I am suprised that they started beta with a windows client. I figured a quick and simple unix client that could be ported to windows would be the best. Drop the gui, add the functionality. We are cracking codes here, not drawing pretty pictures. Also, with the rise of linux and other OS's in europe, I am suprised they took this intial route. Oh well. It will be there loss of CPU power.
I agree with most of what I have read. But I am also leary of the online dependancy that a lot of geeks rush into. Having said that, with my own personal expereince, it hasn't been the lack of being able to meet people. I am just afraid. Not of females, but of getting hurt. I think that many find it easier for an online romance because if things go sour, you can just block 'em. In real life, you see them in passing and at various events. Every time you see them, you are reminded of the failure. Thus, the internet can shield you from some pain and embarasment.
On the flip side, though, I find my self more open on the net. Maybe it is a again part of the defense mechanism. Online != real life. Well... unless we let it. That is, I guess where all this discusion is heading.
I agree with your statement, when truth is censored, truth is lost. In this case, though, it isn't the truth that bothers me, it is the rest of the responses. If I walked up to you and told you what I heard somebody say about your mother, you would have wished that it had never been said, regarldess of stating a simple fact, this is what I heard. Censorship is a dangerous issue. Facts should not be censored. Peoples comments, maybe, depending on the relevance of what they say. Just because there is a nugget of truth in somebodies answer does not make it a proper statement to make. My problem is less with slashdot as it is with the cDc. I hope that they are more intelligent than what some of there comments leads one to beleive.
After reading some of the cDc answers, I am supprised that they were posted. I know that we were warned, but I see the intellgence and wit of a A.C. post. Had this been posted at any other time, it would have been moderated so far down that nobody would have been anoyed by the answers. I am not looking for censorship or even decency, just that slashdot stay consistent.
I agree completely. Being in the industry, I can honestly say that what people want is a quality story line. This is something that Pixar has been doing for years.
The image quality and realism is nice, but that isn't always the focus. Sometimes realism is purposely ignored and a certain "cartoony" feel is added, on purpose. I am sure that pixar has the technology to create videos that are even more realistic, but choose not to for some of those reasons. Also, the turn around time in a more realistic video is much, much longer.
All these things have to be considered when looking at the quality of a movie. In my mind, Pixar leads the way in computer animated movies.
Hmm... by TV quality I assume that we are talking about 24 frames / sec and maybe 640x480... just to make math easy... Without some sort of compression (which would have to be lossy) you are streaming 7.4 million pixels a second. That is a lot... even if you have one frame a second, you have 300 thousand pixels. I assume that you want more than b/w but even with that, with no gray, we are talking 300k bits. Won't make it on a 56k line. And then we need audio... it will never happen. If we cut the image in half, we have a quarter of the pixels... so we still have 75k pixels at 320 x 240.
You would need some fancy lossy compresion for it to look tv quality and still get through in time...
I think that this is great. Having been a long time reader of/. I have begun to realize the depth and insight of the other readers/posters.
We are journalists, in a strange twisted way. We report what we know to educate others. Doing it in this sort of fashion, I beleive, is an amazing idea and concept.
I am begining to think that having this be open sourced is even more important than having open source software. Software completes tasks, but it does not shape and form our views on a subject. I t is about time that a place takes recognition of the importance of the community effort. People can not pull the wool over the eyes of many, not without a fight.
May the open source movement migrate into and improve all things.
If the turing test is out, and some speach recognition has just been conquered, what should the goal be?
Computer vision is a decent test, but it has to be under such tight constraints. Other senses aren't worth the time, so we are left we only a few options.
Intelligence: Problem Solving Have the computer tackle problems that are slight deviations from known ones with known solutions.
Creativity: Problem Solving with a twist Have the machine solve a problem, and display a logical progression of the solution. The path must be more than just a search in all possible answer space.
Abstract: Problem Solving with no discrete answers Have the computer tackle the 5 people in a 4 person life boat problem... who stays, who goes.
Gullibility: Give the computer the ability to believe some of what it is told, with out question, but also have it try to question and investigate false claims.
Reverse Turing test: Computer takes the place as the moderator and tries to decide who it is talking to. Some factors would need to be ruled out, such as spelling and punctuation.
Any other ideas for good AI benchmarks? The benchmarks have to be there to encourage funding and some research, so some test needs to be decided as a standard.
I have both running on my machine as well... but it is an SGI O2...:)
KDE is slow, GNOME w/ Enlightenment is slow, Window maker is fast, and 4Dwm, SGI's default, is the fastest... the sad thing is that I cant use GNOME or Window Maker with MAYA... the key combo for rotating the scene is the same as moving the window... alt-mouse button...
I would say that it is more than a start. It is what is needed to get linux into some of the industries that it is currently not in. I am excited, the IRIX guys at work are worried about another paltform to support, and the NT guys just don't understand, but I can't wait. About the Mental Ray being better than Maya's render engine. I don't know how much of a difference there is. My studio chose Maya based on two things, the modeler and MEL, the Maya scripting language. I think that both put out very good images, getting to that stage is the important part. Plus, Maya can export to renderman, with a small amount of work.
I am glad that this was finaly announced. I couldn't wait for them to go public with the information because I wanted to brag to all my friends about my new linux render farm. My work has had a tight relationship with A|W and we kept pushing for the Maya port. Now it has happened. The way I see it, porting the renderer is a big deal. Having the modeler to use under linux would be nice, but it is not needed. With current hardware support for 3D still comming arround, a high powered modeler for linux might still be a bit slow. Having the renderer for linux allows people to put togeather cheap render farms. Knowing that maya renders about as fast, or faster on dual proc NT machines as it does on O2 or Octane boxes, a cheap, fast linux solution is awesome. We are looking at beefing up our render farm, also migrating some from the SGI platform to the Intel, but we were waiting for the port to be official.
Re:What about SGI traditional software?
on
SGIs Linux Future
·
· Score: 1
I know that the folks at A|W keep tinkering with the idea for a maya port to linux. I know that where I work, which just migrated to Maya from soft image, wants the port bad. I am responsible for the renderfarm, which is currently 02s and Octanes, and we are looking at getting intel machines, which transaltes into NT right now, and this does not excite me at all. If/when the linux port is made, there will be several happy vegetables in Chicago. -- Tim Toll, Render Architect, Big Idea Productions
If we clone all the animals that we, being the intelectually superior beast that we are, chose to kill for one reason or another, greed, greed and oh... probably greed, where are we going to put them. The world is having problems with taking care of what is there as it is, with no help from us. What about the mountain lions in the US? You think that farmers and people in the burbs, and perhaps even the city would enjoy a bunch of cloned mountain lions dropped on the doorstep? Animals that have been hunted to extinction were done so because they were either more valuable dead, in the way, or accidentaly a byproduct of another stupid choice that we have made. Undoing our mistakes will only cause us more problems. Unless we create enough for zoos. Then, we are abusing our resources. What would the point be, creating an animal that is just for display?
Parallel povray. It has been done. Many times. Look at pvmpov for a good example. I have heard of other places doing much better in scalability. Like linear.
But what if it was possible? What if you could do it with linear scalability? What if you could have 2000 machines opperate at the speed of 2000 machines? Then, it might be possible. More info later...:)
This was a decent review. The author, Kenn Hwang knew his stuff. It is worth the reading.
About the chip... I can't wait. I tried to see if VA Research was going to work on optimization for it. I got the salesmans response of we have other machines, wouldn't you rather buy that?
After seeing the matrix, both on an unnamed friend's computer, and on the big screen, I would have to say that it is very possible to create movies both before and after the matrix. The matrix has one strong point, it has altered reality, and thus by doing so, it has given its self room to change anything that has appeared to have happened in the past, and anything that may happen in the future. After saying this, though, I must point out that it may not be the best way to go. Having the sequel start off by saying... they thought they won, little did they know that it was only an experiment... some sort of X-files twist... Can't we think of better names? I suggest "Matrix: The $Element" and "Matrix: The @Array" for the prequel titles... maybe "Matrix: The %Hash"? And for sequels, The Identity Matrix, The Rotation Matrix and/or The Translation Matrix?
Hmm.... rpm present the license for each package... No thanks... the install time would be impossible... Microsoft presents one for its OS (pluss the annoying apps that come with, can we say IE), and then one for any other seperate application/suite that you install. Maybe, have the licenses installed to something like/var/spool/license and make it the users responsibility to read the licenses for the software installed, if you don't agree with a particular one... use the magic rpm -E.
I hate to burst your would be flame, but Burlington has been on cutting edge stuff for a long time now. Looking to linux as saving money is not the only reason for migrating. If you are using linux just to save money, you are missing the point!
I thin that it is good to see that there is a healthy discussion going on about this article, as opposed to the typical attack of the moronic A.C. posts. Kudos to all of the/. commununity to their efforts to keep this peacefull. I for one think that some religions will change an others will not when looking at the net's influence. The traditional religions have not changed over the last hundreds or thousands of years. The media used to announce and even evangelize has changed, but the religions have not... and those that have should be examined as being religions... I am a Christian and go to a Christian college where we are taught what the forefathers of our faith taught (Calvin, Wesely, Luther, Augustine, Paul) and strangely enough, after all this time, it is what we are still being taught, which I think emphaisises how the truth in a reigion is based upon an ultimate truth. To be fair, there have been some slight swayings in teaching, but it is only in the minor things. The net will and can not change a true religion.
Reminds me of the article I read here... went searching back on it... and here it is. The most interesting is the link to Compaq's itsy. Somrthing that has small multimedia capabilities... could be used as a digital picture viewer with some sound... Maybe they were looking to put Be on it?
Slashdot Mirror
I am suprised that they started beta with a windows client. I figured a quick and simple unix client that could be ported to windows would be the best. Drop the gui, add the functionality.
We are cracking codes here, not drawing pretty pictures.
Also, with the rise of linux and other OS's in europe, I am suprised they took this intial route.
Oh well. It will be there loss of CPU power.
I agree with most of what I have read. But I am also leary of the online dependancy that a lot of geeks rush into.
Having said that, with my own personal expereince, it hasn't been the lack of being able to meet people. I am just afraid. Not of females, but of getting hurt. I think that many find it easier for an online romance because if things go sour, you can just block 'em. In real life, you see them in passing and at various events. Every time you see them, you are reminded of the failure.
Thus, the internet can shield you from some pain and embarasment.
On the flip side, though, I find my self more open on the net. Maybe it is a again part of the defense mechanism. Online != real life. Well... unless we let it. That is, I guess where all this discusion is heading.
I agree with your statement, when truth is censored, truth is lost. In this case, though, it isn't the truth that bothers me, it is the rest of the responses. If I walked up to you and told you what I heard somebody say about your mother, you would have wished that it had never been said, regarldess of stating a simple fact, this is what I heard.
Censorship is a dangerous issue. Facts should not be censored. Peoples comments, maybe, depending on the relevance of what they say. Just because there is a nugget of truth in somebodies answer does not make it a proper statement to make.
My problem is less with slashdot as it is with the cDc. I hope that they are more intelligent than what some of there comments leads one to beleive.
After reading some of the cDc answers, I am supprised that they were posted. I know that we were warned, but I see the intellgence and wit of a A.C. post.
Had this been posted at any other time, it would have been moderated so far down that nobody would have been anoyed by the answers. I am not looking for censorship or even decency, just that slashdot stay consistent.
I agree completely.
Being in the industry, I can honestly say that what people want is a quality story line. This is something that Pixar has been doing for years.
The image quality and realism is nice, but that isn't always the focus. Sometimes realism is purposely ignored and a certain "cartoony" feel is added, on purpose. I am sure that pixar has the technology to create videos that are even more realistic, but choose not to for some of those reasons. Also, the turn around time in a more realistic video is much, much longer.
All these things have to be considered when looking at the quality of a movie. In my mind, Pixar leads the way in computer animated movies.
Hmm... by TV quality I assume that we are talking about 24 frames / sec and maybe 640x480... just to make math easy... Without some sort of compression (which would have to be lossy) you are streaming 7.4 million pixels a second. That is a lot... even if you have one frame a second, you have 300 thousand pixels. I assume that you want more than b/w but even with that, with no gray, we are talking 300k bits. Won't make it on a 56k line. And then we need audio... it will never happen. If we cut the image in half, we have a quarter of the pixels... so we still have 75k pixels at 320 x 240.
You would need some fancy lossy compresion for it to look tv quality and still get through in time...
I think that this is great. Having been a long time reader of /. I have begun to realize the depth and insight of the other readers/posters.
We are journalists, in a strange twisted way. We report what we know to educate others. Doing it in this sort of fashion, I beleive, is an amazing idea and concept.
I am begining to think that having this be open sourced is even more important than having open source software. Software completes tasks, but it does not shape and form our views on a subject. I t is about time that a place takes recognition of the importance of the community effort. People can not pull the wool over the eyes of many, not without a fight.
May the open source movement migrate into and improve all things.
If the turing test is out, and some speach recognition has just been conquered, what should the goal be?
Computer vision is a decent test, but it has to be under such tight constraints. Other senses aren't worth the time, so we are left we only a few options.
Intelligence: Problem Solving
Have the computer tackle problems that are slight deviations from known ones with known solutions.
Creativity: Problem Solving with a twist
Have the machine solve a problem, and display a logical progression of the solution. The path must be more than just a search in all possible answer space.
Abstract: Problem Solving with no discrete answers
Have the computer tackle the 5 people in a 4 person life boat problem... who stays, who goes.
Gullibility: Give the computer the ability to believe some of what it is told, with out question, but also have it try to question and investigate false claims.
Reverse Turing test:
Computer takes the place as the moderator and tries to decide who it is talking to. Some factors would need to be ruled out, such as spelling and punctuation.
Any other ideas for good AI benchmarks?
The benchmarks have to be there to encourage funding and some research, so some test needs to be decided as a standard.
I have both running on my machine as well... but it is an SGI O2... :)
KDE is slow, GNOME w/ Enlightenment is slow, Window maker is fast, and 4Dwm, SGI's default, is the fastest... the sad thing is that I cant use GNOME or Window Maker with MAYA... the key combo for rotating the scene is the same as moving the window... alt-mouse button...
And I almost had my IRIX box fully GNU'ed out...
I would say that it is more than a start. It is what is needed to get linux into some of the industries that it is currently not in. I am excited, the IRIX guys at work are worried about another paltform to support, and the NT guys just don't understand, but I can't wait.
About the Mental Ray being better than Maya's render engine. I don't know how much of a difference there is. My studio chose Maya based on two things, the modeler and MEL, the Maya scripting language. I think that both put out very good images, getting to that stage is the important part. Plus, Maya can export to renderman, with a small amount of work.
I am glad that this was finaly announced. I couldn't wait for them to go public with the information because I wanted to brag to all my friends about my new linux render farm.
My work has had a tight relationship with A|W and
we kept pushing for the Maya port. Now it has happened. The way I see it, porting the renderer is a big deal. Having the modeler to use under linux would be nice, but it is not needed. With current hardware support for 3D still comming arround, a high powered modeler for linux might still be a bit slow.
Having the renderer for linux allows people to put togeather cheap render farms. Knowing that maya renders about as fast, or faster on dual proc NT machines as it does on O2 or Octane boxes, a cheap, fast linux solution is awesome. We are looking at beefing up our render farm, also migrating some from the SGI platform to the Intel, but we were waiting for the port to be official.
I know that the folks at A|W keep tinkering with the idea for a maya port to linux. I know that where I work, which just migrated to Maya from soft image, wants the port bad.
I am responsible for the renderfarm, which is currently 02s and Octanes, and we are looking at getting intel machines, which transaltes into NT right now, and this does not excite me at all.
If/when the linux port is made, there will be several happy vegetables in Chicago.
--
Tim Toll, Render Architect, Big Idea Productions
If we clone all the animals that we, being the intelectually superior beast that we are, chose to kill for one reason or another, greed, greed and oh... probably greed, where are we going to put them. The world is having problems with taking care of what is there as it is, with no help from us. What about the mountain lions in the US? You think that farmers and people in the burbs, and perhaps even the city would enjoy a bunch of cloned mountain lions dropped on the doorstep?
Animals that have been hunted to extinction were done so because they were either more valuable dead, in the way, or accidentaly a byproduct of another stupid choice that we have made. Undoing our mistakes will only cause us more problems. Unless we create enough for zoos. Then, we are abusing our resources. What would the point be, creating an animal that is just for display?
Parallel povray.
It has been done. Many times. Look at pvmpov for a good example. I have heard of other places doing much better in scalability. Like linear.
But what if it was possible? What if you could do it with linear scalability? What if you could have 2000 machines opperate at the speed of 2000 machines? Then, it might be possible. :)
More info later...
This was a decent review. The author, Kenn Hwang knew his stuff. It is worth the reading.
About the chip... I can't wait. I tried to see if VA Research was going to work on optimization for it. I got the salesmans response of we have other machines, wouldn't you rather buy that?
After seeing the matrix, both on an unnamed friend's computer, and on the big screen, I would have to say that it is very possible to create movies both before and after the matrix.
The matrix has one strong point, it has altered reality, and thus by doing so, it has given its self room to change anything that has appeared to have happened in the past, and anything that may happen in the future.
After saying this, though, I must point out that it may not be the best way to go. Having the sequel start off by saying... they thought they won, little did they know that it was only an experiment... some sort of X-files twist...
Can't we think of better names?
I suggest "Matrix: The $Element" and "Matrix: The @Array" for the prequel titles... maybe "Matrix: The %Hash"?
And for sequels, The Identity Matrix, The Rotation Matrix and/or The Translation Matrix?
Hmm.... rpm present the license for each package... /var/spool/license and make it the users responsibility to read the licenses for the software installed, if you don't agree with a particular one... use the magic rpm -E.
No thanks... the install time would be impossible... Microsoft presents one for its OS (pluss the annoying apps that come with, can we say IE), and then one for any other seperate application/suite that you install.
Maybe, have the licenses installed to something like
I hate to burst your would be flame, but Burlington has been on cutting edge stuff for a long time now. Looking to linux as saving money is not the only reason for migrating.
If you are using linux just to save money, you are missing the point!
I thin that it is good to see that there is a healthy discussion going on about this article, as opposed to the typical attack of the moronic A.C. posts. Kudos to all of the /. commununity to their efforts to keep this peacefull.
I for one think that some religions will change an others will not when looking at the net's influence. The traditional religions have not changed over the last hundreds or thousands of years. The media used to announce and even evangelize has changed, but the religions have not... and those that have should be examined as being religions...
I am a Christian and go to a Christian college where we are taught what the forefathers of our faith taught (Calvin, Wesely, Luther, Augustine, Paul) and strangely enough, after all this time, it is what we are still being taught, which I think emphaisises how the truth in a reigion is based upon an ultimate truth.
To be fair, there have been some slight swayings in teaching, but it is only in the minor things.
The net will and can not change a true religion.
Tim Toll
ttoll@css.tayloru.edu
#!/bin/bash
sed s/sins/blood/g ~ttoll/old.life > ~ttoll/new.life
rm -r old.*
chown -R jesus:wheel ~ttoll/*
Reminds me of the article I read here... went searching back on it... and here it is . .
The most interesting is the link to Compaq's itsy
Somrthing that has small multimedia capabilities... could be used as a digital picture viewer with some sound...
Maybe they were looking to put Be on it?