I was there. But by 1990 the AV shops around here were already using Avid and strata 3d (both of which started about 1988) to do it all. If I remember, strata even support render farms. Later studio pro and maya walked over, facilitated by Windows... by '96 most AV/3D was Windows based.
I remember when our computer science dept. bought some real expensive SGI boxes. Only a couple people were allowed to use them. They were used for one purpose only; rendering fluid simulations. So, the rest-of-us never really got excited about the hardware.
SGI never got mind share. Even in the 3D world where they had an opportunity. MacOS briefly had a toe hold that was quickly surpased by PCs in the modelling and rendering world. Both were a fraction of the price of the SGI. Suffices to say desktop Wintel owned the market by 1995.
I don't think its fair to say SGI was the Doyenne of computer graphics systems. I don't think any of the players are bitches and SGI was the alpha female...
Well, they can be a NASD pink sheet. But NO ONE wants to be on NASD these days, as you can do reverse splits (destroy capital), and NASD allows shorting. Both of these are fatal to tech companies.
Adobe killed Aldus SuperPaint too. SuperPaint continues to be unsurpassed in easy of use for a drawing app for everyone. It was killed because of Illustrator and Photoshop, both that have continued down a path of unusuability.
The real question... why haven't any products popped up to replace them? Or open source solutions?
The answer is that Photoshop has marketshare and mindshare. Its the shit, man. People teach courses on how to use it (god knows I couldn't figure it out). As soon as the user base starts revolting, things might change, but unfortunately a real revolt means people leaving the platform for an alternative - so its chicken and egg. An alternative leads to competition. But an alternative won't happen so long as Adobe has market share and buys/kills competition.
Recommendations... about IT people and career paths?
Given the trend of most companies to attempt to outsource IT, I'd suggest that. Outsource all of the web development because it is not the company's core business; they are after all a regional airline, not a web development shop. This co-source can support best practices and have a more defined career path.
That's right! Lay them all off. It also moves them from being an operating expense to a capital one. Human resources are costly.
Excuse me? Job protection? What is that? I have worked for so many companies that promote "technical people", usually engineers, into management paths that Do not want to be there, and Are not qualified to be there. So why would any web developer worth his weight in Javascript want to go from a creative hands on process to a managed hands off one?
Very few people in IT/IS these days expect employer loyalty. Allowing IT/IS people to somehow advance into management is about as rational as all geologists and accountants managing and designing all the software at the oil company I work at.
Because he has always been... it never crossed his small narrow mind that people USE Macs because they WORK. Most writers don't give a crap about IT; they want to write...
The problem is that Jack thinks he is on a Jihad inspired by God Himself. I talked to Jack recently and he told me as much. However, when I told him that God never mentioned him to me, nor their communication, that I found truly abhorent, Jack started yelling "Who the hell do you think you are?" at me over the phone. I tried to explain that I had a close, personal relationship with the almighty and that he didn't start any Jihads without consulting me first. Jack responded with a tantrum, and name calling "Blasphemor! Blasphemor!" I said "Listen Jack, Mr. Man and I are going for a smoke in a few minutes to talk about Dubya and a viscious assult by a swarm of national socialist howler monkies. If you don't watch it, I'll subtly suggest a dozen bueboes on your Chevy Chase." He proceeded to call me a large purple dinosaur that mated with a large purple teletubby with a pink triangle on his forehead. "Sir, my farts sound more eloquent than you," I imparted as I put the phone down. I'm pretty sure that Jack spanks to Laura Croft, but that's my personal opinion.
I dislike the puppet intellectual (Dvorak) as much as the next guy, but this time he has done an effective job at restating the obvious.
He does however miss a point near and dear to my heart... that is - the dependency of the OS on these new MS integrated virus and spyware initiatives which will only get worse.
I live behind a firewall. It does a really good job and keeping out most sploits. I also live behind an email server that does a pretty good job at sending executables to the bit-bucket.
It annoys me to no end that IE is so insecure... but it also annoys me every time I boot my machine I get the Your system is insecure message, because I've chosen to disable the MS firewall and antivirus.
Perhaps it will become as irritating as norton, that revalidates itself every other day accross the internet telling me the key I bought last month expired... or having ccapp go crazy burning cpu even when I've disabled virus checking.
Norton is evil. It hooks into all sorts of stuff it shouldn't. Crappy virus ware (that patches file open) can potentially take down/slow down you computer even when its off, or you are disconnected.
So, the real issue, after my rambling, is dependency on this crap by the OS, the grafting *kludge* by which it was implemented, and an unhealthy assumption that every computer is connected to the internet all the time.
Though the article claims clustering is about selling hardware, it goes on to suggest fault tolerant systems by various manufacturers...
And clustering has some advantages over fault tolerant hardware when it comes to site [in]security.
Say for example you want to architect the new Iraqi stock exchange. Do you put all the hardware in the same place and go crazy on physical security and housing? Or do you distribute the hardware with redundancy over multiple physical sites?
You are probably cheap, because you KNOW the hardware is going to fail anyway, so why spend $30k plus on the latest SunFire-UltraSPARC or NEC Express5800FT when you can get a swarm of cheap intel servers for the same price.
The study should claim that its Canadian youth eh?
This reminds me of a study once that compared the populator of MacOS users to left handed people and homosexuals... the conclusion that all MacOS users are left handed gay people.
I worked in this field for years; having been a misguided youth it was strangely appropriate. There was one brutal reality. The costs to invent copy protection schemes was exponential. It had the side effect of complicating the production process. The cost to break copy protection is linear. That, and you have a whole bunch more misguided youth that will try and crack it.
So the real issue is WHY? Is it commercial piracy that's the issue? Or the consumer? Either way - they seem to ignore another market reality - that is the death of the Video store is fueled by the availability of CHEAP DVDs...
Both companies mentioned have no presence in Newfoundland. If you can call two towers (Rogers) on the whole island a presence (servicing St. John's poorly.)
This is kinda stupid; cause all sorts of Americas are buying up the real estate around Deer Lake (because of pristine flora, fauna, and you know there are 6 moose per square kilometer - making moose more abundand than people on the ol' rock.)
It's funny seeing them say it will be nationwide at such a small number; as I doubt small and/or remote communities will get excluded.
Is I a Newf?
Deed I is me ol' cock, long may your big jib draw!
Its odd that so many people think this isn't a big deal, siting issues like "we don't know enough" or "its happened before in our geological history"...
If you actually put some common sense into, that is the carbon cycle over millions of years has store sh1tloads of carbon away underground, and that in the next hundred years its very likely we will have put it all up in the atmosphere... and that carbon contributes to global warming, that has the side effects of unpredictable violent weather, and a general slowing of the earth on its axis (like Venus)... you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
An analogy is forest fires... forests have burned forever, contributing to the nitrogen cycle and carbon cycle. But now we're hell bent on putting them out. Sure, it means not-so-much carbon, but the result is a f4cked up nitrogen cycle and a build up of biomass just waiting to be a serious blaze. Why do we fight the fires then? Protect peoples homes? OR to protect the forestry industry?
So the ocean rises a few inches, and a bunch of well established species get extinct; just think of how many times we get to rebuild New Orleans, Miami, and such...
One problem with software developers in the work force is many of them are lacking the skill to effectively problem solve. Few know about test/debugging out of school, and fewer still know about low level debugging.
If you're talking a compsci degree for a job, then you should try one of the many 6 month courses to be an object oriented software developer at some of the tradeschools... You'll save yourself a lot of month with, for example, your 2 week introductory course to SQL, C++, Java, and the like.
If however you actually want to know how to BUILD a computer, and develop algorithms as opposed to finding them in books, knowing a bit about the "science"... then you should stay in compsci. Hell, take a compilers course and learn about LR and RDP parsers... write your own java...
Slashdot Mirror
I was there. But by 1990 the AV shops around here were already using Avid and strata 3d (both of which started about 1988) to do it all. If I remember, strata even support render farms. Later studio pro and maya walked over, facilitated by Windows... by '96 most AV/3D was Windows based.
I remember when our computer science dept. bought some real expensive SGI boxes. Only a couple people were allowed to use them. They were used for one purpose only; rendering fluid simulations. So, the rest-of-us never really got excited about the hardware.
SGI never got mind share. Even in the 3D world where they had an opportunity. MacOS briefly had a toe hold that was quickly surpased by PCs in the modelling and rendering world. Both were a fraction of the price of the SGI. Suffices to say desktop Wintel owned the market by 1995.
I don't think its fair to say SGI was the Doyenne of computer graphics systems. I don't think any of the players are bitches and SGI was the alpha female...
Well, they can be a NASD pink sheet. But NO ONE wants to be on NASD these days, as you can do reverse splits (destroy capital), and NASD allows shorting. Both of these are fatal to tech companies.
Adobe killed Aldus SuperPaint too. SuperPaint continues to be unsurpassed in easy of use for a drawing app for everyone. It was killed because of Illustrator and Photoshop, both that have continued down a path of unusuability.
The real question... why haven't any products popped up to replace them? Or open source solutions?
The answer is that Photoshop has marketshare and mindshare. Its the shit, man. People teach courses on how to use it (god knows I couldn't figure it out). As soon as the user base starts revolting, things might change, but unfortunately a real revolt means people leaving the platform for an alternative - so its chicken and egg. An alternative leads to competition. But an alternative won't happen so long as Adobe has market share and buys/kills competition.
Text based content models? HTML? PDXI and other industry open, text based data structures? Tons and tonts of prior art.
Recommendations... about IT people and career paths?
Given the trend of most companies to attempt to outsource IT, I'd suggest that. Outsource all of the web development because it is not the company's core business; they are after all a regional airline, not a web development shop. This co-source can support best practices and have a more defined career path.
That's right! Lay them all off. It also moves them from being an operating expense to a capital one. Human resources are costly.
Excuse me? Job protection? What is that? I have worked for so many companies that promote "technical people", usually engineers, into management paths that Do not want to be there, and Are not qualified to be there. So why would any web developer worth his weight in Javascript want to go from a creative hands on process to a managed hands off one?
Very few people in IT/IS these days expect employer loyalty. Allowing IT/IS people to somehow advance into management is about as rational as all geologists and accountants managing and designing all the software at the oil company I work at.
G0d d4mm1t stop shattering my preconceived misconceptions!
Actually thanks; I can't remember if I remember that or not. But now I know (at least temporarily.)
But everyone uses the Dvorak keyboard...
I seem to remember the top letters being S T F U N E W B... Dvorak was ahead of his time.
Because he has always been... it never crossed his small narrow mind that people USE Macs because they WORK. Most writers don't give a crap about IT; they want to write...
The problem is that Jack thinks he is on a Jihad inspired by God Himself. I talked to Jack recently and he told me as much. However, when I told him that God never mentioned him to me, nor their communication, that I found truly abhorent, Jack started yelling "Who the hell do you think you are?" at me over the phone. I tried to explain that I had a close, personal relationship with the almighty and that he didn't start any Jihads without consulting me first. Jack responded with a tantrum, and name calling "Blasphemor! Blasphemor!" I said "Listen Jack, Mr. Man and I are going for a smoke in a few minutes to talk about Dubya and a viscious assult by a swarm of national socialist howler monkies. If you don't watch it, I'll subtly suggest a dozen bueboes on your Chevy Chase." He proceeded to call me a large purple dinosaur that mated with a large purple teletubby with a pink triangle on his forehead. "Sir, my farts sound more eloquent than you," I imparted as I put the phone down. I'm pretty sure that Jack spanks to Laura Croft, but that's my personal opinion.
I did turn off the reminder. I tried to obliterate the service. It took me a few cycles to figure how. My fear is that this is just the beginning...
I dislike the puppet intellectual (Dvorak) as much as the next guy, but this time he has done an effective job at restating the obvious.
He does however miss a point near and dear to my heart... that is - the dependency of the OS on these new MS integrated virus and spyware initiatives which will only get worse.
I live behind a firewall. It does a really good job and keeping out most sploits. I also live behind an email server that does a pretty good job at sending executables to the bit-bucket.
It annoys me to no end that IE is so insecure... but it also annoys me every time I boot my machine I get the Your system is insecure message, because I've chosen to disable the MS firewall and antivirus.
Perhaps it will become as irritating as norton, that revalidates itself every other day accross the internet telling me the key I bought last month expired... or having ccapp go crazy burning cpu even when I've disabled virus checking.
Norton is evil. It hooks into all sorts of stuff it shouldn't. Crappy virus ware (that patches file open) can potentially take down/slow down you computer even when its off, or you are disconnected.
So, the real issue, after my rambling, is dependency on this crap by the OS, the grafting *kludge* by which it was implemented, and an unhealthy assumption that every computer is connected to the internet all the time.
Does he mention at all that he dropped out of post secondary?
Um, yeah, we need you to move your desk right back against the wall. Ok Milton? That's a nice stapler... Red Swingline huh? I'll just take that.
Lumberg
Though the article claims clustering is about selling hardware, it goes on to suggest fault tolerant systems by various manufacturers...
And clustering has some advantages over fault tolerant hardware when it comes to site [in]security.
Say for example you want to architect the new Iraqi stock exchange. Do you put all the hardware in the same place and go crazy on physical security and housing? Or do you distribute the hardware with redundancy over multiple physical sites?
You are probably cheap, because you KNOW the hardware is going to fail anyway, so why spend $30k plus on the latest SunFire-UltraSPARC or NEC Express5800FT when you can get a swarm of cheap intel servers for the same price.
The study should claim that its Canadian youth eh?
This reminds me of a study once that compared the populator of MacOS users to left handed people and homosexuals... the conclusion that all MacOS users are left handed gay people.
from the book of SOFTWARE copy protection.
I worked in this field for years; having been a misguided youth it was strangely appropriate. There was one brutal reality. The costs to invent copy protection schemes was exponential. It had the side effect of complicating the production process. The cost to break copy protection is linear. That, and you have a whole bunch more misguided youth that will try and crack it.
So the real issue is WHY? Is it commercial piracy that's the issue? Or the consumer? Either way - they seem to ignore another market reality - that is the death of the Video store is fueled by the availability of CHEAP DVDs...
How fast do you drive?! For me, from Calgary to Ft. MacLeod is 2 hours! Lethbridge is 3+ hours.
Wow that's informed. I'm impressed! Maybe I just feel marginalized.
The things you learn! Thanks for the tip.
Most cities are by the border? Not everyone lives about the great lakes. Not everyone in the maritimes is close.
Edmonton, AB is 12 hours drive from the border.
Red Deer, AB is 6 hours.
Calgary, AB is 4 hours.
And then there is NFLD.
I meant included. Why can't I edit my damn posts.
Both companies mentioned have no presence in Newfoundland. If you can call two towers (Rogers) on the whole island a presence (servicing St. John's poorly.)
This is kinda stupid; cause all sorts of Americas are buying up the real estate around Deer Lake (because of pristine flora, fauna, and you know there are 6 moose per square kilometer - making moose more abundand than people on the ol' rock.)
It's funny seeing them say it will be nationwide at such a small number; as I doubt small and/or remote communities will get excluded.
Is I a Newf?
Deed I is me ol' cock, long may your big jib draw!
Its odd that so many people think this isn't a big deal, siting issues like "we don't know enough" or "its happened before in our geological history"...
If you actually put some common sense into, that is the carbon cycle over millions of years has store sh1tloads of carbon away underground, and that in the next hundred years its very likely we will have put it all up in the atmosphere... and that carbon contributes to global warming, that has the side effects of unpredictable violent weather, and a general slowing of the earth on its axis (like Venus)... you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
An analogy is forest fires... forests have burned forever, contributing to the nitrogen cycle and carbon cycle. But now we're hell bent on putting them out. Sure, it means not-so-much carbon, but the result is a f4cked up nitrogen cycle and a build up of biomass just waiting to be a serious blaze. Why do we fight the fires then? Protect peoples homes? OR to protect the forestry industry?
So the ocean rises a few inches, and a bunch of well established species get extinct; just think of how many times we get to rebuild New Orleans, Miami, and such...
One problem with software developers in the work force is many of them are lacking the skill to effectively problem solve. Few know about test/debugging out of school, and fewer still know about low level debugging.
If you're talking a compsci degree for a job, then you should try one of the many 6 month courses to be an object oriented software developer at some of the tradeschools... You'll save yourself a lot of month with, for example, your 2 week introductory course to SQL, C++, Java, and the like.
If however you actually want to know how to BUILD a computer, and develop algorithms as opposed to finding them in books, knowing a bit about the "science"... then you should stay in compsci. Hell, take a compilers course and learn about LR and RDP parsers... write your own java...