There are a bunch of problems with Fox's other sites as well. Check out Fox Searchlight. Similar issues. But you can see free pre-screenings if you figure it out. If you don't... Shame on you.
IF anyone's interested, the dino on the http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato.html page was one of of Entropy's flagship images. Entropy was a pay-to-play renderer made under the renderman Spec by a they guy who wrote BMRT. Pixar sued the company that made both of the renderman compliant renderers, and basically forced them into business with Nvidia, who quickly snatched up the company and paid off Pixar. Nvidia had been trying to come up with a hardware shader language like that of renderman, and thusly came out with the shoddy and less than capable CG shader language. Unfortunately, no matter how good that card looks on screen, it's still only going to be a preview render. Straight 35mm film is rendered out at 2048x1556, and you wouldn't believe how tedious CG work is with every single person above you telling you to correct every little thing. The one thing this will do is help look-dev folk and shader-writers out. They get paid enough as is though. Oh.... you might be interested to know, that most of the renderfarms are now at least 1/2-2/3 x86 machines running Linux, and they have been for the past 3 years. No large studios are using SGIs anymore, but surprisingly a lot of the boutiques are using OSX. I guess that's what happens when Apple takes a hint from MS, and buys(Shake) what they want instead of making it.
Something the articles don't mention is that the autotote system is ancient. The software runs on old Vax systems. The way autotote is installed is by duplicating a hard drive and putting it into a "new" vax.
There are so many of those boxes floating around the country that this must happen all the time. As most people probably know banks are scammed on a daily basis, but they don't report it to papers because it would cause public relations problem. The stolen money is funneled off into operating costs in quarterly reports. With a decent amount of social engineering one could probably rip one out of any of the off-track facilities in the country. Because of the nature of the business, which is shady in the first place, gambling does not usually attract, on the lower levels, the brightest and most capable people. On the highest level it is always a matter of fighting against the laws, whether it be slot machines, online gambling or horseracing.
Take for example the state lotteries. It's gambling, pure and simple, except casino's must guarantee a certain percentage of payouts.
In California:
This weeks lottery is worth $17 million. If you choose the cash payout, you divide $17 million in half to make $8.5 million.
So now you have an $8.5 million prize awarded to you by the state, correct? No. Because that $8.5 million payout is income according to the state you've put yourself into a tax bracket that is nearly 50% in income tax. So divide that $8.5 million by 2 again. You now have roughly $4.25 million. But wait.. there's more. Take the income that you made for the rest of that year. Say you make $90K per annum, you've just raised your tax on that income as well. Now you owe bak taxes on all the other income you've made that year.
I'm not saying I wouldn't like to win the lottery. If you look at the details, it's more than obvious it's the dealers game no matter what you do. $3 million is merely a drop in the bucket for these companies. The only difference is that the press got a hold of a police report this time.
heh.. it's kind of funny... I never read the replies to posts... maybe I should now.
I'll troll for some of the stuff on LiveJournal. Actually there's a community on LiveJournal, if I can find it, where they've basically been doing a handoff story for the last year. It's pretty neat. Each post is by someone different continuing the story.
That's waaay old news... nothing new. No offense, but people should do research before going off and saying they're doing something original. I have several friends that have similar projects, after having done it myself. I sometimes wonder if people just want to get their names in lights, or just want to do something unique.
5. nVidia is touting CG as a compiled shader... just like one has to compile shaders for renderman.
6. Fill in the next 2 years here of having look development tools for major graphics studios that look close enough to the final renders that it speeds up FX work to near realtime for shading and lighting.
I replied to the original article, but the company was "The Other 90%" I worked there about 8 years ago. The product was call "MindDrive" The same guy who started the company was the one who kill Atari. I had to print him out his email every morning.
Needless to say the company failed. People want to "play" video games... not teach their bodies how to play them... It took me a good 3 months to get any real control over the system. Even then there are only two ways you can control a game. pretty much... yes or no. left or right. etc. You can control the degrees in between, but that doesn't make for a fun game.
About 10 years ago I used to work at a place called the Other 90%. The ownerr was a guy named Ron something or other. He was the guy who killed Atari. We made a device called the MindDrive which basically was a finger unit that used galvonic skin response.
Needless to say it was useless for gamers. Gamers want to sit down and play games, not teach their bodies to react to their thoughts.
A radio station in San Francisco, where we were located, found that a peeled grape could play the games better than they could.
There's a lot more to gvs than relaxing.
This has been done before... I wish companies would do their research every once-in-a-while.
There's nobody in the animation industry that thinks it's a good idea. Not directors, not animators, not modelers. The article talks about Character animation. Everything else has been out there for a long time. Particle simulations, rigid and soft body dynamics, and cloth sims are all standard in the industry now. But, and this is a big BUT, after the simulation is run there is ALWAYS tweaking that must be done by an artist. It might work for simple physics, but once again CNN is reporting 5 years too late.
The problem is hardly that the people who teach linux are too smart. unix is like chess... any idiot can learn it they just have to be able to do repetetive tasks. The problem is that unix geeks are elitist. shell, shell, shell. Most home users don't even know that a shell exists in MS OSes.
Linux geeks are probably even more elitist because of their view on opensource applications and how much better they are, etc, etc. Linux, for all practical purposes is great, but you don't teach sendmail to someone who only wants to check their email.
To all who care below is the security bulletin from MS. Also, "Netscape Engineers are weenies," is not a password and does not work without the correct Key. The following is a Security Bulletin from the Microsoft Product Security Notification Service. Please do not reply to this message, as it was sent from an unattended mailbox. ******************************** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS00-025) - -------------------------------------- Procedure Available to Eliminate "Link View Server-Side Component" Vulnerability Originally Posted: April 14, 2000 Summary ======= A procedure is available to eliminate a security vulnerability in several web server products. The vulnerability could allow a user who has privileges on a web server to read certain files from other web sites hosted on the same computer. Frequently asked questions regarding this vulnerability and the procedure can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /fq00-025.asp Issue ===== Dvwssr.dll is a server-side component used to support the Link View feature in Visual Interdev 1.0. By design, it provides.asp files to clients who have web authoring privileges on the server. However, it does not properly restrict the files that a web author can request, with the result that a user who has web authoring privileges on one web site could request.asp files from anywhere on the server, including other web sites hosted on it. However, even with this vulnerability, the component would only comply with the request if the specific file granted read access to the user. There are some significant restrictions to this vulnerability: - Only servers hosting multiple web sites could be affected by it - Only a user who has web authoring privileges for a site on the server could request a file. He would need to know the name and location of the file on the server. - The files would only be sent if their permissions granted read access to the particular user who requested them. In most cases, this would mean that the files granted read access to the Everyone group - Only.asp files (and global.asa, which is a special-case.asp file) could be retrieved. Affected Software Versions ========================== The affected component is part of Visual Interdev 1.0. However, it is a server-side component, and is included in the following products: - Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack - Personal Web Server 4.0, which ships as part of Windows 95 and 98 - Front Page 98 Server Extensions NOTE: 1. Windows 2000 is not affected by this vulnerability. Upgrading from an affected Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 removes the vulnerability. 2. Installing Office 2000 Server Extensions on an affected server removes this vulnerability. 3. Installing FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions on an affected server removes this vulnerability. Remediation =========== To eliminate this vulnerability, customers who are hosting web sites should delete all copies of the file Dvwssr.dll from their servers. The FAQ provides step-by-step instructions for doing this. The only functionality lost by deleting the file is the ability to generate link views using Visual Interdev 1.0.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a bunch of problems with Fox's other sites as well. Check out Fox Searchlight. Similar issues. But you can see free pre-screenings if you figure it out. If you don't... Shame on you.
IF anyone's interested, the dino on the http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato.html page was one of of Entropy's flagship images. Entropy was a pay-to-play renderer made under the renderman Spec by a they guy who wrote BMRT. Pixar sued the company that made both of the renderman compliant renderers, and basically forced them into business with Nvidia, who quickly snatched up the company and paid off Pixar. Nvidia had been trying to come up with a hardware shader language like that of renderman, and thusly came out with the shoddy and less than capable CG shader language. Unfortunately, no matter how good that card looks on screen, it's still only going to be a preview render. Straight 35mm film is rendered out at 2048x1556, and you wouldn't believe how tedious CG work is with every single person above you telling you to correct every little thing. The one thing this will do is help look-dev folk and shader-writers out. They get paid enough as is though. Oh.... you might be interested to know, that most of the renderfarms are now at least 1/2-2/3 x86 machines running Linux, and they have been for the past 3 years. No large studios are using SGIs anymore, but surprisingly a lot of the boutiques are using OSX. I guess that's what happens when Apple takes a hint from MS, and buys(Shake) what they want instead of making it.
Something the articles don't mention is that the autotote system is ancient. The software runs on old Vax systems. The way autotote is installed is by duplicating a hard drive and putting it into a "new" vax.
There are so many of those boxes floating around the country that this must happen all the time. As most people probably know banks are scammed on a daily basis, but they don't report it to papers because it would cause public relations problem. The stolen money is funneled off into operating costs in quarterly reports. With a decent amount of social engineering one could probably rip one out of any of the off-track facilities in the country. Because of the nature of the business, which is shady in the first place, gambling does not usually attract, on the lower levels, the brightest and most capable people. On the highest level it is always a matter of fighting against the laws, whether it be slot machines, online gambling or horseracing.
Take for example the state lotteries. It's gambling, pure and simple, except casino's must guarantee a certain percentage of payouts.
In California:
This weeks lottery is worth $17 million. If you choose the cash payout, you divide $17 million in half to make $8.5 million.
So now you have an $8.5 million prize awarded to you by the state, correct? No. Because that $8.5 million payout is income according to the state you've put yourself into a tax bracket that is nearly 50% in income tax. So divide that $8.5 million by 2 again. You now have roughly $4.25 million. But wait.. there's more. Take the income that you made for the rest of that year. Say you make $90K per annum, you've just raised your tax on that income as well. Now you owe bak taxes on all the other income you've made that year.
I'm not saying I wouldn't like to win the lottery. If you look at the details, it's more than obvious it's the dealers game no matter what you do. $3 million is merely a drop in the bucket for these companies. The only difference is that the press got a hold of a police report this time.
heh.. it's kind of funny... I never read the replies to posts... maybe I should now.
I'll troll for some of the stuff on LiveJournal. Actually there's a community on LiveJournal, if I can find it, where they've basically been doing a handoff story for the last year. It's pretty neat. Each post is by someone different continuing the story.
Cheers
Entropy is being dicontinued. :(
Really... we're already looking at new renderers at work... it looks like we're going for PRman11.
That's waaay old news... nothing new. No offense, but people should do research before going off and saying they're doing something original. I have several friends that have similar projects, after having done it myself. I sometimes wonder if people just want to get their names in lights, or just want to do something unique.
1. It's not C.
2. Exluna was bought by nVidia.
3. Exluna makes 2 renderman compliant renderers.
4. Shaders are used by renderman.
5. nVidia is touting CG as a compiled shader... just like one has to compile shaders for renderman.
6. Fill in the next 2 years here of having look development tools for major graphics studios that look close enough to the final renders that it speeds up FX work to near realtime for shading and lighting.
If you can, go to college... you might want to change careers in 5, 10, or 20 years... if you don't go to college you'll limit your options heavily.
I replied to the original article, but the company was "The Other 90%" I worked there about 8 years ago. The product was call "MindDrive" The same guy who started the company was the one who kill Atari. I had to print him out his email every morning.
Needless to say the company failed. People want to "play" video games... not teach their bodies how to play them... It took me a good 3 months to get any real control over the system. Even then there are only two ways you can control a game. pretty much... yes or no. left or right. etc. You can control the degrees in between, but that doesn't make for a fun game.
No... it's what lie detectors use. It monitors the amount of charge going through your skin, pulse, and several other factors.
About 10 years ago I used to work at a place called the Other 90%. The ownerr was a guy named Ron something or other. He was the guy who killed Atari. We made a device called the MindDrive which basically was a finger unit that used galvonic skin response.
Needless to say it was useless for gamers. Gamers want to sit down and play games, not teach their bodies to react to their thoughts.
A radio station in San Francisco, where we were located, found that a peeled grape could play the games better than they could.
There's a lot more to gvs than relaxing.
This has been done before... I wish companies would do their research every once-in-a-while.
There's nobody in the animation industry that thinks it's a good idea. Not directors, not animators, not modelers. The article talks about Character animation. Everything else has been out there for a long time. Particle simulations, rigid and soft body dynamics, and cloth sims are all standard in the industry now. But, and this is a big BUT, after the simulation is run there is ALWAYS tweaking that must be done by an artist. It might work for simple physics, but once again CNN is reporting 5 years too late.
The problem is hardly that the people who teach linux are too smart. unix is like chess... any idiot can learn it they just have to be able to do repetetive tasks. The problem is that unix geeks are elitist. shell, shell, shell. Most home users don't even know that a shell exists in MS OSes.
Linux geeks are probably even more elitist because of their view on opensource applications and how much better they are, etc, etc. Linux, for all practical purposes is great, but you don't teach sendmail to someone who only wants to check their email.
To all who care below is the security bulletin from MS. Also, "Netscape Engineers are weenies," is not a password and does not work without the correct Key. The following is a Security Bulletin from the Microsoft Product Security Notification Service. Please do not reply to this message, as it was sent from an unattended mailbox. ******************************** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS00-025) - -------------------------------------- Procedure Available to Eliminate "Link View Server-Side Component" Vulnerability Originally Posted: April 14, 2000 Summary ======= A procedure is available to eliminate a security vulnerability in several web server products. The vulnerability could allow a user who has privileges on a web server to read certain files from other web sites hosted on the same computer. Frequently asked questions regarding this vulnerability and the procedure can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /fq00-025.asp Issue ===== Dvwssr.dll is a server-side component used to support the Link View feature in Visual Interdev 1.0. By design, it provides .asp files to clients who have web authoring privileges on the server. However, it does not properly restrict the files that a web author can request, with the result that a user who has web authoring privileges on one web site could request .asp files from anywhere on the server, including other web sites hosted on it. However, even with this vulnerability, the component would only comply with the request if the specific file granted read access to the user. There are some significant restrictions to this vulnerability: - Only servers hosting multiple web sites could be affected by it - Only a user who has web authoring privileges for a site on the server could request a file. He would need to know the name and location of the file on the server. - The files would only be sent if their permissions granted read access to the particular user who requested them. In most cases, this would mean that the files granted read access to the Everyone group - Only .asp files (and global.asa, which is a special-case .asp file) could be retrieved. Affected Software Versions ========================== The affected component is part of Visual Interdev 1.0. However, it is a server-side component, and is included in the following products: - Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack - Personal Web Server 4.0, which ships as part of Windows 95 and 98 - Front Page 98 Server Extensions NOTE: 1. Windows 2000 is not affected by this vulnerability. Upgrading from an affected Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 removes the vulnerability. 2. Installing Office 2000 Server Extensions on an affected server removes this vulnerability. 3. Installing FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions on an affected server removes this vulnerability. Remediation =========== To eliminate this vulnerability, customers who are hosting web sites should delete all copies of the file Dvwssr.dll from their servers. The FAQ provides step-by-step instructions for doing this. The only functionality lost by deleting the file is the ability to generate link views using Visual Interdev 1.0.