Hmmm..... Fancy 3D graphics? Unable to describe "programmers" without the use of quotes. Frequent uses of phrases such as "Come on!" "FFS" "Don't do this to me!!".
Hardly anyone who works 5 days a week flipping burgers will go and eat at macdonalds on their day off. It's no different in the games industry. There is however one small detail you may be missing, so time for a car analogy: If you were a life long car racing fan (and go to watch races on your weekends), if you then got a job at a racing team learning from the best in the business. Would you spend your time off:
a) Going to watch races as per usual?
b) Building you own race car in your garage?
Thats pretty much what you will find in the games industry. The process of developing a game is far more interesting than actually playing them (you want to know what the worlds best gaming sandbox enviornment is?? Visual C++!). You might spend time playing a game to work out how a particular mechanic works, how they managed to create a certain effect, etc. But playing them? Not so much. You are more likely to want to spend your time making games (because you can, and it's more interesting anyway) than spending time playing other peoples. You will not find people passionate about the 12th release in the series of sonic, but that does not mean they are not passionate about gaming. Quite the opposite infact....
You also find the same in the film industry. A film director will watch a film to analyse it for how the film was put together, what worked, what didn't, etc. They are not watching a film for enjoyments sake, and yet no one would even consider telling them that they aren't passionate about film..... sadly, everyone critisises us poor game developers:(
Research done in post-war Sweden actually showed that those with the highest IQ could all touch their elbows with their toungue. Another strange factoid for you....
Ok, so we don't see them all at once. To be honest, if a middleware company can't write a furstum cull, they would be closed by now!
But what do they do then when they are not seen? Sod off for a holiday in the cloud? Seriously. I think you are missing the point. Where the hell is this data being stored, and what is the size of the data set? It's got to be in memory *at some point*, and hard disk if it's not. So how much ram/disk space will this thing use exactly? Ok, so 'most of it is calculated, somewhat like fractals', well ok. But which bits? Are the trees fractals (or L-systems maybe)?. Just the leaves? The Models of the rocks they have scanned in? The 3ds max models they have converted to point clouds? The whole island? Answers to these questions need to be provided before any games developer would even bother looking at this tech. Either it's all procedural (in which case it's utterly useless for game designers), it's primarily procedural (in which case the art director will struggle to achieve a consistent look), it's partially procedural (which will annoy the modelling & texturing departments), or it's a load of made up lies. I'm erring towards the latter.....
(I've done some things on computers that were 'impossible', I just didn't accept the limitations and did something nobody had thought of before. Many cool pieces of programming were considered impossible before someone went and pulled it off anyhow. So the way I see it, if I and other people can do the 'impossible' with software, I see no reason a bunch of other smart people can't do it. In a decade or two after release, nobody will understand why it took so long for someone to do it this way, just wait.)
No, things that are impossible to do on computers, are simply impossible to do. Time travel for example. That's impossible. Storing 21 trillion (as they claim in the video) anythings on a computer is impossible on current gen hardware. Unless they are expecting the PS4 to ship with 20,000Gb+ ram, it will be still be impossible on next generation of hardware. If you can show me how to store 21 trillion unique and random values on a PS3, well sir, I shall forever be your servant because I'd have a lot to learn from you.
It would be interesting (to me, as a graphics programmer in the games industry), if they stopped bullshitting. The claims in that video, when writtten down, are absolutely absurd. 20,000Gb of Ram. That's right. 20,000Gb of ram (at least!) to store the number of 'atoms' they claim they are displaying. Now, that simply can't be true - so they must either have left out a hell of a lot of information (such as, we are drawing the same object 20,000,000 times, or we are throwing everything at some procedural geometry shader), or they are out and out lying.
The claims made by the Intel demo were always realistic. Most of the implementation details were described, so that you could say "ok, it's good for that, not so good for that". Now listen again to the claims in that video. "Trillions of polygons", "Trillions of objects", "Infinite levels of detail", "all @ 20fps", "Simple tool to magically convert polygons (that we've been lambasting for the last 5mins) into an infinite detail point cloud (thereby adding detail to the mesh that was not there to begin with? WTF?)"". That video has lots of figures, without any believable facts. This is a hoax, or an exceptionally ill-advised way to generate developer interest in their middleware (if it even exists at all - which I doubt).
Allegedly they have 21 trillion atoms in that scene. Now pardon my skepticism, but if that's say 1byte per 'atom' (a massivey concservative estimate), then you'll need about 20,000Gb of data storage alone. Now. They are either a) lying, or b) bending the truth massively (i.e. we only have 1 model, instanced 200,,000,000 times). They also claim that they can convert a polygon mesh into a point cloud. Well. That's not hard to do, but you will be inherently limited by the detail of the original mesh, so it's still going to have the same jaggies as before. i.e. It won't look much different
They also claim that 'poly counts are pretty low in games'. Well. Compared to the raw number of triangles your average geforce card can theoretically process, that's very true - mainly because the pixel shader cost tends to be the biggest bottleneck in graphics at the moment. I can't see many ways this tech would be able to reduce that burdon to be honest.
Imho. This tech is nothing more than vapourware (or more likely, just some lame youtube troll spouting some unrealistic nonsense over a video pre-rendered out of 3ds max).
It's pretty useless really. How many people can afford to buy a house that covers 12,000 sqr miles? What's the point in that? When will technology companies learn that enough is enough! It's just like the time Apple went and released the iPad. My iPhone squeezed in my trouser pockets just fine, but I had to get all my trousers upgraded to the 'apple approved trouser pocket size' when I got my iPad, and to add insult to injury, they only went and bloody removed the 'phone' part. This is just yet another unreasonable attempt at extracting more money from consumers, and I for one am disgusted! Right. I'd better go start saving for a larger house....
In my case, they hired me because of the code library (i.e. it has been very very useful to them). I was paid a fee, we had a license drawn up to cover the code, and I retain the copyright and modifications (which have primarily been minor bug fixes) when I leave the company. It's simple enough to do. You've just got to stump up some cash and see a lawyer before you sign anything (although in my case, having a sister who happens to be an IP lawyer helps quite a lot!)
Hi Llama, I have no such agreement. It was done on my own time with the company’s full support. They knew it was open source. I think now that I’m not at the company, they want to “control” it.
'They' would only know about it if 'He' had told them about it. The rule of thumb:
If you don't want your employer to know what you do in your spare time, don't tell them!
What makes me most suspicious though is his claim that the company 'wants to control it'. If the company gave him their 'full support', and the company 'wants to control it', one has to assume it has become a fairly integral library within their codebase. Libraries don't magically end up in that situation, they are normally championed by a lone developer (who then integrates it, and gives the CTO assurances that the lib is covered by a nice permissive MIT license so as to not cause problems for the company later). I'm sorry, but this dev MUST have been the one to champion the code, and MUST have committed it to their codebase, and MUST have made at least one change to the code during work hours (otherwise none of this story makes any sense whatsoever!).
Recently I found out that they have removed all of the licenses from the files (GPL and MIT), gave it a silly name, and have the intention of marketing it as a product.
So, sections were covered by MIT then? (That nice permissive license development studios like to see..... ). So this isn't as simple as a GPL violation then? Which bits are GPL? Which bits are MIT? Or do both licenses cover the same code? Were you the one to commit the code into the companies repository? Did the company only start using it AFTER he left? (which I very much doubt)
This guy actually reminds me of someone we 'let go' a couple of years ago (definitely someone different to the guy in the article!). He worked all day and all night writing an 'awesome' (in his eyes) framework to underpin our codebase. He'd normally turn up between 3 and 5 hours late every morning, because he'd been hacking away on this framework until the early hours. Because he was never around, we'd be having to continually fix the builds every morning due to changes made at 4am. He would choose to ignore everyones comments (about the apalling performance, failure to adhere to coding standards, non-existent documentation, numerous bugs, hideous compile times, etc etc), not because the comments weren't valid, but because he believed that putting in so many hours gave him the right to call the shots (and that everyone should just start using it more to see the awesomeness). The framework never actually did what we needed, because he was never there to listen to feedback. The situation was unworkable, the guy was let go, and we rewrote the thing from the ground up so that it would actually be a benefit to the team rather than a massive hinderance.
So yeah. Back to the article. Why was this guy sacked exactly? He wasn't turning up 3 hours late every morning was he?
The guy spent 2 years of company time developing some code which the company paid him to develop. If I were working in a car factory, I would not expect to take all the finished cars home with me at the end of the day....
You didn't check the article. Note the use of 'we'
I was terminated from a company that I worked day and night for for about 5 years. During the last 2 years of that time, I created a simple web framework and contributed it to open source. We had always used open source, so it was high time we became a contributor!
He developed an OSS framework on company time, on company machines, within the company offices, and was then laid off. The company (who owns the copyright) has now decided to change the license under which it ships the code (with the hope of productizing it in future). I think the guy somehow believes that if you choose to release code under a GPL / MIT, you should be shackled to that license for the rest of eternity. The copyright holder can do what they like. This guy is just pissed he can no longer use the fruits of his labour.
That very much depends on your contract. My contract clearly states any code written at work (or at home) belongs to the company. If that isn't something you're willing to agree to, don't sign the contract. (I actually had a couple of clauses added to my contract to cover one or two of my projects - which is also something you can do!)
They only own 40% of it. Shareholders (i.e. the other 60%) would not want to see a convicted criminal become CEO, especially when that same person was involved in a scandal that closed the NOTW, and wiped millions off the value of their assets.....
I think you are missing the small detail that the politicians were happy to brush the affair under the carpet. It is the politicians who are responding to public pressure, not leading the show as you seem to think.
I am extremely happy to see the back of the news of the world, and I really hope the murdochs get the book thrown at them. The opinions (not facts, but opinions!) splashed across the front pages of the notw (and the sun) have always made me hang my head in shame to be in this country. This isn't just about Milly Dowler, it's been going on much longer than that. The NOTW/Sun supported the invasion of Iraq. They supported the invasion of Afghanistan. They supported 'sending the immigrants back'. They whip up anger regading polish workers. They supported the 'NO' campaign (in the recent referendum on voting reform that would change the ridiculous inequality in the voting system). Supported the Poll tax. Supported increasing univerisity fees (by 200% per year). Claimed hillsborough was the result of hooligans. In short, if there was a political decision to be made, you could be sure that the Murdoch rags would be in favour of choosing the option that would hurt the working classes most..... If there was ever an opinion offered, it would be some homophobic or racist rant. These people do not represent the people of this country.
We can get rid of bad politicians every few years. The opportunity to get rid of murdoch comes along once in a lifetime....
Slashdot Mirror
Call me old fashioned, but I'd prefer to see rows and rows and rows of blinky lights. No practical reason for this. I just like blinky lights.
Irix running on an SGi machine (ILM would have had hundreds of the things lying around....)
Hmmm..... Fancy 3D graphics? Unable to describe "programmers" without the use of quotes. Frequent uses of phrases such as "Come on!" "FFS" "Don't do this to me!!".
:p
You do realise you are describing Window Aero?
Hardly anyone who works 5 days a week flipping burgers will go and eat at macdonalds on their day off. It's no different in the games industry. There is however one small detail you may be missing, so time for a car analogy: If you were a life long car racing fan (and go to watch races on your weekends), if you then got a job at a racing team learning from the best in the business. Would you spend your time off:
:(
a) Going to watch races as per usual?
b) Building you own race car in your garage?
Thats pretty much what you will find in the games industry. The process of developing a game is far more interesting than actually playing them (you want to know what the worlds best gaming sandbox enviornment is?? Visual C++!). You might spend time playing a game to work out how a particular mechanic works, how they managed to create a certain effect, etc. But playing them? Not so much. You are more likely to want to spend your time making games (because you can, and it's more interesting anyway) than spending time playing other peoples. You will not find people passionate about the 12th release in the series of sonic, but that does not mean they are not passionate about gaming. Quite the opposite infact....
You also find the same in the film industry. A film director will watch a film to analyse it for how the film was put together, what worked, what didn't, etc. They are not watching a film for enjoyments sake, and yet no one would even consider telling them that they aren't passionate about film..... sadly, everyone critisises us poor game developers
Research done in post-war Sweden actually showed that those with the highest IQ could all touch their elbows with their toungue. Another strange factoid for you....
Ok, so we don't see them all at once. To be honest, if a middleware company can't write a furstum cull, they would be closed by now!
But what do they do then when they are not seen? Sod off for a holiday in the cloud? Seriously. I think you are missing the point. Where the hell is this data being stored, and what is the size of the data set? It's got to be in memory *at some point*, and hard disk if it's not. So how much ram/disk space will this thing use exactly? Ok, so 'most of it is calculated, somewhat like fractals', well ok. But which bits? Are the trees fractals (or L-systems maybe)?. Just the leaves? The Models of the rocks they have scanned in? The 3ds max models they have converted to point clouds? The whole island? Answers to these questions need to be provided before any games developer would even bother looking at this tech. Either it's all procedural (in which case it's utterly useless for game designers), it's primarily procedural (in which case the art director will struggle to achieve a consistent look), it's partially procedural (which will annoy the modelling & texturing departments), or it's a load of made up lies. I'm erring towards the latter.....
(I've done some things on computers that were 'impossible', I just didn't accept the limitations and did something nobody had thought of before. Many cool pieces of programming were considered impossible before someone went and pulled it off anyhow. So the way I see it, if I and other people can do the 'impossible' with software, I see no reason a bunch of other smart people can't do it. In a decade or two after release, nobody will understand why it took so long for someone to do it this way, just wait.)
No, things that are impossible to do on computers, are simply impossible to do. Time travel for example. That's impossible. Storing 21 trillion (as they claim in the video) anythings on a computer is impossible on current gen hardware. Unless they are expecting the PS4 to ship with 20,000Gb+ ram, it will be still be impossible on next generation of hardware. If you can show me how to store 21 trillion unique and random values on a PS3, well sir, I shall forever be your servant because I'd have a lot to learn from you.
It would be interesting (to me, as a graphics programmer in the games industry), if they stopped bullshitting. The claims in that video, when writtten down, are absolutely absurd. 20,000Gb of Ram. That's right. 20,000Gb of ram (at least!) to store the number of 'atoms' they claim they are displaying. Now, that simply can't be true - so they must either have left out a hell of a lot of information (such as, we are drawing the same object 20,000,000 times, or we are throwing everything at some procedural geometry shader), or they are out and out lying.
The claims made by the Intel demo were always realistic. Most of the implementation details were described, so that you could say "ok, it's good for that, not so good for that". Now listen again to the claims in that video. "Trillions of polygons", "Trillions of objects", "Infinite levels of detail", "all @ 20fps", "Simple tool to magically convert polygons (that we've been lambasting for the last 5mins) into an infinite detail point cloud (thereby adding detail to the mesh that was not there to begin with? WTF?)"". That video has lots of figures, without any believable facts. This is a hoax, or an exceptionally ill-advised way to generate developer interest in their middleware (if it even exists at all - which I doubt).
Allegedly they have 21 trillion atoms in that scene. Now pardon my skepticism, but if that's say 1byte per 'atom' (a massivey concservative estimate), then you'll need about 20,000Gb of data storage alone. Now. They are either a) lying, or b) bending the truth massively (i.e. we only have 1 model, instanced 200,,000,000 times). They also claim that they can convert a polygon mesh into a point cloud. Well. That's not hard to do, but you will be inherently limited by the detail of the original mesh, so it's still going to have the same jaggies as before. i.e. It won't look much different
They also claim that 'poly counts are pretty low in games'. Well. Compared to the raw number of triangles your average geforce card can theoretically process, that's very true - mainly because the pixel shader cost tends to be the biggest bottleneck in graphics at the moment. I can't see many ways this tech would be able to reduce that burdon to be honest.
Imho. This tech is nothing more than vapourware (or more likely, just some lame youtube troll spouting some unrealistic nonsense over a video pre-rendered out of 3ds max).
It's pretty useless really. How many people can afford to buy a house that covers 12,000 sqr miles? What's the point in that? When will technology companies learn that enough is enough! It's just like the time Apple went and released the iPad. My iPhone squeezed in my trouser pockets just fine, but I had to get all my trousers upgraded to the 'apple approved trouser pocket size' when I got my iPad, and to add insult to injury, they only went and bloody removed the 'phone' part. This is just yet another unreasonable attempt at extracting more money from consumers, and I for one am disgusted! Right. I'd better go start saving for a larger house....
I wouldn't. Quaternions require highly specialied protractors capable of measuring the imaginary.
Yup. England is a lot like Sparta (with a bit more rain)..... Now. Stand near my well and say that!
Madness? This is England!
In my case, they hired me because of the code library (i.e. it has been very very useful to them). I was paid a fee, we had a license drawn up to cover the code, and I retain the copyright and modifications (which have primarily been minor bug fixes) when I leave the company. It's simple enough to do. You've just got to stump up some cash and see a lawyer before you sign anything (although in my case, having a sister who happens to be an IP lawyer helps quite a lot!)
Later he also says:
Hi Llama, I have no such agreement. It was done on my own time with the company’s full support. They knew it was open source. I think now that I’m not at the company, they want to “control” it.
'They' would only know about it if 'He' had told them about it. The rule of thumb:
If you don't want your employer to know what you do in your spare time, don't tell them!
What makes me most suspicious though is his claim that the company 'wants to control it'. If the company gave him their 'full support', and the company 'wants to control it', one has to assume it has become a fairly integral library within their codebase. Libraries don't magically end up in that situation, they are normally championed by a lone developer (who then integrates it, and gives the CTO assurances that the lib is covered by a nice permissive MIT license so as to not cause problems for the company later). I'm sorry, but this dev MUST have been the one to champion the code, and MUST have committed it to their codebase, and MUST have made at least one change to the code during work hours (otherwise none of this story makes any sense whatsoever!).
Recently I found out that they have removed all of the licenses from the files (GPL and MIT), gave it a silly name, and have the intention of marketing it as a product.
So, sections were covered by MIT then? (That nice permissive license development studios like to see..... ). So this isn't as simple as a GPL violation then? Which bits are GPL? Which bits are MIT? Or do both licenses cover the same code? Were you the one to commit the code into the companies repository? Did the company only start using it AFTER he left? (which I very much doubt)
This guy actually reminds me of someone we 'let go' a couple of years ago (definitely someone different to the guy in the article!). He worked all day and all night writing an 'awesome' (in his eyes) framework to underpin our codebase. He'd normally turn up between 3 and 5 hours late every morning, because he'd been hacking away on this framework until the early hours. Because he was never around, we'd be having to continually fix the builds every morning due to changes made at 4am. He would choose to ignore everyones comments (about the apalling performance, failure to adhere to coding standards, non-existent documentation, numerous bugs, hideous compile times, etc etc), not because the comments weren't valid, but because he believed that putting in so many hours gave him the right to call the shots (and that everyone should just start using it more to see the awesomeness). The framework never actually did what we needed, because he was never there to listen to feedback. The situation was unworkable, the guy was let go, and we rewrote the thing from the ground up so that it would actually be a benefit to the team rather than a massive hinderance.
So yeah. Back to the article. Why was this guy sacked exactly? He wasn't turning up 3 hours late every morning was he?
Hate to see people ripped-off by their employer.
The guy spent 2 years of company time developing some code which the company paid him to develop. If I were working in a car factory, I would not expect to take all the finished cars home with me at the end of the day....
I was terminated from a company that I worked day and night for for about 5 years. During the last 2 years of that time, I created a simple web framework and contributed it to open source. We had always used open source, so it was high time we became a contributor!
He developed an OSS framework on company time, on company machines, within the company offices, and was then laid off. The company (who owns the copyright) has now decided to change the license under which it ships the code (with the hope of productizing it in future). I think the guy somehow believes that if you choose to release code under a GPL / MIT, you should be shackled to that license for the rest of eternity. The copyright holder can do what they like. This guy is just pissed he can no longer use the fruits of his labour.
That very much depends on your contract. My contract clearly states any code written at work (or at home) belongs to the company. If that isn't something you're willing to agree to, don't sign the contract. (I actually had a couple of clauses added to my contract to cover one or two of my projects - which is also something you can do!)
However this tends to be done *after* the hazardess materials have been removed from the ships....
I assume they'll make efforts to collect it when it comes down.
If by 'collect' you mean 'sink', then yes they will make efforts to 'collect' it....
If a module of the ISS landed in my backgarden I'd be fairly chuffed (and I'd be calling up Xzibit to come round and pimp my ride)
It's called the 'above average effect'. Everyone thinks they are above average, which statistically speaking can't be true....
They only own 40% of it. Shareholders (i.e. the other 60%) would not want to see a convicted criminal become CEO, especially when that same person was involved in a scandal that closed the NOTW, and wiped millions off the value of their assets.....
News International != News Corp.
One is the parent, one is the wayward child....
I think you are missing the small detail that the politicians were happy to brush the affair under the carpet. It is the politicians who are responding to public pressure, not leading the show as you seem to think.
I am extremely happy to see the back of the news of the world, and I really hope the murdochs get the book thrown at them. The opinions (not facts, but opinions!) splashed across the front pages of the notw (and the sun) have always made me hang my head in shame to be in this country. This isn't just about Milly Dowler, it's been going on much longer than that. The NOTW/Sun supported the invasion of Iraq. They supported the invasion of Afghanistan. They supported 'sending the immigrants back'. They whip up anger regading polish workers. They supported the 'NO' campaign (in the recent referendum on voting reform that would change the ridiculous inequality in the voting system). Supported the Poll tax. Supported increasing univerisity fees (by 200% per year). Claimed hillsborough was the result of hooligans. In short, if there was a political decision to be made, you could be sure that the Murdoch rags would be in favour of choosing the option that would hurt the working classes most..... If there was ever an opinion offered, it would be some homophobic or racist rant. These people do not represent the people of this country.
We can get rid of bad politicians every few years. The opportunity to get rid of murdoch comes along once in a lifetime....