comparatively little screen-time seem like a real person. I hope the real Lewis Nixon is toasting him with a tumbler of Vat 69, wherever he is.
Office managers are putting on their O-face. You know: Oh! Oh!
Let me preface this by saying that I know very little about the mechanics of putting up / maintaining a satellite.
We've all heard about how space garbage, like paint-chip or an errant screw from another satellite, travelling at the ridiculous speeds they do while in orbit routinely knock out other satellites. There's (according to a TLC program I recently saw) actually a crew at NORAD that keeps watch for larger pieces of space junk, and advises the space shuttle on how to avoid them.
So, how is it that this thing is even in one piece? Anyone who has an answer, please respond - this has been bothering me all day.
DC area. The tech firms (and the wind-down of the last administration) burned off a LOT of people in all sectors. Housing is, if not cheap, getting plentiful again, and I'm seeing many more jobs advertised than I was even six months ago. When I got roundfiled by a tech company right after 9/11, it took me about 4 months to find a job. Now I'm doing exactly what I did there - web design and graphics - full time for a university here in town. There are jobs out there.
Not independent, but the Uptown in Washington, DC is still a great place to see a movie. One MASSIVE screen in the house, full balcony, great sound, and projectionists who actually know how to do their job.
Saw all the SW re-releases and Episode I there. Also saw Se7en and Natural Born Killers - very, very cool venue, and perfect for those kinds of sensory-overload movies.
Now I can get carpal neck, as well...
Real "piracy" is rape, pillage, and murder on the high seas or some remote godforsaken mountain pass or desert wadi.
:)
Ah, somebody else who went to see RMS at the DNC the other day
kzinti - I agree that it would have been much more practical to do it with a digital camera, but I'm not sure I agree with you that the purpose wasn't to create great single photos. Have you ever taken a snapshot - 35mm film or otherwise - that you forgot about until you got it back from the lab or pulled it down to your computer that totally surprised you how perfectly composed and exposed it was? A photo that you put no thought into? I kinda see that as the point of this fellow's excericise, and honestly, a fantastic digital photo (at least on a consumer-grade camera) can't hold a candle to a good photo taken on 35mm.
Does anyone honestly want to have onscreen cues telling them to scroll left and right while watching a movie? Let alone do the scrolling while watching a movie? I prefer to watch the movie.
And, barawn, people don't watch movies in widescreen for the 'meaningless information', we watch them that way to see the shots the way the director and DP composed them. A lot of thought and talent (in a good movie) went into that process.
If it had been decided by the printing press manufacturers that the optimum length of a book was 200 pages and that anything over that should be removed or condensed down to 'fit the format', would that make sense? Would it make any more sense for the condensed sections to have a footnote that read 'refer to addendum 4.0.1 for full text'?
Dobbie must punish hisself, Dobbie must!
Ahh... come on. It was probably NOT a final draft (all early drafts of big movies suck), and that writer has a huge hate-on for Rick Berman. Berman produced 'First Contact', and that rocked, no?
Will the leader of the Center for Internet Security be running for President in twenty years as a spoiler, handing the election to oh, say, George P. Bush that time around?