I submitted this a story but apparently it's not interesing enough--MS's director of competitive strategy for Windows at LWCE, talking about lessons they've learned from Linux. Read it here at CNET.
I hate to have to disagree with Linus, but I'm not so sure the government would step in.
A think a problem arises when you start asking someone who is mainly a software developer about government and tax codes. These types of panels should probably just stick to what the panelists are well-versed in, instead of always forcing the conversation into a sprawling discussion of the future of the universe.
The article says that people get involved in open source with recognition as one of the primary motives. It even has a quote from a panelist: Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word? But everyone knows Linus,this is part of why you do open source.
This is a terrible analogy, and IMHO it is even worse for the point of open source. First off, comparing the creator of linux to the creator of the Word paper clip is a bit off. The significance of the development of a free OS and an animated piece of metal are totally different. Besides Linus, there are 1000s of people who do open source that don't get nor seek any recognition. For example, who is the guy who wrote the Gnome Calculator? Can you name the members of the Mozilla team?
More importantly though, this panelist (Dirk Hohndel, former CTO of SuSE) makes a very disconcerting assertion that if you get into open source, you are going to get tons of recognition from the endeavor. This is certainly not that case. I think that most of the benefits of open source come from collaboration between diverse groups, and the vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained just by *looking* at someone elses code. The idea that open source will get you a lot of recognition is ludicrous. True, people may say "X application is great!", but they will probably not know the person behind it or ever send a thank-you note. A lot of people say the same about commercial software.
Just a rant, but open source should never be about recognition--if it becomes about that, the movement will fade rather fast.
Sure, let's all go...never mind the fact that they have a seriously out of control murder rate. I think I read that last year there were somewhere around 11,000 murders just in Rio.
All of this activity continues to show the passion of the consumer for music and the need for both legal protection and legitimate alternatives.
Well, let's put a stop to that. People are passionate about music!
More of this legal maneuvering will only take away the passion that people have for *buying* music, not for the music itself (hopefully). And you know what, that is probably not that bad of a thing if these are the types of people we buy the music from. I prefer to have a nice new manufactured CD of music I like rather than a burned copy, but these people make a nice case for civil disobedience with regard to music purchase.
Oh well. I'm moving to Canada, where they have no laws.:)
If I remember right hasn't every Nintendo console to date that had a metroid on it been the dominate console in its class
Not sure if Metroid was on SNES, but even if it was I think Genesis was the ruling party then.
Re:My "siggraph experience"
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 1
Well, I have egg on my face. Yum.
Seriously though, I was going by the fact that I saw many, many people taking pictures during the technical sessions. And I'm assuming they weren't a "credible media outlet" since they had disposable cameras.
Re:My "siggraph experience"
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 1
SIGGRAPH's policy forbids cameras (not that people really care).
No, you can take pictures of just about anything you want. There were plenty of people walking around with cameras (video included). There was one talk that I went to that did forbid pictures--they just said so before the session started--because they showed some just-finished FX clips from Spider-Man (which looked very cool).
Re:My "siggraph experience"
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 1
it's so BIG and all the major announcements for the next 6 months are happening there
There really aren't many announcements that occur at SIGGRAPH; any announcements are usually for products that only the deeply CG technical community cares about. It's not like Comdex or some trade show like that. While the exhibition was good, I don't think it's enough to have a roaming webcasting reported going from booth to booth showing the latest products--maybe a 5 minute best of clip.
Most things presented are technical papers (which are usually availbable on the net 3-6 months beforehand), or technical classes. I do agree that it would be nice to stream these classes, but that probably *would* cut into attendence, since that is what a fair number of people go for.
Re:Monsters Inc.
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well worth it
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Having also returned from my first SIGGRAPH, I have to say it was well worth the money spent. For anyone who can qualify for the student rate ($230 for the full conference), my advice is to try to attend it next year.
In addition to the wealth of knowledge you can get from the conference, the contacts you can make in the industry are worth the price of admission. Where else can you get a class taught by Jim Blinn?
Apparently, you're not a guardian of an animal. When they run out of food, they don't want 2 day express shipping, or overnight if you order by 5 pm, they want new cat or dog food within hours.
Hmmm, it's called planning ahead. That way when one bag of food runs out, you already have another! Imagine that!
Actually, I thought pets.com ruled--they gave you a $10 off coupon with every order (not to mention all the coupons on the web). My pet food budget was at at all time low while they were around!
we have enough technical know-how to install the ones we want (and only the ones we want)
But why not make life easier for everyone and include the plugins that everyone wants anyway--is there anyone here who wants mozilla but does *not* want the Java plugin?
The argument is understandable, but if it's taken too far it just hurts the end product. Case in point--Java not included, Debug/QA is. Of course, this *is* still a beta officially, (right?), but now everyone has to download that stuff!
It's not a matter of saying "the more stupid chairs you bought the more likely the company is to have stupid management"
Unfortunately, I have found this to be absolutely true. I worked for a company that had been around for 10 years doing software development, yet when the new management came in, the company went downhill until they laid off about 70% of the people 3 months ago. And, yes, they have a lot of extra Aeron chairs right now.
It would be interesting to see of the companies you listed, which ones actually bought Aeron chairs. Who knows, maybe it is linked:)
Of course, but with a company as large as Dell, it's hard for it to fold overnight. Even look at Lucent--they have had *tons* of losses, yet they are still around, albeit they may need to merge to keep from losing even more money.
When confronted at the dinner, he was asked to give the $50,000 in fees that would have to be paid to close a real-estate deal, something of this nature, I forget the details.
Well, needless to say, Michael stormed out of the dinner, upset that the people he gave this "gift" to "spit in his face."
I must say that whatever charity you worked must be a bunch of ingrates. If the "fees" to close the deal was around 50K, the land must have been worth much, much more than 50K.
Any "charity" that accepts a donation, throws a friggin "thank you dinner", and then insults the guest of honor--they deserve to have the guest storm out. Did you ever think that if the 50K was so outrageous, maybe they shouldn't have had a thank-you dinner.
Yes, and this is a sample implemenation. The point was that OpenGL is a specification, and there are many implementations, some of which have source code open (like this), and most of which do not.
This link is just an SGI implementation, just as MS has an implementation, just as does Nvidia.
you have say metal and stone on one map then varying some constants becomes necessary
True enough. I'm thinking more in a high-end graphics environment rather than a gaming one, where that situation wouldn't come up very often really--it's just a way of being lazy and putting multiple objects into one--not sure if I'm being clear.
But you're right, you would have to change those constants across a surface, especially in games, where i suppose surfaces might be merged together for optimization's sake.
As far as the RGB/normal channel goes, I think most bump mapping is sufficiently done with just a grayscale type image...much like a heightmap. Since bump maps inherently give the appearance of micro geometry, some accuracy that might be acheived through an RGB bump map can be set aside for the sake of ease and speed (even if the speedup is in development!).
microsoft actively develops new nice features helping the developers, opengl has stuck to its standard for a looong time.
But the "features" that microsoft develops are easily implemented in OGL, or can be added in as extensions by the vendor. That's the good part about OGL, each individual vendor can add its own extensions to suit whatever is needed.
Of course, then you have this situation, where some vendors support some things, and others support other technologies, etc, but the point of a "standard" is that it shouldn't change that often. Hence OpenGL is on v1.2, and DirectX is on 8. Most "standards" don't go too far up the version ladder.
I don't know for sure that artists are gonna be able to create and leverage a separate ka, ks etc map for each material
This would be done more through code than by an artist. You only need to either write a shader do do it properly, or just assign a ka/kd/ks to each material, and that isn't exactly difficult. After all, in the real world, most surfaces have a pretty much constant reflectance function for the whole dang thing. Just look around...Yes, things have different *colors* across its surface, but the actaul reflectance is usually the same.
Artists won't draw bump-maps.
Why not? They draw textures now, I'm sure they would have no problem drawing a bump map if need be. Besides, if there is support for procedural textures, you can just use those to generate a bump map.
Slashdot Mirror
I submitted this a story but apparently it's not interesing enough--MS's director of competitive strategy for Windows at LWCE, talking about lessons they've learned from Linux. Read it here at CNET.
I hate to have to disagree with Linus, but I'm not so sure the government would step in.
A think a problem arises when you start asking someone who is mainly a software developer about government and tax codes. These types of panels should probably just stick to what the panelists are well-versed in, instead of always forcing the conversation into a sprawling discussion of the future of the universe.
This is a terrible analogy, and IMHO it is even worse for the point of open source. First off, comparing the creator of linux to the creator of the Word paper clip is a bit off. The significance of the development of a free OS and an animated piece of metal are totally different. Besides Linus, there are 1000s of people who do open source that don't get nor seek any recognition. For example, who is the guy who wrote the Gnome Calculator? Can you name the members of the Mozilla team?
More importantly though, this panelist (Dirk Hohndel, former CTO of SuSE) makes a very disconcerting assertion that if you get into open source, you are going to get tons of recognition from the endeavor. This is certainly not that case. I think that most of the benefits of open source come from collaboration between diverse groups, and the vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained just by *looking* at someone elses code. The idea that open source will get you a lot of recognition is ludicrous. True, people may say "X application is great!", but they will probably not know the person behind it or ever send a thank-you note. A lot of people say the same about commercial software.
Just a rant, but open source should never be about recognition--if it becomes about that, the movement will fade rather fast.
Sure, let's all go...never mind the fact that they have a seriously out of control murder rate. I think I read that last year there were somewhere around 11,000 murders just in Rio.
Any takers?
Well, let's put a stop to that. People are passionate about music!
More of this legal maneuvering will only take away the passion that people have for *buying* music, not for the music itself (hopefully). And you know what, that is probably not that bad of a thing if these are the types of people we buy the music from. I prefer to have a nice new manufactured CD of music I like rather than a burned copy, but these people make a nice case for civil disobedience with regard to music purchase.
Oh well. I'm moving to Canada, where they have no laws. :)
Not sure if Metroid was on SNES, but even if it was I think Genesis was the ruling party then.
Seriously though, I was going by the fact that I saw many, many people taking pictures during the technical sessions. And I'm assuming they weren't a "credible media outlet" since they had disposable cameras.
No, you can take pictures of just about anything you want. There were plenty of people walking around with cameras (video included). There was one talk that I went to that did forbid pictures--they just said so before the session started--because they showed some just-finished FX clips from Spider-Man (which looked very cool).
There really aren't many announcements that occur at SIGGRAPH; any announcements are usually for products that only the deeply CG technical community cares about. It's not like Comdex or some trade show like that. While the exhibition was good, I don't think it's enough to have a roaming webcasting reported going from booth to booth showing the latest products--maybe a 5 minute best of clip.
Most things presented are technical papers (which are usually availbable on the net 3-6 months beforehand), or technical classes. I do agree that it would be nice to stream these classes, but that probably *would* cut into attendence, since that is what a fair number of people go for.
There are two trailers available at monstersinc.com.
In addition to the wealth of knowledge you can get from the conference, the contacts you can make in the industry are worth the price of admission. Where else can you get a class taught by Jim Blinn?
Hmmm, it's called planning ahead. That way when one bag of food runs out, you already have another! Imagine that!
Actually, I thought pets.com ruled--they gave you a $10 off coupon with every order (not to mention all the coupons on the web). My pet food budget was at at all time low while they were around!
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.
Seriously, they probably have 35-40 Aeron chairs and 4 employees. It's really funny now--now that I have a new job, that is :) Before, not so funny.
But why not make life easier for everyone and include the plugins that everyone wants anyway--is there anyone here who wants mozilla but does *not* want the Java plugin?
The argument is understandable, but if it's taken too far it just hurts the end product. Case in point--Java not included, Debug/QA is. Of course, this *is* still a beta officially, (right?), but now everyone has to download that stuff!
Unfortunately, I have found this to be absolutely true. I worked for a company that had been around for 10 years doing software development, yet when the new management came in, the company went downhill until they laid off about 70% of the people 3 months ago. And, yes, they have a lot of extra Aeron chairs right now.
It would be interesting to see of the companies you listed, which ones actually bought Aeron chairs. Who knows, maybe it is linked :)
I think they should have stepped in to block the release of Quake 2 without deathmatch maps. Now *that* was a travesty.
Of course, but with a company as large as Dell, it's hard for it to fold overnight. Even look at Lucent--they have had *tons* of losses, yet they are still around, albeit they may need to merge to keep from losing even more money.
And if I need to clarify (and apparently I do), no, this is not Michael Dell typing, I have no Dell stock, and I don't even own anything from Dell.
Don't hold your breath on that one.
I must say that whatever charity you worked must be a bunch of ingrates. If the "fees" to close the deal was around 50K, the land must have been worth much, much more than 50K.
Any "charity" that accepts a donation, throws a friggin "thank you dinner", and then insults the guest of honor--they deserve to have the guest storm out. Did you ever think that if the 50K was so outrageous, maybe they shouldn't have had a thank-you dinner.
People amaze me.
This link is just an SGI implementation, just as MS has an implementation, just as does Nvidia.
In any case, thanks for the link!
True enough. I'm thinking more in a high-end graphics environment rather than a gaming one, where that situation wouldn't come up very often really--it's just a way of being lazy and putting multiple objects into one--not sure if I'm being clear.
But you're right, you would have to change those constants across a surface, especially in games, where i suppose surfaces might be merged together for optimization's sake.
As far as the RGB/normal channel goes, I think most bump mapping is sufficiently done with just a grayscale type image...much like a heightmap. Since bump maps inherently give the appearance of micro geometry, some accuracy that might be acheived through an RGB bump map can be set aside for the sake of ease and speed (even if the speedup is in development!).
But the "features" that microsoft develops are easily implemented in OGL, or can be added in as extensions by the vendor. That's the good part about OGL, each individual vendor can add its own extensions to suit whatever is needed.
Of course, then you have this situation, where some vendors support some things, and others support other technologies, etc, but the point of a "standard" is that it shouldn't change that often. Hence OpenGL is on v1.2, and DirectX is on 8. Most "standards" don't go too far up the version ladder.
This would be done more through code than by an artist. You only need to either write a shader do do it properly, or just assign a ka/kd/ks to each material, and that isn't exactly difficult. After all, in the real world, most surfaces have a pretty much constant reflectance function for the whole dang thing. Just look around...Yes, things have different *colors* across its surface, but the actaul reflectance is usually the same.
Artists won't draw bump-maps.
Why not? They draw textures now, I'm sure they would have no problem drawing a bump map if need be. Besides, if there is support for procedural textures, you can just use those to generate a bump map.